Pain, pleasure and æsthetics : an essay concerning the psychology of pain and pleasure, with special reference to æsthetics / by Henry Rutgers Marshall.

  • Henry Rutgers Marshall
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pain, pleasure and æsthetics : an essay concerning the psychology of pain and pleasure, with special reference to æsthetics / by Henry Rutgers Marshall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    becomes important, however, in another direction. If tliere arise, by suggestion from the expressions of another, trains of thought which are normally connected with other secondary trains, but if by skilful management the arousal of these secondary trains be prevented, then we have a condition of artificial inhibition which will result in pleasure-getting whenever the secondary trains are allowed to appear. [In physiological language this may be spoken of as artificial nutrition of organs ivhich are to be called into action; for the normal connection between the primary and secondary trains implies connections between the stimuli which bring nutrition to the organs involved in the presentation of the two trains. The temporary inhibition of the secondary trains, therefore, implies a gain of nutrition in the organs of tlie secondary trains without the use of the energy accumulated.] Such it seems to me is the process in the delicate play of wit. In what is usually called the ludicrous we use this means, although much of the effect in such cases is dependent upon sudden transitions, in the lines of ordinary association, from mental processes which involve effort to more habitual processes where the same energy will produce greater effects, i.e. hypernormal stimulation. It is not desirable to argue this point here at length, for such argument would carry us too far from our line of thought. While other sources of pleasure-getting are made use of in various ways together with the action above described, I think it can be shown that this is the characteristic move- ment in what is usually called the ludicrous, and that it serves well to harmonise the oppositions of the many thinkers who have attempted analysis of this mental state. Those cases of the ludicrous which seem to involve little except surprise are explicable on the ground that the surprise in-
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