180 UTILITARIAN DOCTRINE, HOW FAR TRU£: 



of growth. Flowers rank among the most beautiful pro- 

 ductions of nature ; but they have been rendered conspicuous 

 in contrast with the green leaves, and in consequence at the 

 same time beautiful, so that they may be easily observed by 

 insects. I have come to this conclusion from finding it an 

 invariable rule that when a flower is fertilized by the wind 

 it never has a gayly-colored corolla. Several plants habitu- 

 ally produce two kinds of flowers ; one kind open and colored 

 so as to attract insects ; the other closed, not colored, destitute 

 of nectar, and never visited by insects. Hence, we may con- 

 clude that, if insects had not been developed on the face of 

 the earth, our plants would not have been decked with beauti- 

 ful flowers, but would have produced only such poor flowers as 

 we see on our fir, oak, nut, and ash trees, on grasses, spinach, 

 docks and nettles, which are all fertilized through the agency 

 of the wind. A similar line of argument holds good with 

 fruits ; that a ripe strawberry or cherry is as pleasing to the 

 eye as to the palate — that the gayly-colored fruit of the 

 spindle-wood tree and the scarlet berries of the holly are 

 beautiful objects — will be admitted by every one. But this 

 beauty serves merely as a guide to birds and beasts, in order 

 that the fruit may be devoured and the matured seeds dis- 

 seminated. I infer that this is the case from having as yet 

 found no exception to the rule that seeds are always thus 

 disseminated when embedded within a fruit of any kind 

 (that is within a fleshy or pulpy envelope), if it be colored 

 of any brilliant tint, or rendered conspicuous by being white 

 or black. 



On the other hand, I willingly admit that a great number 

 of male animals, as all our most gorgeous birds, some fishes, 

 reptiles, and mammals, and a host of magnificently colored 

 butterflies, have been rendered beautiful for beauty's sake. 

 But this has been effected through sexual selection, that is, 

 by the more beautiful males having been continually pre- 

 ferred by the females, and not for the delight of man. So 

 it is with the music of birds. We may infer from all this 

 that a nearly similar taste for beautiful colors and for musi- 

 cal sounds runs through a large part of the animal kingdom. 

 When the female is as beautifully colored as the male, which 

 is not rarely the case with birds and butterflies, the cause 

 apparently lies in the colors acquired through sexual selec- 

 tion having been transmitted to both sexes, instead of to the 

 males alone. How the sense of beauty in its simplest form 

 — that is, the reception of a peculiar kind of pleasure from 



