It is strictly true that the three intellectual pursuits--literature, science, and the fine arts--are all of them strong stimulants, and that men are attracted to them by the stimulus they give. But these occupations are morally much nearer to the common level of other occupations than you suppose. There is no doubt a certain intoxication in poetry and painting; but I have seen a tradesman find a fully equivalent intoxication in an addition of figures showing a delightful balance at his banker's. I have seen a young poet intoxicated with the love of poetry; but I have also seen a young mechanical genius on whom the sight of a locomotive acted exactly like a bottle of champagne. Everything that is capable of exciting or moving man, everything that fires him with enthusiasm, everything that sustains his energies above the dead level of merely animal existence, may be compared, and not very untruly, to the action of generous wine. The two most powerful mental stimulants--since they overcome even the fear of death--are unquestionably religion and patriotism: ardent states of feeling both of them when they are genuine; yet this ardor has a great utility. It enables men to bear much, to perform much which would be beyond their natural force if it were not sustained by powerful mental stimulants. And so it is in the intellectual life. It is because its labors are so severe that its pleasures are so glorious. The Creator of intellectual man set him the most arduous tasks--tasks that required the utmost possible patience, courage, self-discipline, and which at the same time were for the most part, from their very nature, likely to receive only the most meagre and precarious pecuniary reward. Therefore, in order that so poor and weak a creature might execute its gigantic works with the energy necessary to their permanence, the labor itself was made intensely attractive and interesting to the few who were fitted for it by their constitution. Since their courage could not be maintained by any of the common motives which carry men through ordinary drudgery--since neither wealth nor worldly position was in their prospects, the drudgery they had to go through was to be rewarded by the triumphs of scientific discovery, by the felicities of artistic expression. A divine drunkenness was given to them for their encouragement, surpassing the gift of the grape.