December 31, 1891] 



NATURE 



201 



far-stretching countries and over hill and dale the sound 

 of the human voice as though it spoke in our ear ? 



" Life is earnest, art is gay " : this saying of Schiller's 

 remains as true if we substitute science for life. Art is 

 the realm of the beautiful ; its productions fill us with an 

 enjoyment, half sensuous, half intellectual ; it is, therefore, 

 a realm of liberty in the widest sense. No rigid laws are 

 enforced in it ; no stern logic binds the events of the 

 present to those of the past and future ; no certain signs 

 indicate success ; blame and praise are distributed by the 

 varying taste of ages, nations, and individuals, so that the 

 glorious Gothic church architecture came to be derided 

 by the eighteenth century. In art, the definition of 

 genius as a talent for patience does not hold good. Its 

 creations, once brought forth in a happy hour of revela- 

 tion, stir our souls with elementary force, and scorn all 

 abstruse explanations, subsequently forced upon them by 

 art criticism. Whoever accomplishes such a feat also 

 ministers in a sense to the cares and troubles of 

 humanity. Unfortunately, the nature of things does not 

 allow such fruit to ripen at all seasons ; at one time, in 

 one direction, the culminating point will be reached, and 

 then age after age will strive in vain to emulate the past. 

 The finest itsthetic theories can neither carry the in- 

 dividual beyond the limits of his own natural powers, nor 

 retrieve the fortunes of a declining period. Of what use 

 has been the recent strife in the artistic world between 

 naturalists and idealists? Has it protected us from 

 the frequently almost intolerable extravagances of the 

 latter "^ There is an attraction in every boldly advanced 

 novelty which the common herd is unable to resist, and 

 which will invariably triumph till antiquated ideas are 

 somehow supplanted by fresh ones, or by the lofty rule of 

 some irresistibly superior personality. Nor can science 

 in the stricter sense come to the aid of art ; and thus, 

 strangers at heart, without materially influencing each 

 other, each seeks its own way : the former advancing 

 steadily, though irregularly ; the latter slowly fluctuating 

 like a majestic tide. Those unfamiliar with science are 

 apt to recognize the supreme development of our mental 

 faculties in art alone. Doubtless this is a mistake ; yet 

 human intellect shines brightest where glory in art is 

 coupled with glory in science. 



We may notice something here which is similar to 

 what occurs in practical ethics. The more corrupt the 

 morals of an age or nation, the more we find virtue a 

 favourite topic. The flood of itsthetic theories rises 

 highest when original creative power is at its lowest ebb. 

 Lotze, in his " History of /Esthetics in Germany," ^ gives 

 a wearying and discouraging account of such fruitless 

 efforts. Philosophers of all schools have rivalled in 

 abstract definitions of the essence of beauty. They call 

 it unity in multiplicity, or fitness without a purpose, or 

 unconscious rationality, or the transcendant realized, or 

 the enjoyment of the harmony of the absolute, and so 

 forth. But all these properties, which are supposed to 

 constitute the beautiful, have no more to do with our 

 actual sensation of it than the vibrations of light and 

 sound with the qualities they bring to our perception. 

 Indeed, it would be vain to attempt to find one term 

 equally fitted to describe all the varieties of the beautiful : 

 the beauty of cosmos as contrasted with chaos, of a 

 mountain prospect, a symphony, or a poem, of Ristori in 

 Medea, or a rose ; or even, taking the fine arts alone, 

 the beauty of the Cologne Cathedral, the " Hermes" of 

 Praxiteles, the Madonna Sistina, a picture of still-life, a 

 landscape, a genre piece, or a Japanese flower design ; 

 not to mention the questionable custom which permits 

 us in German to speak of a beautiful taste or a beautiful 

 smell. Let us rather admit that here, as so often, we 

 meet with something inexplicable in our organization ; 

 something inexpresiible, though not the less distinctly 



' Munich, 1868. 



