The editor takes this first opportunity to invite criticism of whatever trend, and to ask for suggestions, whether from sense-gluttons or from philosophers, for the better conduct and the furtherance of this series and of that other series, on “The Life of the Child,” which he is editing. As is true in a wholly different field of conquest, here, too, lies safety in numbers, and where there are many men there are many minds. As all authors at least will hasten to agree, not even an editor knows all that might be known. G.V.N.D. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, _January, 1917_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREFACE The sense of taste is in numerous ways the most paradoxical of all the senses. Although, as a source of sense impression, it can afford the keenest immediate feelings of pleasure and delight, the books on æsthetics and art have little or nothing to say about it. Skill in the compounding of tastes and flavors, or discrimination in their relish, brings the expert neither artistic recognition nor social eminence. Taste, it is constantly asserted, is one of the “lower senses,” and neither in the enjoyment of it nor the ministration to it is there to be acquired the merit and general esteem that readily distinguish an art from a service. Nevertheless we commonly use the word “taste” for the expression of just those qualities of fine discrimination and delicate perception which are most conspicuously the marks of æsthetic appreciation. In our choice of figures of speech we reserve “vision” for the impersonal and remote intuition of the seer and the philosopher. “Touch” we use to express such intimate and personal impressions as sympathy and pity. “Sound” seems best to indicate, through “noise” or “tone,” either the self-seeking clamor of aggression or the mere passive possession of a certain richness of quality. “Odor,” in its most common figurative use, suggests the reprehensible and undesirable motive. “Warmth” and “chill” bespeak at once the depth of emotion or affection. But the special fineness of soul which shows itself in the active and judicious choice of the appropriate and the harmonious, the subtly fitting and the delicately adapted, seems best expressed by the name of one of the “lowest” and most “vulgar” of senses,—“taste.” 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.