It seems quite probable that in the main these synæsthesias represent uncritical confusion of sensory qualities with other sensory qualities, or with the affective qualities, the feelings, which accompany them. Thus, we often hear such phrases as “bright taste,” “heavy taste,” “dark brown taste,” “green taste,” “soft taste,” “hard taste,” “smooth taste,” etc. It is clear in most of these cases that either a touch component is included in the total taste experience (as in “smooth taste,” “soft taste,” “hard taste”), or that kinæsthetic (muscular) factors are so included (as in “heavy taste”), or that the phrase is more or less designedly an analogy, or other figure of speech (as in “sharp taste,” “bright taste,” “clear taste”). The basis of such analogies is sometimes rather easily discerned, and often is seen to be the “feeling tone” which the sensation arouses,—the effect or “affect” which it produces. 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. Some tastes, being well defined, definitely localized, and highly agreeable and soothing, may, then, be intelligibly described as being “clear,” “bright,” or “pointed.” These illustrations represent, to be sure, only simple forms of such synæsthesias. But even the resemblance of the sound of “intelligence” to the taste of fresh sliced tomatoes is by no means incomprehensible when we reflect that “freshness” means “alertness,” “sliced” suggests sharpness of edge, while tomatoes thus prepared are usually mature and ripe. For are not alertness, keenness, and maturity the very marks of intelligence, just as “dullness” and “greenness,” also sense qualities, are expressive of its absence? In somewhat the same way we commonly speak of “sweet odors,” “sweet sounds of music,” or even sweet visual experiences, as in “a sweet face.” A few individual cases of taste synæsthesia have been studied in some detail. Such individuals are often shown to have a defective sense of taste and to rely largely, in their recognition of taste, on touch accompaniments, affective characteristics, and such “color” experiences as the various tastes are said to induce. _Perversions of Taste_