There is no need to enlarge upon this branch of our subject. Those who are curious about it may apply themselves to Havelock Ellis for more detailed3 information. What I am concerned with here is something much less commonplace and obvious, the question, namely, whether we disseminate4 and receive, each of us, anything less material than the odours we are conscious of.
In addition to his other olfactory6 accomplishments7, our friend the dog seems to be able to distinguish by smell when a strange dog is to be cultivated as a friend or wrangled8 with as a foe9, and nothing is more amusing to watch than the careful and even suspicious olfactory investigation10 88two dogs meeting for the first time make of each other’s odours, during which exchange of credentials11 a state of armed neutrality exists, to pass, apparently12 as a result of some mysterious olfactory decision, either into frank, open, and unchangeable hostility13, or into friendship equally frank, open, and unchangeable.
But what it is that makes one dog smell to another of enmity or of friendship is as mysterious as—the mutual14 attraction or repulsion felt for each other by two human beings, shall we say? For, of course, this suspense15 of judgment16 on encountering a new-comer is a human no less than a canine17 trait. There were physiognomists before Lavater, since we are naturally influenced by what our senses, and especially our eyes and our ears, tell us about a person we are meeting for the first time. We like the look of the man, his expression, his smile, the character of his movements, bodily as well as facial; we find the intonation18 of his voice, his accent, his laugh, agreeable. Or we don’t. And our decision is curiously19 independent of his moral character, even after we have got to know that side of him. Now, this act of judgment seems to us to be quite independent of any olfactory evidence. We rely upon our predominant senses just as the dog relies upon his. Yet I sometimes catch myself wondering whether olfaction, olfaction rarefied and refined beyond 89imagining, does not without our knowledge play some part in our estimate of the pros20 and cons5 in character.
What is conveyed to us by the “personality” of a man? Here we have apparently a complex of sense-impressions, for the most part vague, which we are seldom able to analyse, even to ourselves. Still less can we put it into words capable of conveying our impression to other people. “There is something about him that I like” is about the sum-total of our attempts at description.
And if this be true as between man and man, it is even more often remarked as between man and woman. Meredith it is, I think, who says that the surest way to a woman’s heart is through her eye. Fortunately for most of us, his dictum is open to question. Otherwise the human race would soon come to an end. Now, although, unlike Meredith, I cannot claim the rank of a high-priest in the temple of Venus, yet so far as I may dare to express an opinion upon a matter so recondite21, not to say mysterious, I should rather be inclined to say that the surest route is by way of her ear, and I am fortified22 in my belief by an authority as erudite in these matters as Meredith himself, Shakespeare to wit:
“That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.”
90John Wilkes, they say, to all appearance a “most uninteresting-looking man,” asked for only half an hour of a start to beat the handsomest gentleman in England at the game of games. Women forgot what he was like as soon as he began to talk.
Who has not seen women turning sidelong glances, with that surreptitious intentness we all know so well, towards some very ordinary man in whose voice they, but not we, detect the indefinable something that has the power of luring23 these shy creatures from their inaccessible24 retreats? What man has not seen this play and puzzled over it? The quality—is it perhaps something caressing25, or something brutal26 and ultra-masculine, or both at once? Who knows what it is that their intuition perceives?
So we ask, we less favoured mortals, as we turn and look at him also, hard and long, only to give it up with a shrug27!
When I am one of a crowd under the spell of an orator—a rare bird, by the way, in England—I feel his power less in what he says than in how he says it. Gladstone, for example, swayed his audience by the fervour of his personality, not by any beauty of word or thought in his rhetoric28. How meaningless his speeches seem to us nowadays as we vainly try to read them, how involved, discursive29, ambiguous, turgid. How dull! And yet we 91know that these same involved, discursive, ambiguous, turgid and dull speeches could and did rouse hard-bitten Scotsmen to a wildness of enthusiasm that seems to us incredible.
Thus the personality is something that travels on the wings of sound. But is that all? Is there not something more, something imperceptible which yet exercises a secret power over our emotions and passions? Is there an olfactory aura?
“Why does the elevation30 of the Host in a Roman Catholic church bring such an assurance of peace to the congregation?” writes a friend of mine. “This remarkable32 sensation I have myself frequently experienced and wondered at. Yet I am, as you know, a Scots Presbyterian, and do not credit for a single moment the miraculous33 change of bread and wine. And yet to this gracious and comforting influence I have been subject on more than one occasion. It is for all the world as if the constant pin-pricks of our normal life were suspended for a moment or two.
“As I do not believe in the miracle, the influence must come to me from without, not from within myself. Indeed, I have actually come to the conclusion that it is borne in upon me not by the church atmosphere with its incense35, nor by the solemn intonation of the priest, nor by the whisper of the muted organ, nor yet by the distant murmur36 of the choir37, but—by the congregation itself!
