effect is insipidity or flatness:-if it be too strong, it is pain or uneasiness. 5. The effect, however, of the same things on different individuals varies according to the different degrees of irritability in their organs; from which their sensibility arises-it also varies in the same individual, as he advances from infancy to maturity; and from maturity to decay. Very young children are almost always fond of pure sweet; but as the palate grows adult, it requires some mixture of acid or bitter to vary it, and give it pungency, or it becomes vapid and disgusting. 6. These mixt flavours continue ever after to be most grateful; and it is in mixing and preparing them in the ways best adapted to excite and prolong appetite by stimulating the. organs, that all the arts subservient to gluttony consist. Nature, however, has anticipated most of these arts, and rendered them superfluous further than as they tend to assist and vary her operations; for we must not imagine that the food, which we call simple, is in reality so all the fruits, herbs, and meats, on which we feed being composed of many simple elements, blended and tempered by Nature with a delicacy and exactitude, which art can but feebly imitate. By the variation and succession of the seasons, too, we are supplied with all that variety, which, if not necessary to CHAP. I. Of Taste. CHAP. Of Taste. health, is certainly requisite to pleasure; at least to that of sense; as none can last long without it; there being scarcely any sensations but such as are too violent to be pleasant, that will not, by being very frequently repeated, or very long continued, become so familiar, as to be no longer sensations but mere habits of existence. The organs, by being continually subjected to the same impression, become assimilated and adapted to it, so that the action of the nerves excited by it becomes a sort of spontaneous motion; the irritation being little more perceived or noticed, than that caused by the action of the blood, or the natural operation of any other internal stimulus. Hence we naturally seek for some new impression, that may restore that pleasure, which we originally felt from this sensation, which has thus become stale and vapid, 7. If this desire of change be indulged to excess, men soon begin to require an increase in the degree, as well as variation in the mode, of irritation; whence arises that vicious appetite for strong odours, relishing food, and stimulant liquors, which, if once suffered to prevail, always increases in a constant, and regularly accelerated progression; till at length things, naturally the most nauseous, become most grateful; and things, naturally most grateful, most insipid. 8. This extreme effect, however, only takes place where the palate has become morbid and vitiated by continued, and even forced, gratification; and even then the metaphors taken from this sense, and employed to express intellectual qualities, show that it is always felt and considered as a corruption, even by those who are most corrupted: for though there are many, who prefer port wine to malmsey, and tobacco to sugar, yet no one ever spoke of a sour or bitter temper, as pleasant, or of a sweet one, as unpleasant. 9. Yet the pleasures derived from these vitiated tastes seem to be more exquisite, than any derived from nature: for, when men have once acquired them, they are more constant in the indulgence of them, and find greater difficulty in dispensing with the gratification, after they have been used to it. No one, past the age of childhood, has ever found any permanent pleasure in sucking sugar-candy; but how many do we see, to whom the chewing or smoking of tobacco has become an habitual, and even an indispensable gratification. Ottar of roses and other sweet scents are only occasionally applied to the nose; and, if used too frequently, cloy and satiate: but the use of snuff becomes a permanent and constant habit. 10. The case is, that all those tastes, which arc natural, lose, and all those which are un CHAP. I. Of Taste. CHAP. Of Taste. natural, acquire strength by indulgence: for 11. It is to be observed, however, that a great part of the pleasure, arising from the use of bitter and nauseous drugs, and fermented liquors, arises from their exhilarating and intoxicating qualities: but these belong to another branch of our inquiry, and shall be examined in the proper place. CHAPTER II. OF SMELL. СНАР. II. 1. WHAT has been said of tastes may, in almost every instance, be applied with equal propriety to smells; which are caused by the Of Smell. finer particles of bodies being dissolved in the air, which we inhale, and borne by it through the nostrils to the olfactory nerves; as tastes are caused by the same finer particles being diluted in the saliva, and conveyed with it to the palate and other organs of the mouth. The pleasures and pains of each seem to depend on similar modes and degrees of irritation; but, in mankind, to be more limited in their extent, in the sense of smelling, than in that of tasting. 2. In some kinds of animals, however, the sense of smell seems to be connected with certain mental sympathies; as those of hearing and sight are in all that possess them in any high degree: for not only their sexual desires appear to be excited by means of it; but other instinctive passions, which, according to the usual system of nature, should be still more remote from its influence. It has been observed that dogs, though wholly unacquainted with lions, will tremble and shudder at their roar; and an elephant, that has never seen a |