Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 03.djvu/345

 the thin membranes of a bladder, and many of them scarce ordinary white paper.

There is a great variety of smells, though we have but a few names for them; sweet, stinking, sour, rank, and musty, are almost all the denominations we have for odours; though the smell of a violet, and of musk, both called sweet, are as distinct as any two smells whatsoever.

Taste is the next sense to be considered.

The organ of taste is the tongue and palate.

Bodies that emit light, sounds, and smells, are seen, heard, and smelt at a distance; but bodies are not tasted, but by immediate application to the organ; for till our meat touch our tongues, or palates, we taste it not, how near soever it be.

It may be observed of tastes, that though there be a great variety of them, yet, as in smells, they have only some few general names; as sweet, bitter, sour, harsh, rank, and some few others.

The fifth and last of our senses is touch; a sense spread over the whole body, though it be most eminently placed in the ends of the fingers.

By this sense the tangible qualities of bodies are discerned; as hard, soft, smooth, rough, dry, wet, clammy, and the like.

But the most considerable of the qualities that are perceived by this sense, are heat and cold.

The due temperament of those two opposite qualities is the great instrument of nature that she makes use of in most, if not all, her productions.

Heat is a very brisk agitation of the insensible parts of the object, which produces in us that sensation from whence we denominate the object hot; so what in our sensation is heat, in the object is nothing but