THE THEORY OF COURTSHIP 153 



rously to admit. The desire to arrogate to mankind 

 alone all the higher faculties either of sense or intellect 

 has probably much to do with the current disinclina- 

 tion towards the Darwinian idea of sexual selection. 

 Thinkers who allow themselves to be emotionally swayed 

 by such extraneous considerations forget that the beau- 

 tiful is merely that which pleases ; that beauty has no 

 external objective existence ; and that the range of 

 taste, both among ourselves and among animals at large, 

 is practically infinite. The greatest blow ever aimed at 

 the Darwinian theory of sexual selection was undoubt- 

 edly that dealt out by Mr. Alfred Kussel Wallace (et 

 tu, Brute !) in his able and subtle article on the Colours 

 of Animals in ' Macmillan's Magazine,' since reprinted 

 in his delightful work on ' Tropical Nature.' Wallace 

 there urges with his usual acuteness, ingenuity, and 

 skill several fundamental objections to the Darwinian 

 hypothesis of no little importance and weight. But it 

 must always be remembered (with all due respect to 

 the joint discoverer of natural selection) that Mr. 

 Wallace himself, after publishing his own admirable 

 essay on the development of man, drew back aghast in 

 the end from the full consequences of his own admission, 

 and uttered his partial recantation in the singular words, 

 ' Natural selection could only have endowed the savage 

 with a brain a little superior to that of an ape.' It 

 seems probable that in every case an analogous desire 

 to erect a firm barrier between man and brute by 

 positing the faculty for perceiving beauty as a special 

 quasi-divine differentia of the human race has been afc 

 the bottom of the still faintly surviving dislike amongst 

 a section of scientific men to sexual selection. 



