But this relation is not confined to colours and sounds alone. It probably extends to the objects of human aliment. For example, bread and meat, meat and salt, the alkalescent meats and acescent vegetables, all harmonize with each other upon the tongue; while fish and flesh, butter and raw onions, fish and milk, when combined, are all offensive to a pure and healthy taste. It would be agreeable to trace the analogy of sounds and tastes. They have both their flats and their sharps. They are both improved by the contrast of discords. Thus pepper, and other condiments (which are disagreeable when taken by themselves) enhance the relish of many of our aliments, and they are both delightful in proportion as they are simple in their composition. To illustrate this analogy by more examples from music, would lead us from the subject of the present inquiry. It is observable that the tongue and the stomach, like instinct and reason, are, by nature, in unison with each other. One of those organs must always be disordered, when they disagree in a single article of aliment. When they both unite in articles of diet that were originally disagreeable, it is owing to a perversion in each of them, similar to that which takes place in the human mind, when both the moral faculty and the conscience lose their natural sensibility to virtue and vice. Unfortunately for this part of science, the taste and the stomach are so much perverted in infancy and childhood by heterogeneous aliment, that it is difficult to tell what kinds, and mixtures of food are natural, and what are artificial. It is true, the system possesses a power of accommodating itself both to artificial food, and to the most discordant mixtures of that which is natural; but may we not reasonably suppose, that the system would preserve its natural strength and order much longer, if no such violence had been offered to it? If the relation of aliments to each other follows the analogy of the objects of chemistry, then their union will be influenced by many external circumstances, such as heat and cold, dilution, concentration, rest, motion, and the addition of substances which promote unnatural, or destroy natural mixtures. This idea enlarges the field of inquiry before us, and leads us still further from facts and certainty upon this subject, but at the same time it does not preclude us from the hope of obtaining both; for every difficulty that arises out of this view of the subject, may be removed by observation and experiment. I come now to apply these remarks to health and pleasure. I shall select only a few cases for this purpose; for if my principles be true, my readers cannot avoid discovering many other illustrations of them. 1. When an article of diet is grateful to the taste, and afterwards disagrees with the stomach, may it not be occasioned by some other kind of food, or by some drink being taken into the stomach, which refuses to unite with the offending article of diet?