Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/113

Rh course, is necessary to be attended to, in order to secure the accomplishment of the more remote and ultimate ends of eating and drinking. This end therefore requires consideration and watchfulness on the part of man, as a guard principally against excess in eating and drinking; since daily experience teaches the melancholy truth, that the health of the body may be injured by too much food, as well as by too little, and that intemperance in the use of meats and drinks is alike destructive to the body as entire abstinence. But what shall we say is the precise limit or boundary, in this case, between the too much and the too little? This can only be discovered by a man’s own experience, in proportion as he consults the blessing of health more than the indulgence of appetite; since if the latter be principally consulted, he may then depend upon it, he will never find the middle point of temperance and order in the daily nourishment of his body, which can alone insure to him the comforts of a sound constitution, and rescue him from the miseries of an impaired one.

But what a multitude of wonders and of mercies are here presented to our view, in the accomplishment of this proximate end of eating and drinking! For, in the first place, it is requisite, previous to the reception of food, that there be an appetite for it; yet, what is