THE EVOLUTION OF BEAUTY. 



361 



THE EVOLUTION OF BEAUTY. 



Br F. T. MOTT, F. E. G. S. 



TO estimate the comparative value of consti- 

 tution and education in producing the net 

 result of character is one of the most difficult 

 problems of physiology. 



The influence of education being the more 

 easily recognized of the two, it is probable that 

 this factor has rarely been undervalued, and the 

 Darwinian philosophy has turned upon it a spe- 

 cial share of attention. Inherited " tendencies " 

 are indeed admitted by modern evolutionists, but 

 with a very vague conception of what it is which 

 " tends ; " and generally the evolving organism is 

 treated rather as a tabula rasa, on which sur- 

 rounding conditions paint themselves in a cumu- 

 lative manner, than as a centre of force to whose 

 inherent activity is largely due the character of 

 the complex product. 



The existence of a " vital force," under some 

 name or other, is not perhaps denied, but it is 

 comparatively ignored ; the main arguments be- 

 ing expended in attempting to show that the va- 

 riations of form, color, ornament, and disposition, 

 may be accounted for by the mere action of sur- 

 rounding conditions ; that education is every- 

 thing, original constitution of quite secondary 

 importance. Yet the fact is surely evident that 

 every organism has within itself a force which 

 will expend its activity in a definite direction, and 

 that its environment has only power to modify 

 that line of activity within very narrow limits. 



An acorn cannot be made to grow into any- 

 thing but an oak, with perhaps some small va- 

 riation of form or color ; and though it be grant- 

 ed that variations in the same direction, impressed 

 upon many successive generations, may effect 

 large changes in the end, this is the result of 

 guiding rather than of creating. It is the turn- 

 ing of the stream into a new channel, not the 

 making of the river; and the most important 

 factor in the product is, after all, the current with 

 its perpetual activity, rather than the physical 

 condition to which it partially submits. 



A recent article in the Quarterly Journal of 

 Science, on " The Action of Light upon the Col- 

 oration of the Organic World," 1 presents a fair 

 example of the manner in which this question is 

 commonly treated. Impartiality and sound logic 

 are not wanting, but the argument is invalidated 

 1 Set Supplement No. X., p. 307. 



because it ignores one of the primary factors of 

 the problem. 



To discuss the manner in which the surface- 

 coloring of plants and animals is produced by in- 

 sects or by light, without reference to the inter- 

 nal forces upon which these influences act, is like 

 calculating the velocity of the hands of a watch 

 upon the basis of the decreased temperature by 

 which it is slightly accelerated, without taking 

 account of the spring, or of the fact that the ve- 

 locity will remain nearly the same whether the 

 temperature be lowered or elevated. 



Is it not possible to get a more satisfactory 

 view of organic phenomena by going a step lower 

 in the chain of causation ? By turning our at- 

 tention to the internal sources of activity, as well 

 as to external influences, and by endeavoring to 

 estimate each factor at its true value ? 



We have no knowledge of matter, except as 

 accompanied by force. The ultimate atoms we 

 imagine to be related to each other by attractions 

 and repulsions. The compound molecule is the 

 seat of equally compound forces. The possibili- 

 ty of such a perfect balance of forces as to pro- 

 duce absolute rest may be argued, but can scarce- 

 ly be proved, and a probability remains that no 

 such thing as absolute rest is known throughout 

 the universe. Everywhere the concomitant cf 

 force is motion or activity, either atomic, mo- 

 lecular, or molar ; and the universal character of 

 such activity is alternate acceleration and retar- 

 dation. 



We need not discuss the problem whether the 

 force or the matter is the actual snbstans. The 

 same general laws of activity hold good both for 

 matter and mind, and one of the most funda- 

 mental of these laws is that of alternate accelera- 

 tion and retardation, of expansion and compres- 

 sion, of increase and decrease, whether in relation 

 to time, to space, or to intensity. In modern 

 terminology this type of activity is known as 

 wave-motion, and the total activity of the uni- 

 verse, as far as we can penetrate it, is made up of 

 such waves, in what may be called — without ex- 

 travagant metaphor — an " infinite " variety. 



The wave-form originates in the compound 

 action of initial impulse with surrounding resist- 

 ances. Both factors are essential, and if space is 

 everywhere occupied by matter, or is everywhere 



