THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANISMS ^7 



Why should the quality of exciting this distinctive emotion be 

 pervasive throughout the world of organisms, as compelling in 

 new creatures which the human eye never saw before as in the 

 familiar favourites with which our race has grown up ? It is possible 

 that some light is thrown on this question when we analyse the 

 esthetic delight which every normally constituted man feels when 

 he watches the Shetland ponies racing in the field, the kingfisher 

 darting up the stream like an arrow made of a piece of rainbow, 

 the mayflies rising in a living cloud from a quiet stretch of the 

 river, or the sea-anemones nestling like flowers in the niches of the 

 seashore rocks. The forms, the colours, the movements, set up 

 agreeable rhythmic processes in our eyes, agreeable rhythmic 

 messages pass to our brain, and the good news — the pleasedness — 

 is echoed throughout the body, in the pulse, for instance, and in 

 the beating of the heart, as Wordsworth so well knew. The esthetic 

 emotion is certainly associated with a pleasing bodily resonance; 

 in other words, it has its physiological side. The second factor in 

 our esthetic delight is perceptual. The "form" of what we con- 

 template is significant for us and satisfies our feeling. The more 

 meaning is suffused into the material, the more our sense of beauty 

 is enhanced. The lines and patterns and colours of living creatures 

 go to make up a "form" which almost never disappoints. And in 

 spite of some experts who maintain that nothing which does not 

 appear can count in the esthetic impression, we agree with that 

 thoughtful physiologist. Sir John Burdon Sanderson, who was 

 persuaded that certain associated concepts, such as that of 

 adaptiveness, have considerable influence in our esthetic enjoy- 

 ment of animal form and structure, even when the ideas simply 

 remain in the background of the mind. 



But is there any particular reason why animals and plants should 

 delight us so uniformly, should give us esthetic pleasure with 

 more infallibility and convincingness than human creations or 

 inanimate objects do? It has been known for centuries, and it has 

 been borne out by experiments with children, that certain forms 

 and patterns, as well as colour-combinations, are much more 

 pleasing than others. There are lines that flow and shapes that 

 sing. Why should there be among living creatures such a practical 

 omnipresence of pleasing lines and colours? Must not part of the 

 answer be that natural creatures are harmonious unities which 

 have stood the test of time, which have been chiselled from within 

 by harmonious metabolism and rhythmic orderly growth? Per- 

 fectly adaptive architecture from which all the useless has been 

 eliminated, the organised ripple-marks of orderly regulated growth, 

 the colour-expressions of successfully rhythmic metabolism from 

 which everything disorderly has been sifted out, ought to be beauti- 

 ful ; that is to say, they may be expected to excite pleasant physio- 



