The dance of life / Havelock Ellis.

  • Ellis, Havelock, 1859-1939.
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The dance of life / Havelock Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    taste of fruits, refine my palate, and establish a just relish in the kind.” He thought, probably, that he was merely using a metaphor. But he was speaking essentially in the direct straightforward way of natural and primitive Man. At the foundation, “ sweetness ” and “ goodness ” are the same thing. That can still be detected in the very struc¬ ture of language, not only of primitive languages but those of the most civilised peoples. That morality is, in the strict sense, a matter of taste, of aesthetics, of what the Greeks called a[0-6*1 cris, is conclusively shown by the fact that in the most widely separated tongues—possibly wherever the matter has been carefully investigated— moral goodness is, at the outset, expressed in terms of taste. What is good is what is sweet, and, sometimes, also, salt.1 Primitive peoples have highly developed the sensory side of their mental life, and their vocabularies bear witness to the intimate connection of sensations of taste and touch with emotional tone. There is indeed no occa¬ sion to go beyond our own European traditions to see that the expression of moral qualities is based on fundamental sensory qualities of taste. In Latin suavis is sweet, but even in Latin it became a moral quality and its English derivatives have been entirely deflected from physical to moral qualities, while bitter is at once a physical quality and a poignantly moral quality. In Sanskrit and Persian and Arabic salt is not only a physical taste but the name for lustre and grace and 1 There is no need to refer to the value of salt, and therefore the appreciation of the flavour of salt, to primitive people. Still to-day in Spain, sal (salt) is popularly used for a more or less intellectual and moral quality which is highly admired.