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 coloured 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 the delight of man. So it is with the music of
birds. We may infer from all this that a nearly similar taste for
beautiful colours and for musical sounds runs through a large part of the
animal kingdom. When the female is as beautifully coloured as the male,
which is not rarely the case with birds and butterflies, the cause
apparently lies in the colours acquired through sexual selection 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 colours, forms and sounds--was first
developed in the mind of man and of the lower animals, is a very obscure
subject. The same sort of difficulty is presented if we enquire how it is
that certain flavours and odours 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.
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