Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind

SECTION I. SMELL.

It is not material to the present purpose in what order we survey the subdivisions of this elementary class of the mental phenomena. It will be convenient to take those first, which can be most easily thought of by themselves; that is, of which a conception, free from the mixture of any extraneous ingredient, can be most certainly formed. For this reason we begin with SMELL.2

² The order of exposition of the senses is not a matter of indifference. The author, like Condillac, selected Smell to begin with, as being a remarkably simple and characteristic feeling; he has found another expository advantage in it, by disturbing our routine mode of regarding the intellect as principally made up of sensations of sight. It has a startling effect on the reader, to suggest a mental life consisting wholly of smells and ideas of smell.

There are two principles of arrangement of the senses, each good for its own purpose; it being understood that the active or muscular sensibility is taken apart from, and prior to, sensation proper.

The first is to take them in the order of Intellectual development. Some of the senses are evidently intellectual in a high degree, as Sight and Hearing, others are intellectual in a much smaller degree, as Smell and Taste. The organic sensations are still less connected with the operations of the intellect. Many of the least intellectual sensations are remarkably intense, as pleasure and pain; perhaps more so than the intellectually higher class. The organic pains are more unendurable than the worst pains of hearing or of sight, unless these are assimilated to the other class, by injury of the organs.

The intellectual superiority of the higher senses shows itself in two ways, the one strictly in the domain of Intellect, the other in the domain of Feeling. As regards Intellect, it is shown in the predominance of the ideas of the higher senses. Our intellectual or ideal trains, the materials of thought and knowledge, are made up most of all of ideas of sight, next of ideas of hearing, to a less degree of ideas of touch or skin contact, and, least of all, of ideas of stomach and lung sensations or other organic states. The trains of the scientific man, of the man of business, and even of the handicraft worker, are almost entirely made up of ideas of sight and of hearing (with active or muscular ideas). Our understanding of the order of nature, our very notion of the material universe, is a vast and complex scheme of ideas of sight.

The intellectual superiority of the higher senses in the domain of Feeling is connected with the remembrance or ideal persistence of pleasures and pains. The pleasures of Digestion are weakly and ineffectively remembered, in the absence of the actuality. The pleasures of Smell are remembered better. The pleasures and pains of Hearing and Sight are remembered best of any. This gives them a higher value in life; the addition made to the actual, by the ideal, is, in their case, the greatest of all. They are said, for this among other reasons, to be more refined.

The arrangement dictated by the gradation of intellectuality would be as follows:—1. Sensations of Organic Life. 2. Taste. 3. Smell. 4. Touch. 5. Hearing. 6. Sight.

The second principle of arrangement starts with Touch, as the most simple in its mode of action, and the most diffused in its operation. Touch consists in mere mechanical pressure on a sensitive surface; this is the most simple and elementary of all stimuli. The other senses are regarded as specialised modifications of Touch.

In Hearing, the mode of action is touch or mechanical contact. In the remaining senses, the contact is accompanied with other forces. Taste and Smell involve chemical change, as well as contact. The action of Light on the eye is probably some species of molecular disturbance involving chemical action. This mode of viewing the order and dependence of the senses belongs more especially to the theory of the development of the organic system, which is made prominent in the Psychology of Mr. Herbert Spencer. The arrangement might be variously expressed:—it might be Touch, Hearing, Sight, Taste, Smell, Organic Sensibility; or Touch, Hearing, Taste, Smell, Organic Sensibility, Sight.—B.

8 In the Smell three things are commonly distinguished. There is the ORGAN, there is the SENSATION, and there is the antecedent of the Sensation, the 9 external OBJECT, as it is commonly denominated,1* to which the Sensation is referred as an effect to its cause.

^1* It is necessary here to observe, that I use, throughout this Inquiry, the language most commonly in use. This is attended with its disadvantages; for on the subject of mind the ordinary language almost always involves more or less of theory, which may or may not appear to me to correspond with the true exposition of the phenomena. The advantages, however, of not departing from familiar terms still appeared to me to preponderate; and I am willing to hope, that such erroneous suggestions, as are sometimes inseparable from the language I have thought it best upon the whole to employ, will be corrected, without any particular notice, by the analysis which I shall present.—(Author’s Note.)

