9
Smell and its object are much less easy to determine than what we
have hitherto discussed; the distinguishing characteristic of the
object of smell is less obvious than those of sound or colour. The
ground of this is that our power of smell is less discriminating and
in general inferior to that of many species of animals; men have a
poor sense of smell and our apprehension of its proper objects is
inseparably bound up with and so confused by pleasure and pain,
which shows that in us the organ is inaccurate. It is probable that
there is a parallel failure in the perception of colour by animals
that have hard eyes: probably they discriminate differences of
colour only by the presence or absence of what excites fear, and
that it is thus that human beings distinguish smells. It seems that
there is an analogy between smell and taste, and that the species of
tastes run parallel to those of smells-the only difference being
that our sense of taste is more discriminating than our sense of
smell, because the former is a modification of touch, which reaches in
man the maximum of discriminative accuracy. While in respect of all
the other senses we fall below many species of animals, in respect
of touch we far excel all other species in exactness of
discrimination. That is why man is the most intelligent of all
animals. This is confirmed by the fact that it is to differences in
the organ of touch and to nothing else that the differences between
man and man in respect of natural endowment are due; men whose flesh
is hard are ill-endowed by nature, men whose flesh is soft,
wellendowed.
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