Romantic Love and Personal Beauty: Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiaritiesFinck, Henry T.
Science
Romantic Love and Personal Beauty: Their development, causal relations, historic and national peculiarities
Finck, Henry T.
Beauty, Personal; Love
Schopenhauer of course errs in attributing, in his ignorance of
Protective, Warning, and other colours, all the hues of birds and
butterflies to this agency. But it is probable that whenever colours and
other ornaments do not serve for purposes of protection (as _e.g._ the
lion’s mane and the horns of beetles, _vide_ _Tropical Nature_, p. 202),
they serve the purpose of sexual recognition of species. A case cited by
Darwin to prove that quadrupeds take notice of colour, is very
suggestive in this connection: “A female zebra would not admit the
addresses of a male ass until he was painted so as to resemble a zebra,
and then, as John Hunter remarks, she received him very readily.”
It is probable, therefore, that in many cases the unique spots and
stripes and colours of animals subserve the special use of facilitating
the finding of a partner; and in this way they relate directly to the
courtship and Romantic Love of animals. Thus we see how the Love affairs
of animals may indirectly affect their Personal Beauty in a way quite
different from that suggested by Darwin.
LOVE-CHARMS AND LOVE-CALLS
The same reasoning applies to the music of animals, vocal and
instrumental, on which Darwin lays great stress. In his opinion, the
music of some male animals serves to charm the females æsthetically, and
thus gives to the best musicians special advantages through Sexual
Selection. But the instances cited by him hardly warrant this
conclusion, and seem rather to point to the inference that the function
of animal music is chiefly to facilitate courtship, by making it easy
for the females to discover the whereabouts of a male of the same
species. The evidence tends to show that it is not the male whose voice
is most mellow and melodious that catches the female, but rather the one
who is most vigorous and persistent and has the loudest organ. As Jaques
says in _As You Like It_: “Sing it: ’tis no matter how it be in tune, so
it make noise enough!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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