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

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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$pleasurable recurrence of the content is again possible. This brings before us again the great principle of lihythm (see Chap. V. § 5). [Because processes of nutrition are relatively regular, the times required for complete recovery after full use remain approximately equal in the same set of organs, and it thus happens that we learn to act at recurrent regular intervals, being thus enabled to hold to a special subject-matter for a long time, not only without fatigue, but, if the rhythm be properly timed, with marked pleasure.] Accurate rhythms are most notable in music and poetry, but what may be termed inaccurate rhythms are the very ordinary tools of the artist in other lines also. The power of order, in architecture, for example, and the value of sym- metries ^ generally, depend largely upon such rhythms. Instances will be recalled by the reader in all the arts with- out special example. Passing to the consideration of the shifting of attention Uyond the same field, from field to field, we obtain the weU- recoguised canon of Variety. Monotony of stimulations gives us first indifference and then the positive pains of fatigue. If the content of consciousness be constantly changed, how- ever, the chances of pleasure gain are greatly increased; if a unity be recognised in the variety, on the principles already discussed, we have an added pleasure to that gained by the shifting of the centre of interest. Variety, however, like all the melns of pleasure stimulation, is likely to be carried too far. Variety of pleasurable exhaustive stimulation will eventually aggravate the trouble we attempt to correct 1 SyiBtnetries also may be held to produce effect through l^ype-omal stimuhis involved in the recognition of the unity of the manifold. I may beTel here to remark that the search for symmetry m theoretical fo m 'Ailh has Ted many a metaphysician astray has probably had its basis m the {esthetic demand of his nature.$