SCIENCE AND FINE ART. 755 



derived from any abstract principle or architectonics or Hogarth- 

 ian wave-line. A year after my remark, appeared Charles Darwin's 

 Descent of Man, in which the doctrine of sexual selection, which 

 was only indicated in the Origin of Species, was treated in detail 

 and followed out to its consequences. But I have, too, a lively 

 recollection of how Dove, when I was once contending with him 

 against the validity of vitalism, embarrassed me with the objec- 

 tion that profusion prevails in organic nature, as, for example, in 

 the feathers of a peacock, or of a bird-of -paradise, while Mauper- 

 tuis's law of the least action excludes such waste in inorganic na- 

 ture. The problem seems to be solved now, under the presumption 

 that a kind of sense of beauty in their species exists among ani- 

 mals. The brightly colored wedding garment of the male bird 

 may have originated in the females giving the preference to the 

 most highly decorated suitor, under which an ever more richly 

 adorned posterity is developed. The male birds-of -paradise may 

 be seen at pairing-time emulously displaying their beauty before 

 the female. The nightingale's gift of song may likewise be 

 accounted for if, instead of pleasure in colored feathers, we 

 ascribe musical perceptions to the females. Darwin carries his 

 idea further, to the extent of assuming that certain sexual marks 

 in the human race, the grave beard of the man and the luxu- 

 riant hair of the woman, may have been derived through sexual 

 selection*. It is well known that the introduction of handsome 

 Circassian slaves into the harems of prominent Turks has repeat- 

 edly changed the original Mongolian type into a figure of nobler 

 pattern. Rising to a higher level, we can now find in the same 

 idea the answer to the question. Where are the roots of the charm 

 which female beauty exercises on man ? According to our views, 

 the woman was not made out of a rib of the first man, an assump- 

 tion which encounters morphological difficulties, but it was tlie 

 man himself who in the course of numerous generations made his 

 woman by natural selection of such fashion as would please him, 

 and, inversely, the woman her man. "We now call this type beau- 



* The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. London, 1871, vol. li, pp. 52, 

 89, 379, 400, 401. In his book on Darwinism, etc (second London edition, 1889), Mr. 

 Wallace rejected the explanation of the decorative plumage and the song of the male bird 

 through selection by the female, and proposed other interpretations. But a writer recog- 

 nized by Mr. Wallace himself as equally a student in this line, Mr. C. B. Poulton, in his 

 work, The Colors of Animals, their Meaning and their Use (International Scientific Series), 

 has sturdily taken up the defense of the Darwinian view against this attack, and exposed 

 the untenability of Wallace's later explanation. Mr. Wallace has not failed to reply to this 

 (Nature, No. 1082, vol. xlii, July 24, 1890) ; while Mr. R. J. Pocock, resting on Mr. G. W. 

 Peckham's investigations, joins Mr. Poulton (ibid.. No. 1086, August 1, 1890, p. 40.'5). This 

 is not the place to enter into the question, especially as my conclusion concerning the 

 doctrine of sexual selection still holds, even if Mr. Wallace should be right on the single 

 points of feather ornament and song. 



