LECTIO TWENTY-ONE

             § 501. Having dealt with the visible, the audible and the odorous, the Philosopher now treats of the tasteable; and this in two parts, first considering the tasteable in general, and then, at 'The species of savour', its division into flavours. As to the former point he does three things. First, he asks whether the tasteable is perceived through a medium; then he explains what is perceived by taste, i.e. the tasteable and the non-tasteable, at 'As sight etc.'; and thirdly, what is the organ of taste, at 'Since what is tasteable is liquid'. For he has explained these three points with regard to the other senses, namely the medium, the object sensed and the sense-organ. As regards the medium, he first shows that the tasteable is not perceived through any extraneous medium; then, at 'Hence, if we were in water', he answers an objection; and thirdly, at 'It causes no sensation', he shows us the necessary condition of actual tasting.

             § 502. First, then, he says that the tasteable is something tangible, i.e. discerned by touch. That is why it is not sensed through a medium extraneous to the body, i.e. which is not part of the living body--differing in this from the sense-objects hitherto treated of, which are perceived through air or water outside the animal's body. Touch does not perceive through an extraneous medium, but through one that is conjoined with the subject, i.e. through flesh, as we shall see. Therefore, as taste is a kind of touch, the tasteable is not perceived through any extraneous medium.

             § 503. That the tasteable is a sort of tangible he shows thus: flavour or savour exists in moisture as in the matter proper to it; and moisture is tangible.

             § 504. But if taste is a kind of touch, it would seem that it ought not to be placed in contrast to touch (for no species is opposed to its genus); and if so, then there are not five senses but only four. But, in truth, touch and taste can be considered in two ways: with regard to the mode of perception, and thus taste is a kind of touch, for it apprehends by contact; and with regard to the object, and then we have to maintain that as the object of taste is to the object of touch, so the sense of taste is to the sense of touch. For flavour (the object of taste) is evidently not one of the qualities of those elemental bodies of which the animal is composed, which constitute the specific object of the sense of touch; yet it is caused by them, and exists in one of them as in its matter, i.e. in moisture. Clearly then, taste is not the same as touch, but is somehow founded on touch. So a distinction is commonly drawn between taste, as discriminative of flavours, and taste as a kind of touch discerning certain tangible qualities, namely those of nourishment, of which touch is the sense, as has been pointed out. Hence Aristotle's remark in the Ethics (Bk. III) that there is no such thing as temperance in the pleasures of taste understood in the former of these senses, but only as understood in the latter.

             § 505. Next, at 'Hence, if we were in water' he answers an objection. For it is obvious that if something tasty and soluble were placed in water (say, honey, or something of that kind) and we were in the water also, we would be aware of the thing's flavour, even though at a distance from it. Taste, then, apparently perceives its object through an extraneous medium, water.

             § 506. To dispose, then, of this objection, Aristotle, arguing from the principle already stated, that taste does not use an extraneous medium, says that if we were in the water in the way described we should certainly perceive the sweet thing in the water at a distance from us, but that the sensation would not in fact reach us through a medium; for the flavour would be mixed with the liquid as in a drink (as when honey or the like is mixed with water or wine) and the water itself would be affected by the sweet object. Taste then would not perceive the thing's flavour at a distance except in so far as the water was affected by the thing.

             § 507. A sign of which is that the taste is not so strongly affected by such water as it naturally would be by the flavour of the thing that is at a distance, because the flavour is weakened by mixing with water. Colour, on the other hand, is not seen through its medium in such a way that the coloured body is mixed with the medium, or that anything from it flows to the eye, as Democritus supposed; it is seen rather through a spiritual modification of the medium. Hence, sight does not perceive colour as colour of the air or of water, but as colour of a distant coloured body, and to the same degree of intensity. Comparing, then, taste with sight, we cannot say that the medium of taste is like that of sight, but we can say that just as colour is the visible, i.e. the object of vision, so flavour is the tasteable, i.e. the object of taste.

             § 508. Then at 'It causes no sensation of taste,' he shows what is required for taste in the place of a medium, observing that nothing tasty is tasted without moisture. As colour becomes actually visible in light, so flavour becomes actually tasteable in moisture; for which reason all that is tasteable is either actually liquid already, like wine, or is potentially liquid, like things taken as food. Hence the necessity of saliva in the mouth; being very liquid it moistens the palate, so that what is eaten may be liquefied and its flavour perceived.

