THE FLATS 39 



cannot see far into the recesses of the bird-mind. But 

 it is capable, perhaps, of a qualified solution, partly by 

 particular and partly by general application. In the 

 first place, there do exist certain examples of aesthetic 

 appreciation among animals. The bower birds make a 

 decorative front-garden to their homes ; bees visit 

 flowers not only for their scent, but their colour, and 

 Forel's experiments show that they return to objects of 

 the same colour as the flowers whose nectar they collect ; 

 moths are attracted to white flowers in the dusk ; magpies 

 steal bright objects ; a surprising number of species deco- 

 rate their nests with flowers, and so on. But sexual 

 selection is the most important example, so important 

 that Herbert Spencer derived the whole stimulus of the 

 aesthetic sense from the sexual emotions. I am assuming 

 that Darwin's theory of preferential mating stands 

 proven — it is accepted by most biologists — and that 

 whether the hen-bird's interest is emotional, or aesthetic, 

 or sexual, the one must and does imply an infusion of 

 the other two. The male on his part displays his 

 plumage to the best aesthetic advantage, and follows a 

 kind of informal, rhythmical design in his dancing and 

 posturing. A certain aesthetic awareness exists, that is 

 to say, in both sexes, and its selective interplay has a 

 high survival value. 



The general question views the omnipresence of beauty 

 in nature and wonders how it got there. For natural 

 beauty is the normal expression of natural life ; ugliness 

 we only find in a very rare monstrosity or in parasites, 

 which have gone to the bad. " The pismire and the 

 egg of the wren, each is equally perfect," says Whitman. 

 " The halo of beauty," says Professor Thomson, " is on 

 every free individuality," and he quotes Lotze : "To 

 look upon beauty, not as a stranger in the world . . . 

 not as a casual aspect . . . but as the fortunate revela- 

 tion of that principle which permeates all reality with 

 its living activity." The ugly, the inharmonious, the 

 discordant have been eliminated as unfit in the struggle 

 for existence. The next question is how did beauty 

 arrive ? and the answer is by that complex power of 

 differentiation we call evolution. At one period in the 



