90 THE DKSCENT OF MAN. 



forth by many male birds during the season of love, are certainly 

 admired by the females, of which fact evidence will hereafter be 

 given. If female birds had been incapable of appreciating the 

 beautiful colors, the ornaments, and voices of their male partners, 

 all the labor and anxiety exhibited by the latter in displaying their 

 cliarir'S before the females would have been thrown away; and 

 this it is Impossible to admit. Why certain bright colors should 

 excite pleasure cannot, I presume, be explained, any more than 

 why certain flavors and scents are agreeable; but habit has 

 something to do with the result, for that which is at first un- 

 pleasant to our senses, ultimately becomes pleasant, and habits 

 are inherited. With respect to sounds, Helmhoitz has explained 

 to a certain extent on physiological principles, why harmonies 

 and certain cadences are agreeable. But besides this, sounds fre- 

 quently recurring at irregular intervals, are highly disagreeable, 

 as every one will admit who has listened at night to the irregular 

 flapping of a rope on board ship. The same principle seems to 

 come into play with vision, as the eye prefers symmetry or figures 

 with some regular recurrence. Patterns of this kind are em- 

 ployed by even the lowest savages as ornaments; and they" have 

 been developed through sexual selection for the adornment of 

 some male animals. Whether we can or not give any reason for 

 the pleasure thus derived from vision and hearing, yet man and 

 many of the lower animals are alike pleased by the same colors, 

 graceful shading and forms, and the same sounds. 



The taste for the beautiful, at least as far as female beauty is 

 concerned, is not of a special nature in the human mind; for it 

 differs widely in the different races of man, and is not quite the 

 same even in the different nations of the same race. Judging 

 from the hideous ornaments, and the equally hideous music ad- 

 mired by most savages, it might be urged that their aesthetic 

 faculty was not so highly developed as in certain animals, for 

 instance, as in birds. Obviously no animal would be capable of 

 admiring such scenes as the heavens at night, a beautiful land- 

 scape, or refined music; but such high tastes are acquired through 

 culture, and depend on complex associations; they ai'e not en- 

 joyed by barbarians or by uneducated persons. 



Many of the faculties, which have been of inestimable service 

 to man for his progressive advancement, such as the powers of 

 the imagination, wonder, curiosity, an undefined sense of beauty, 

 a tendency to imitation, and the love of excitement or novelty, 

 could hardly fail to lead to capricious changes of customs and 

 fashions. I have alluded to this point, because a recent writer'^ 

 has oddly fixed on Caprice "as one of the most remarkable and 

 "typical differences between savages and brutes." But not only 



'3 'The Spectator," Dec. 4th 1S69, p. 1430. 



