142 ON THE SENSES 



respect only like the indications furnished by a clock; we must understand the 

 signification of the numbers of the dial plate and the movement of the hands if 

 we would derive from the clock information as to time : so we must learn by 

 circuitous experiences to interpret the different qualities of the sensations of 

 taste, if we would avail ourselves of them in the diagnosis of food and poison. 

 It is difficult to say how we are determined to the choice of our first nourish- 

 ment; an impulse wholly enigmatical urges the new-born child to its mother's 

 breast, nor must we imagine that we make any progress towards an explanation 

 when we call this impulse an instinct ; that is only a word by which we supply 

 our want of a clear idea. But whatever the nature of the impulse, a sensation 

 of peculiar quality is imparted by the milk of which we are thus led to partake, 

 and this quality, impressed upon the memory, serves us ever after for the recog- 

 nition of that particular nutriment. And so with all other means of nutrition, 

 whether instinct or experience may have taught us to recognize them as such ; 

 the sensations excited by them impress themselves upon us, and, with each, an 

 idea of the nature of the corresponding object. Thus we learn by the sensation 

 to distinguish the objects, but in nowise do we learn from the sensations the sig- 

 nificancy of those objects as regards life and health. When we partake of food, 

 the previously instructed sense informs us of the kind and quantity of its sapid 

 ingredients ; it is upon our own experience or that of others that we found our 

 judgment of their nutritious or noxious character. Unfortunately for the epicure, 

 the antagonist ideas of pleasant and distasteful can in no manner be brought to 

 conform absolutely with the two categories of food and poison ; many a culinary 

 preparation of simplest flavor is an excellent nutriment ; many a delicacy, which 

 tickles the palate to an exquisite degree, is either innutritions or positively 

 hurtful. Finally, it is to be remembered that among the safest viands as the sub- 

 tlest poisons there are some which are quite insipid, to which, therefore, the 

 vigilance of the sentinel palate can by no possibility extend. These patent 

 truths it is unnecessary to re-enforce by multiplied examples. What would it 

 avail, indeed, to prove that a plain milk-porridge as much surpasses a truffle- 

 pastry in nutritious properties as it falls behind it in savoriness ? We should 

 make thereby as few proselytes as did the barbarous reformer who once set a 

 whole community in ferment with the words, " Beer is poison." 



IV.— THE SENSE OF HEARING. 



We enter now upon a sphere of sensation in which we feel that we have a surer 

 footing than when dealing with the enigmatical senses of smell and taste, be- 

 cause here we encounter an external excitant accurately known as regards its 

 nature and laws, and this nature and these laws are already more or less famil- 

 iar to the contemplation of a large number of readers. What pe-rception of the 

 senses is there which takes a deeper and stronger hold upon our inmost being 

 than sound in its endless modifications and harmonious combinations, which, in 

 its inexhaustible interchange of tones, is capable, if we may be allowed the ex- 

 pression, of more delicate and diversified shadings, especially when it reaches 

 us in the living form of speech ? Even that small and unhappy number of hu- 

 man' beings in whose inelastic natures music " finds no echo, strikes no respon- 

 sive string" — even these are the willing slaves of sound, without whose availa- 

 bility as speech the intellectual commerce of mankind would indeed be reduced 

 to narrow bounds and wretched expedients. If we consider the animal world, 

 we recognize "tbe same wonderful force, the same essential office of sound in 

 hundreds of instances. The tones produced by the small fibrous tendons of the 

 throat thrown into vibration by the breath, whether it be in the unmodulated 



