the northern tropic, and his teaching travelled
westward. It is, indeed, a circumstance worthy
of note, that civilisation and the vine have their
origin alike in the north, and that neither are
indigenous to the south. Also is it noticeable,
that wherever the grape ripens, there flourish
all the arts that chiefly tend to make life
enjoyable. Dr. Arthaud expands this fact into a
somewhat absolute system with a degree of
modesty, truthfulness, and impartiality, which
are wonderful even in a Frenchman.

"It may," he says, "be asserted with
unrestricted truth, that civilisation is a flower which
only grows spontaneously in the soil that
produces the vine;" and he adds: "There are two
kinds of civilisation: the one native, spontaneous,
active, and lively; the other communicated,
feeble, accidental, and reflected. A people
animated by a native civilisation is like a luminous,
burning star, which draws within its orbit a crowd
of satellites, warmed by its heat, and enlightened
by its rays; this people is a missionary of civilisation, and its initiator; upon it weighs the
heavy responsibility of guiding the course of
humanity all over the globe. In Europe, Athens,
Rome, Florence, and Paris, are the dazzling
points whence have proceeded at different
periods all the laws which have regulated the
moral world. England, Germany, and Russia,
offer to observation classes more or less numerous
of men excessively civilised, but the people in
those countries are generally barbarous; while
in Greece, in Italy, and throughout France, the
whole people possess, or have possessed, the
sovereignty of mind in all its plenitude!"

"But," continues the enthusiastic and
appreciative doctor, "this supreme privilege of
the pontificate of civilisation, granted to the
essentially wine-growing population, is
accompanied by cruel drawbacks; the palm of the
martyr often crowns their apostolate. To them
belong the agitations of the forum, the incessant
struggle of liberty against slavery"
(nothing of the kind was ever heard of in beer-
drinking England!), "to them revolutions;
to them that laborious fermentation of ideas
whence issue human dignity and life, as the
wine flows from the bubbling vat! The excessive
development of light too often blinds and
precipitates them into abysses unknown to those
nations which receive civilisation ready-made,
purified, and elaborated; as a plant receives the
rays of the sun, as the helpless child drinks in
the maternal milk. Saintly and dreamy
Germany, commercial Holland and England, military
Prussia and Russia, live at the present day
entirely on the life of France. Under the
influence of the same civilising breath, Spain and
Italy seem also to desire to be born again."
(This was written just before the little affair
of Solferino.) "Amongst those peoples, so
different in race, in manners, in religions, the
upper classes, who all drink the paternal wines
of France" (some of them also sipping Rhine
wine, together with a little port and sherry),
"have a tendency to draw nearer to her with
sentiments of peace and sympathy; they
imitate in their literature, their theatre" (this
is a melancholy fact), "their language" (in
England, we talk French "without a master,"
which is more than our neighbours can say),
"their dress" (no! not their hats!), "their
customs" (fortunately, not all of them), "the
models which reach them from Paris; while the
popular masses, whose character is harsh and
sour, like the vulgar drinks with which they are
impregnated" (compare a glass of mild ale or
foaming stout with vin de Suresnes, or the vin
bleu that stains the gutters), "feel nothing but
jealousy of, and hatred against us. The miracle
of Bacchus civilising nations and taming tigers,
is reproduced in our own days!"

Having settled the fact that France is at the
top of the tree of civilisation, the doctor
proceeds to explain the cause. He scouts the
idea that civilisation depends on climate, or
race, or even on the ingenious theories of
philosophers, economists, and socialists, and
asks if, independently of these, there be not
another agent whose power has hitherto been
ignored, but which has a right to an eminent
place in the domain of history. One of the
most prominent aphorisms of Brillat-Savarin,
the philosophical gastronome, is the following:
"Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what
you are!" But Dr. Arthaud changes this form
of speech. "The witty magistrate," he says,
"approached the truth; but he would have
shown her in all her beautiful nudity, had he
written: 'Tell me what you drink, and I will
tell you what you are!' If I demonstrate
physiologically and historically that the use of
good wine has been the most manifest cause
of those great and luminous developments
of the human mind, which, at different epochs,
have attracted the world towards the regions
of a higher civilisation, I shall, I think, have
introduced into science a new element which
will contribute its share towards solving the
great problem of the courses of social
progress."

Basing his opinion upon that of Descartes,
Dr. Arthaud grows metaphysical, and lays down
the proposition that the perfectioning of
humanity upon earth depends principally on
physiology and the science of health. In the
terrestrial condition in which it has pleased
God to place the soul, that divine and
inalterable part of ourselves is, as it were, buried
in the depths of our material organism. The
senses, true observatories, are the means which
the soul employs to place itself in relation
with the rest of the creation. Whatever may
be its own activity, it can only act on impressions
transmitted by the senses, and the quality
of its impressions influences the nature of its
judgments. We can, therefore, readily understand
how necessary it is that the senses, or the
material instruments charged with the duty of
placing the soul in communication with the
external world, should be in conditions favourable
to the clearness and energy of the sensations.
The function of receiving impressions,
or of placing the soul in communion with