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Strange impossible ideas enter my mind at times. Reason soon bids them take their exit, but now and then a few reappear to haunt me. One of them is this: The Japanese associate with their traditional tea-cult an entry into the atmosphere of spiritual tranquillity. May it not be that the modern British--from whom, and for this particular purpose, I must leave out the Celts of Wales and Cornwall, Scotland, and Ireland--being deficient in metaphysical faculty and mystical temperament, drink their tea in an unconscious and futile attempt to touch the divine stillness by a grossly physical act? For the figures show that they drink more tea per head than any other people in the world, outside Southeast Asia.

-- Notebooks Category 5: The Body > Chapter 3 : Diet > # 171