ARTISTIC FEELING OF THE LOWER ANIMALS. a TR. DARWIN, in
the remarkable book which we notice else- 111. where, has explained, or at least partly explained, to his own satisfaction, the striking beauty of the plumage of birds and the rich colours of certain other creatures even lower in the scale of intelligence than birds, on the principle that there has been among all these orders of creatures so great a preference for beauty of exterior, that the more beautiful have always found it easier to secure mates, and more eligible mates, than the less beautiful ; in other words, that it has always been likely that the more beautiful birds, &c., would pair more easily, and rear a greater number of offspring than the less beautiful, and probably also not only a greater number, but a greater number of more healthy offspring,—the result being, of course, after the lapse of a vast number of generations, to accumulate beauties on the species. Mr. Darwin gives a most curious illustration, by analyzing the mode in which rudimentary and less finished probably grow into more elabo- rate and perfect beauties, in the case of the Argus pheasant, which is spotted with what is called a perfect " ball-and-socket ocellus,"— an "intensely black circular ring surrounding a space shaded so as exactly to resemble a ball." "The ring is always much thickened, with the edges ill-defined, towards the left-hand upper corner. . . . beneath this thickened part there is on the surface of the ball an oblique almost pure white mark, which slides off downward into a pale leaden hue, and this into yellowish and brownish tints which invariably become darker and darker towards the lower part of th'e ball. It is this shading which gives so admirably the effect of light shining on a convex surface." Mr. _ Darwin shows how this marvellous artistic effect is ob- tained from the confluence and prolongations of (rela- tively) very common spots—such as occur in the feathers next the body—by insensible gradations. " Almost every minute detail in the shape and colouring of the ball-and-socket ocelli can be shown to follow from gradual changes of the elliptic orna- ments, and the development of the latter can be traced by equally small steps from the union of two almost simple spots, the lower one having some dull fulvous shading on the upper side." But to what cause are we to trace the development of these "almost simple spots, the lower one having some dark fulvous shad- ing on the upper side" into "elliptic ornaments," and the development of the elliptic ornaments into perfect "ball- and-socket ocelli"? Mr. Darwin traces it without hesitation to the strong preference of the hen-pheasants for beauty of plumage. In other words, he supposes there was a time when all the cock-pheasants were feathered with common-spotted feathers ; —and that then birds in which two adjoining spots had flowed together into something like one of the elliptic ornaments, would have been so much preferred by the hens to birds in which no such confluence of spots had taken place, that they would have the choice of all the belles of the pheasant society, and the effect would be that their descendants, who would inherit the tendency to a confluence of spots, would become a sort of aristocracy among the pheasants, and would command the best mates ; and that this process would go on till the complete development of the common spots into elliptic ornaments, and of the elliptic orna- ments into ball-and-socket ocelli on those feathers chiefly displayed by the Argus pheasant, had taken place.
This is a very ingenious and possibly true account of the method of the development,—a precisely analogous one is given, by the way, of the development of the vocal powers of singing birds,— for most convincing evidence seems to be attainable of the pride felt by birds in their rich plumage and their fine voices, and of the admiration these are apt to excite in the breasts of their mates. Mr. Darwin tells a curious story of the intense jealousy felt by a robin for all birds with any red in their plumage (but no others), and by a quiet, well-behaved bullfinch (which has a black head) for a reed-bunting which had also a black head, though to all his other comrades, except the one with a similar distinction to his own, he was perfectly good-humoured. The vexation evidently was primarily of the same nature which a young lady would feel at a ball, on seeing a splendid ball-dress, precisely the duplicate of her Own, on another young lady, when she had persuaded herself that she was unique. There certainly seems no reason to doubt that birds are extremely susceptible to the effect of beauty of plumage and voice, and are jealous of the same attractions in their rivals. But admitting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, only con- ceive what refined and finely-developed taste it implies in these birds, at once to prefer those variations of plumage and voice tending to perfect harmony of effect,—to what we call high art,—to variations of a different kind, which would, according to our standard of taste, tend to vulgarity of effect. If we notice the preferences of the least cultivated classes of civilized human beings in relation to colour,—say the ordinary preferences of English sailors or English maidservants,— we might safely assume that they would not be directed towards perfect harmony of colour and perfect grace of form, but rather to startling and blotchy effects in both colour and form. But the splendidly coloured snakes and birds of tropical forests, however grand their colours, are never what our taste would call vulgarly coloured, never coarsely patched with frightful patterns, such as you constantly see on gaudy gowns, showy wall- papers, and glaring carpets. Yet if the tastes of snakes and birds be not of a wonderfully delicate and cultivated character, how are we to accept Mr. Darwin's theory ? Why were not the dark fulvous spots developed, through the agency of pheasant popular opinion, into hideous but showy whirligigs of yellow, such as a British