When I need a word and do not find it in French, I select it from other tongues, and the reader has either to understand or translate me. Such is my fate.

The first thing we become convinced of is that man is organized so as to be far more sensible of pain than of pleasure.

Sight and touch, being thus increased in capacity, might belong to some species far superior to man; or rather the human species would be far different had all the senses been thus improved.

Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose.

The torrent of centuries rolling over the human race, has continually brought new perfections, the cause of which, ever active though unseen, is found in the demands made by our senses, which always in their turns demand to be occupied.

The senses are the organs by which man places himself in connexion with exterior objects.

The centuries last passed have also given the taste important extension; the discovery of sugar, and its different preparations, of alcoholic liquors, of wine, ices, vanilla, tea and coffee, have given us flavors hitherto unknown.