Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/151

Rh that the vagueness of the idea is made manifest. Our foil, even with the button on, goes clean through the phantom.

The mind, in short, has not absorbed, nor can it absorb, the fact. We seize a glass of water to drain it, and presently, like Alice, we find ourselves swimming about in an ocean! Obviously the universe is beyond our comprehension, a conclusion desperate if you like, yet undeniable.

But how very annoying it is, after all our heavy labour, to hear the ancient scoff of Zophar the Naamathite still ringing triumphant :

“Canst thou by searching find out God ? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ?”

(Still we mean to go on trying !)

Yet of all the senses none surely is so mysterious as that of smell. For, as we have shown, the nature of the emanations that stir it to activity is still unknown ; the simple structure of its end-organ confronts us, like a sphinx, with silence ; and after the reception of the stimulus in the olfactory lobe of the brain its further connections and communications still remain unsurveyed, albeit, as I haye already so amply displayed, its effects upon the psyche are both wide and deep, at once obvious and subtle.