, and
certain insects seem to prefer certain colors. But you may say that
these afford merely sense gratification like that which green
affords to our eyes or sugar to our tastes.

But does not the grouping of colors in the flower appeal to some
aesthetic standard in the mind of the insect? What of the tail of the
peacock? Its iridescent rings and eyes evidently appeal to something
in the mind of the female. Do form and grouping minister to pure
sense gratification? What of the song of the thrush? Does not the
orderly and harmonious arrangement of notes and cadences appeal to
some standard of order of arrangement, and hence idea of harmony, in
the mind of the bird's mate?

Now, I grant you readily that the A B C of this training is mere
sense gratification at the sight of bright colors. Most insects and
birds have probably not advanced much beyond this first lesson.
Savages have generally stopped there or reverted to it. But any
appreciation of form and harmonious arrangement of cadence and
colors seems to me at least to demand some perception which we must
call aesthetic, or dangerously near it. But here you must judge
carefully for yourselves lest you be misled. For remember, please,
that those schemes of psychology farthest removed from, and least
readily reconcilable to, the theory of evolution maintain that
perception of beauty is the work of the rational faculty, which also
perceives truth and right in much the same way that it perceives
and recognizes beauty. If the animal has the aesthetic perception, it
has the faculty which, at the next higher stage of development, will
perceive, and recognize as such, both truth and right. We are
considering no unimportant question; for on our answer to this
depends our answer to questions of far greater importance.

Does it look as if the animal had begun to learn the first rudiments
of the great science of rights, of his own rights and those of
others? This is an exceedingly difficult question, though often
answered unhesitatingly in the negative. But what of the division of
territory by the dogs in oriental cities, a division evidently
depending upon something outside of mere brute strength and power to
maintain, and their respect of boundaries? The female is allowed, I
am told by an eye-witness long resident in Constantinople, to
distribute her puppies in unoccupied spots through the city without
interference. But when she has once located them, she is not allowed
to