Appetence and Emotion. 413 



guide us towards right living ; and aesthetics are true or 

 false according as they lead towards a higher or a lower 

 standard of moral life." * 



To sum up, then, concerning this difficult subject, the 

 following are the propositions on which I would lay stress : 

 (1) What we term an aesthetic sense of beauty involves a 

 number of complex perceptual, conceptual, and emotional 

 elements. (2) The fact that a natural object excites in us 

 this pleasurable emotion does not carry with it the implica- 

 tion that the object was evolved for the sake of its beauty. 



(3) Even if we grant, as we fairly may, that brightly 

 coloured flowers, in association with nectar, have been 

 objects of appetence to insects ; and that 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 con- 

 sciously aesthetic motive has been a determining cause. 



(4) In fine, though animals may be incidentally attracted 

 by beautiful objects, they have no aesthetic sense of beauty. 

 A sense of beauty is an abstract emotion. Esthetics in- 

 volve ideals ; and to ideals, if what has been urged in these 

 pages be valid, no brute can aspire. 



What applies thus to aesthetics applies also to ethics. 

 Few, however, will be found to contend that animals can be 

 moral or immoral, or have any moral ideas properly so called. 

 Mr. Eomanes does indeed state, in the table he prefixes 

 to his works on Mental Evolution, that the anthropoid 

 apes and dogs are capable of "indefinite morality." He 

 leaves this to be explained, however, in a future work. In 

 the published instalment of " Mental Evolution in Man " 

 he seems to contend,! or, at least, admit, " that the funda- 

 mental concepts of morality are of later origin than the 

 names by which they have been baptized." But he says 

 nothing of indefinite morality, which still remains for con- 



* This paragraph is quoted from the author's " Springs of Conduct," p. 263. 

 t Page 347. 



