96 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



brilliant plumage, in association with sexual vigour, has 

 been a factor in the preferential mating of birds; — this 

 is a very different thing from saying that, either in the 

 selection of flowers by insects, or in the selection of 

 their mates by birds, a consciously aesthetic motive has 

 been a determining cause. (4) In fine, though ani- 

 mals may be incidentally attracted by beautiful objects, 

 they have no aesthetic sense of beauty. A sense of 

 beauty is an abstract emotion. iEsthetics involve ideals; 

 and to ideals, if what has been urged in these pages be 

 valid, no brute can aspire." 



There is certainly much truth in these propositions of 

 Mr. Morgan. His second statement, however, seems 

 to need some qualification. As previously stated, the 

 beauty in nature must be a pure accident or else have 

 been evolved, because it appealed to the sense of beauti- 

 ful in the lower animals. A landscape or beautiful sun- 

 set generally appeals to our sense of tlie sublime rather 

 than the beautiful. But tJiere are many objects in 

 inorganic nature that certainly do appeal to our sense of 

 the beautiful. Crystals may be beautiful both in form 

 and color, but when such is the case the beauty cannot 

 be looked upon as anything but a coincidence. Objects 

 in the organic just as in the inorganic world may or 

 may not be beautiful, but in this case the beauty cannot 

 be always considered incidental. If a feather is beauti- 

 ful it is doubtless a mere accident, inasmuch as it was 

 evolved for utility, and the same may be said of the 

 leaf. But if flowers, insects and birds, display beautiful 

 effects which bear an observed relation to the inter per- 

 ceptual and emotional faculties of these organisms, it is 

 but reasonable to assume a causal connection between 

 them, and to suppose that these beautiful effects have 

 been evolved by insects and birds, because they gave 

 them pleasure. Mr. Weismann, in speaking of the tail- 



