THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLUMS AND PEACHES.
IN a very curious and very instructive, though also very extravagant, paper in the new number of the Cornhill Magazine, with the initials "G. A."—possibly, though we have only internal evidence to guide us, those of Mr. Grant Allen, the author of a very ingenious, and also very extravagant, book on "Physiological }Esthetics," which we reviewed in these columns rather more than a year ago*—we find a magnificent peroration, in which the writer becomes much too eloquent on the evolution of all the poetry of colour out of the association between edible fruits and the bright colours by which edible fruits are usually distinguished. "It must be remembered," he writes of the tribes of fruit-eating animals, "that the earliest fruit-eaters, though they might find the scarlet, crimson, or purple coats of their food an aid to dis- crimination in the primeval forest,would not necessarily derive any pleasure from the stimulation thus afforded. That pleasure has been slowly begotten in all frugivorous races by the constant use of these particular nerves in the search for food, which has at last pro- duced in them a calibre and a sensitiveness answering pleasurably to the appropriate stimulation. Just as the peach which a dog would reject, has become delicious to our sense of taste ; just as the pineapple, at which he would sniff unconcernedly, has become exquisite to our sense of smell,—so the fine tints of the plum, the orange, the mango, and the pomegranate, which he would disregard, have become lovely to our sense of colour. And further still, just as we transfer the tastes formed in the first two cases to the sweetmeats of the East, or to the violets, hyacinths, or heliotropes of our gardens, so do we transfer the taste formed in the third case to our gorgeous pansies, roses, dahlias, crocuses, tiger-lilies, and chrysanthemums, to our silks, satins, damasks, and textile fabrics generally ; to our vases, our mosaics, our painted windows, our frescoed walls, our Academies, our Louvres, and our Vaticans. Even as we put sugar and spices into insipid dishes, to gratify the gustatory nerves, whose sensibility was originally developed by the savour of tropical fruits, so do we put red, blue, and purple into our pottery, our decoration, and our painting, to gratify the visual nerves, whose sensibility was originally developed by the rich tints of grapes and strawberries, star-apples, and oranges." But the Cornhill writer soars far above this comparatively low level. Not only does he deliberately maintain that "all these varied objects of civilised life may be traced back directly to the reaction of coloured fruits upon the structure of the mammalian eye," but he concludes thus :—" What a splendid and a noble prospect for humanity in its future evolutions, may we not find in this thought, that from the coarse animal pleasure of be- holding food, mankind has already developed, through delicate gradations, our modern disinterested love for the glories of sun- set and the melting shades of ocean, for the gorgeous pageantry of summer flowers and the dying beauty of autumn leaves, for the exquisite harmony which reposes on the canvas of Titian, and the golden haze which glimmers over the dreamy visions of Turner ! If man, base as he yet is, can nevertheless rise to-day in his highest moments so far above his sensuous self, what may he not hope to achieve hereafter, under the hallowing influence of those chaster and purer aspirations which are welling up within him even now towards the perfect day !" For our own parts, if the writer's belief were based on anything more than very wild hypothesis, we should not be at all inclined to draw the same infer- ence as he draws. If conspicuous colours, only by becoming asso-
On June 2nd, 1877.
elated with agreeable and life-sustaining processes of nature, rigie into the symbols of what is ideally lovely and sublime, we should infer rather the extremely untrustworthy and valueless character of the latter conceptions, and therefore the barrenness of human nature, rather than the grand prospects which the Cornhill writer unfolds. But the truth is that nothing can be wilder, or less connected with the very valuable dissertation with which "G. A." precedes these speculations, than the speculations themselves. That the brightness of fruit aids birds and other fruit- eating creatures to discover it,—that they, again, by their dis- covery, and wide dissemination of the seeds it contains, aid its reproduction from those seeds,—is matter of fact ; and that a cer- tain measure of enjoyment in the consumption of the fruit is likely to produce an association of pleasure with the mere vision of it, and so far to render its colour—when combined with the other signs of an agreeable fruit—pleasurable, is probable, from what we know of our own experience as children and as men. But beyond this the Cornhill theorist is soaring into a world of dreams, which is in amusing and almost absurd contrast with the moral dignity of his peroration. Let us briefly consider the real drift of this strange philosophy of plums and peaches.
