WHAT IS A KISS?

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 1, 11 December 1911, Page 3

WHAT IS A KISS?

A “SNIFFING SALUTE.”

Kissing is an extremely ancient habit of mankind, coming to us from far beyond the range of history, and undoubtedly practised by the remote animal-like ancestors of the human race. Poets have exalted it, and in these hygienic days doctors have condemned it. in the United States they have even proposed to forbid it by law, on the ground that disease germs may be (and undeniably are in some cases) conveyed by it from one individual to another. But it is too deeprotted in human nature, and has a significance and origin too closely associated with human well-being in the past, and even in the present, to permit of its being altogether “tabooed” by medical authority. There are two kinds of “kissing” practised by mankind at the present time—one takes the form of “nose-rubbing”-—each kiss-giver rubbing his nose against that of the other. The second kind, which is that familiar to us in Europe, consists in pressing the lips against the lips, skin, or hair, of another individual, and making a short, quick inspiration, resulting in a more or less audible sound. Both kinds are really of the nature of “snilling,” the active effort to smell or explore by the olfactory sense. The “nose-kiss” exists in races so far apart from one another as the Maoris of New Zealand and the Esquimaux of the Arctic regions.. It is the habit of the Chinese, of the Malays, and other Asiatic races. The only Europeans who practise it are the Laplanders. The lip-kiss is distinguishable by some authorities as “the salute by taste” from nose-rubbing, which is “the salute by smell.” The word ‘lds” is connected by Skeat with the Latin “gustus,” taste: both words signify essentially ‘choice.” But it would be a mistake to regard the lipkiss as merely an effort to taste in the strict sense, since the act of inspiration accompanying it brings the olfactory passages of the nose into play. Lip-kissing is frequently mentioned in the most ancient Hebrew books of the Bible, and it was also the method of affectionate salutation among the Ancient Greeks.

Primarily both kinds of kissing were, there can be no doubt, an act of exploration, discrimination, and recognition dependent on the sense of smell. The more primitive character of the kiss is retained ‘by the lovers’ kiss, the mother’s kissing and sniffling of her babe, and by the kiss of salutation to a friend returning from or sotting but on a distant journey. Identification and memorising by the sense of smell is the remote origin and explanation of those kisses. The kissing of one another by grown-up men as a salutation was abandoned in this country as late as the eighteenth century.—Sir Bay Lankoster, in the “Daily Telegraph.”