TASTE, sense of. The senses of taste and smell are nearly allied to the sense of feeling ; indeed they may be considered as modifications of feeling. They how ever are properly distinguished from it, because they have each a peculiar organ, and are each affected by peculiar proper ties of bodies. The chief organ of taste is the tongue ; and it is fitted fbr its office by the numerous extremities of nerves which are lodged along its surface, and particularly at the top and sides. Hartley considers this sense as extending to the other parts of the mouth, down the throat, the stomach, and the other parts of the channel for food. Taken in this compre hensive sense, the sense of taste conveys to the mind sensations, not only of fla vours, hut of hunger and thirst.
In order to produce the sense of taste, the nervous extremities of the tongue must be moistened, and the action of eat ing generally produces an effusion of a fluid from different parts of the mouth, which answers the purpose of exciting the taste, and of assisting digestion. The pleasures derived from taste are very considerable ; and the power of yielding pleasurable sensations accompanies the taste through the whole of life. Hence it is reasonable to infer, that the pleasures of taste constitute one grand source of the mental pleasures, that is, those which can be felt without the direct intervention of sensation. They leave their relics in
the mind ; and these combine together, with other pleasures, and thus form feel, trigs which often connect themselves with objects which have ms immediate con nection with the objects of taste. To this source Hartley traces the principle origin of the social pleasures ; and there cannot be a doubt that the pleasures of taste are the chief original sources of the filial af fection. It appears that one end of the long continuance of the pleasures of taste is, to supply continual accessions of vivid. ness to the mental pleasures; but doubt less the principal object is, to make that a source of pleasure, which is necessary for self preservation. The pains of taste are much less numerous than those of feel ing. They are only such as are necessa ry to prompt to avoid excessive abstinence or gratification, and to prevent the em ployment of improper food ; and there fore depend much more upon causes which man usually has under his own controul.