14 HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. [chap. 



of the insentient. I shall have to go into this subject in 



more detail in the next chapter ; but before I do so, there 



are some more remarks to be made concerning the relation 



between sensation and consciousness. 



Conscious- The distinction between a sensation and the conscious- 



tiifct from ^^^^ '^^ *^® sensation is in my opinion a very important 



sensation, one, though it appears to be often overlooked.^ The truth 



that they are distinct may be further illustrated by the 



fact, that a sensation which is felt as disagreeable at first, 



sometimes becomes agreeable when it is repeated often 



. . , enough to become familiar. Hence is the very common 



Acquired ° n • 



taste, yet really very remarkable fact of "acquired tastes." I 



am not now speaking of the feelings produced by poetry, 



by music, or by visual beauty ; the feelings they produce 



are very different from mere sensations, and are much 



more complex ; I mean tastes in the primary sense of the 



word, as belonging to the sense of taste. We know that 



there are flavours, the taste of which is disagreeable at first, 



and for which a liking is nevertheless soon acquired. It can 



scarcely be maintained that the flavour comes by repetition 



to produce a different sensible impression on the nerves of 



taste ; in other words, it can scarcely be maintained that 



• it comes to taste differently from what it did at first. I 



due to a think it much more likely that the sensation itself con- 



in th.e^^° tinues to be the same, but the impression produced by the 



sensation, sensation on the consciousness becomes different. If it is 



conscious- Said that this is no explanation at all of the fact that tastes 



ness of It. jjjay be acquired, I admit it ; I admit that the hypothesis 



I advance explains nothing — or, in other words, does not 



make the fact we have to do with more intelligible ; I only 



advance it as being what I believe to be a true statement 



of fact. So far as the fact of acquired tastes is capable of 



being explained at aU, it can be explained only by referring 



it to the law of habit among sentient beings, that what is 



habitual tends to become agreeable.^ 



1 Had this distinction been recognised, no one could have fallen into the 

 monstrous absurdity (as I think it) of maintaining that insects have no 

 sensation, because they have nothing homologous with the cerebrum or 

 Vertebrata, which is the organ of conscioiisness. 



2 See vol. i, p. 188. 



