DESIRE OF SELF-EXPRESSION 287 



for its own sake, but is actually drawn from elaborate 

 musical instruments made for this sole purpose; 

 made or evolved, in any case a modification of the 

 sound-producing parts of the organism in response 

 to a want and a desire in the creature's life. This in 

 man is what we call a desire to express himself — 

 to express something in him which is not solely, or 

 not at all, concerned with purely material needs; 

 and as a result of this desire we have singing, and 

 playing on musical instruments; also dancing, picture- 

 painting and moulding or chiselling forms in imitation 

 of natural objects in clay, or wax, or stone, and various 

 other arts. The desire, the impulse, the instinct, is one 

 and the same in man and insect. To the musical and 

 the artistic minded generally, this may seem an un- 

 pleasant idea, a degradation of art to something low 

 and little. To the naturalist there is nothing low and 

 little in this sense. But we know that the fact of 

 evolution in the organic world was repellent to us 

 for the same reason — because we did not like to 

 believe that we had been fashioned, mentally and 

 physically, out of the same clay as the lower animals. 

 When our great green grasshopper, Locusta viri- 

 dissima, as described by me in another book, sings 

 to please himself and incidentally pleases the listening 

 female, he is so absorbed in his own performance 

 that he disregards her even when she follows him 

 and casts herself in his way. His musical passion 

 overrules all others. His attention is drawn away 

 to some other locust far from sight in some distant 

 place and insolently returning song for song; and 



