Taste

Next to it in nobility is the rank of taste (*dhawq*), and this may be innate and may be acquired, as in an aptitude for poetry, for melodies, for eloquence and the like — save that the innate taste which is next to the rank of sainthood is exceedingly rare in occurrence, and even if it be found it is not wholly independent of being kept up, unlike the taste for poetry and melodies and what is near to them.

And whoever traces the Arabic language, which gives expression to the inmost essence of the whole, finds in it subtleties that speak plainly of the roots of the realities — as one of the later men among the people of complete taste undertook to set out a portion of them in detail;

rather, the mainstay is upon what sound taste (*dhawq*) attains.

Taste is the quality apprehensible by the organ of taste.