feeling in exercise, in athletic sports, in rowing, riding, dancing, and what old Thomas Fuller called “the descants on the plain air of walking.” Through it we gain the sensation of buoyancy and elasticity, we “feel good,” our personality is sharpened, and our appreciation of life and what it has to offer is heightened. It is the synonym of healthful activity, and thus becomes the most advantageous preparation for all species of enjoyment.
By physiologists, this muscular sense is not included in the list of “special” senses, because it cannot be localized in any one set of nerves. It is nearest allied to the special sense of Touch, which is centred in certain “tactile corpuscles,” distributed irregularly beneath the skin, principally on the finger-tips. They are extremely useful, but not prominently serviceable in the production of pleasurable sensations. The stroking of soft and warm substances, such as velvet and fur, excites agreeable impressions, but they are not very keen. Irritations to the skin are a source of acute annoyance, but their removal affords merely a negatively acceptable condition.
When we consider how slightly most sensations of touch excite subjective states of mind, it is remarkable that in response to one stimulant they are among the most powerful known in nature. This stimulus is that of another personality. The most positive feelings of both aversion and attraction are those excited by physical contact of the naked flesh. This is why it has been accepted in so many countries as a sign and proof of amity. The savage
Africans touch noses and the civilized European shakes hands or kisses the hand or the cheek. Such actions are barren conventionalities, unaccompanied by either pleasure or pain; but they are indeed unfortunate who cannot recall any moment of heart’s utmost joy and triumph when “the spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.” Such moments are sacred, priceless gifts of the gods, not to be had for gold nor secured by taking thought, so their consideration has no place in this book.
In spite of the active business done at the perfumery counters, the pleasures of the sense of Smell do not seem to come in for a large share of admiration in the modern world. It was different in the days of old. They were considered the most delightful of all, even to Divinity itself. Among the earliest rites of religion was that of burning aromatic incense to the gods; and in the books of Moses good works are described as affording “a sweet savor of satisfaction” to the Almighty. One of the Fathers of the Church speaks of a holy prayer as “the perfume of a just soul” rising to Heaven; and when a good man passed away he was said to die “in the odor of sanctity.” Such solemn authorities should justify the cultivation of the pleasures of this sense. They could be supported by abundant quotations from those philosophers, the poets, who have much to say about “the spicy gales of Araby the blest,” and other such odoriferous associations.
Some odors are as intoxicating as wine, and others cling to the memory like the impressions of childhood. Yet it
is rare for the insane to have delusions of the olfactory sense; and I have found few persons who dream of odors. Some writers who claim to be scientific have set up “a gamut of scents,” and others pretend such a harmonic scale can be made the basis of a sort of music of perfumes. This is riding theory beyond sight of practice; but who does not inhale with conscious joy the balsamic fragrance of the pines, the salt and stimulating whiffs from old ocean, or the laden redolence from gardens of roses?
Many writers attribute the pleasure which tobacco gives to its influence on the sense of smell; but this, I am sure, will not explain the intense satisfaction which it yields to men in all climes, consuming it in so many varied ways. I know nothing in physiology more surprising or more puzzling than the eager demand for this plant, which sprang up throughout the world after its discovery in America. I have been a smoker from boyhood, and am just as unable to analyze the pleasure it gives me as to explain it in others.
That prince of epicures, Brillat-Savarin, spent some time in the United States, and in his delightful volume on the Physiology of the Taste has a chapter on “cookery in America,”—which is filled with nothing but asterisks and interrogation points!
A hundred years have passed since he was among us, and we have reformed our cuisine indifferently, though not altogether. We have been too much hampered by fatuous