An introduction to the experimental psychology of beauty / by C.W. Valentine.

  • Valentine, C. W. (Charles Wilfred), 1879-1964.
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the experimental psychology of beauty / by C.W. Valentine. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    55/136 (page 51)
    The Pleasure of Successful Mental Activity.— Our pleasure in straight lines or regular curves or symmetrical figures is not, however, entirely to be explained by the suggestion of pleasant movement. We must fall back on a fundamental prin- ciple of psychology, that mental actwity 1s pleasant in so far as i eee as successful. Now attention is a form of mental activity, and we find that we experience pleasure when the attention process is facilitated by the unity of the object. A conglomeration of lines having no regular plan about them gives us no pleasure. A line such as that in Fig. 6 displeases us. Having set out to be a curve, with a certain regularity about it, it ceases to follow this plan. Our attention is thwarted and disappointed. The line cannot be taken in at a glance as a unity, as it could if the - even curve had continued. Of course some _ baffling of mental effort may be the means “ of stimulating to keener activity, and if this is successful 1t may be the means of B further pleasure. Too simple a line or figure does not provide us with enough , about which to occupy our mind. But a serpentine curve, while changing, changes gradually ; there is not the same “ shock ” about the change. We may even like a very sudden change in some of the lines of a figure, if the figure as a whole is enough to occupy fully this heightened activity of mind, and if the figure as a whole can be apprehended with comparative ease. Thus ,. : starting from A in Fig. 7, we get a great an change in direction at B and again at c. But we have now a more complex figure than a straight line. And the principle of change is grasped at once.