cook would select for the pattern of her Sunday dress, instead of into the exquisite ball-and-socket pattern of the Argus pheasant ? Why is the order of development always from leas beautiful to more, instead of in the reverse direction towards gaudy vulgarity and detestable splendour? "The elongated and golden- orange plumes which spring from beneath the wings of the Paradisea apoda," says Mr. Darwin, "when vertically erected and made to vibrate, are described as forming a sort of halo, in the centre of which the head looks like a little emerald sun, with its rays formed by the two plumes. In another most beautiful species the head is bald and of a rich cobalt hue, crossed by several lines of black velvety feathers." Well, why did not development of the plumage most pleasing to these little creatures bring out instead something as ugly as the British matron's orange turban, sur- mounting a rich salmon-coloured silk dress ? Mr. Darwin accounts most ingeniously for the wonderful development of rich plumage, if he only gave us any equally adequate account of the wonderful development of animal taste. How did the preferences of the various tribes of creatures happen to select harmonies so perfect, when the rudimentary tastes of partially civilized human beings seem to select ornament so hideous ? Surely the problem re- mains as difficult as ever,—namely, to account for the sure selection of exquisite harmonies of form and colour, instead
of the most atrocious discords. Put the mind of the average English barmaid into the hen pheasants, and instead of distinguishing by their preference the variations tending to- wards such ball-and-socket ocelli, they would have distinguished by their preference variations of the " fulvous " tinge tending in the direction of coarse cap-string streaks of yellow, while the appearance of a few red bows in the neighbourhood would have caused a perfect enthusiasm. And instead of the elegant "ear-tufts" of certain humming-birds, such as Mr. Darwin describes, they would have influenced the development in the direction of heavy ear-drops adapted expressly to distort the shape of the ear. The exquisite harmony and graduation of the various bird-plumage would certainly never have been produced by the selective preferences of the lowest order of human beings. How, then, if Mr. Darwin's account of the cause of the development of beauty be admitted, are we to account for the sure artistic animal taste which determined its progress and direction?
We will offer a suggestion. Granting that Mr. Darwin is right in his explanation of the gradual growth and accumulation of beautiful colours and forms in the plumage of birds, through the preference for those birds which are the more beautiful, and the relative neglect of those which are less so, it must be plainly
conceded, we think, that some of the lowest animal orders possess a far finer artistic sense than does uncultivated man even in an advanced stage of civilization. When we consider the frightful as well as barbaric ornamentation which Sir John Lubbock tells us that savage women are compelled to undergo,—as, for instance, great seams of sears all round their middle,—and compare it with the preference of hen pheasants for the "elliptic ornaments" and the " ball-and-socket " plumage, we must admit at once that the hen pheasants have a far finer sense of beauty than the Australian males. Now, we also know that in reference to quite other cases, the animal instinct., are superseded in man by a general development of reason, which, for the special purposes of instinct, is, at first at all events, a vastly inferior instrument. No human reason would suffice to effect what the beaver, and the ant, and the bee effect by instinct alone. The bee's power of building per- fectly hexagonal cells may, as Mr. Darwin has shown, be a developed instinct, since certain wild bees build cells of a much ruder kind ; but no one supposes that even the hexagonal cells are built on strictly geometrical principles, by true bee engineers who have studied the trigonometry of the subject. And yet men who have, would be puzzled to build cells one-hundredth part as perfect as the bees. Does not this seem to show that as reason begins to supersede instinct, we gain a far higher and wider power,—the power of laying the intellectual basis of our own rules,—at the expense of a great specific loss of practical skill ? And may not something of the same kind be true of the sense of beauty ? If Mr. Darwin is right as to the principle which stimulates the elaboration of beauty by the lower animals, does not the Creator give the lower order of animals an instinct of beauty ready-made, which we lose as we become competent to apprehend its laws, and which we only recover by mastering consciously those laws of harmony which the bird and even the fish apprehend instinctively ? Yet if this be a true account of the matter, this instinctive selection of the beautiful leads to a theological inference a good way beyond that war- ranted by the selection of the useful. Of course, with regard to the natural selection of modifications useful to the creature which undergoes those modifications, it may be said that they are merely the survivors of thousands of modifications which are lost out of sight merely because they were injurious or indifferent. But with regard to the selection of the beautiful, this cannot be said. If there were any race of birds which really preferred pure ugliness,—there might and must be a natural selection of ugliness of which we suppose there is no trace. Hence, the instinctive taste for beauty in the bird, which is so much greater than that of half-educated human beings, and which is only painfully recovered through the laborious study of Nature by educated intelligences, must come from a fountain of infinite love of beauty, and cannot by any possibility be the mere result of a competitive struggle for existence among animals quite unconscious whither the issue of that struggle tends.
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