Taste (sense)

“ Taste is the common sense of genius. ”

“ We have slowly evolved a tongue and palate on the one hand, and French cooks and pâté de foie gras on the other. But while everybody knows practically how things taste to us, and which things respectively we like and dislike, comparatively few people ever recognise that the sense of taste is not merely intended as a source of gratification, but serves a useful purpose in our bodily economy, in informing us what we ought to eat and what to refuse. ”

“ Briefly, taste is a metaphor taken from one of our mixed senses, and applied to objects of the more purely organic senses, and of our moral sense, when we would imply the co-existence of immediate personal dislike or complacency. In this definition of taste, therefore, is involved the definition of fine arts, namely, as being such the chief and discriminative purpose of which it is to gratify the taste, ­ that is, not merely to connect, but to combine and unite, a sense of immediate pleasure in ourselves, with the perception of external arrangement. ”

“ Good sense appears to differ from taste in this, that taste is an instantaneous decision of the mind, a sudden relish of what is beautiful, or disgust at what is defective, in an object, without waiting for the slower confirmation of the judgment. ”

“ The word Taste in its extensive application may express the pleasures received by any of our senses, when excited into action by the stimulus of external objects; as when odours stimulate the nostrils, or flavours the palate; or when smoothness, or softness, are perceived by the touch, or warmth by its adapted organ of sense. The word Taste is also used to signify the pleasurable trains of ideas suggested by language, as in the compositions of poetry and oratory. ”

“ I am strongly inclined to believe, too, that the sense of taste exists in all animals; for why else should one seek one kind of food, and another another? In this is to be seen the wondrous power of Nature, the framer of all things. ”

“ On the whole it appears to me, that what is called taste, in its most general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is partly made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the secondary pleasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations to these, and concerning the human passions, manners, and actions. ”

“ The taste, the sense by which we distinguish the flavor of our food, has produced, in all known languages, the metaphor expressed by the word "taste"—a feeling of beauty and defects in all the arts. It is a quick perception, like that of the tongue and the palate, and in the same manner anticipates consideration. Like the mere sense, it is sensitive and luxuriant in respect to the good, and rejects the bad spontaneously ”

“ 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. ”

“ The same is the case with the young of animals, which readily distinguish tastes and seem astonished at new ones; and the newly hatched chicken will at once select the food, where it is given a choice, which is most agreeable to it. Taste is, then, the first sense which affords clear perceptions, and is the first which gives occasion for the exercise of the faculties of memory and judgment.
The sensations of smell can hardly be separated from those of taste. ”

“ Considered as a principle of action, such a taste provides an effectual security against the grossness connected with many vices, and cherishes a temper of mind friendly to all that is amiable, or generous, or elevated in our nature. While, therefore, we regard taste as an important [Pg 59] ally to the sense of duty, we are not to rely chiefly upon it. ”

“ Taste, therefore, as opposed to vision and sound, will teach us to expect in its metaphorical use a certain reference of any given object to our own being, and not merely a distinct notion of the object as in itself, or in its independent properties. From the sense of touch, on the other hand, it is distinguishable by adding to this reference to our vital being some degree of enjoyment, or the contrary, ­ some perceptible impulse from pleasure or pain to complacency or dislike. The sense of smell, indeed, might perhaps have furnished a metaphor of the same import with that of taste ”

“ By taste, therefore, as applied to the fine arts, we must be supposed to mean an intellectual perception of any object blended with a distinct reference to our own sensibility of pain or pleasure, or, vice versa, a sense of enjoyment or dislike co-instantaneously combined with, and appearing to proceed from, some intellectual perception of the object; ­ intellectual perception, I say; for otherwise it would be a definition of taste in its primary rather than in its metaphorical sense. ”

“ And that it has the sense of taste also, will, I think, be clear to you, when you remember bow much you enjoy the reading of a good book, wherein is food for the mind. Healthy food is sometimes presented in so unpalatable a shape, that the taste rejects it; and so it is with truth, which is the mind's food. ”

“ Similarly, without the sense of taste, sweet or sour has no meaning, and in like manner only those who can hear know what music is, and only those who have a sense of smell are able to enjoy the perfume of a flower. ”

“ Developing as one of the earliest forms of sensitiveness, intimately associated with the vital processes of life and growth, affording manifold richness of pleasure and aversion, full of paradoxical surprises and puzzling problems, and figuratively expressing one of the rarest of human qualities, “the sense of taste” constitutes one of man’s most interesting contacts with the outer world. ”

“ Each knows that literary enjoyment usually goes hand in hand with that wisdom which extended is the director of Life itself.
xAlthough the sense of taste is more strictly a “biological” sense than any of the other simple senses of man—that is, more particularly concerned with the underlying bodily life—it plays, nevertheless, a very important part in our personal psychology. Many of us find in tasting one of the fairly dependable satisfactions of our everyday living ”

“ And for a few of us, especially if we be chefs, or cooks, or tea-tasters, or dyspeptics, or epicures, or gluttons, or taste-perverts, and the like, taste is, perhaps, one of the most important of all mortal xiexperiences and of all scientific themes. ”

“ May we then conclude that taste has improved since those days, and not only taste, but common sense? At the present moment we see nothing outrageous to find fault with, and much that is pretty to admire. ”

