Again—when I say that æsthetic interest does not prompt to action, I am, of course, speaking of those who enjoy, not of those who are laboriously trying to enjoy, still less of those who create what is to be enjoyed. It commonly requires effort, conscious and unconscious, to be a good spectator; it always requires effort to become a good artist. Yet these are no real exceptions to the principle. Æsthetic interests, once aroused, do not prompt to action; and it is, I conceive, of their essence that they should not. The most emotional spectator does not rush to save Desdemona from Othello; and, though tragedy may (or may not) purify by “pity and terror,” the pity does not suggest a rescue, nor the terror urge to flight. II Now these characteristics of æsthetic emotions and beliefs raise problems of great interest. How came they to be what they are? To what causal process are they due? In the case of ethics (to anticipate a discussion that will occupy us in the next lecture) the earlier stages at least are seemingly due to selection. They lead to action, and to action which has survival value. But what survival value have æsthetic judgments and feelings at any stage of culture? It is true that actions which are sometimes represented as primitive forms of artistic creation play their part in the drama of animal courtship. Some animals dance, some sing, some croak; some flaunt colours, some exhale smells. Apes (it seems) make inarticulate noises which (according to Spencer) were the humble beginnings, not only of speech, but of music. I own that to me this sort of explanation leaves our æsthetic interests quite unexplained. Grant, for the sake of argument that, were our knowledge sufficient, we could trace a continuous history of musical emotions from the simple satisfaction excited in the female ape by the howling of the male, down to the delicate delights of the modern musician, should we be nearer an answer to the problem of æsthetic causation? I doubt it. Certainly we should not have succeeded in coupling the development of our feelings for beauty to the general process of organic evolution. Before this can be satisfactorily accomplished it must be shown, not merely that the tastes of anthropoid apes are useful to anthropoid apes, but that the tastes of men are useful to men, and in particular that the tastes of civilised men are useful to civilised men. Nor would even this be enough unless usefulness be carefully defined in terms of survival value. It must, in other words, be shown that communities rich in the genius which creates beauty and in the sensibility which enjoys it, will _therefore_ breed more freely and struggle more successfully than their less gifted neighbours. And I am not aware that any attempt to establish such a doctrine has ever been seriously undertaken.