There is no proper name for the object. We are obliged to call it, that which has taste. The word flavour is used to denote that quality, which is more peculiarly the object of taste, in certain articles of food; and sometimes we borrow the word sapidity, 27 from the Latin, to answer the same purpose more extensively.
The word taste is a name for the sensation. We generally call the feeling, which is the point of consciousness in this case, by the name taste. Thus we say one taste is pleasant, another unpleasant; and nothing is pleasant or unpleasant but a feeling.
The word taste is also a name for the object, as when we say, that any thing has taste.
It is further employed as a name of the organ. As we are said to perceive qualities by the eye, the ear, and the touch; so we are said to perceive them by the taste.
In the phrase, sense of taste, there is the same complexity of meaning as we have observed in the corresponding phrase in the case of the other senses. In this phrase, taste expresses all the leading particulars; the organ, the object, and the sensation, together with the order of position in the two first, and the order of constant sequence in the last.[8]
[8] The statement that “taste” is sometimes employed as a name of the organ, seems to me, like the similar statements respecting the names of our other senses, disputable.—Ed.
SECTION V.
TOUCH.
In discoursing about the ORGAN, the SENSATIONS, and the OBJECTS, of touch, more vagueness has been admitted, than in the case of any of the other senses.