These three distinguishable particulars are common to all the five Senses. With regard to the ORGAN, which is a physical rather than a mental subject of inquiry, I shall have occasion to say little more than is required to make my reader distinguish, with sufficient accuracy, the part of his body to which the 10 separate feelings of his five Senses belong. And with regard to the antecedent of the Sensation, or OBJECT of the Senses, the proper place for explaining what is capable of being known of it is at a subsequent part of this inquiry. My desire at present is, to fix the attention of the reader upon the SENSATION; that he may mark it as a mental state of a particular kind, distinct from every other feeling of his nature.

The ORGAN of Smell, as every body knows, is situated in the mouth and nostrils, or in the nerves, appropriated to smelling, which are found in the passage between the mouth and nostrils, and in the vicinity of that passage.

Though it appears to be ascertained that the nerves are necessary to sensation, it is by no means ascertained in what way they become necessary. It is a mystery how the nerves, similar in all parts of the body, afford us, in one place, the sensation of sound; in another, the sensations of light and colours; in another, those of odours, in another those of flavours, and tastes, and so on.

With respect to the external OBJECT, as it is usually denominated, of this particular sense; in other words, the antecedent, of which the Sensation Smell is the consequent; it is, in vulgar apprehension, the visible, tangible object, from which the odour proceeds. Thus, we are said to smell a rose, when we have the sensation derived from the odour of the rose. It is more correct language, however, to say, that we smell the odorous particles which proceed from the visible, tangible object, than that we smell the object itself; for, if any thing prevents the odorous particles, which the body emits, from reaching the organ of smell, the 11 sensation is not obtained. The object of the sense of smelling then are odorous particles, which only operate, or produce the sensation, when they reach the organ of smell.

But what is meant by odorous particles we are still in ignorance. Something, neither visible nor tangible, is conveyed, through the air, to the olfactory nerves; but of this something we know no more than that it is the antecedent of that nervous change, or variety of consciousness, which we denote by the word smell.

Still farther, When we say that the odorous particles, of which we are thus ignorant, reach the nerves which constitute the organ of smell, we attach hardly any meaning to the word reach. We know not whether the particles in question produce their effect, by contact, or without contact. As the nerves in every part of the body are covered, we know not how any external particles can reach them. We know not whether such particles operate upon the nerves, by their own, or by any other influence; the galvanic, for example, or electrical, influence.

These observations, with regard to the organ of smell, and the object of smell, are of importance, chiefly as they show us how imperfect our knowledge still is of all that is merely corporeal in sensation, and enable us to fix our attention more exclusively upon that which alone is material to our subsequent inquiries—that point of consciousness which we denominate the sensation of smell, the mere feeling, detached from every thing else.

When we smell a rose, there is a particular feeling, a particular consciousness, distinct from all others, which we mean to denote, when we call it the smell 12 of the rose. In like manner we speak of the smell of hay, the smell of turpentine, and the smell of a fox. We also speak of good smells, and bad smells; meaning by the one, those which are agreeable to us; by the other, those which are offensive. In all these cases what we speak of is a point of consciousness, a thing which we can describe no otherwise than by calling it a feeling; a part of that series, that succession, that flow of something, on account of which we call ourselves living or sensitive creatures.

We can distinguish this feeling, this consciousness, the sensation of smell, from every other sensation. Smell and Sound are two very different things; so are smell and sight. The smell of a rose is different from the colour of the rose; it is also different from the smoothness of the rose, or the sensation we have by touching the rose.

We not only distinguish the sensations of smell from those of the other senses, but we distinguish the sensations of smell from one another. The smell of a rose is one sensation; the smell of a violet is another. The difference we find between one smell and another is in some cases very great; between the smell of a rose, for example, and that of carrion or assafoetida.