“It is from the kneeling worshippers that the mysterious influence emanates38, invisibly, inaudibly, intangibly, to suffuse39 with the peace of some other world the spirit even of an unbeliever....”
Is it possible that influences such as these may enter by the olfactory door?
92This perhaps may seem to be rather a fanciful suggestion for a scientifically trained writer to offer. But it is not wholly fanciful, since it has some support at least from theory (whatever that may be worth), and even from some considerations based upon solid fact.
As to theory, we have already seen how Fabre arrived at the conclusion that the olfactory sense of certain insects is capable of receiving stimuli40 to which we are insensitive, stimuli which he surmised41 to be of the nature of an ethereal vibration42. Consider too the following facts.
It is well known that there are people who have an instinctive43 dislike of cats. The late Lord Roberts was one, and it is said of him that he was aware of the presence of his bête noire before he caught sight of it. How was he made aware?
The same instinctive aversion is felt by some people towards spiders. I myself know of one, a young girl, who cannot sleep if her bedroom contains one of these creatures. She, like Lord Roberts feels without knowing how when a spider is near her.
Here also is a letter to a newspaper from a correspondent telling the same tale:
“Sir,
“I notice with interest that the official photographer who is to accompany Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Quest expedition has an intense dislike of spiders. Can any of your readers 93explain this uncanny horror, which I believe is shared by a large number of people?
“I myself loathe44 and fear spiders—so much so that I have been known on more than one occasion to go into a darkened room and to declare the presence of one of these creatures, my pet abomination being subsequently discovered....
“F. E.”
What sense-organ—because there must be one—enables F. E. and others like him (or her) to detect the presence of a small creepy-crawly?
We turn now to a series of medical cases which may throw some light upon this peculiarity45.
There are people who suffer from asthma47 when they go near horses. To enter a stable or to sit behind a horse is to them a certain means of bringing on an attack.
This susceptibility and the peculiar46 form taken by the reaction remind us of hay fever. In sufferers from this troublesome complaint the pollen48 of certain plants has an irritating effect upon the mucous49 surfaces of the eyes, nose, and bronchial tubes. So in like manner recent investigation has shown that there is in the blood of the horse a proteid substance which acts as an irritant poison to those susceptible50 people. Their asthma, therefore, is merely a manifestation51 of the irritation52 produced by the poisonous body or its emanation when it is borne to them through the air. Similarly we are justified53 in arguing that cats 94and spiders may throw off an effluvium which is irritating to those susceptible to it.
But it is to be noted54 that the antipathy55 in these last instances manifests itself, not in a tissue change, but in a feeling of the mind, an emotion. Nay56 more, these people do not smell the cat or the spider, except in the way that James I. “smelled” gunpowder57. Nevertheless, the irritant must travel through the air as an odour does, and it probably enters the organism by the mucous membrane58 of the nose.
But does it act upon the olfactory cells? Here we encounter, I must confess, a serious obstacle to an acceptance of this theory.
The interior of the nose is sensitive not only to odours, but also to certain chemical irritants. Any one who has peeled a raw onion or has taken a good sniff59 at a bottle of strong smelling-salts knows what I mean. Now, the chemical irritant, in the latter case ammonia gas, affects not the olfactory nerve, but certain naked nerve fibrils in the mucous membrane belonging to what is known as the fifth cranial nerve, a nerve of simple sensation.[2] And the simultaneous irritation of the eyelids60, and in the case of the pollen and horse effluvia the bronchial tubes, shows that these 95resemble in their action the simple chemical irritants, and not the odours.
2. The difference between those two sensations becomes clearly evident when an anosmic person is peeling an onion. The usual irritation of the eyes and nose is felt and manifested, but the patient is unaware61 of any odour.
It must be remembered, however, that, as we have said, the cat and the spider effluvia induce an emotional effect simply, without local irritation. And emotional change not only follows, it may also precede, the perception of an odour.
The following anecdote62 of Goethe, for example, shows how smell may affect the personality before it is recognised as an odour by the consciousness:
“An air that was beneficial to Schiller acted on me like poison,” Goethe said to Eckermann. “I called on him one day, and as I did not find him at home, I seated myself at his writing-table to note down various matters. I had not been seated long before I felt a strange indisposition steal over me, which gradually increased, until at last I nearly fainted. At first I did not know to what cause I should ascribe this wretched, and to me unusual, state, until I discovered that a dreadful odour issued from a drawer near me. When I opened it I found, to my astonishment63, that it was full of rotten apples. I immediately went to the window, and inhaled64 the fresh air, by which I was instantly restored. Meanwhile his wife came in, and told me that the drawer was always filled with rotten apples, because the scent65 was beneficial to Schiller, and he could not live without it.”
I wish to emphasise66, for the sake of my argument, that Goethe underwent a profound constitutional disturbance67, with its attendant discomfort68, before he realised that its cause was an odour.
