464 BIOLOGV. 



ceive the rationale of the decomposition, or the spiritual 

 conflict, which prevails between the matters, when they 

 are about to separate. 



2823. Now, the organ which only perceives the quali- 

 ties of matters, without reference to their actual separa- 

 tion, is a sense. Upon the highest grade of perfection the 

 digestive passes over into a sensorial function. 



2824. Tasting is the first commencement of the diges- 

 tion in the nervous system, where the aliments are felt just 

 before the analysis into their polar quantities has taken 

 place. The gustatory is a water-sense. 



2825. For the exercise of the sense of taste the same 

 conditions are requisite as for digestion, viz. solution 

 and capacity for decomposition. Without the capacity 

 for being dissolved, and without the occurrence of actual 

 solution, nothing can be tasted, any more than digested. 

 The saliva is the gastric juice for the tongue. 



2826. If water be the basic element in the process of 

 digestion, so in gustation must the higher water, or the 

 salt, be the basis of taste. Salt alone is sapid, and every 

 thing in order to be tasted, must possess saline pro- 

 perties. 



2827. The tongue, by means of the saliva, passes over 

 gradually into salt. Salt is the last extremity of the 

 tongue. The salt-formation is a member of the gusta- 

 tory formation. Hence tasting is only an ascension of 

 the inorganic to the animal tongue. The salt is the gus- 

 tatory sense of the earth. 



2828. The general object of taste is the salt of the 

 sea. It alone can and must be converted into a pleasing- 

 taste or relish. What is general in nature, is the ante- 

 type of that which is equivalent in an organism. Sea- 

 salt and the tongue or saliva are one in kind. 



2829. Every thing admits only of being tasted, in so 

 far as it is salt ; every thing is but savoury, in so far as 

 it is marine salt. 



2830. As the component parts of sea-salt are acid 

 and alkali, so also are both these the extremes of tastes. 

 Tastes are divisible accordingly into acid and alkaline 

 savours. 



