These elementary pleasures of light, colour, and certain simple aspects of form, may be said to be the basis of a crude perception of beauty in natural objects and in the products of human workmanship. A quite small child is capable of acquiring a real admiration for a beautiful lady, in the appreciation of which brightness, colour, grace of movement, the splendour of dress, all have their part, while the charm for the eye is often reinforced by a sweet and winsome quality of voice. Such an admiration is not perfectly æsthetic: awe, an inkling of the social dignity of dress,[203] perhaps a longing to be embraced by the charmer, may all enter into it; yet a genuine admiration of look for its own sake is the core of the feeling. In other childish admirations, as the girl’s enthusiastic worship of the newly arrived baby, we see a true æsthetic sentiment mingled with and struggling, so to speak, to extricate itself from such ‘interested’ feelings as sense of personal enrichment by the new possession and of family pride. In the likings for animals, again, which often take what seem to us capricious and quaint directions, we may see rudiments of æsthetic perceptions half hidden under a lively sense of absolute lordship tempered with affection. ----- Footnote 203: On the nature of the early feeling for dress see Perez, _L’Art et la Poésie chez l’Enfant_. ----- Perhaps the nearest approach to a pure æsthetic enjoyment in these first experiences is the love of flowers. The wee round wonders with their mystery of velvety colour are well fitted to take captive the young eye. I believe most children who live among flowers and have access to them acquire something of this sentiment, a sentiment of admiration for beautiful things with which a sort of dumb childish sympathy commonly blends. No doubt there are marked differences among children here. There are some who care only, or mainly, for their scent, and the strong sensibilities of the olfactory organ appear to have a good deal to do with early preferences and prejudices in the matter of flowers.[204] Others again care for them mainly as a means of personal adornment, though I am disposed to think that this partially interested fondness is less common with children than with many adults. It is sometimes said that the love of flowers is, in the main, a characteristic of girls. I think however that if one takes children early enough, before a consciousness of sex and of its proprieties has been allowed to develop under education, the difference will be but slight. Little boys of four or thereabouts often show a very lively sentiment of admiration for these gems of the plant world. ----- Footnote 204: See Perez, _L’Art et la Poésie chez l’Enfant_, p. 90 f. -----