The Sense of the Beautiful in Brutes [pp. 126-142]

BEAUTIFUL IN BRUTES.
The solution which we have just offered may be found on
every page in Mr. Darwin's work; we have only borrowed it
from him. He would have assuredly chosen and adopted it if
his position had not been previously taken. He would have appropriated it the more readily, inasmuch as he has perfectly
measured the sense which is called the animal sense par excellence, that of smell. This sense acts at the time of coupling
with prodigious energy. There are extraordinary instances of
it. The naturalist, Scarpa, assures us that if, after having handled she-frogs or toads, one plunges the hand into water, the
males which are there immediately gather around it from a great
distance. Without dwelling upon it, one readily perceives what
part so subtle an organ must have in the attractions which Mr.
Darwin attributes to the sentiment of beauty. Join the excitations of the sense of smell to those of the eye and ear, and see
if there is need of anything more to explain the phenomena
which have been accumulated with so much satisfaction. It
was especially sensation which should have been studied in the
animal. There would have been found an almost unexplored
field of manifold and instructive observations. In thus commencing the study of comparative psychology, admirable progress would have been made in this science, so new and important.
M. H. Joly has attempted it, and has succeeded to an extent
already worthy of eulogy. As to Mr. Charles Darwin, it could
not in justice be said that he did not wish to do it, but could he?
His absolute adhesion to the principle of evolution, his pre-conceived and systematic idea that man descends from the animal,
obliged him to violate the most elementary rules of the method.
He forgets that man knows his own mental nature better than
that of the animal; that consequently it is the faculties of the
human soul which should first be analyzed. Pressed by the desire to find our ancestors in the sphere of animality, he increases
at pleasure points of resemblance, and diminishes individual
differences so far as to efface them. This dangerous tendency
of mind is manifested anew in his work, otherwise so ingenious,
on the Expression of t,e Emotions in Man and Animals. Here
again the clouds abound, the phenomena and faculties of mental
life are mingled and confounded. One looks in vain for any
psychological distinction whatever between sensation in its dif
1874.]
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