How far we have traveled away from that foolish, nay, criminal Puritan
notion that enjoyment of the pleasures of the table is a reprehensible
form of sensual indulgence--the notion which made Walter Scott's father
pour hot water into the soup because the boy liked it!
That attitude was a blunder, a huge blunder, as the preceding pages
prove.
A still bigger blunder, and one equally deplorable and mischievous, now
claims our attention--a blunder so amazing, so incomprehensible that it
seems almost incredible: _the universal belief, among men of science as
well as the laity, that the pleasures of the table come to us through
the sense of taste_.
How I happened to discover that this notion is a blunder, I now beg the
reader's permission to relate briefly.
In 1878 Harvard University rewarded me for my hard work in the
philosophical department (under Professors Bowen and Palmer) by giving
me the Harris Fellowship, which enabled me to continue my study of
physiological and comparative psychology for three years at the
universities of Germany.
I recall vividly my boyish delight in the pleasures of the senses of
sight, hearing, and smell. During my college course and afterwards I
diligently studied the phenomena of these senses in man and animals
in all the books and scientific papers I could find; and thus it came
about that my first magazine articles were on the Æsthetic Value of
Odors, and The Development of the Color Sense. The first of these was
accepted by W. D. Howells, for the "Atlantic Monthly" (December, 1880);
the second, by Alfred Russell Wallace, for "Macmillan's Magazine"
(London, December, 1879). I mention these things to show that the
senses of man and animals have been a subject of special interest with
me for more than four decades, and that when I went to Germany, I took
up the study of them not as an amateur but as one prepared (as well as
eager) to make original researches.
My most ardent desire was to work in the laboratories of the University
of Berlin under Professor Helmholtz, whose monumental books on the
sensations of tone and on the phenomena of sight had revealed so many
secrets to the world of science. Unfortunately he was not lecturing on
those subjects at that time. Moreover, reperusal of his books made me
feel as if he had covered all the most interesting ground. I therefore
looked about for a region in which I could do some exploring on my own
account, and soon found it in the functions of the senses of smell and
taste.
Concerning these two senses, the most absurdly incorrect notions were
current at that time even among leaders in science. Grant Allen, known
as "the St. Paul of Darwinism," voiced the current biological opinion
when he wrote that with man "smell survives with difficulty as an
almost functionless relic"; and Darwin himself wrote that this sense is
"of extremely slight service" to man.
The king of German philosophers, Kant, who was an epicure, maintained
that smell is the least important of our senses, and that it
is not worth while to cultivate it. Nay, the king of epicures,
Brillat-Savarin, wrote a famous book the very title of which,
"Physiology of Taste," is a scientific blunder. Like everybody else, he
believed in the existence of an infinite variety of tastes, and never
suspected that, _with the exception of sweet, sour, salt and bitter,
all our countless gastronomic delights come to us through the sense of
smell_.