192 UTILITARIAN DOUTRINE, BOW FAR TRUE: 



disseminated when imbedded within a fruit of any kind 

 (that is withia a fleshy or pulpy envelope), if it be colored 

 of any brilliant tint, or rendered conspicuous by being 

 white or black. 



On the other hand, I willingly admit that a great 

 number of male animals, as all our most gorgeous birds, 

 some fishes, reptiles, and mammals, and a host of 

 magnificently colored butterflies, have been rendered 

 beautiful for beauty's sake. But this has been effected 

 through sexual selection, that is, by the more beautiful 

 males having been continually preferred by the females, 

 and not for ilie delight of man. So it is with the music of 

 birds. We may infer from all this that a nearly similar 

 taste for beautiful colors and for musical sounds runs 

 through a large part of the animal kingdom. When the 

 female is as beautifully colored as the male, which is not 

 rarely the case with birds and butterflies, the cause ap- 

 parently lies in the colors acquired through sexual selec- 

 tion having been transmitted to both sexes, instead of to 

 the males alone. How the sense of beauty in its simplest 

 form — that is, the reception of a peculiar kind of pleasure 

 from certain colors, forms and sounds — >was first developed 

 in the mind of man and of the lower animals, is a very ob- 

 scure subject. The same sort of difficulty is presented if 

 we inquire how it is that certain flavors and odors give 

 pleasure, and others displeasure. Habit in all these cases 

 appears to have come to a certain extent into play; but 

 there must be some fundamental cause in the constitution 

 of the nervous system in each species. 



Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modifica- 

 tion in a species exclusively for the good of another 

 species, though throughout nature one species inces- 

 santly takes advantage of and profits by the structures of 

 others. But natural selection can and does often produce 

 structures for the direct injury of other animals, as we 

 see in the fang of the adder, and in the ovipositor of the 

 ichneumon, by which its eggs are deposited in the living 

 bodies of other insects. If it could be proved that any 

 part of the structure of any one species had been formed 

 for the exclusive good of another species, it would anni- 

 hilate my theory, for such could not have been produced 



