FRANKINCENSE AND MYRRH 101 



tongue and that of mice, may turn out to have an 

 actual depressing effect, which may be emphasized 

 by association if they call up the memories of the 

 fatigue and stupefaction induced by organic 

 particles in crowded rooms and filthy streets. 



It is usually said that man's pleasure in the 

 fragrant and the palatable has no correlated aesthetic 

 emotion like that which accompanies looking at 

 the beautiful or listening to music. But we doubt 

 the accuracy of this hard-and-fast statement, and 

 are inclined to think that the difference is in degree, 

 not in kind. One of the difficulties is in trying to 

 discriminate between the immediate effect of certain 

 fragrances and that of the pleasant associations 

 which they arouse. And again, while we agree, 

 of course, with Professor Stout that " smells are 

 not adapted to ideal revival in serial succession as 

 sounds and sights are," and therefore do not figure 

 in those trains of ideas which bulk so largely in our 

 mental life, it is not true to our personal experience 

 to say that man has no olfactory memory. Civiliza- 

 tion has staked so much on eye and ear, that man's 

 sense of smell seems to be on the down grade. But 

 one hopes that this is still rather individual than 

 racial, that is, rather modificational than variational, 

 and that the growing love for gardens, for instance, 

 may do something to counteract the exhaustion 

 of the sense by tobacco and petrol. One of the 

 hints that we get from Nature is that a fundamental 

 secret of progressive evolution lies in a broadening 

 and deepening appropriation of the complex system 



