Page - 833 - in The Complete Aristotle

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. As flavours may be divided into (a) sweet, (b) bitter, so with smells. In some things the flavour and the smell have the same quality, i.e. both are sweet or both bitter, in others they diverge. Similarly a smell, like a flavour, may be pungent, astringent, acid, or succulent. But, as we said, because smells are much less easy to discriminate than flavours, the names of these varieties are applied to smells only metaphorically; for example ‘sweet’ is extended from the taste to the smell of saffron or honey, ‘pungent’ to that of thyme, and so on. In the same sense in which hearing has for its object both the audible and the inaudible, sight both the visible and the invisible, smell has for its object both the odorous and the inodorous. ‘Inodorous’ may be either (a) what has no smell at all, or (b) what has a small or feeble smell. The same ambiguity lurks in the word ‘tasteless’. Smelling, like the operation of the senses previously examined, takes place through a medium, i.e. through air or water-I add water, because water- animals too (both sanguineous and non-sanguineous) seem to smell just as much as land-animals; at any rate some of them make directly for their food from a distance if it has any scent. That is why the following facts constitute a problem for us. All animals smell in the same way, but man smells only when he inhales; if he exhales or holds his breath, he ceases to smell, no difference being made whether the odorous object is distant or near, or even placed inside the nose and actually on the wall of the nostril; it is a disability common to all the senses not to perceive what is in immediate contact with the organ of sense, but our failure to apprehend what is odorous without the help of inhalation is peculiar (the fact is obvious on making the experiment). Now since bloodless animals do not breathe, they must, it might be argued, have some novel sense not reckoned among the usual five. Our reply must be that this is impossible, since it is scent that is perceived; a sense that apprehends what is odorous and what has a good or bad odour cannot be anything but smell. Further, they are observed to be deleteriously effected by the same strong odours as man is, e.g. bitumen, sulphur, and the like. These 833