Harry L. Hollingworth

“ Within the past decade there has been a general popular awakening from the former uninterested attitude toward these phenomena of the physical and mental processes by which we keep in touch with the things outside ourselves. A fair knowledge of the rudiments of biology, of physiology, and of psychology now has become part of the curriculum of our schools and colleges. And of these three sciences it is psychology which has entered so deeply into our everyday life—business life as well as personal—that at last no one can escape its influence. ”

“ The artist desires, above all, to eliminate our own immediate and instinctive reactions to his materials. In so far as he is an artist, he is not satisfied with presenting to us a pleasing array of sense materials. His main concern is in communicating to his observers some situation, some theme, some state of affairs, some meaning, some purely relational fact. Such emotions as are stirred in us he does not wish to come from his mere materials, but from his own manipulation of them, from the form or pattern which he gives them, from the meaning which he thereby conveys to us. ”

“ As a matter of fact, artists do not seek to please the greatest possible number of observers. They are often contented if a single observer is satisfied. And by satisfied, in this connection, one does not mean pleased. We have already seen that the most pleasing of all sense impressions are those afforded by the lower senses. If the mere production of pleasure is the chief aim of the artist, he would surely have resorted to those materials which in themselves and by their own direct effects facilitated his purpose. ”

“ In saying this we do not have reference to the doctrine that one often hears emphasized,—viz., that the lower senses, such as taste, are low and unæsthetic because they minister mainly to our personal and physiological needs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is not because taste, smell, and touch are mainly concerned in telling us of facts that are of fundamental vital importance to us as individuals that they are low or unæsthetic, but only because they do nothing more than this,—because they cannot become the vehicle of our individual and social conference and communication. ”

“ One might just as significantly criticize the literary style of a mathematician or a logician as the technique of an artist. Such criticisms, to be sure, have a legitimate place in life. But the critic of the mathematician’s literary style should not delude himself into the belief that he is discussing mathematics, nor the critic of the artist’s technique fancy that he is dealing with his art. ”

“ It is however true that, although the indications of taste and smell may be, for lower forms of animal life, fairly trustworthy guides in the selection of edible substances, such criteria as taste and odor can by no means be relied on by human beings. In a general way it is, of course, true that wholesome substances possess taste qualities which are agreeable and enjoyable, while foul, decaying and poisonous substances are often characterized by tastes and odors that arouse in us disgust and revulsion. ”

“ And no one wishes to, for psychology in a sense has become the intellectual handmaiden of all who think in terms of to-day, with to-day’s amazing development of insight into the mortal meanings of our very selves, body always as well as soul. ”

“ Living gateways as the sense organs are between ourselves and our ever-changing surroundings, both spiritual and material, they constitute the channels not only of our life-satisfaction, but of all our immediate knowledge as well. ”

“ The business man as well as his wife sitting beyond the living-room table will both find the something they hoped to find; and the keen school teacher and the all too infrequent schoolmaster will find part of that material for the development of intensive sense-training now obviously indispensable to the further evolution of our school system. For even taste, least intellectual of our senses, can be intensively and hence usefully trained and thus education be furthered. ”

“ It is a matter of common knowledge that the sight of various objects—a lemon, for instance—will cause a copious flow of saliva, and, further, that certain mental states, such as fear, anxiety, and the like, may cause reduction of the flow of saliva, with the resultant dry mouth, the cleaving of the tongue to the roof of the mouth, and other unpleasant effects of lack of saliva. ”

“ And one of the main conditions for sapidity is solubility. A substance to be tasted must enter the mouth cavity as a fluid or else after being taken into it must be dissolved in the saliva. Thus, the adequate stimulus for the taste organ may be said to be a fluid. Recalling the structure and location of the sensory ends of the taste mechanism, it is at once inferred that only fluids can enter the taste pore and stimulate there the nerve endings of taste. It might then be assumed that all fluids should produce taste sensations. But all soluble substances are not sapid or tastable. ”

