404 Darwin, and after Darwin. 



reference to inorganic nature. Therefore, with the 

 charm or the loveHness of landscapes, of earth and sea 

 and sky, of pebbles, crystals, and so forth, we have at 

 present nothing to do. How it is that so many inani- 

 mate objects are invested with beauty— why it is that 

 beauty attaches to architecture, music, poetry, and 

 many other things these are questions which do not 

 specially concern the biologist. If they are ever to 

 receive any satisfactory explanation in terms of 

 natural causation, this must be furnished at the hands 

 of the psychologist. It may be possible for him to 

 show, more satisfactorily than hitherto, that all beauty, 

 whenever and wherever it occurs, is literally " in the 

 eyes of the beholder"; or that objectively considered, 

 there is no such thing as beauty. It may be — and in 

 my opinion it probably is— purely an affair of the 

 percipient mind itself, depending on the association of 

 ideas with pleasure-giving objects. This association 

 may well lead to a liking for such objects, and so to the 

 formation of what is known as aesthetic feeling with 

 regard to them. Moreover, beauty of inanimate nature 

 must be an affair of the percipient mind itself, unless 

 there be a creating intelligence with organs of sense 

 and ideals of beauty similar to our own. And, apart 

 from any deeper considerations, this latter possibility is 

 scarcely entitled to be regarded as a probability, looking 

 to the immense diversities in those ideals among dif- 

 ferent races of mankind. But, be this as it may, the 

 scientific problem which is presented by the fact of 

 aesthetic feeling, even if it is ever to be satisfactorily 

 solved, is a problem which, as already remarked, must 

 be dealt with by psychologists. As biologists we have 

 simply to accept this feeling as a fact, and to consider 