“ In fact, modern authorities agree that there are only four qualities which can be truthfully classed as tastes, 15namely, sweet, salt, sour, and bitter. What we took to be the taste manifold is really a meager equipment of four qualities, with such variations of intensity and combination as these may possess. Both the richness and the manifoldness come from qualities of other senses, parading under the guise of taste. Smell especially is prone to sacrifice its claim in favor of its neighbor, and it is common indeed for us even to use taste names in describing odors ”

“ The sense of taste proceeds, in fact, upon the principle of gradual selection and elimination; it refuses first what is positively destructive, next what is more remotely deleterious, and finally what is only undesirable or over-luscious. ”

“ The sensation, the simple feeling, affords the means of discriminating, judging, distinguishing, and to this latter power or process the word taste, in the physical sense, is more frequently appropriated. We say of such or such a man, his taste is acute, or his taste is impaired, or dull, etc., meaning his power of perceiving and distinguishing the various properties of objects which affect his sense of taste. ”

“ It is a universal rule in psychology that when sense qualities combine to form what is called a perception, the result of their combination is not a sum but a system, not a patchwork but a pattern.... 30Hence, just as it would be absurd to say that the plan of the locomotive is a new bit of steel or the pattern of the carpet a new bit of colored stuff, so is it wrong to say that the peach character of a certain taste blend is a new taste quality. ”

“ Man wishes to enjoy the pleasures of the senses, among which not the least in importance is the sense of taste. This sense God gave for man’s enjoyment, and then provided for its satisfaction many delicious natural flavors. It is not, however, the man in whose house there is most cooking done who gets the greatest pleasure from taste, and it is frequently just he who gets the least enjoyment from the other senses. ”

“ There is an inseparable connection between the two senses of smell and taste, for when anosmia or loss of the sense of smell occurs, all taste, except for bitterness, sweetness, sourness, and saltness, is completely lost, so far as ideas of flavour, &c., are concerned. ”

“ What remains positive in the impression is a sense of extreme fineness and delicacy, qualities which reflect themselves in the physical counterparts of that restraint and sure taste which are in the essence of all that she signed. ”

“ The possession of taste insures grace and beauty in the works of an artist, and the avoidance of all that is low or mean. It is as [Pg 118] often the result of an innate sense of beauty or propriety as of art education, and no genius can compensate for the want of it. * * * Tastes differ so much among individuals, nations, or in different ages and conditions of civilization that it is utterly impossible to set up a standard of taste applicable to all men and to all stages in the evolution of society. ”

“ Smell is that specialization of touch, uniquely delicate, supposed by Maeterlinck to be still in its earlier stage of development in human kind, which responds to the stimulus of those otherwise intangible exhalations called odor. Lastly, taste is touch specialized so as to discern the inner properties of food stuff; taste is the testing sense. Mere touch determines the existence, specialized [15] touch the character and niceties of matter of the physical universe. ”

“ The sense of taste checks the progress of every noble sense; the child concentrates its whole thoughts on the enjoyment of this single appetite. In this way, it is prepared to become, not only an epicurean, but a sensualist ”

“ But such a long representation of the moral sense by the sense of the beautiful has made us forget this master. When we have so long practised this rule of obeying at once the suggestions of taste, and when we have found the result always satisfactory, taste ends by assuming a kind of appearance of right. ”

“ Hence we are taught that the substances properly the objects of the sense of taste, are those only which produce sensations purely and exclusively gustative, perceived neither through the nose nor through the nerves of touch, but acting on the tongue and palate only. ”

“ Here there is no diversity in their sentiments; and that there is not, appears fully from the consent of all men in the metaphors which are taken from the sense of taste. A sour temper, bitter expressions, bitter curses, a bitter fate, are terms well and strongly understood by all. And we are altogether as well understood when we say, a sweet disposition, a sweet person, a sweet condition, and the like. ”

“ We often, however, counteract this salutary monitor by depraving our sense of taste, by the too free use of vinous or spirituous liquors, which so far deadens the sense of taste, that sweet substances become unpleasant, and nothing but acrid and stimulating things can make an impression on our diminished and vitiated sense of taste. ”

“ Thus, a heavy weight retards, inhibits, and overpowers us. Some tastes have this same overpowering affective tone, and may be intelligibly described as “heavy.” A clear, bright day gives us recognizable feelings of pleasantness, relief, and gives to objects a distinctness of contour. ”

“ Between good sense and good taste there is as much difference as between cause and effect. ”

“ The Prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! ”

“ The requirement of conspicuous wastefulness is not commonly present, consciously, in our canons of taste, but it is none the less present as a constraining norm selectively shaping and sustaining our sense of what is beautiful, and guiding our discrimination with respect to what may legitimately be approved as beautiful and what may not. ”

“ For in judging of any new thing, even of a taste similar to that which he has been formed by habit to like, he finds his palate affected in the natural manner and on the common principles. Thus the pleasure of all senses, of the sight, and even of the taste, that most ambiguous of the senses, is the same in all, high and low, learned and unlearned. ”

“ Such is the impetuosity of uncultivated or perverted human tendencies that the desire for acquisition, some [Pg 160] times called greed, impels one to swallow one mouthful of food to take in another, without ever dreaming that the very last contribution of taste to the last remnant of a delicious morsel is like the last flicker of a candle, more brilliant than any of the preceding ones. In eating, the last taste, when saliva, the medium of taste, is most perfectly in possession of the solution, is better than all the other stages of the process. ”