There are very
good reasons for this subdivision of faculties in the tongue, the object
being, as it were, to make each piece of food undergo three separate
examinations (like 'smalls,' 'mods,' and 'greats' at Oxford), which must
be successively passed before it is admitted into full participation in
the human economy. The first examination, as we shall shortly see, gets
rid at once of substances which would be actively and immediately
destructive to the very tissues of the mouth and body; the second
discriminates between poisonous and chemically harmless food-stuffs; and
the third merely decides the minor question whether the particular food
is likely to prove then and there wholesome or indigestible to the
particular person. The sense of taste proceeds, in fact, upon the
principle of gradual selection and elimination; it refuses first what is
positively destructive, next what is more remotely deleterious, and
finally what is only undesirable or over-luscious.
When we want to assure ourselves, by means of taste, about any unknown
object--say a lump of some white stuff, which may be crystal, or glass,
or alum, or borax, or quartz, or rock-salt--we put the tip of the tongue
against it gingerly. If it begins to burn us, we draw it away more or
less rapidly with an accompaniment in language strictly dependent upon
our personal habits and manners. The test we thus occasionally apply,
even in the civilised adult state, to unknown bodies is one that is
being applied every day and all day long by children and savages.
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