340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or at least very little. Thus we see Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Poynter each 

 mutually denying the other's powers of appreciation. But the psy- 

 chological a^stheticiau can not confine his attention to such exceptional 

 and highest developments of the love for beauty as engage the whole 

 interest of these artistic critics. He must look rather to those simpler 

 and more universal feelings which are common to all the race, and 

 which form the groundwork for every higher mode of aesthetic sensi- 

 bility. It is enough for him that all village children call a daisy or a 

 primrose pretty : he need not go far afield to discuss the peculiar spe- 

 cific merits of a Botticelli or a Pinturiccio. Hundreds of thousands, 

 who would stare in blank unconcern at a torso from the chisel of Phid- 

 ias, can love and admire " the meanest flower that blows," with some- 

 thing not wholly unlike the welling emotions of a Wordsworth. In- 

 deed, one is often inclined to fancy that the truest lovers of beauty in 

 nature, or in the works of man, are not always those who can talk 

 most glibly the technical dialect of art-criticism. 



If we wish to hit upon the primitive germ of a?sthetic sensibility 

 in man, we can not begin better than by looking at its foreshadowing 

 in the lower animals. There are two modes of aesthetic feeling which 

 seem to exist among vertebrates and insects at least : the first is the 

 sense of visual beauty in form, color, or brilliancy ; the second is the 

 sense of auditory beauty in musical or rhythmical sound. The former 

 of the two modes I have endeavored in part to illustrate in my little 

 work " The Color-Sense " : the latter has been admirably treated by 

 Mr. Sully in his valuable essay on " Animal Music," which appeared 

 in the " Cornhill Magazine " for November, 1879. Now, if we look at 

 the manner in which insects, birds, and mammals apparently manifest 

 these presumed agsthetic feelings, we shall see that they are very re- 

 stricted and limited in range. Animals never seem to admire scenery, 

 or foliage, or beautiful creatures of other species. They do not appear 

 for the most part to care greatly for human music, or for any sounds 

 other than those uttered by their own kind. They do not even show 

 any marked aesthetic enjoyment of the lovely flowers and fruits whose 

 tints, as Mr. Darwin teaches us, are mainly due to their own selective 

 action. But, if our great biologist is correct in his reasonings,* they 



* I should like to add parenthetically that, since the appearance of my work " The 

 Color-Sense " and the nunaerous criticisms to which it gave rise, I have fully reconsidered the 

 whole question of sexual selection in the light of all that has been written about it, and 

 feel only the more convinced of the general truth of Mr. Darwin's views upon the subject. 

 It may be naturally objected that I am not an impartial witness in this matter : but I 

 should like further to state that, on examining the various authorities, pro and con, I find 

 in every case that the persons who are uncommitted to any special theological, quasi- 

 theological, or metaphysical theory of evolution agree in full with Mr. Darwin, while only 

 those differ from him who are bound down, f7i parti pj-is, to some more or less supernat- 

 ural view of evolution, like Mr. Wallace, Professor Mivart, and Mr. J. J. Murphy, and 

 who are therefore averse to any naturalistic explanation of the sense of beauty. I hope 

 hereafter and elsewhere to enter more fully into this important question. 



