SPIRITUAL SCENTS 79 



perfumes in religious symbolism. Let me first, how- 

 ever, refer to the word spiritual as used a few pages 

 back in describing the perfume of certain flowers. 

 That it has been used by others in this connection 

 I don't know: it would surprise me to learn that 

 it hadn't. Nevertheless, I must say something in 

 elucidation of my private meaning. 



Spiritual, as here used, refers to a scent, or to 

 a quality of a scent, which differs in character from 

 all these flower-odours described as sweet, delicious, 

 luscious, rich, lovely, luxuriant, etc. the scents, in 

 fact, which in some degree are suggestive of flavours; 

 differing too from all fragrant gums and woods, 

 spices and the aromatic smells of leaves; also from 

 all artificial perfumes and scents distilled from flowers. 

 You may capture and bottle a rare or spiritual per- 

 fume, but its chief virtue, its highest quality, will 

 vanish in the process. That can only be had from 

 the living flower. 



Spiritual, then, in the flower-scent means an effect 

 on the mind, one we are already familiar with; we 

 find it in certain human faces, in their expression, in 

 human voices too, in some moods, in speech or song, in 

 certain flowers in their appearance never, perhaps, 

 in any brilliantly-coloured flower in certain bird 

 sounds; it may be in a certain note or phrase of its 

 music; also in other non-human things, even in the 

 inorganic world, as in certain aspects of earth and sea 

 and sky in certain rare atmospheric conditions. 



Finally, it is a more ethereal scent than those of 

 other flowers, therefore more evanescent, yet more 



