Smell

“ A whiff of the universe makes us dream of worlds we have [79] never seen, recalls in a flash entire epochs of our dearest experience. I never smell daisies without living over again the ecstatic mornings that my teacher and I spent wandering in the fields, while I learned new words and the names of things. Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived. The odour of fruits wafts me to my Southern home, to my childish frolics in the peach orchard. ”

“ As your eyes become accustomed to the dimness you can see on the floor the wide, shallow milk coolers, silvery as full moons in that twilight, the only light that enters coming through the long slit of a narrow unglazed window where blistery leaves of green docken, springing rank from the unkempt garden without, show a splash of sunlight. The smell is sourish and cold, if we may speak, as I think we may, of the temperature of a smell. ”

“ The perfume of these wonderful flowers is probably more delightful to Ala than to us. As there are sounds which they hear though inaudible to us, and colors visible to them which lie beyond the range of our vision, so there may be vibrations affecting the olfactory nerves which make no impression upon our sense of smell. ”

“ Aroma is in fact, the essence of the soul, and every flavor emitted by the body represents a corresponding emotion of the soul. Happiness finds expression in a mirthful perfume, sorrow in a doleful one. Does not a hungry man on smelling a joint of meat at once rejoice? I myself have been so overcome by the scent of a favorite fruit that, under an uncontrollable impulse, I have fallen upon and devoured the whole plateful! so powerful is the sense of smell. ”

“ To the sense of smell as well as that of taste the Murænidæ appealed strongly, to judge by the eulogy that their bodies when being cooked exhaled an odour fragrant enough to restore the sense of smell in the nose of a dead man! ”

“ But the sense of smell is by itself as a fact no actual consumption of objects, as eating and tasting are; it merely accepts the result of the process in which the objects pass into the atmosphere and its invisible and mysterious medium of dissolution. ”

“ We are all pretty familiar from experience with the limitations of the sense of smell and the fact that agreeable odours please us only fitfully; the sensation comes as a pleasing shock, a surprise, and is quickly gone. If we attempt to keep it for some time by deliberately smelling a fragrant flower or any perfume, we begin to have a sense of failure as if we had exhausted the sense, keen as it was a moment ago. ”

“ I like to smell a flower,—a flower is not complete without smell; but I don’t care if I never smell a bush till I die. Then the birds,—they laugh and talk like Christians; they make me split my sides, bless their little hearts! ”

“ I particularly love that smell,—it brings before me the entire benevolence of Nature, for ever working death and decay, so piteous in themselves, into the means of fresh life and glory, and sending up sweet odours as she works. ”

“ Afterwards when he would sit glowing on the bank, the sun would be rising and growing warmer every minute, and this new warmth would seem to accentuate the odour of the place that was compact of the yellow water-lily’s harsh savour, the odour of soaked wood, and another, more subtly blended: the composite smell of water that is neither fast nor stagnant, the most provocative and the coolest smell on earth. ”

“ DIGGING TO-DAY I think
Only with scents,—scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;
Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;
The smoke's smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.
It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth.
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth. ”

“ With some the smell is lost in a few seconds, while with others we continue to be aware of it for a much longer time. 16Curiously enough, odours seem, in this matter, to follow the general law of the feelings in that the pleasant are lost sooner than the unpleasant. It is the first breath of the rose that makes the fullest appeal, when the whole being becomes for a moment suffused with the loveliest of all perfumes. ”

“ Odors are material emanations, and represent a division of matter into inconceivably small particles. What are the perfumes we smell but emanations, flying atoms or electrons, radiating in all directions, and continuing for a shorter or longer time without any appreciable diminution in bulk or weight of the substances that give them off? How many millions or trillions of times does the rose divide its heart in the perfume it sheds so freely upon the air? The odor of the musk of certain animals lingers under certain conditions for years. ”

“ We may fairly therefore conclude, that the sense of smell, like the sense of taste, was intended by the GREAT CREATOR, in the first place, as a guard, to watch against the admission, into the body, of any external matter which might prove injurious to bodily health; and in the second place, to remind man of those higher and interior faculties of mind from which the sense of bodily smell derives its life and soul, and especially to call to his recollection the DIVINE SOURCE of all his sensations, whether corporeal or mental, whether natural or spiritual. ”

“ When we smell a rose, there is a particular feeling, a particular consciousness, distinct from all others, which we mean to denote, when we call it the smell 12 of the rose. In like manner we speak of the smell of hay, the smell of turpentine, and the smell of a fox. ”

“ The Uses of the Sense of Smell.—Smell is the special sense which enables us to appreciate odors. Touch, as we have seen, is largely concerned with solid bodies; and taste, with fluids, or with solids in solution. Smell, on the other hand, is designed to afford us information in reference to substances in a volatile or gaseous form. Invisible and subtile particles emanate from odorous bodies, and are brought by the respired air in contact with the terminal filaments of the olfactory nerve, upon which an agreeable or disagreeable impression is produced. ”

“ What relation is there between the real world and that image of the world shadowed in our soul? In the special case we are concerned with, what is it in these substances which is the cause why they affect our sense of smell? It seems certain, in the first place, that odor in itself, so far as it is odor, is a mere figment of our mind. Contemporaneous physiology proves that excitement of the nerves of sensation is followed, in each one, by the sensation that corresponds with each. ”