Now the Cornhill maintains that the fruit-eating creatures come to the enjoyment of colour, and therefore (through the influence of the relation of sex) to their own adornment in bright colours, much before the carnivorous mammalia,—that the dog, for instance, through not caring for fruits, has no sense of colour at all like that of a bird, and consequently, that, comparatively, dogs are far less gaily coloured than birds. And this may possibly be trite. But if it be so, what is the proper inference? Surely that if the sense of beauty grows out of the sense of taste, whatever the substitute sense may be by which such mammalia are guided to their favourite food,—in dogs, chiefly the sense of smell, we suppose,— through that sense, the sense of beauty should, in such a race and its descendants, be built up. For example, man is, like the dog, carnivorous. If it is the association with peaches, plums, and cherries, say, which makes birds, and fruit-eating creatures generally, delight in the beauty of the various shades of pink, purple, and the red and white of the cherry, why is not some similar sense of beauty evolved out of the dog's delight in carrion or man's in Stilton cheese and roast pork ? The pleasure of the carnivorous races in the smell of flesh, and in the scent of the creatures on whose flesh they prey, is quite as keen, probably even keener, than the pleasure of the frugivorous races in the colour of the fruits on which they feed ; and man is the inheritor of both instincts. Why, then, does the one develope into the artistic sense, and the other into nothing at all beyond itself ? Why is that sense, which belongs in its primitive form to by no means the highest class of animals, de- veloped into this high sense of beauty and sublimity, while another, which belongs to higher classes of animals, and is just as much also the heritage of man, evolves no such grand elements at all ? Surely, if there be anything in the Cornhill critic's idea that the sense of beauty in colour is evolved out of the association with pleasing food, we ought to have the noblest sense of beauty associated with the odours of the kitchen, while Burke should have illustrated the sense of the " sublime " from the odour of a venison pasty.
In the next place, it is certainly not true that the birds which —if Mr. Darwin's explanation of beautiful plumage is to be trusted—are most sensitive to the beauty of colour, are chiefly fruit-eating or berry-eating. On the contrary, some of the most beautiful, like the goldfinch of this country, are chiefly seed- eating, not fruit-eating or berry-eating, and therefore cannot have learned to enjoy bright colours, if they do enjoy them, through association with their food ; while some of the most voracious of the fruit-eaters and berry-eaters,—Mackbirds and thrushes,—are, if we may judge by their plumage, and if we reason on Mr. Darwin's assumption as to the origin of bright plumage in birds, no great admirers of bright colours. Again, the humming-bird, according to Mr. Wallace, far from being chiefly a fruit-consumer, is in the main insectivorous, and will not live even on honey without a supply of insects. The peacock, again, with his brilliant plumage, is almost exclusively a grain-eater, and though he is very destructive to gardens, is not a devourer of fruit or of berries, at all events to anything like the extent of a host of other much tamer-coloured birds. Numbers of purely worm-eating, insectivorous, carnivorous birds, again, have very fine plumage,—like our English shrike, for instance,—so that in these cases the pleasure in colour —if they have it, as Mr. Darwin's theory would assert —has certainly not been inspired by association with their favourite food. In fact, we believe the Corn kill reviewer's theory that the testhetic delight in colour originates in fruit-eating habits, to be as devoid of foundation as a theory which is not at variance with all the facts, but only with the greater number of them, well can be.
Again, if, in the ultimate analysis, we admire sunsets and moon- rises and the starry night, and Titian and Turner, because our ancestors were fond of oranges, and apricots, and yellow goose- berries, and currants, and plums, why do we not also shrink from all those colours which by our barbarous forefathers were still more closely associated with pain,—such as the colour of blood, for instance, or the colour of ice and snow, or the colours of the animals they most dreaded ? Is the sense of beauty in colour nothing but the balance of the pleasant against the unpleasant asso- ciations connected with any one colour? Would the colour of deadly nightshade be esteemed ugly, if no wholesome fruits existed of the same colour? and is the sense of beauty we attach to its colour, attenuated imperceptibly,but really, by the past ex- perience of mankind and birdkind of its pernicious character ? If so, whence the delight in the deep blue of an Italian sky ? No fruit that we can remember, of any kind at all, exhibits any such shade. Do we admire a lovely child's cheek because it re- minds us,—or at least reminds the race,—of the peach when it is ripe,—or rather admire the ripe peach as we do because it reminds us of the beauty of a lovely child's cheek ? Does the sense of beauty trace its descent downwards from the associations of the animal nature with its food of long ago, or upwards from the associations of our human nature with the highest aspirations of man as man? From all we know on the subject, we believe the latter. And there is nothing in the very interesting and instructive facts, or in the extravagant speculative flights which follow the facts, of "U. A.'s " article in the Carnhill Magazine, which tends in the least degree to shake that belief.
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