Book II Chapter 10

What can be tasted is always something that can be touched, and just for that reason it cannot be perceived through an interposed foreign body, for touch means the absence of any intervening body. Further, the flavoured and tasteable body is suspended in a liquid matter, and this is tangible¹. Hence, if we lived in water, we should perceive a sweet object introduced into the water, but the water would not be the medium through which we perceived; our perception would be due to the solution of the sweet substance in what we imbibed², just as if it were mixed with some drink. There is no parallel here to the perception of colour, which is due neither to any blending of anything with anything, nor to any efflux of anything from anything. In the case of taste, there is nothing corresponding to the medium in the case of the senses previously³ discussed; but as the object of sight is colour, so the object of taste is flavour. But nothing excites a perception of flavour without the help of liquid; what acts upon the sense of taste must be either actually or potentially liquid like what is saline; it must be both (a) itself easily dissolved, and (b) capable of dissolving along with itself the tongue. Taste apprehends⁴ both (a) what has taste and (b) what has no taste, if we mean by (b) what has only a slight or feeble flavour or what tends to destroy the sense of taste. In this it is exactly parallel to sight, which apprehends both what is visible and what is invisible (for darkness is invisible and yet is discriminated⁵ by sight; so is, in a different way, what is over brilliant), and to hearing, which apprehends both sound and silence, of which the one is audible and the other inaudible, and also over-loud sound. This corresponds in the case of hearing to over-bright light in the case of sight. As a faint sound is ‘inaudible’, so in a sense is a loud or violent sound. The word ‘invisible’ and similar privative terms cover not only (a) what is simply without some power, but also (b) what is adapted by nature to have it but has not it or has it only in a very low degree, as when we say that a species of swallow is ‘footless’ or that a variety of fruit is ‘stoneless’. So too taste has as its object both what can be tasted and the tasteless-the latter in the sense of what has little flavour or a bad flavour or one destructive of taste. The difference between what is tasteless and what is not seems to rest ultimately on that between what is drinkable and what is undrinkable both are tasteable, but the latter is bad and tends to destroy taste, while the former is the normal stimulus⁶ of taste. What is drinkable is the common object of both touch and taste.

Since what can be tasted is liquid, the organ for its perception cannot be either (a) actually liquid or (b) incapable⁷ of becoming liquid. Tasting means a being affected⁸ by what can be tasted as such; hence the organ of taste must be liquefied, and so to start with must be non-liquid but capable of liquefaction without loss of its distinctive⁹ nature. This is confirmed by the fact that the tongue cannot taste either when it is too dry or when it is too moist; in the latter case what occurs is due to a contact with the pre-existent moisture in the tongue itself, when after a foretaste of some strong flavour we try to taste another flavour; it is in this way that sick persons find everything they taste bitter, viz. because, when they taste, their tongues are overflowing¹⁰ with bitter moisture.

The species of flavour are, as in the case of colour, (a) simple, i.e. the two contraries, the sweet and the bitter, (b) secondary, viz. (i) on the side of the sweet, the succulent, (ii) on the side of the bitter, the saline, (iii) between these come the pungent¹¹, the harsh, the astringent¹², and the acid; these pretty well exhaust the varieties of flavour. It follows that what has the power of tasting is what is potentially of that kind, and that what is tasteable is what has the power of making it actually what it itself already is.

1 tangible   

adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的

参考例句：

• The policy has not yet brought any tangible benefits.这项政策还没有带来任何实质性的好处。
• There is no tangible proof.没有确凿的证据。

2 imbibed   

v.吸收( imbibe的过去式和过去分词 )；喝；吸取；吸气

参考例句：

• They imbibed the local cider before walking home to dinner. 他们在走回家吃饭之前喝了本地的苹果酒。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. 海丝特 - 白兰汲取了这一精神。 来自英汉文学 - 红字

3 previously   

adv.以前，先前（地）

参考例句：

• The bicycle tyre blew out at a previously damaged point.自行车胎在以前损坏过的地方又爆开了。
• Let me digress for a moment and explain what had happened previously.让我岔开一会儿，解释原先发生了什么。

4 apprehends   

逮捕，拘押( apprehend的第三人称单数 )； 理解

参考例句：

• A guilty man apprehends danger in every sound. 犯了罪的人对每一个声音都感到风声鹤唳。
• The police maintain order in the city, help prevent crime, apprehends lawbreakers and directs traffic. 警察维持城市的秩序，协助防止犯罪，逮捕犯法者及指挥交通。

5 discriminated   

分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待

参考例句：

• His great size discriminated him from his followers. 他的宽广身材使他不同于他的部下。
• Should be a person that has second liver virus discriminated against? 一个患有乙肝病毒的人是不是就应该被人歧视？

6 stimulus   

n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物

参考例句：

• Regard each failure as a stimulus to further efforts.把每次失利看成对进一步努力的激励。
• Light is a stimulus to growth in plants.光是促进植物生长的一个因素。

7 incapable   

adj.无能力的，不能做某事的

参考例句：

• He would be incapable of committing such a cruel deed.他不会做出这么残忍的事。
• Computers are incapable of creative thought.计算机不会创造性地思维。

8 affected   

adj.不自然的，假装的

参考例句：

• She showed an affected interest in our subject.她假装对我们的课题感到兴趣。
• His manners are affected.他的态度不自然。

9 distinctive   

adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的

参考例句：

• She has a very distinctive way of walking.她走路的样子与别人很不相同。
• This bird has several distinctive features.这个鸟具有几种突出的特征。

10 overflowing   

n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The stands were overflowing with farm and sideline products. 集市上农副产品非常丰富。
• The milk is overflowing. 牛奶溢出来了。

11 pungent   

adj.（气味、味道）刺激性的，辛辣的；尖锐的

参考例句：

• The article is written in a pungent style.文章写得泼辣。
• Its pungent smell can choke terrorists and force them out of their hideouts.它的刺激性气味会令恐怖分子窒息，迫使他们从藏身地点逃脱出来。

12 astringent   

adj.止血的，收缩的，涩的；n.收缩剂，止血剂

参考例句：

• It has an astringent effect.这个有止血的作用。
• Green persimmons are strongly astringent.绿柿子非常涩。