nebriate first loses his
vivacity and natural acuteness of perception. His judgment becomes
clouded and impaired in its strength, the memory also enfeebled and
sometimes quite obliterated. The mind is wandering and vacant, and
incapable of intense or steady application to any one subject. This
state is usually accompanied by an unmeaning stare or fixedness of
countenance quite peculiar to the drunkard. The imagination and the
will, if not enfeebled, acquire a morbid sensibility, from which they
are thrown into a state of violent excitement from the slightest causes:
hence, the inebriate sheds floods of tears over the pictures of his own
fancy. I have often seen him, and especially on his recovery from a fit
of intoxication, weep and laugh alternately over the same scene. The
will, too, acquires an omnipotent ascendency over him, and is the only
monitor to which he yields obedience. The appeals of conscience, the
claims of domestic happiness, of wives and children, of patriotism and
of virtue, are not heard.

The different powers of the mind having thus lost their natural relation
to each other, the healthy balance being destroyed, the intellect is no
longer fit for intense application, or successful effort; and although
the inebriate may, and sometimes does, astonish, by the wildness of his
fancy and the poignancy of his wit, yet in nine cases out of ten he
fails, and there is never any confidence to be reposed in him. There
have been a few who, from peculiarity of constitution, or some other
cause, have continued to perform intellectual labor for many years,
while slaves to ardent spirits; but in no instance has the vigor of the
intellect or its ability to labor been increased by indulgence; and
where there is one who has been able to struggle on under the habits of
intemperance, there are thousands who have perished in the experiment,
and some among the most powerful minds that the world ever produced. On
the other hand, we shall find, by looking over the biography of the
great men of every age, that those who have possessed the clearest and
most powerful minds, neither drank spirits nor indulged in the pleasures
of the table. Sir Isaac Newton, John Locke, Dr. Franklin, John Wesley,
Sir William Jones, John Fletcher, and President Edwards, furnish a
striking illustration of this truth. One of the secrets by which these
men produced such astonishing results, were enabled to perform so much
intellectual labor, and of so