An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German EditionWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
An Introduction to Psychology: Translated from the Second German Edition
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Educational psychology; Psychology
rhythmical row of beats the agreeableness is generally very moderate,
we clearly observe that with many individuals the feeling of pleasure
contained in it often sinks below the threshold of consciousness, so
that they only perceive the objective constitution of the beats. With
others this subjective reaction becomes very prominent. The feeling of
pleasure will, as is well known, become more intense, when harmonious
tones combine with the rhythmical beat into one melodious whole. The
agreeable feeling that then arises from the melody can scarcely be
wanting in any individual consciousness. Just here we note that the
degree of this feeling of pleasure for one and the same melody can
vary extraordinarily for different individuals. And these subjective
differences increase more and more as the melodious compound becomes
more complicated. A complicated tone-structure may produce the greatest
ecstasy in a musician, whereas it may leave an unmusical person
absolutely cold. The latter, on the other hand, may perhaps find a very
simple melody agreeable, and this same melody may appear trivial to the
musician and therefore disagreeable. In all these cases we see that the
feeling of pleasure, which is bound to certain sensations and ideas, is
purely subjective. It is an element that is not only dependent upon the
impression itself, but also and always and most of all dependent upon
the subject receiving the impression. And negatively the subjective
character of this feeling is shown in the fact that it is never
projected into the outer world, although it may be so closely bound up
with the idea that refers to the outer world.
But feelings of pleasure are not the only ones that we observe in our
rhythm experiments. If we call to mind the exact state of consciousness
between two beats of a rhythmical row, we notice that the apprehension
of the identity of two intervals arises by means of a subjective
process. This process takes place in the same manner within each of the
two compared intervals, and thereby gives rise to the impression that
they coincide. In ordinary life we generally speak of the phenomena,
that are observed in such cases, as a change from "expectation" to
"realisation." If we follow these phenomena a little more closely, we
notice that in our case the process of expectation is a continuous and
regularly varying one. At the moment immediately following one beat,
expectation strains itself to catch the next one, and this straining
increases until this beat really occurs. At the same moment the strain
is suddenly relieved by the realisation of the expected, when the
new beat comes. Then the same process is repeated during the next
interval. If the arrangement of the beat is more complicated because
of different degrees of emphasis, then these subjective processes
become in proportion more complicated, since several such processes of
expectation and realisation overlap one another.
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