Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/76

64 objects. But there is this great difference between them : the names of colours take us back to near the original trunk from which the Aryan languages branch off, whereas the names of odours, to this day still vague and indeterminate (at least in popular phraseology), are derived from the spoken tongue of to-day, or, in some cases, from foreign languages, and are, therefore, but recent additions.

This delay in the naming of classes of odours justifies the statement made at the outset of this section that smell is specchless. It shows, in other words, that although, as we have seen, its influence upon the mind may be profound, yet that influence does not extend as far as the speech-centres. It remains largely in the subconsciousness.

We should be guilty of error, however, were we to conclude that the scantiness of olfactory names is due to the lack of recognition by the consciousness of early man of smell in general, or to a failure to distinguish between different odours, because savages, in general less discriminating and analytical than cultured races, have, there is every reason to believe, a more acute and highly perfected olfactory sense. It has been reported that the North American Indian was able to track his enemy or his game by the scent alone, and Humboldt has recorded a similar acuteness on the part