The Descent of Man

irregular intervals are highly disagreeable, as
every one will admit who has listened at night
to the irregular flapping of a rope on board
ship. The same principle seems to come into
play with vision, as the eye prefers symmetry
or figures with some regular recurrence. Patterns
of this kind are employed by even the
lowest savages as ornaments; and they have
been developed through sexual selection for the
adornment of some male animals. Whether we
can or not give any reason for the pleasure thus
derived from vision and hearing, yet man and
many of the lower animals are alike pleased by
the same colours, graceful shading and forms,
and the same sounds.
The taste for the beautiful, at least as far as female
beauty is concerned, is not of a special
nature in the human mind; for it differs widely
in the different races of man, and is not quite
the same even in the different nations of the
same race. Judging from the hideous orna-