660 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or idiotic features to an expression full of liveliness and intelligence 

 there can be but one answer possible. Leaving out of consideration 

 for the present all other elements of the involved and complex prob- 

 lem, we may conclude that beauty, from one point of view at least, 

 consists for each species in the outward signs of specific adaptation to 

 specific necessities. 



On the other hand, beauty also consists from a different point of 

 view of stimulation by a certain relatively fixed number of exter- 

 nal stimulants musical sound, brilliant light, analytic colors, curved 

 shapes, symmetrical arrangements of form, etc. which appear to act 

 directly upon the nervous system. This is clearly the view which Mr. 

 Darwin implicitly accepts, especially with regard to tone and color. 

 The facts at which we have briefly glanced above respecting the 

 aesthetic feelings in birds, and the beauty of the birds themselves, take 

 for granted some such theory of the aesthetic faculty. How are we to 

 find a reconciliation between this view and that of Mr. Herbert Spen- 

 cer? 



I believe the true clew has been given us by Mr. A. R. Wallace, in 

 the able essays on " Color in Plants and Animals " which originally ap- 

 peared in " Macmillan's Magazine," and were afterward reprinted in 

 his work on " Tropical Nature." It is true that Mr. Wallace utterly 

 rejects sexual selection as a vera causa, and substitutes for it several 

 separate minor modifications of natural selection ; yet it seems to me 

 that a compromise between his view and the two other views of Mr. 

 Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer would more really represent the 

 actual state of the case in nature. Or, to put it more correctly, the 

 three ideas are not in reality contradictory or even opposite, but are 

 rather different and complementary aspects of one and the same fun- 

 damental truth. 



Beauty in the abstract and for all species, as it seems to me, con- 

 sists of pleasurable stimulation of the higher sense-organs. Such plea- 

 surable stimulation must, on the average of cases, be given rather by 

 brilliancy than by dullness ; rather by analytic colors than by confused 

 hues ; rather by curved or flowing forms than by angularity ; rather 

 by musical sounds than by mere noises. But beauty relatively to the 

 particular species, and especially as regards the sexual relation, must 

 be largely due to special inherited tastes, doubtless ingrained and 

 physically registered in the nervous system, leading the animal to 

 derive pleasure from the typically healthy and normal form of the 

 opposite sex. For, if any individual possesses divergent tastes, they 

 must either be for relatively unhealthy and typically defective forms, 

 in which case they will tend to be promptly suppressed by natural se- 

 lection ; or for neutral or improved forms, in which case they will help 

 to give rise to new varieties, ultimately culminating in separate species. 

 Such divergent tastes seem to be shown in all large dominant families, 

 such as the humming-birds, where specific variation and ornamentation 



