Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4: Sexual Selection In ManEllis, Havelock
Science
Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4: Sexual Selection In Man
Ellis, Havelock
Sex; Sex (Psychology)
A valuable and interesting memoir, "Revue Générale sur les
Sensations Olfactives," by J. Passy, the chief French authority
on this subject, will be found in the second volume of _L'Année
Psychologique_, 1895. In the fifth issue of the same year-book
(for 1898) Zwaardemaker presents a full summary of his work and
views, "Les Sensations Olfactives, leurs Combinaisons et leurs
Compensations." A convenient, but less authoritative, summary of
the facts of normal and pathological olfaction will be found in a
little volume of the "Actualités Médicales" series by Dr. Collet,
_L'Odorat et ses Troubles_, 1904. In a little book entitled
_Wegweiser zu einer Psychologie des Geruches_ (1894) Giessler has
sought to outline a psychology of smell, but his sketch can only
be regarded as tentative and provisional.
At the outset, nevertheless, it seems desirable that we should at least
have some conception of the special characteristics which mark the great
and varied mass of sensations reaching the brain through the channel of
the olfactory organ. The main special character of olfactory images seems
to be conditioned by the fact that they are intermediate in character
between those of touch or taste and those of sight or sound, that they
have much of the vagueness of the first and something of the richness and
variety of the second. Æsthetically, also, they occupy an intermediate
position between the higher and the lower senses.[26] They are, at the
same time, less practically useful than either the lower or the higher
senses. They furnish us with a great mass of what we may call
by-sensations, which are of little practical use, but inevitably become
intimately mixed with the experiences of life by association and thus
acquire an emotional significance which is often very considerable. Their
emotional force, it may well be, is connected with the fact that their
anatomical seat is the most ancient part of the brain. They lie in a
remote almost disused storehouse of our minds and show the fascination or
the repulsiveness of all vague and remote things. It is for this reason
that they are--to an extent that is remarkable when we consider that they
are much more precise than touch sensations--subject to the influence of
emotional associations. The very same odor may be at one moment highly
pleasant, at the next moment highly unpleasant, in accordance with the
emotional attitude resulting from its associations. Visual images have no
such extreme flexibility; they are too definite to be so easily
influenced. Our feelings about the beauty of a flower cannot oscillate so
easily or so far as may our feelings about the agreeableness of its odor.
Our olfactory experiences thus institute a more or less continuous series
of by-sensations accompanying us through life, of no great practical
significance, but of considerable emotional significance from their
variety, their intimacy, their associational facility, their remote
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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