TBE DESCENT OR ORIGIN OF MAN 129 



majority of animals, however, the taste for the beautiful is 

 confined, as far as we can judge, to the attractions of the 

 opposite sex. The sweet strains poured 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 beauti- 

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

 all the labor and anxiety exhibited by the latter in display- 

 ing their charms 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 unpleasant to our senses ultimately 

 becomes pleasant, and habits are inherited. With respect 

 to sounds, Helmholtz has explained, to a certain extent, on 

 physiological principles, why harmonies and certain cadences 

 are agreeable. But besides this, sounds frequently recurring 

 at irregular intervals are highly disagreeable, as every one 

 will admit who has listened at night to the irregular flap- 

 ping 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 employed by even the lowest savages as orna- 

 ments; and they have been developed through sexual se- 

 lection 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 dififerent races of man, and 

 is not quite the same even in the difEerent nations of the same 

 race. Judging from the hideous ornaments and the equally 

 hideous music admired by most savages, it might be urged 

 that their aesthetic faculty was not so highly developed as 



