Appetence and Emotion. 409 



a sense of beauty we mean that in them pleasurable 

 emotions may be aroused on sight of objects which we 

 regard as beautiful, I am not prepared to deny them such 

 a sense of beauty, nay, I fully believe that such pleasurable 

 feelings are aroused in them. When, however, it is said 

 that the gorgeous plumage of male birds has been produced 

 by the aesthetic choice of their mates, I am not so ready to 

 agree. A consciously aesthetic motive has not, I believe, 

 been a determining cause. The mate selected has been 

 that which has excited the strongest sexual appetence ; his 

 beauty has probably not, as such, been distinctly present 

 to consciousness. Here, then, we have again the question 

 which arose in conection with floral beauty — How is it 

 that the sight of the mates selected by hen birds excites in 

 us, in so many cases, an aesthetic pleasure ? 



It is clear that this is a matter rather of human than 

 of animal or comparative psychology. As such, except for 

 purposes of illustration, it does not fall within the scope of 

 this work. I can, therefore, say but a few words on the 

 subject. The view that I think erroneous is that either 

 floral beauty or the beauty of secondary sexual characters 

 has been produced on aesthetic grounds, that is to say, for 

 the sake of the beauty they are seen by man to possess. 

 It is, therefore, to the point to draw attention to the fact 

 that many of the objects and scenes which excite in us this 

 aesthetic sense have certainly not been produced for the 

 sake of their beauty. Their beauty is an adjunct, a by- 

 product of rarest excellence, but none the less a by-product. 



Nothing can be more beautiful in its way than a well- 

 grown beech or lime tree; and yet it cannot be held to 

 have been produced for its beauty's sake. The leaves of 

 many trees, shrubs, and plants are scarcely less beautiful 

 than the flowers. But they cannot have been produced by 

 the aesthetic choice of insects. From the depth of a mine 

 there may be brought up a specimen of ruby copper ore, or 

 malachite, or a nest of quartz crystals, or an agate, or a 

 piece of veined serpentine, which shall be at once pro- 

 nounced a delight to the eye. But for the eye it was not 