If, then, an odour can induce such emotional 96changes without attracting attention to itself, the suggestion is not, after all, so very far-fetched that an emanation proceeding69 from the worshippers at the moment of the elevation of the Host in a Roman Catholic church may be transmitted to the bystanders through the olfactory door to induce in them an emotion similar to that felt by the initiated70.
It may be objected that Goethe’s experience and that of my friend are not alike, since Goethe plainly, though tardily71, became aware of a real odour. It must be remembered, however, that Goethe was a scientist and naturally gifted, besides, with an unusual power of introspective analysis. He found the cause of his disturbance because he sought for it.
Moreover, we learn from Havelock Ellis that during religious excitement a real (and pleasant) odour is sometimes perceptible in the atmosphere around the faithful.
May it not also be the same kind of influence, transmitted in the same way, that dominates the mind, in company with impressions received by sight and hearing, when we are in the vicinity of other people?
Our study of smells has brought us, to be sure, into a strange region of psychology72, for it is possible that we have here one explanation of the 97mysteries of crowd-psychology, of those unreasonable73 waves of passion that sometimes sweep through masses of people and lead to all manner of strange happenings, like crusades and holy wars; autos-da-fé; witch-burnings; lynch-murders; State-prohibition; spiritualistic manifestations74; and other miracles.
(The somewhat uncanny “sense” we have when some one else is present in what we suppose to be an empty room may be olfactory in origin, but it has generally seemed to me that it is due rather to an alteration75 in the echo of the room, a change in its normal sound-picture. If the room is a strange one to us, I do not think we so readily become suspicious of the presence of an unseen and unexpected visitor.)
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1
quaint
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| adj.古雅的，离奇有趣的，奇怪的 | |
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envelop
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| vt.包，封，遮盖；包围 | |
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detailed
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| adj.详细的，详尽的，极注意细节的，完全的 | |
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disseminate
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| v.散布；传播 | |
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cons
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| n.欺骗，骗局( con的名词复数 )v.诈骗，哄骗( con的第三人称单数 ) | |
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olfactory
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| adj.嗅觉的 | |
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accomplishments
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| n.造诣；完成( accomplishment的名词复数 )；技能；成绩；成就 | |
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wrangled
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| v.争吵，争论，口角( wrangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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foe
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| n.敌人，仇敌 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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credentials
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| n.证明，资格，证明书，证件 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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hostility
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| n.敌对，敌意；抵制［pl.］交战，战争 | |
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mutual
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| adj.相互的，彼此的；共同的，共有的 | |
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suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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canine
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| adj.犬的，犬科的 | |
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intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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pros
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| abbr.prosecuting 起诉；prosecutor 起诉人；professionals 自由职业者；proscenium （舞台）前部n.赞成的意见( pro的名词复数 )；赞成的理由；抵偿物；交换物 | |
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recondite
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| adj.深奥的，难解的 | |
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fortified
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| adj. 加强的 | |
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luring
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的现在分词形式） | |
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inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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discursive
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| adj.离题的，无层次的 | |
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elevation
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| n.高度；海拔；高地；上升；提高 | |
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rite
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| n.典礼，惯例，习俗 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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culmination
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| n.顶点；最高潮 | |
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incense
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| v.激怒；n.香，焚香时的烟，香气 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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choir
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| n.唱诗班，唱诗班的席位，合唱团，舞蹈团；v.合唱 | |
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emanates
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| v.从…处传出，传出( emanate的第三人称单数 )；产生，表现，显示 | |
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suffuse
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| v.(色彩等)弥漫，染遍 | |
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stimuli
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| n.刺激（物） | |
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surmised
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| v.臆测，推断( surmise的过去式和过去分词 )；揣测；猜想 | |
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vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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loathe
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| v.厌恶，嫌恶 | |
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peculiarity
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| n.独特性，特色；特殊的东西；怪癖 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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asthma
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| n.气喘病，哮喘病 | |
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pollen
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| n.[植]花粉 | |
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mucous
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| adj. 黏液的，似黏液的 | |
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susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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manifestation
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| n.表现形式；表明；现象 | |
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irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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justified
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| a.正当的，有理的 | |
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54
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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55
antipathy
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| n.憎恶；反感，引起反感的人或事物 | |
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56
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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57
gunpowder
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| n.火药 | |
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membrane
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| n.薄膜，膜皮，羊皮纸 | |
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59
sniff
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| vi.嗅…味道；抽鼻涕；对嗤之以鼻，蔑视 | |
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60
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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unaware
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| a.不知道的，未意识到的 | |
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anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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64
inhaled
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| v.吸入( inhale的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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emphasise
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| vt.加强...的语气，强调，着重 | |
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disturbance
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| n.动乱，骚动；打扰，干扰；(身心)失调 | |
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discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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71
tardily
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| adv.缓慢 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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