For as colors need light, so tastes require salt, that they may affect the sense, unless you would have them very nauseous and unpleasant.

For, as Heraclitus used to say, a carcass is more abominable than dung.

Now all flesh is dead and part of a lifeless carcass; but the virtue of salt, being added to it, like a soul, gives it a pleasing relish and a poignancy.

Hence it comes to pass that before meat men use to take sharp things, and such as have much salt in them; for these beguile us into an appetite.

And whoever has his stomach sharpened with these sets cheerfully and freshly upon all other sorts of meat.