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. Conspicuous and potent among these favoring influences are the sensations of taste and the strongly toned feelings with which they are so closely associated—“the satisfactions of the palate.” Even the various “bitters” which are so commonly used as “appetizers” seem to owe such efficacy as they may possess to the influence of their taste on the preliminary flow of “appetite gastric.” Carlson has shown that these bitters, introduced directly into the stomach in medicinal doses, have no influence on the hunger mechanisms. In larger doses their effect is inhibition of hunger. Acting in the mouth, they also retard the hunger contractions of the stomach in proportion to their intensity as taste stimuli. In so far, then, as “bitters” are “appetizing,” it is by virtue of their taste qualities, rather than their medicinal properties, and the act of swallowing them would seem to be superfluous. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIV THE ÆSTHETIC VALUE OF TASTE _The Higher and Lower Senses_ WHEN people are asked to state which are the higher and which the lower senses they feel no hesitation in deciding. When asked to arrange the various senses in an order of merit on this basis they are able to do so promptly. Moreover, their various arrangements agree very closely with each other. Vision commonly stands at the top of the series; then hearing; touch and smell are given third and fourth places about equally often; taste is likely to be next; and finally temperature, sensations of movement, and the more general organic sensations. When asked to state what meaning they give to the term “higher” in making this arrangement there is more disagreement in the nature of the replies. Occasionally an individual asserts that by “higher” he means more elaborate, complicated,—“highly” differentiated. A few individuals mean by “higher” more useful, indispensable,—“higher” in value. But by far the larger number of individuals mean neither the one nor the other of these two notions, but have in mind some characteristic which is not immediately related either to structural complexity, genetic antiquity, nor practical utility,—a characteristic which can only be described as ethical or æsthetic. Evidence of a cleavage of the senses on an ethical basis is abundant. Quotations from Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy” may serve as representative of statements that can easily be found in the writings of all centuries, from the Socratic period, through the reflections of the schoolmen, down to the modern textbooks of psychology. Says Burton: