...dispositions and ideas of beauty and in our empathy with the object that stimulated an aesthetic response: 'every different species of sensible creatures has...them is most affected with the beauties of its own kind'.59 We are likely to be most affected not only by the beauty of other human beings, but by those...

...directed in the choice of a mate, and in the love and care of their offspring. 'We see', says Mr Addison, 'that every different species of sensible creatures...affected with the beauties of its own kind. This is nowhere more remarkable than in birds of the same shape and proportion, where we often see the mate...

...(Spectator 412, 6:129). Addison illustrates this sort of beauty with the example of a male bird who may be "determined in his courtship by the single grain or tincture of a feather," which might seem to suggest that the origin of pleasure in this sort of beauty lies in the gratification...

...beauty, this trait beingnowhere more remarkable than in birds of the same family, where the male is determined in his courtship ' by the single grain or tincture of a feather, and never discovers any charms but in the colour of its own species.' It is to be feared that in his election...