Page:Letters on the Human Body (John Clowes).djvu/88

68 taught to consider his eating and drinking as acts of any further importance than to please his palate and support his bodily health and strength; and accordingly, when he sits down to his daily meals, the gratification of appetite and the nourishment of the body are the principal objects of his attention and regard. Yet he never scruples to join in the ceremony of what is commonly called saying grace, both before and after dinner, and thus of supplicating, apparently at least, the on what he is about to eat and drink, and of returning thanks also to the  for the materials of eating and drinking. There is too much reason however to fear, that the good effects, intended by this ceremony, terminate, in the case of Epicurus, with the ceremony itself, since, the moment it is ended, he suffers the pleasures of taste to take into their hands the reins of government, and to banish from his thoughts every other but the god of those sensualists of old, of whom it is written, “Whose God is their belly.” The unhappy consequence is such as might be expected, for by degrees the taste of bodily meat and drink gains an ascendancy over the taste of any higher order and degree, whether intellectual or spiritual, until at length no sound is so enchanting to Epicurus as that of the dinner bell, and no sight so fascinating as that of the dinner