But is there any paying too dear for health? How amply are you satisfied for the sacrifices you make, by the enjoyment of it, and by the pleasures it throws into all the moments of your life? “Without health (says HIPPOCRATES) there can be no enjoyment of any earthly good; honors, riches, and all other advantages are of no avail[109].” Besides, these sacrifices are much less than it is commonly imagined they are. I could quote many witnesses, to whom, after just the first days, it no longer cost them any pain to renounce the variety and savoriness of rich viands, for the sake of a simplicity of regimen: which is what nature points out, and is the most pleasing to well constituted organs. A healthy palate, which has all the sensibility that it ought to have, can have no relish but for plain meats; made dishes and high sauces are insupportable to it, while, in the least savory aliments, it finds a relish, and a variety of relish, which escape the depraved, worn out, or furred organs of taste: so that those who return to the simplicity of nature in their aliments, whether it is for their health, or from convinced reason, or from a contracted distaste to high eating, may be assured, that so fast as they shall recover their health, they will find in plain aliments a delight of the palate which they did not suspect in them. A fine ear discerns the slight difference between two notes, which will have escaped a less sensible ear: just so it is with the nerves of the organs of taste; when they are in exquisite order, they perceive the slightest varieties of savors, and are sensible to them; the water-drinkers meet with waters as flattering to their taste as the most exquisite Falernian could be to drinkers of wine, and others as disagreeable to them, as to those the pricked wines of Brie. But even were there not rational hopes of pleasure in the plain regimen, and I am sure it is not hard to accommodate one’s self to that which I have indicated, the satisfaction one must feel, the consideration that, in submitting to it, one is fulfilling a duty to one’s self, must be a greatly pressing motive, as well as a justly flattering reward, for those who can know all the value of the being well with one’s self. The liquid part of aliments, or the drink, is an article of the regimen almost as important as the solid, or eating.