In England, during this period, the writers on æsthetics define beauty more and more frequently, not by its own qualities, but by taste, and the discussion about beauty is superseded by a discussion on taste. After Reid (1704-1796), who acknowledged beauty as being entirely dependent on the spectator, Alison, in his _Essay on the Nature and Principles of Taste_ (1790), proved the same thing. From another side this was also asserted by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), the grandfather of the celebrated Charles Darwin. He says that we consider beautiful that which is connected in our conception with what we love. Richard Knight’s work, _An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste_, also tends in the same direction. Most of the English theories of æsthetics are on the same lines. The prominent writers on æsthetics in England during the present century have been Charles Darwin, (to some extent), Herbert Spencer, Grant Allen, Ker, and Knight. According to Charles Darwin (1809-1882—_Descent of Man_, 1871), beauty is a feeling natural not only to man but also to animals, and consequently to the ancestors of man. Birds adorn their nests and esteem beauty in their mates. Beauty has an influence on marriages. Beauty includes a variety of diverse conceptions. The origin of the art of music is the call of the males to the females.[54] According to Herbert Spencer (b. 1820), the origin of art is play, a thought previously expressed by Schiller. In the lower animals all the energy of life is expended in life-maintenance and race-maintenance; in man, however, there remains, after these needs are satisfied, some superfluous strength. This excess is used in play, which passes over into art. Play is an imitation of real activity, so is art. The sources of æsthetic pleasure are threefold:—(1) That “which exercises the faculties affected in the most complete ways, with the fewest drawbacks from excess of exercise,” (2) “the difference of a stimulus in large amount, which awakens a glow of agreeable feeling,” (3) the partial revival of the same, with special combinations.[55] In Todhunter’s _Theory of the Beautiful_ (1872), beauty is infinite loveliness, which we apprehend both by reason and by the enthusiasm of love. The recognition of beauty as being such depends on taste; there can be no criterion for it. The only approach to a definition is found in culture. (What culture is, is not defined.) Intrinsically, art—that which affects us through lines, colours, sounds, or words—is not the product of blind forces, but of reasonable ones, working, with mutual helpfulness, towards a reasonable aim. Beauty is the reconciliation of contradictions.[56]