Disgust, is the result of a special treaty of amity and
reciprocity between the stomach and the imagination, differing according
to difference in the contracting parties. We have known many persons
who would not touch mutton, and others who would rather starve than eat
oysters; while we ourselves revolt at sourkrout, which, nevertheless,
millions of Germans, French, and Americans consider delicious. Disgust
is arbitrary; it does not furnish us with a philosophical ground for
argumentation. The Fijian does not feel disgust at the flavor of a
well-roasted white sailor; and as long as he does not insist upon our
relishing his fare, what right have we to ask him to feel disgusted?
When the panther-tailed Aztec priest fattened his prisoner, or carried
along the children decked with wreaths, soon to be smothered in their
own juice, he cannot have felt disgust, any more than the Malay, of whom
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles tells us, that, with epicurean refinement,
he cut the choicest bits from his living prisoner, in order to baste
them to a turn and season them with choice pepper.
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