Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/152

 DUST OF THE ROSE PETAL

way of relief from the exacting mental strain of the last chapter, I have thought that the reader who has got this length might be grateful for something more simple, and so it is not altogether egotism that leads me to finish up with a few of the olfactory pictures I cherish.

Before proceeding with the subject-matter proper of the chapter, however, let me put in a plea for the conscious cultivation of the sense of smell. But little more, I take it, is needed in this way than to pay attention to the olfactory sensations that reach us, for the very fact of taking note of them is sufficient probably to increase the power and delicacy of olfaction, this being always the effect of the mental process known as attention.

Smell may thus be easily cultivated and improved, and with the increase in its appreciation of the world comes an enriching of the other sense-impressions that is quite surprising.

It is possible that there is no substance in the natural world entirely devoid of odour. At all Rh