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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    I think it must be granted that the mass of aisthetic pleasures is reached by slightly vivid presentations in varied directions, but, as we have so often noted, it is vividness also which leads to pain, [If hypernormal activity be continued after the surplus force stored up in an organ has been exhausted, pain results ; hence if this unusual activity be continued for any great length of time, we will have the conditions productive of pain.] It becomes necessary then for us to consider the means to be adopted to bring about permanency of pleasure field, and this brings us to the second division proposed in the beginning of this part. I 8. Our problem here is to define the conditions which make possible the attainment of relative permanence of pleasure. We have already seen (1) that absence of a content from consciousness for an unusual time suffices to make it pleasurable when it appears; also (2) that vividness of impression is an important source of pleasure-getting ; but (3) that the avoidance of continuity of vivid presentation of any one set of contents is a necessity if pain is to be avoided. [In physiological terms : Rest from action before action in a given organ is one of the conditions to pleasm^e-getting from the content which appears with such activity, or else hypernormality of action in the organ ; but the avoidance of continuity of hyper- normal action in any one set of organs is also a necessity if pleasure be sought; for such continuity uses up all surplus energy and leads directly to the physiological conditions which involve pain production.] If, then, a permanent pleasure field is to be reached, a
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