SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS. 259 



be a musk-deer, or a musk-rat, or a musk-plant, or a grain 

 of dry musk, or simply a scented handkerchief ; but 

 former experience leads us to believe that the sensation 

 is due to the presence of one or other of these objects, 

 and that it will vanish if the object is removed. In 

 other words, there arises a belief in an external cause of 

 the muskiness, which, in common language, is termed an 

 odorous body. 



But the manner in which this belief is usually put 

 into words is strangely misleading. If we are dealing 

 with a musk-plant, for example, we do not confine our- 

 selves to a simple statement of that which we believe, 

 and say that the musk-plant is the cause of the sensation 

 called muskiness ; but we say that the plant has a musky 

 smell, and we speak of the odour as a quality, or prop- 

 erty, inherent in the plant. And the inevitable reaction 

 of words upon thought has in this case become so com- 

 plete, and has penetrated so deeply, that when an ac- 

 curate statement of the case namely, that muskiness, 

 inasmuch as the term denotes nothing but a sensation, is 

 a mental state, and has no existence except as a mental 

 phenomenon is first brought under the notice of com- 

 mon-sense folks, it is usually regarded by them as what 

 they are pleased to call a mere metaphysical paradox and 

 a patent example of useless subtlety. Yet the slightest 

 reflection must suffice to convince any one possessed of 

 sound reasoning faculties, that it is as absurd to suppose 

 that muskiness is a quality inherent in one plant, as it 

 would be to imagine that pain is a quality inherent in 



