The Courtship of AnimalsPycraft, W. P. (William Plane)
Science
The Courtship of Animals
Pycraft, W. P. (William Plane)
Animal behavior; Natural selection
These emotions, varying in kind and intensity, are such as are embraced
in the term “Love” in the highest sense. They control the selection
of mates, but this selection takes no account, save by accident, of
qualities which have any value as factors of race-survival. In the
lower animals these are determined by natural selection, and sexual
selection adopts as it were the material furnished thereby. It
“selects” only in so far as it eliminates the non-sexually inclined,
and those which lack the qualities essential to ensure reproduction,
such as weapons for example. In human communities natural selection
is largely avoided, and “mate-hunger” seems now to be swayed by more
than the mere desire for its satisfaction. With the development of
human faculty new factors have been introduced, complex emotions have
come into being, whose influences are as yet only vaguely understood.
Whither are they tending? What will be their effect on race-progress?
These are matters of grave importance to us all, and to the student of
Eugenics in particular.
Of man’s higher emotions, which, it is contended, now govern his
conduct, probably the earliest to assert itself was the æsthetic. His
quickening mentality could not fail to be captivated by the bright
hues of birds and butterflies, and flowers, the glorious colour-effects
of dawn and sunset, the seasons in their changes and so forth. And as
this sense of the beautiful slowly gathered force he would seek to
decorate his naked body with such of the more brightly-coloured objects
around him as were suitable or rather with such as could be affixed
thereto.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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