Note 609 — Chapter XVI · ON FORM AND MECHANICAL EFFICIENCY

Delight in beauty is one of the pleasures of the imagination; there is no limit to its indulgence, and no end to the results which we may ascribe to its exercise. But as for the particular “standard of beauty” which the bird (for instance) admires and selects (as Darwin says in the Origin, p. 70, edit. 1884), we are very much in the dark, and we run the risk of arguing in a circle: for wellnigh all we can safely say is what Addison says (in the 412th Spectator)—that each different species “is most affected with the beauties of its own kind .... Hinc merula in nigro se oblectat nigra marito; ... hinc noctua tetram Canitiem alarum et glaucos miratur ocellos.”