This seems to be true of all our senses, especially of taste.  Our first food is milk; we only become accustomed by degrees to strong flavours; at first we dislike them.  Fruit, vegetables, herbs, and then fried meat without salt or seasoning, formed the feasts of primitive man.  When the savage tastes wine for the first time, he makes a grimace and spits it out; and even among ourselves a man who has not tasted fermented liquors before twenty cannot get used to them; we should all be sober if we did not have wine when we were children.  Indeed, the simpler our tastes are, the more general they are; made dishes are those most frequently disliked.  Did you ever meet with any one who disliked bread or water?  Here is the finger of nature, this then is our rule.  Preserve the child’s primitive tastes as long as possible; let his food be plain and simple, let strong flavours be unknown to his palate, and do not let his diet be too uniform.

I am not asking, for the present, whether this way of living is healthier or no; that is not what I have in view.  It is enough for me to know that my choice is more in accordance with nature, and that it can be more readily adapted to other conditions.  In my opinion, those who say children should be accustomed to the food they will have when they are grown up are mistaken.  Why should their food be the same when their way of living is so different?  A man worn out by labour, anxiety, and pain needs tasty foods to give fresh vigour to his brain; a child fresh from his games, a child whose body is growing, needs plentiful food which will supply more chyle.  Moreover the grown man has already a settled profession, occupation, and home, but who can tell what Fate holds in store for the child?  Let us not give him so fixed a bent in any direction that he cannot change it if required without hardship.  Do not bring him up so that he would die of hunger in a foreign land if he does not take a French cook about with him; do not let him say at some future time that France is the only country where the food is fit to eat.  By the way, that is a strange way of praising one’s country.  On the other hand, I myself should say that the French are the only people who do not know what good food is, since they require such a special art to make their dishes eatable.

Of all our different senses, we are usually most affected by taste.  Thus it concerns us more nearly to judge aright of what will actually become part of ourselves, than of that which will merely form part of our environment.  Many things are matters of indifference to touch, hearing, and sight; but taste is affected by almost everything.  Moreover the activity of this sense is wholly physical and material; of all the senses, it alone makes no appeal to the imagination, or at least, imagination plays a smaller part in its sensations; while imitation and imagination often bring morality into the impressions of the other senses.  Thus, speaking generally, soft and pleasure-loving