The terms which our language supplies, for speaking of this sense, are exceedingly imperfect. It would obviously be desirable to have, at any rate, distinct names for the ORGAN, for the OBJECT, and for the SENSATION; and that these names should never be confounded. It happens, unfortunately, that the word SMELL is applicable to all the three. That the word smell expresses, both the quality, as we vulgarly say, of the object smelt; and also the feeling of him by whom it is smelt, every one is aware. If you ask whether the smell, when I hold a violet to my nostrils, is in me or in the violet, it would be perfectly proper to say, in both. The same thing, however, is not in both, though the two things have the same name. What is in me is the sensation, the feeling, the point of consciousness; and that can be in nothing but a sentient being. What is in the rose, is what I call a quality of the rose; in fact, the antecedent of my sensation; of which, beside its being the antecedent of my sensation, I know nothing. If I were speaking of a place in which my senses had been 14 variously affected, and should say, that, along with other pleasures, I had enjoyed a succession of the most delightful smells, I should be understood to speak of my sensations. If I were speaking of a number of unknown objects, and should say of one, that it had a smell like that of honey; of another, that it had a smell like that of garlick; I should be understood as speaking of the object of each sensation, a quality of the thing smelt.
The word smell, beside denoting the sensation and the object, denotes also the organ, in such phrases as the following; “Sight and Hearing are two of the inlets of my knowledge, and Smell is a third;” “The faculty by which I become sensible of odour is my Smell.”[3]
[3] It may be questioned whether, in the phrases here cited, the word Smell stands for the olfactory organ. It would perhaps be most correct to say, that in these cases it denotes the abstract capacity of smelling, rather than the concrete physical instrument. Even when smell is said to be one of the five senses, it may fairly be doubted whether a part of the meaning intended is, that it is one of the five organs of sensation. Nothing more seems to be meant, than that it is one of five distinguishable modes of having sensations, whatever the intrinsic difference between those modes may be.
In the author’s footnote he recognises that the abstract power of smelling enters into this particular application of the word Smell; and refers to a subsequent [part] of the treatise for the meaning of Power. But he thinks that along with the power, or as part of the conception of Power, the material organ is also signified. It seems to me that the organ does not enter in either of these modes, into the signification of the word. We can imagine ourselves ignorant that we possess physical organs; or aware that we possess them, but not aware that our sensations of smell are connected with them. Yet on either of these suppositions the “power of smelling” would be perfectly intelligible, and would have the same meaning to us which it has now.—Ed.
15 In the phrases in which smell is called a SENSE, as when we say, that smell is one of the five senses, there is considerable complexity. The term here imports the organ, it imports the sensation, and, in a certain way, it imports also the object. It imports the organ as existing continuously, the sensation as existing only under a certain condition, and that condition the presence of the object.[2*]
[2*] It will naturally occur to some of my readers, that, in the term sense of smelling, the idea of power is also included. They will say, that when we speak of the sense of smelling, we mean not only the organ, but the function of the organ, or its power of producing a certain effect. This is undoubtedly true; but when the real meaning of the language is evolved, it only amounts to that which is delivered in the text. For what does any person mean when he says that, in the sense of smelling, he has the power of smelling? Only this, that he has an organ, and that when the object of that organ is presented to it, sensation is the consequence. In all this, there is nothing but the organ, the object, and the sensation, conceived in a certain order. This will more fully [appear] when the meaning of the relative terms, cause and effect, has been explained.—(Author’s Note.)
SECTION II.
HEARING.
In Hearing, the same three particulars, the ORGAN, the OBJECT, and the FEELING, require to be distinguished.