If you put a light to it, it burns with a bright flame, and it is that substance which we know as spirits of wine.

Now these facts which I have just put before you—all but the last—have been known from extremely remote antiquity. It is, I hope one of the best evidences of the antiquity of the human race, that among the earliest records of all kinds of men, you find a time recorded when they got drunk. We may hope that that must have been a very late period in their history. Not only have we the record of what happened to Noah, but if we turn to the traditions of a different people, those forefathers of ours who lived in the high lands of Northern India, we find that they were not less addicted to intoxicating liquids; and I have no doubt that the knowledge of this process extends far beyond the limits of historically recorded time. And it is a very curious thing to observe that all the names we have of this process, and all that belongs to it, are names that have their roots not in our present language, but in those older languages which go back to the times at which this country was peopled. That word "fermentation" for example, which is the title we apply to the whole process, is a Latin term; and a term which is evidently based upon the fact of the effervescence of the liquid. Then the French, who are very fond of calling themselves a Latin race, have a particular word for ferment, which is 'levure'. And, in the same way, we have the word "leaven," those two words having reference to the heaving up, or to the raising of the substance which is fermented. Now those are words which we get from what I may call the Latin side of our parentage; but if we turn to the Saxon side, there are a number of names connected with this process of fermentation. For example, the Germans call fermentation—and the old Germans did so—"gahren;" and they call anything which is used as a ferment by such names, such as "gheist" and "geest," and finally in low German, "yest"; and that word you know is the word our Saxon forefathers used, and is almost the same as the word which is commonly employed in this country to denote the common ferment of which I have been speaking. So they have another name, the word "hefe," which is derived from their verb "heben," which signifies to raise up; and they have yet a third name, which is also one common in this country (I do not know whether it is common in Lancashire, but it is certainly very common in the Midland countries), the word "barm," which is derived from a root which signifies to raise or to bear up. Barm is a something borne up; and thus there is much more real relation than is commonly supposed by those who make puns, between the beer which a man takes down his throat and the bier upon which that process, if carried to excess, generally lands him, for they are both derived from the root signifying bearing up; the one thing is borne upon men's shoulders, and the other is the fermented liquid which was borne up by the fermentation taking place in itself.

Again, I spoke of the produce of fermentation as "spirit of wine." Now what a very curious phrase that is, if you come to think of it. The old alchemists talked of the finest essence of anything as if it had the same sort of relation to the thing itself as a man's spirit is supposed to have to his body; and so they spoke of this fine essence of the fermented liquid as being the spirit of the liquid. Thus came about that extraordinary ambiguity of language, in virtue of which you apply precisely the same substantive name to the soul of man and to a glass of gin! And then there is still yet one other most curious piece of nomenclature connected with this matter, and that is the word "alcohol" itself, which is now so familiar to everybody. Alcohol originally meant a very fine powder. The women of the Arabs and other Eastern people are in the habit of tinging their eyelashes with a very fine black powder which is made of antimony, and they call that "kohol;" and the "al" is simply the article put in front of it, so as to say