“ While the individual lacks teeth and subsists on a milk diet the process of nourishment is best accomplished by having the food pass directly back over the superior surface of the tongue until it reaches a point where the swallowing reflexes are set up. However, after the teeth appear and mastication of food is necessary, then it is better that the food should pass from the tip of the tongue to either side, where it will come between the teeth! Thus, seeking the maximum taste sensation from the food is equivalent to placing it in a position to be thoroughly masticated. ”

“ The easier case to understand is that in which the continued indulgence in a substance, such as ice cream, candy, tobacco, sets up organic effects which have their unpleasant accompaniment. Here it happens that a taste originally very pleasant becomes indifferent or even disgusting. The unpleasantness in such a case is rather easily seen to arise, not from a taste quality alone, but from the total state of the moment. ”

“ In such cases as the sensibility to weight and light it is easily possible to measure the intensity of the stimulus in terms of pounds, candle power, or similar physical units. In the cases of temperature and sound the problem is much more difficult, since we do not know precisely what aspect of the stimulus should be used as indicating the intensity of the process at the point of stimulation. Taste and smell offer still greater difficulties, inasmuch as we do not know even with moderate certainty the real nature of the stimulation,—whether, for example, it be mechanical or chemical, or both. ”

“ Music and dance, jest and general merriment, genial conversation and cordial friendship, prosperity and individual success, fragrance, color, bodily ease, and a clear conscience—these and all the other joys of life play their part in promoting the bodily welfare of the organism. ”

“ Vision, therefore, is a higher sense than the others, only in so far as it is more often shared, and hence more often discussed and described, measured and verified. This is the reason why it is a more significant social material of intercourse, art, and science. Pressure and warmth, on the other hand, are less valued, because they are less often actually shared and, therefore, less easily verified and less frequently described. ”

“ Not only is it true that many substances accessible to human beings are injurious and unwholesome, in spite of their agreeable taste; it is equally true that many substances that are initially distasteful may be either nourishing or remedial. Human beings find it necessary to supplement, or even to supplant, the “beneficent guardianship” of taste by the introduction of various other sources of information and criteria of selection. ”

“ The sensation produced by the camphor 13was thus not a taste at all, but a fusion of odor and touch.
If, under the simple conditions of Chevreul’s experiment, the various substances be reduced to a state of like consistency, so that they cannot be recognized by the tactile sense, observers are usually much amazed to discover that through taste alone it is impossible to distinguish between quinine and coffee or between apple and onion. Many familiar experiences of daily life testify to the large contribution which the sense of smell makes to the supposed taste. ”

“ There are cases in which sapid substances dissolved in the blood produce taste sensations. In cases of diabetes, where sugar is present in the blood, a sweet taste is experienced in the absence of stimuli upon the tongue surface. Also, in cases of jaundice, where there is an excess of bile, a bitter sensation may be experienced. Here the stimuli affect either the taste nerves or the taste buds directly. There is no reason to think that the stimulation process differs in any other respect from the normal, except in the mode of access to the taste buds. ”

“ We do not find, however, that the sense of taste shows any evidence of deterioration as the result of such loss of function. Probably never before in the history of our race has there been such diligence and zeal in ministering to the demands and satisfactions of our appetite. In the preparation, marketing, and serving of food the appeal through tastefulness and flavor stands second only to that through purity and cleanliness. ”

“ Just in that degree to which sense impressions fail to produce in us 184immediate pleasures and aversions, fail to provoke us to instinctive emotions of joy and disgust, fail to stir in us moods of irritation and acquiescence,—in just that degree do they declare themselves to be adequate raw materials for the fine arts. If, as we are often told, the primary purpose of art is to please, this must be an entirely unexpected state of affairs, and the low position of taste in the æsthetic scale becomes quite unintelligible. ”

“ Daily experience entails many such instances of contrast in the case of the taste qualities as well. A ripe apple may surprise us by its unexpected sourness if we come to it direct from a box of bonbons. Experiments designed to investigate the presence and character of taste contrasts are especially interesting and their results are in many ways curious. If, under proper experimental precautions, a salt solution is applied to one side of the tongue and a drop of tasteless distilled water is simultaneously applied to the other side, the tasteless water is reported as sweetish. ”

