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 stimulus 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) incapable of becoming
liquid. Tasting means a being affected 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
distinctive 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.
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