242 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



literally true, because in thinking of it they again 

 (in a sense) see and hear it. But to think of evil 

 odors does not affect us at all: we can, in imagi- 

 nation, uncork and sniff at cans of petroleum and 

 saturate our pocket-handkerchiefs with assafcetida 

 or carbolic acid, or walk behind a dust-cart, or 

 wade through miles of fetid slime in some tropical 

 morass, or take up some mephitic animal, like 

 the skunk, and fondle it as we would a kitten, yet 

 experience no pain, and no sensation of nausea. 

 We can, if we like, call up all the sweet and abom- 

 inable smells in nature, just as Owen Glendower 

 called spirits from the vasty deep, but, like the 

 spirits, they refuse to come ; or they come not as 

 smells but as ideas, so that phosphuretted hydro- 

 gen causes no pain, and frangipani no pleasure. 

 We only know that smells exist; that we have 

 roughly classified them as fragrant, aromatic, 

 fresh, ethereal, stimulating, acrid, nauseous, and 

 virulent ; that each of these generic names includes 

 a very large number of distinct odors: we know 

 them all because the mind has taken note of the 

 distinct character of each, and of its effect on us, 

 not because it has registered a sensation in our 

 brain to be reproduced at will, as in the case of 

 something we have seen or heard. 



It is true that we are equally powerless to recall 

 tastes. Bain admits that "these sensations are 

 deficient as regards the power of being remem- 

 bered"; but he did not discover the fact himself, 

 nor does he verify it from his own experience, 



