2827. The tongue, by means of the saliva, passes over gradually into salt. Salt is the last extremity of the tongue. The salt-formation is a member of the gustatory formation. Hence tasting is only an ascension of the inorganic to the animal tongue. The salt is the gustatory sense of the earth.
2828. The general object of taste is the salt of the sea. It alone can and must be converted into a pleasing taste or relish. What is general in nature, is the antetype of that which is equivalent in an organism. Sea-salt and the tongue or saliva are one in kind.
2829. Every thing admits only of being tasted, in so far as it is salt; every thing is but savoury, in so far as it is marine salt.
2830. As the component parts of sea-salt are acid and alkali, so also are both these the extremes of tastes. Tastes are divisible accordingly into acid and alkaline savours.
2831. As salt is a product of what is inorganic, so will the sapid bodies of this kind be pleasant objects for gustation, provided they do not act chemically nor in excess. Therefore, what is saline, or acid and alkali combined, is agreeable to the taste, even if its action should last a long time.
2832. On the contrary, the proper organic savours, which admit with difficulty of being reduced to the former or inorganic kinds, if they do not prove at once nauseous or unpleasant, yet become so by lengthened operation, e. g. the Sweet, the Bitter.
2833. According to these savours has the organ of taste been regulated. It hath in itself also polar relations. The point or tip of the tongue tastes what is acid, its root more readily what is bitter, its dorsum or back what is poignant or moist.
2834. The matters are not mechanically analyzed upon the tongue; it does not therefore taste the several component parts, but only their chemical behaviour or relation in the water, in other words, their reaction.
3. Function of the Olfactory Sense.
2835. In the lungs the air is materially analyzed and deprived of its oxygen; but, when these organs have assumed a nervose character, the tension only of the air unto the analysis will be perceived. Now, the action of the air is the electrism. The nose perceives only the electrical condition of the air.