The Perfume oj an Evening Primrose. 247 



This approach in ourselves to the recovery of a 

 strong or familiar smell, this dim white patch, to 

 speak in metaphor, the ghost of a phantasm of 

 a smell, seems to have misled the philosophers into 

 the idea that we can mentally reproduce odours. 

 Bain, as I have said, contradicts himself, and there- 

 fore, excepting in the sentence I have quoted, must 

 be put down among those who are against me ; and 

 with him are McOosh, Bastian, Luys, Ferrier, and 

 others who write on the brain and the mind. Do 

 they copy from each other? It is very odd that 

 they all tell us that we know very little about the 

 sense of smell, and prove it by affirming that we 

 can recall the sensations produced by odours, in 

 some cases quoting the poet : 



Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 

 Live within the sense they quicken. 



I was seriously alarmed at the beginning of this 

 inquiry by reading in McOosh, " When the organs 

 of taste and smell, supposed by Ferrier to be at the 

 back of the head, are diseased or out of order, the 

 reproduction of the corresponding sensations may 

 be indistinct." So indistinct was the reproduction 

 in my own case, even of the smell of coffee, that 

 after reading this passage I began to fear that my 

 own brain had misled me, and so, to satisfy myself 

 on the point, I consulted others, friends and 

 acquaintances, who all began trying to recall the 

 sensations produced on them by the odours they 

 were most familiar with. The result of their efforts 

 has restored my peace of mind. With the exception 