The number of distinguishable smells is very great. Almost every object in nature has a peculiar smell; every animal, every plant, and almost every mineral. Not only have the different classes of objects different smells, but probably different individuals in the same class. The different smells of different individuals are perceptible, to a certain extent, even by the human organs, and to a much greater extent by those of the 13 dog, and other animals, whose sense of smelling is more acute.

We can conceive ourselves, as endowed with smelling, and not enjoying any other faculty. In that case, we should have no idea of objects as seeable, as hearable, as touchable, or tasteable. We should have a train of smells; the smell at one time of the rose, at another of the violet, at another of carrion, and so on. The successive points of consciousness, composing our sentient being, would be mere smells. Our life would be a train of smells, and nothing more. Smell, and Life, would be two names for the same thing.

The terms which our language supplies, for speaking of this sense, are exceedingly imperfect. It would obviously be desirable to have, at any rate, distinct names for the ORGAN, for the OBJECT, and for the SENSATION; and that these names should never be confounded. It happens, unfortunately, that the word SMELL is applicable to all the three. That the word smell expresses, both the quality, as we vulgarly say, of the object smelt; and also the feeling of him by whom it is smelt, every one is aware. If you ask whether the smell, when I hold a violet to my nostrils, is in me or in the violet, it would be perfectly proper to say, in both. The same thing, however, is not in both, though the two things have the same name. What is in me is the sensation, the feeling, the point of consciousness; and that can be in nothing but a sentient being. What is in the rose, is what I call a quality of the rose; in fact, the antecedent of my sensation; of which, beside its being the antecedent of my sensation, I know nothing. If I were speaking of a place in which my senses had been 14 variously affected, and should say, that, along with other pleasures, I had enjoyed a succession of the most delightful smells, I should be understood to speak of my sensations. If I were speaking of a number of unknown objects, and should say of one, that it had a smell like that of honey; of another, that it had a smell like that of garlick; I should be understood as speaking of the object of each sensation, a quality of the thing smelt.

The word smell, beside denoting the sensation and the object, denotes also the organ, in such phrases as the following; “Sight and Hearing are two of the inlets of my knowledge, and Smell is a third;” “The faculty by which I become sensible of odour is my Smell.”3

³ It may be questioned whether, in the phrases here cited, the word Smell stands for the olfactory organ. It would perhaps be most correct to say, that in these cases it denotes the abstract capacity of smelling, rather than the concrete physical instrument. Even when smell is said to be one of the five senses, it may fairly be doubted whether a part of the meaning intended is, that it is one of the five organs of sensation. Nothing more seems to be meant, than that it is one of five distinguishable modes of having sensations, whatever the intrinsic difference between those modes may be.

In the author’s footnote he recognises that the abstract power of smelling enters into this particular application of the word Smell; and refers to a subsequent part of the treatise for the meaning of Power. But he thinks that along with the power, or as part of the conception of Power, the material organ is also signified. It seems to me that the organ does not enter in either of these modes, into the signification of the word. We can imagine ourselves ignorant that we possess physical organs; or aware that we possess them, but not aware that our sensations of smell are connected with them. Yet on either of these suppositions the “power of smelling” would be perfectly intelligible, and would have the same meaning to us which it has now.—Ed.

15 In the phrases in which smell is called a SENSE, as when we say, that smell is one of the five senses, there is considerable complexity. The term here imports the organ, it imports the sensation, and, in a certain way, it imports also the object. It imports the organ as existing continuously, the sensation as existing only under a certain condition, and that condition the presence of the object.2*

^2* It will naturally occur to some of my readers, that, in the term sense of smelling, the idea of power is also included. They will say, that when we speak of the sense of smelling, we mean not only the organ, but the function of the organ, or its power of producing a certain effect. This is undoubtedly true; but when the real meaning of the language is evolved, it only amounts to that which is delivered in the text. For what does any person mean when he says that, in the sense of smelling, he has the power of smelling? Only this, that he has an organ, and that when the object of that organ is presented to it, sensation is the consequence. In all this, there is nothing but the organ, the object, and the sensation, conceived in a certain order. This will more fully appear when the meaning of the relative terms, cause and effect, has been explained.—(Author’s Note.)

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