Noctes Atticae

What Aristotle wrote of the congenital absence of some of the senses.

NATURE has given five senses to living beings; sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, called by the Greeks ai)sqh/seis. Of these some animals lack one and some another, being born into the world blind, or without the sense of smell or hearing. But Aristotle asserts that no animal is born without the sense of taste or of touch.

His own words, from the book which he wrote On Memory, are as follows: [*](Peri\ (/Upnou or On Sleep, 2. Gellius is mistaken in his title.)

Except for some imperfect animals, all have taste or touch.