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 



