There are many objects, as to which *the question of duty is a question of more or less*. To this class belong not only food and drink, but all forms of luxury, indulgence, recreation, and amusement. In all these the choice lies between excess, abstinence, and temperance. The tendency to excess is intensely strong, when not restrained by prudence or principle. This tendency is by no means confined to the appetite for intoxicating liquors, though modern usage has restricted to excess in this particular the term _intemperance_, which properly bears a much more extended signification. There is reason to believe that there is fully as much intemperance in food as in drink, and with at least equally ruinous consequences as to capacity, character, health, and life,—with this difference only, that gluttony stupefies and stultifies, while drunkenness maddens; and that the glutton is merely a dead weight on the community, while the drunkard is an active instrument of annoyance and peril. There are probably fewer who sink into an absolutely beastly condition by intemperance in food than by intemperance in drink; but of persons who do not expose themselves to open scandal, those whose brains are muddled, whose sensibilities are coarsened, and whose working power is impaired by over-eating, are more numerous than those in whom similar effects are produced by over-free indulgence in intoxicating drinks. Intemperance in amusements, also, is not uncommon, and would undoubtedly be more prevalent than it is, were not the inevitable necessity of labor imposed on most persons from a very early period. In this matter the limit between temperance and excess is aptly fixed by the term _recreation_, as applied to all the gay and festive portions of life. _Re-creation_ is making over, that is, replacing the waste of tissue, brain-power, and physical and mental energy occasioned by hard work. Temperance permits the most generous indulgence of sport, mirth, and gayety that can be claimed as needful or conducive to this essential use, but excludes all beyond this measure.