ON TASTE.
With the organ of taste you are all sufficiently acquainted. In considering the phenomena, which it presents, in the peculiar sensations that directly flow from it, it is necessary to make some little abstraction from the sensation of touch, which accompanies them, in consequence of the immediate application of the tangible sapid body to the organ; but the sensations, thus co-existing, are so very different in themselves, as to be easily distinguishable. When the organ of taste is in a sound state, the application of certain substances produces, immediately, that change or affection of the sensorial organs, which is attended with a corresponding change or affection of the sentient mind. In our present state of knowledge, we immediately refer this simple sensation, to something, which is bitter, or sweet, or acrid, or of some other denomination of sapid quality; and we have no hesitation, in classing the sensations as sensations,—effects of laws of action that belong jointly to matter and mind,—not as feelings that arise in the mind, from its own independent constitution. But, if we attend sufficiently to the feeling that arises in the case of taste, we shall find, however immediate the reference to a sapid body may seem to be, that it is truly successive to the simple sensation, and is the mere suggestion of former experience, when a body previously recognized by us as an external substance, was applied to our organ of taste;—in the same manner, as, when we see ashes and dying embers, we immediately infer some previous combustion, which we could not have inferred, if combustion itself had been a phenomenon altogether unknown to us. In the simple sensation which precedes the reference,—the mere pleasure of sweetness or the mere pain of bitterness—there is nothing which seems to mark more distinctly the presence of honey or wormwood, or any similar external substance, than in any of our joys or sorrows, to which we have not given a name; and there can be no doubt, that, if the particular feeling which we now term joy, and the particular feeling which we now term sorrow, had been excited, whenever we knew, from other sources, that certain bodies were applied to the tongue, we should have considered these internal feelings as sensations, in the strict sense of the word, precisely in the same manner, as we now regard, as sensations, the feeling which we term sweetness, and the feeling which we term bitterness, because, like these sensations, they could not have failed to suggest to us, by the common influence of association, the presence and direct coincidence of the object without. In the case of taste, therefore, as in the case of smell, we could not, from the simple sensations,—if these alone had been given to us,—have derived any knowledge of an external world, of substances extended and resisting; but we consider them as sensations, in the strict philosophic meaning of the term, because we have previously acquired our belief of an external world.
It may be remarked of these two classes of sensations, now considered, that they have a greater mutual resemblance, than our sensations of any other kind. It is only a blind man who thinks, that what is called scarlet is like the sound of a trumpet; but there are tastes which we consider as like smells, in the same manner as we consider them to be like other tastes; and, if we had not acquired a distinct knowledge of the seats of our different organs, and had yet known that smells and tastes arose from external causes acting upon some one or other of these, we should probably have been greatly puzzled, in many cases, in our attempt to refer the particular sensation to its particular organ.
In considering the advantages which we derive from our organs of smell and taste, the mere pleasures which they directly afford, as a part of the general happiness of life, are to be regarded, from their frequent occurrence, as of no considerable amount. The fragrance of the fields enters largely into that obscure but delightful group of images, which rise in our minds on the mere names of spring, summer, the country, and seems to represent the very form of ethereal purity, as if it were the breath of heaven itself.
If we imagine all the innumerable flowers which nature pours out, like a tribute of incense to the God who is adorning her, again to be stripped, in a single moment, of their odour, though they were to retain all their bright diversities of colouring, it would seem as if they were deprived of a spirit which animates them,—how cold and dead would they instantly become,—and how much should we lose of that vernal joy, which renders the season of blossoms almost a new life to ourselves.
“In vain the golden Morn aloft
Waves her dew-bespangled wing;
With vermeil cheek and whisper soft
She woos the tardy Spring;
Till April starts, and calls around