Although the mind has rested during the night, we feel in the morning rather sleepy than otherwise, and hence it is, that we are every morning desirous of stimulating our nervous system with a cup of coffee, preparing, as it were, our mind for the day's work. A modern naturalist, as genial as he is learned, Moleschott, ascribes the lately increased consumption of coffee to the greater degree of mental activity, which life in former times did not require to such a high extent as our present age. We have now sufficiently explained the need of coffee-drinking, and we must confess that all we have said here does not in the least affect our conviction that, according to Liebig, coffee is also nutritive. And no one can help believing this who has seen how old people can subsist on but very little food, provided they can have plenty of coffee. The objection raised, that it would be better for these persons to take the nitrogen contained in coffee in the form of meat, is correct; but, on the other hand, we must stop to ask, whether meat would be good for the stomach at all such times as a cup of coffee is! This would certainly not be the case early in the morning; and if in the coffee we enjoy a beverage which gives us nutriment, strengthens the stomach and at the same time stimulates our mind, we have good reasons to reverence the instinct of man which raised coffee to an essential means of subsistence, and discovered its beneficial influence long before this was done by science. CHAPTER V. USEFULNESS AND HURTFULNESS OF COFFEE. Since coffee possesses the quality of stimulating the nervous system, it is a matter of course that in many cases its effect is rather injurious. Phlegmatic people, especially, need coffee, and they are fond of drinking it; for a similar reason it is a favorite beverage in the Orient, where its consumption is immense. But to persons of an excitable temperament the enjoyment of coffee is hurtful; they ought only to take it very weak. With lively children it does not agree at all, and it is very wrong to force them to drink it, as is often done; while elderly people, who are in need of a stimulant for the decreasing activity of their nerves, are right in taking as much of it as they choose.