             § 509. Next, at 'As sight is of the visible', he treats of the object perceived by taste, comparing taste with sight and hearing. For sight perceives both the visible and the invisible, as has been said; the invisible being darkness, which is apprehended by sight. Also what is extremely bright, like the sun, is described as invisible, though in quite another way. For darkness is called invisible because of a lack of light, but brilliant objects on account of an excess of light which overcomes the sense. Similarly hearing is of the audible, i.e. sound, and of the inaudible, i.e. silence (the privation of sound) and also of the inaudible in the sense of what is heard with difficulty, either because of its excessive loudness or because it is too faint to affect the hearing sufficiently. And so it is with all things involving capacity and incapacity.

             § 510. For one can say of a thing that it is incapable, meaning either that it has not what it ought to have by nature, or that it has it only defectively. Thus an animal is described as unable to walk either because it lacks legs or because it is weak on its legs. And so it is with taste and the tasteable and non-tasteable. The latter means either what has little or poor flavour, or what is so violently flavoured as to overcome the sense.

             As the tasteable pertains to moisture, i.e. the drinkable, and moisture is the basis of savour, it would appear that the drinkable and the non-drinkable are fundamental in the process of tasting. For taste perceives both, the one, i.e. the non-drinkable, as bad and destructive of taste, but the other, i.e. the drinkable, as appropriate and congenial to taste. Yet while the tasteable is perceived by taste, precisely as a sense distinct from touch, the drinkable and non-drinkable are perceived by it inasmuch as it is a species of touch. For the drinkable is common to touch and taste, to touch in so far as it is liquid, to taste so far as it has savour.

             § 511. Obviously then, the pleasures afforded by food and drink, in so far as these are things perceptible and drinkable, accompany taste inasmuch as it is a kind of touch (see Book III of the Ethics).

             § 512. Then at 'Since what is tasteable is liquid' he examines the organ of taste, first stating the fact and then, at 'There is a sign of this', pointing out a sign of its truth.

             First, then, he says that because the tasteable is liquid and has savour, the organ of taste must itself be neither actually moist nor actually flavoured. Yet it must be able to become moist--like the organ of sight, which must be colourless, but able to receive colour. This is because the taste is affected by the tasteable precisely as such, as any other sense by its proper object. Since then the tasteable as such is liquid, the organ of taste, in the act of receiving the savour, must become moist; and yet preserve its quality of being able to taste, when it is not actually, but only potentially, moist.

             § 513. Next, at 'There is a sign', he observes that an indication of the truth of the foregoing is that the tongue is able to taste nothing when it is either quite dry, or extremely liquid; for when it is excessively liquid through the presence and predominance of some liquid already tasted, then for the time being no new moisture can be tasted; as when after tasting a strong flavour one can taste nothing else, because the sensation of the former flavour remains on the tongue. Similarly to the 'burdened' or sick, all things taste bitter because their tongues are covered with a feverish or bitter moisture.

             § 514. Then at 'The species of savour' he concludes about the species of taste, observing that, as in the case of colour simple colours are contrary, such as white and black, so in flavours the simple are contrary, as the sweet and the bitter. Those 'adjoining', that is, those immediately following upon the simple species, are the succulent following on the sweet, and the salty following on the bitter. Intermediary are the sour, the pungent, the astringent and the acid, which two last are reducible to the same. To these seven species of flavour most of the others seem to be reducible.

             § 515. Note, with regard to these species, that whilst flavours are caused by the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry, and although contraries connote terms furthest apart, yet the contraries in the species of flavour do not follow the maximum differences of hot and cold or of moist and dry, but are related precisely to the natural capacity of the sense of taste to be affected by savour either to disgust or to delight. There is no need then for the sweet or the bitter to be particularly hot or cold or moist or dry, but much that it be in a state that corresponds somehow to the sense of taste. As for the origin of flavours, that is explained in the De Sensu et Sensato.

             § 516. He concludes, finally, that taste, i.e. the sense of taste, or its organ, is in potency to savour and the species of savour; and that the tasteable is what can bring it into act.

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