NO. I 157, VOL. 45] 



felt, without which life would offer a dull and cheerless 

 aspect. 



In an essay of Schiller's there is a disquisition on 

 physical beauty.^ He distinguishes between an archi- 

 tectural beauty and a beauty which emanates from grace. 

 I attacked this aesthetic rationalism, to which the last 

 century was strongly addicted, twenty years ago on a 

 similar occasion in a lecture on Leibnitz's ideas in modern 

 science. I ventured to assert that " the attraction which 

 physical beauty exerts on the opposite sexes can as 

 little be explained as the effects of a melody."'- On 

 reflection, it seems, indeed, incomprehensible why one 

 distinct shape, which, according to Fechner, might be 

 represented by a plain algebraic equation between three 

 variables, should please us beyond a thousand other 

 possibilities. The reason can be traced from no abstract 

 principle, no rules of architecture, not even from 

 Hogarth's line of beauty. A year after this remark was 

 made, Charles Darwin published his " Descent of Man," 

 in which the principle of sexual selection, only cursorily 

 treated in the " Origin of Species," is fully expounded, 

 and pursued in all its bearings. I remember vividly 

 how, in a discussion with Dove as to the necessity of 

 admitting a vital force, he embarrassed me by the 

 objection that in the organic world luxury occurs, for 

 example, in the plumage of a peacock or a bird of 

 Paradise ; while in inorganic nature Maupertuis's law 

 of the minimum of action precludes such prodigality. 

 Here was a solution to the problem, allowing that one 

 might attribute to animals a certain sense of beauty. 

 The gorgeous nuptial plumage displayed by male birds 

 may have been acquired through the preference of the 

 female for more highly ornamented suitors, a progeny 

 of constantly increasing brilliancy of colouring being 

 thus obtained. Male birds of Paradise have been 

 observed to vie in showing off their beauty before the 

 females during courtship. The power of song in night- 

 ingales might be attributed to the same cause, the 

 female in this case being more susceptible to the charms 

 of melody than to those of brilliant colouring. Darwin 

 goes on to observe that, in the human race likewise, 

 certain sexual characteristics, such as the imposing beard 

 in man and the lovely tresses in woman, might have 

 been acquired through sexual selection.'' It is a well- 

 known fact that, by the repeated introduction of hand- 

 some Circassian slaves into aristocratic Turkish harems, 

 the original Mongol type in many cases has been 

 remarkably ennobled. And carrying the same principle 

 further, we may find therein an explanation for the 

 fascination which female beauty has for man. According 

 to our present views, the first woman was not made of a 

 rib taken out of the first man— a process fraught with 

 morphological difficulties. It was man himself who, in 

 countless generations, through natural selection, fashioned 

 woman to his own liking, and was so fashioned by her. 

 This type we call beautiful, but we need only to cast a 

 glance at a Venus by Titian, or one by Rubens — let 

 alone the different human races — to recognize hovr 

 little absolute this beauty is. 



If one kind of beauty could be said to bear analyzing 

 better than another, it is what might be termed 

 mechanical beauty. It is noticed least, because it 

 escapes all but the practised eye. This kind of beauty 

 may belong to machines or physical apparatus, each 

 part of which is exactly fitted to its purpose in size, 

 shape, and position. It answers more or less to the 

 definition of "unconscious rationality," our satisfaction 



• " Ueber Anmuth und Wiirde." 



^ The author's '•Collected Addresses, &c.," vol. i., pp. 4y, 50, Leipzig, 

 1886. 



3 The author is not unaware of Mr. Wallace's attack on Darwin's ex- 

 planation of the brilliant plumage of male birds by the females' preference, 

 and of the discussion arisen between him and Messrs. Poulton. Pocock, and 

 Peckham. This was not the proper place to enter into it, the less so as, 

 whatever may be its outcome, the author's conclusion from the theory of 

 sexual selection would r.:main unaltered. 



