28 THE EVOLUTION OF SEX. 



both insects and birds have so far and increasingly become 

 educated in such sensitiveness; but when we consider the com- 

 plexity of the markings of the male bird or insect, and the slow 

 gradations from one stage of perfection to another, it seems 

 difficult to credit birds or butterflies with a degree of aesthetic 

 development exhibited by no human being without both special 

 aesthetic acuteness and special training. Moreover, the butter- 

 fly, which is supposed to possess this extraordinary development 

 of psychological subtlety, will fly naively to a piece of white 

 paper on the ground, and is attracted by the primary aesthetic 

 stimulus of an old-fashioned wall-paper, not to speak of the 

 gaudy and monotonous brightness of some of our garden flowers. 

 Thus we have the further difficulty, that we must suppose the 

 female butterfly to have a double standard of taste, one for the 

 flowers which she and her mate both visit, the other for the 

 far more complex colouring and markings of the males. And 

 even among birds, if we take those unmistakable hints of real 

 awakening of the aesthetic sense which are exhibited by the 

 iVustralian bowerbird or by the common jackdaw in its fondness 

 for bright objects, how very rude is this taste compared with the 

 critical examination of infinitesimal variations of plumage on 

 which Darwin relies. Is not, therefore, his essential supposition 

 too glaringly anthropomorphic ? 



Again, the most beautiful males are often extremely com- 

 bative ; and on the conventional view this is a mere coin- 

 cidence, yet a most unfortunate one for Mr Darwin's view. 

 Battle thus constantly decides the question of pairing, and in 

 cases where, by hypothesis, the female should have most choice, 

 she has simply to yield to the victor. On our view, however, 

 combative energy and sexual beauty rise pari passu with male 

 katabolism. 



Or again, in the y^neas group of the genus Fapilio, Darwin 

 notes how there are frequent gradations in the amount of dif- 

 ference between the sexes. Sometimes the sexes are alike dull, 

 where we should have to suppose the aesthetic perception must 

 somehow have been lost or inhibited ; sometimes the females 

 are dull and the males splendid, — for Darwin, an example of 

 the result of sexual esthetic perception, this of an exquisitely 

 subtle kind however, and without i)roportionate cerebral en- 

 largement. In a third set of cases, both sexes arc splendid, 

 which would suggest logically that the male in turn had acquired 

 a taste for splendour. But such cases, which usually need more 