“ The apparent absence of taste in certain idiots is not a form of taste blindness to be compared with color blindness. Such persons will eat sulphate of quinine with as much enjoyment as sweet food, but so will they try to eat wood or stones or paper. Nor are the cases, which are more or less common, of dulled taste sensitiveness as a result of cerebral malformation to be compared with real color blindness, which, as far as is known, at least, depends upon no such cerebral abnormality. ”

“ Not only is it in the usages of language that taste is a paradoxical sense; it is at the same time one of the most ancient of the special senses and also one about which exact knowledge is most difficult to acquire. It seems to afford a multitude of varying and distinctive nuances of sensation, yet it can boast but a meager equipment of four fundamental sense qualities. It is a primitive and well-established sense in the evolution of man, and individuals might therefore be expected to resemble xveach other closely in their experience of it ”

“ The study of taste structures reduces itself largely to the search for sense organs resembling those of man, and in the same neighborhood as they are found in man. Here again the difficulty is especially great in taste, because the taste organs even in man are not very highly differentiated from other structures, and the really essential part of the organ is not definitely known. (See Chapter VI.) In the search for taste in lower animals one must rely much upon the expectation of finding the taste mechanism in the mouth or its immediate neighborhood. ”

“ The connection between a sense organ and the brain consists of a series of separate links, which always remain distinct units. Each cell, or neurone, as one of these units is called, consists of a body, which contains the nucleus, and two sets of branches. In one set the branches are very short and numerous, called dendrites; in the other there is usually only one branch, called the axone, which is relatively long. A group of cell bodies is called a ganglion. In practically all sensory nerves these ganglia are situated outside of the central nervous system. ”

“ But recent studies show that sensations of taste do far more than serve as clues to the acceptance or rejection of food. Such sensations appear, in fact, to be the initial stimulus to the whole series of digestive and assimilative processes on which the well-being of the organism depends. In much the same way the dulling or perversion of the taste sensations is often seen to constitute an early warning of grave disorder in the system xvias a whole, and their restoration to presage the return to normal health. ”

“ When looked at from the evolutionary point of view, all of the senses are seen to have developed through modification of the sensitivity of a single structure, the cell, with its additional properties of conductivity and motility. In the simplest living organisms, for instance, one finds sensitivity to consist in the irritability common to all living cells, and the sense organ to be represented by the whole cell. Still, the amœba, one of these unicellular organisms, reacts differently to the contact of food substances and to purely mechanical stimulation. ”

“ The Imaginative Value of Taste A further characteristic which correlates closely with the æsthetic arrangement is to be found in the relative ease with which images can be called up and contemplated in the various modes of sensation, in the absence of any physical stimulation,—what we may call the imaginative possibilities of 186the different senses. With most people visual and auditory imagery is both more vivid and intense, and more facile and prompt, than is imagery within any of the other sensory modes. ”

“ In the latter group there is one nerve which carries the impulses from the sense organ to the brain. Thus, we have the optic nerve for vision, the auditory nerve for hearing, and the olfactory nerve for smell. In taste, however, no single cranial nerve can be called the nerve of taste or the gustatory nerve. There has always been a great deal of difference of opinion as to how the taste fibers are carried to the brain, no small part of which has been due to the seeming necessity for finding “a taste nerve.” ”

“ On the other hand, each several sensation is proportionately less important through its own intensity and pleasant or painful character. Any direct effect produced by its own intrinsic intensity and affective tone would interfere with its value as a vehicle of meaning—as an indication of something beyond its own existence. Thus, as perceptual consciousness becomes relatively more prominent and important, sensation is more delicately differentiated, more definitely restricted, less intense, and less strongly toned in the way of pleasure and pain. ”

“ Whether the judgment be exercised in the choice of color harmony or musical composition, costume or personal ornament, architecture, monument, design or arrangement, poetry or passing jest, rug, menu, pastime or associates, it is the sense of taste which furnishes the apt name for the critical capacity. ”