“ SENSATION—DISTANCE SENSES THE three senses that give us information of what is happening beyond the surface of our bodies are smell, hearing, and sight. Since smell is closely related to taste, which was talked about in the last chapter, we shall take it up first. Smell is like taste in that it is aroused by chemical substances, but to be smelled these must be in gaseous form, not dissolved in water, as for taste. The organ for smell is in the upper part of the nasal chamber. ”

“ But smell is speechless. We can truthfully say that in our native English language there is not a single word characterising any one of all the myriad odours in the world.
No doubt there are many words that we do apply to smells. But they are either borrowed from the vocabulary of one of the other senses, in order to describe a state of mind induced by the smell, or else they originate from some known odoriferous object. ”

“ For the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, of taste, of smell, of touch—all these are discriminative faculties, their purpose being to separate the beneficial from whatever causeth harm. Now, is it possible that man’s sense of smell, the sense that differentiates odours, should find some odour repugnant, and that odour be beneficial to the human body? ”

“ I shall only observe that no smells or tastes can produce a grand sensation, except excessive bitters, and intolerable stenches. It is true that these affections of the smell and taste, when they are in their full force, and lean directly upon the sensory, are simply painful, and accompanied with no sort of delight; but when they are moderated, as in a description or narrative, they become sources of the sublime, as genuine as any other, and upon the very same principle of a moderated pain. ”

“ Smell gives me more idea than touch or taste of the manner in which sight and hearing probably discharge their functions. Touch seems to reside in the object touched, because there is a contact of surfaces. In smell there is no notion of relievo, and odour seems to reside not in the object smelt, but in the organ. ”

“ Emphatic as a blow. Obviously, we have here a combination of several sense impressions, tactile, visual, olfactory: tactile, for 157the air is damp and chilly; visual, for it is a blank, a negative, and yet a powerful influence; olfactory, smelling ominous and of death. Old dried bones emit precisely the same exhalation. In a subtle way, too, the presence of mould is perceptible, all blending into the horrible and grisly atmosphere of despair; the Valse Triste and the Dance of Death.
Smell can bring as certainly and as irresistibly as music emotions of all sorts to the mind. ”

“ Almost every object in nature has a peculiar smell; every animal, every plant, and almost every mineral. Not only have the different classes of objects different smells, but probably different individuals in the same class. The different smells of different individuals are perceptible, to a certain extent, even by the human organs, and to a much greater extent by those of the 13 dog, and other animals, whose sense of smelling is more acute. ”

“ But shall the Lord have endued flowers with such beauty, to present itself to our eyes, with such sweetness of smell, to impress our sense of smelling; and shall it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected with the beautiful sight, or our olfactory nerves with the agreeable odour? ”

“ The intensity and delicacy of the sense of smell vary in mankind among different individuals, and particularly among different races of men. While some persons are almost devoid of the sense of smell, others, whose history is related in the annals of science, have displayed a refinement and range in the distinction of odors truly wonderful. ”

“ Shall it then be said that those other qualities also act upon bodies? But all bodies are not impressionable by odour and sound, and those which are so are indefinite and mobile, such as is the air; for the air gives out odour, as if it had been subject to impression. What then is smell but impression of some kind? But smelling is a sentient perception; and the air having been impressed by odour, becomes quickly sensible to us. ”

“ For smell often operates powerfully, not only in surreptitiously enriching and invigorating the mental impression of an event, but also in directing at times the flow of ideas into some particular channel independent of the will. ”

“ There remains the sense of smell. In the domain of our senses, scent, better than anything else, would more or less explain the onrush of the Moths, even though they do not find the bait that allures them until after a certain amount of hesitation. ”

“ SMELL AND SPEECH That the effect of odour upon the mind is largely concealed is further illustrated by the curious fact that our native language does not possess a terminology descriptive of smells. We never name an odour ”

“ We may add here, that the smell is a guide and guard placed before the taste, as that is before the stomach, in a great degree in men, but much more so in brutes, who have scarce any other means, than that of smell, whereby to distinguish what foods are proper for them. It is likewise probable, that the smell is a guard to the lungs ”

“ He smells the diverse smells of creatures, as elephants, horses, cows, goats, beasts, as well as the smell issuing from the body of various living beings in the condition of brutes. He perceives the smells exhaled by the body of women and men, of boys and girls. He smells, even from a distance, the odour of grass, bushes, herbs, trees. ”

“ Smell is somewhat under the control of the will. That 393 is, we have the power of receiving or rejecting odors that are presented; thus, if odors are agreeable, we inspire forcibly, to enjoy them; but, if they are offensive, our inspirations are more cautious, or we close our nostrils. ”

“ Next in order of delicacy, and more closely allied with the physical functions, is the sense of smell. Delicate perfumes, or the fragrance of a flower, impart an exhilarating sensation of delight, while numerous odors excite a feeling of disgust. The organ of smell is far less complicated in its structure than the eye or the ear. It consists of two cavities having cartilaginous walls, and lined with a thick mucous coat, termed the pituitary membrane, over which are reflected the olfactory nerves. ”

“ The sense of smell perceives it en route, and it is precipitated into the stomach to undergo ulterior transformations, without the most minute fragment during the whole of this escaping. Every drop every atom has been appreciated. ”

“ As taste proceeds from the action of the soluble parts of bodies on the nervous papillae of the tongue, so smell is occasioned by minute and volatile particles flying off from bodies, which become mixed with the air, and drawn up with it into the nostrils, where these small particles stimulate or act upon the nerves before described, and produce the sensation which we call smelling. ”