In a treatment of the relation between art and sexual life the facts must necessarily be classified under two different headings, namely, the influence of artistic activity upon sexual selection and the importance of erotic motives in works of art. These two points of view have indeed often been confounded with each other. But it will soon appear from the following how indispensable it is to maintain the distinction between them.
In modern literature there has scarcely appeared any treatise of the same importance, not only for the theory of art, but also for æsthetic proper, as the chapters on sexual selection in The Descent of Man. As is well known, Darwin supposes a necessary connection between beauty and art. He takes it for granted that music, poetry, drama, and the rest chiefly aim at pleasing. When he sees that activities and forms, which at least technically correspond to the various kinds of art, are to be met with not only among the lower tribes of man, but even among some of the higher animals, he therefore explains these forms and activities as emanating from a conscious or unconscious endeavour to please through beauty. And for this endeavour he finds a reason in the necessity of gaining preference in the favour of the female. By endowing the female with æsthetic attention and æsthetic judgment[262] he has been able not only to explain the appearance of art amongst savages and animals, but also to account for the importance of beauty in life.
In the foregoing arguments we have already with sufficient clearness pronounced our dissent from Darwin’s primary supposition. In the chapter upon the art-impulse we have tried to show that this tendency in its essence is something quite different from the tendency to “attract by pleasing.” But with all this theoretical argumentation it has of course not been proved that the endeavour of the males to win the favour of the females by singing, dancing, and other similar performances has exercised no influence on the history of art. However little these activities may have to do with real art, they might, however, have afforded a raw material to be used by the art-impulse proper for its own purposes. In this connection it is necessary, therefore, to discuss the question, To what extent has æsthetic choice, exercised by either of the sexes in selecting a mate, favoured the development of artistic activities in the other sex?
The æsthetic theory of Darwin has its chief interest in the fact that it can be applied to the activities of animals as well as to those of men. Darwin himself has chosen the majority of his examples from bird life, and his critics have generally restricted the discussion to the zoological application of his thesis. As the data of animal psychology are less complicated than the corresponding facts in the mental life of man, it is in every respect advantageous to begin with this supposed animal art. When the illustrations are chosen from bird life the argumentation can, moreover, be handled with a freedom which would be impossible in discussing the delicate questions of human erotics and sexual life.
The theory of an appeal to some primordial æsthetic appreciation in the hen birds is one which, however well it may account for the beautiful plumage of some species and for the melodious singing of some others, necessarily must arouse objections from the point of view of comparative psychology. Æsthetic judgment presupposes a certain development not only of intellectual qualities, but also of moral self-restraint. In other words, it might be said that attention to beauty, whether manifested in forms or colours or sounds, always is what Ribot calls an “attention volontaire.”[263] It is hard to believe that the hen really has reached such a state of spiritual freedom that, when looking at the finery and the antics of her rival suitors, she could be able to bestow her attention upon the æsthetic qualities in the display. One has only to work out into all its details and consequences the idea of a bird who approves or disapproves the performance, and who, after balancing the merits of the various competitors, awards her prize to the one nearest her ideal of beauty, in order to realise the improbability, not to say the absurdity, of this avian connoisseurship. M. Espinas, who describes in detail the dilemma of the anxiously hesitating arbiter, has added nothing to the theory of æsthetic selection. But it may safely be said that his illustration of the thesis acts as a caricature of it.[264]
The improbability of an æsthetic judgment is yet more palpable when one considers the state of mind in which the hen is likely to be on the occasion. It has indeed been contended with regard to some species—as, for instance, the satyr bird—that the hen behaves with a perfect calm and indifference during the display of the cock.[265] But it would be undoubtedly too rash to form any general conclusion on the ground of her outward show in some single instances. Amongst the wood-birds, on the other hand, the hens are known to be so excited during the “Balz” that they can easily be caught with the hands.[266]
To all these a priori objections there may also be added the remark of Geddes and Thomson, that if the females of insects and birds had really called into existence all the detailed patterns on the dresses of their respective males by the exercise of æsthetic selection, they would possess more discrimination than is shown in their predilection for any sort of gaudy-coloured objects, such as pebbles, slips of paper, and rags.[267]
However great the psychological improbability of the supposed æsthetic selection, there is still more reason to take exception to it from an evolutionistic point of view. The female appreciation for gaudy and gorgeous dresses must necessarily, as Darwin himself remarks, in many cases give rise to a plumage, as a result of which the males become encumbered in their movements and easily discovered by their enemies.[268] Æsthetic judgment, which is in itself so incomprehensible, would thus have been developed in a continuous conflict with natural selection. This circumstance, more than anything else, makes it indispensable to look for some more utilitarian cause of the secondary sexual characters and activities than the hypothetical necessity of satisfying a sense of beauty in the female sex.
By the theory that has been advanced by Wallace, and further developed by Westermarck, the nuptial dresses of the males have indeed been accounted for in a simple way.[269] Reference to the need of recognisable marks for every different species can explain the most prominent characteristics in male plumage without any appeal to an æsthetic sense. This need, together with the equally great indispensability of protective colouring, must necessarily give rise to precisely such brilliant coloured spots on a monotonous or plain surface as are so often found on the bodies of the northern birds. The gaudier coloration of the tropical species, on the other hand, appears as a result of their more brilliant surroundings. Even here protective colouring often leaves to the colour of recognition only a narrow and limited space, on which this has to develop itself with so much the greater intensity. In this way one can find a reason not only for the decorations, which are beautiful according to our standard, but also for the inharmonious and glaring colour-combinations.
An adherent of sexual selection can, however, easily object that these theories, however sound and sensible they may be, still leave the main point in Darwin’s thesis quite unaffected. When trying to prove the existence of an æsthetic judgment in birds, he did not lay so much stress upon decorative plumage itself as upon the fact of its being displayed in the presence of the hen. If secondary sexual characters had their only purpose in facilitating recognition between individuals of the same species, then these elaborate performances would be quite superfluous. And this argument can of course be further strengthened by reference to the musical and dancing entertainments given by the males. Any theory which leaves these activities unexplained must therefore be regarded as incomplete.