en
gives to the story of Kay and Gerda in the passage about flowers. Kay,
whom the wicked magician's glass has blinded to human love, rushes away
fiercely from home when he discovers that the roses have lost their
sweetness.

The loss of smell for a few days gave me a clearer idea than I had ever
had what it is to be blinded suddenly, helplessly. With a little stretch
of the imagination I knew then what it must be when the great curtain
shuts out suddenly the light of day, the stars, and the firmament
itself. I see the blind man's eyes strain for the light, as he fearfully
tries to walk his old rounds, until the unchanging blank that
everywhere spreads before him stamps the reality of the dark upon his
consciousness.

My temporary loss of smell proved to me, too, that the absence of a
sense need not dull the mental faculties and does not distort one's view
of the world, and so I reason that blindness and deafness need not
pervert the inner order of the intellect. I know that if there were no
odours for me I should still possess a considerable part of the world.
Novelties and surprises would abound, adventures would thicken in the
dark.

In my classification of the senses, smell is a little the ear's
inferior, and touch is a great deal the eye's superior. I find that
great artists and philosophers agree with me in this. Diderot says:

Je trouvais que de tous les sens, l'oeil etait le
plus superficiel; l'oreille, le plus orgueilleux;
l'odorat, le plus voluptueux; le gout, le plus
superstitieux et le plus inconstant; le toucher,
le plus profond et le plus philosophe.[C]

A friend whom I have never seen sends me a quotation from Symonds's
"Renaissance in Italy":

Lorenzo Ghiberti, after describing a piece of
antique sculpture he saw in Rome adds, "To express
the perfection of learning, mastery, and art
displayed in it is beyond the power of language.
Its more exquisite beauties could not be
discovered by the sight, but only by the touch of
the hand passed over it." Of another classic
marble at Padua he says, "This statue, when the
Christian faith triumphed, was hidden in that
place by some gentle soul, who, seeing it so
perfect, fashioned with art so wonderful, and with
such power of genius, and being moved to reverent
pity, caused a se