Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/100

88 two dogs meeting for the first time make of each other's odours, during which exchange of credentials a state of armed neutrality exists, to pass, apparently as a result of some mysterious olfactory decision, either into frank, open, and unchangeable hostility, 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 mutual attraction or repulsion felt for each other by two human beings, shall we say ? For, of course, this suspense of judgment on encountering a new-comer is a human no less than a canine 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 intonation of his voice, his accent, his laugh, agreeable. Or we don't. And our decision is curiously 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