Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/19

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the case of alcoholic beverages the tendency to inherit the taste is more fully developed than in the case of tobacco, and the taste has thus certainly become intuitive.

The love of the taste of some kinds of food of which man partakes and with which he has had experience for untold generations, seems to be hereditary and hence intuitive. The pleasure derived from the sipidity of honey, sugar, and juices of fruits is innate from experience dating back to primordial life, for the evidence is at hand that all of these ambrosial pleasures are derived and can easily be lost.

Pleasure may easily be transformed into pain. The attar of rose is a pleasant odor intuitive from hereditary experience, yet it is within the experience of the writer that it may become loathsome. Once on a time an epidemic of cholera was carrying off its victims, and he attended many men, women, and children in the last sad office of life. It was midsummer, and raging heat prevailed, so rosewater was freely used until at last it became disgusting to him and has remained so, although gradually wearing away in later years.

Thus, when we consider that hereditary and innate pleasures may be transmitted into pains, and that new pleasures may be derived from old pains, the argument for the derivation of pain is in such cases made plain. Ambrosial pleasures and pains are artificial, and no insignificant portion of human activity is occupied in catering thereto.

The nature of ambrosial pleasures and pains and the activities which arise therefrom have been sufficiently set forth for the purpose of recognizing the group.

DECORATIVE PLEASURES

In science antithetic meanings are sometimes embraced in one term; thus degrees of plus or minus from a particular datum point are combined and their sum is expressed in one term. This practice will be found convenient in the science of psychology