y and desire. It suggests all things strong and beautiful and
joyous, and gives me a sense of physical happiness. I wonder if others
observe that all infants have the same scent--pure, simple,
undecipherable as their dormant personality. It is not until the age of
six or seven that they begin to have perceptible individual odours.
These develop and mature along with their mental and bodily powers.

What I have written about smell, especially person-smell, will perhaps
be regarded as the abnormal sentiment of one who can have no idea of the
"world of reality and beauty which the eye perceives." There are people
who are colour-blind, people who are tone-deaf. Most people are
smell-blind-and-deaf. We should not condemn a musical composition on the
testimony of an ear which cannot distinguish one chord from another, or
judge a picture by the verdict of a colour-blind critic. The sensations
of smell which cheer, inform, and broaden my life are not less pleasant
merely because some critic who treads the wide, bright pathway of the
eye has not cultivated his olfactive sense. Without the shy, fugitive,
often unobserved sensations and the certainties which taste, smell, and
touch give me, I should be obliged to take my conception of the universe
wholly from others. I should lack the alchemy by which I now infuse into
my world light, colour, and the Protean spark. The sensuous reality
which interthreads and supports all the gropings of my imagination would
be shattered. The solid earth would melt from under my feet and disperse
itself in space. The objects dear to my hands would become formless,
dead things, and I should walk among them as among invisible ghosts.

RELATIVE VALUES OF THE SENSES

VII

RELATIVE VALUES OF THE SENSES

I WAS once without the sense of smell and taste for several days. It
seemed incredible, this utter detachment from odours, to breathe the air
in and observe never a single scent. The feeling was probably similar,
though less in degree, to that of one who first loses sight and cannot
but expect to see the light again any day, any minute. I knew I should
smell again some time. Still, after the wonder had passed off, a
loneliness crept over me as vast as the air whose myriad odours I
missed. The multitudinous subtle delights that smell makes mine became
for a time wistful memories. When I recovered the lost sense, my heart
bounded with gladness. It is a fine dramatic touch that Hans Anders