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
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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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    are able to turn ourselves away from their stimulation as soon as we begin to be weary. Hence, we must avoid the use of the picturesque in our homes, and must deal most carefully with strong contrasts in the decoration of rooms in which we wish, to live, or in buildings which we are com- pelled to view constantly. On the whole, it appears that the safest means of pro- ducing lasting gesthetic results will be reached if we choose that succession of contents, each of which is naturally led up to by those which have preceded. [In physiological language : we will gain our result best if we choose such successive impressions as will stimulate organs that have been best and fully prepared for action by the associa- tive nutrition (if I may so speak) connected with the previously stimulated activities.] From this we may argue to a wide sesthetic law, which may perhaps be called the principle of the satisfaction of expectancies—a legitimate description of the means of gaining gesthetic result here touched upon, as all such movements of thought appear in retrospect to be expectation i^hases which are fulfilled.^ That this canon, however, although of wide application, is not a universal one for sesthetics, is apparent when we consider that our normal, indifferent, scarcely con- scious life is largely made up of these fulfilments of expecta- tion, not recognised as such, to be sure, unless their legitimacy is questioned in one way or another, and unrecognised because the ordinary reaction is immediate, and thus not involving any marked transformation of surplus potential into actual energy, i.e. not involving pleasure. 1 Cf Bergman, Vehcr das Schdne, p. 132, where the value of arousing expectation and allowing its satisfaction is discussed and carried out to the explanation of the delight obtained in curves, etc. The same argument suffices to explain the pleasures reached by the contemplation of nuances ot all kinds.
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