THE SENSE OF TASTE
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Few people, comparatively, however intelligentand generally thoughtful, have as yet stopped toconsider the surpassing interest and the uniqueimportance of Our Senses. Living gateways asthe sense organs are between ourselves and ourever-changing surroundings, both spiritual andmaterial, they constitute the channels not only ofour life-satisfaction, but of all our immediateknowledge as well. If, then, in discussing them,biological imagination and breadth and depth gohand in hand with technical knowledge of thehighest grade, the volumes comprised should beboth human and scientific. And these volumesare so, and will be. It is because of such possibilitiesthat a series like the present, authentic yetinteresting and inexpensive, must appeal to theintelligent man or woman of to-day. As contributionsto psychology and to education their value iscertain to be great, as indeed is indicated by thelist of their authors, whom it would be superfluousto praise or even to portray.
Small in number are the topics in all the wondrousrange of the science of living things thatare more alluring for their very mystery andromance than these same gateways by which weviiimay go out into “our world” and by which thissame great world may come into us and, for thelittle span of life, lend us a feeling of home-dwelling.
Within the past decade there has been a generalpopular awakening from the former uninterestedattitude toward these phenomena of thephysical and mental processes by which we keepin touch with the things outside ourselves. A fairknowledge of the rudiments of biology, of physiology,and of psychology now has become part ofthe curriculum of our schools and colleges. Andof these three sciences it is psychology which hasentered so deeply into our everyday life—businesslife as well as personal—that at last no one canes