280 THE FACT OF BEAUTY 



to Man at his best something conveying not knowledge, but 

 an intuition that was greater than knowledge. How can 

 this be if the aesthetic emotions are but the refined outcome 

 of primeval distributions of matter and energy? We have 

 tried in our consideration of the organism to take the edge 

 off such arguments. There are few active evolutionists of 

 the present day who are committed to such materialism. 

 From the physical abstractions ' matter ' and ' energy ' it is 

 impossible to account for emotion, yet emotion may have 

 evolved in psycho-physical beings such as it seems quite 

 legitimate to postulate as the first organisms. 



Esthetic emotion is a very subtle feeling, and is possibly 

 peculiar to mankind, yet it is not inconceivable that its raw 

 materials up to the level perhaps of a pleased awareness 

 of specific arrangements of certain lines and colours as dis- 

 tinguished from others may be detected far below the 

 human plane of being. Bower-birds are not, of course, 

 among man's ancestors, but it is interesting to know how 

 the males decorate their sometimes elaborate courting bowers 

 with brightly coloured pods and flowers and shells. We must 

 remember that low down in the kingdom of the unicellulars, 

 as we have seen, animals select material to work with and 

 handle it without hands dexterously, and it does not seem 

 far-fetched to suppose that the creature has a dim pleasure 

 in its work. We find similar artificers at various levels in 

 the animal hierarchy, and the thrill accompanying success- 

 ful formative endeavour will probably strengthen and deepen 

 with the degree of general differentiation and integration. 

 From enjoyment of one's own achievement it is possible to 

 pass to an appreciation of that of others, and in the fact 

 that some birds will appropriate characteristic phrases of 

 song from others we have a hint of admiration. It is too 



