There is also pleasure in the mere _repeating_ of symmetrical groups,
although, when the attention is turned to this feature, the feeling of
_symmetry_ is less felt. Even when attending chiefly to the repetition
of the groups, the symmetry of each is felt somewhat, which makes the
whole experience better than Fig. 19, but the two attitudes seem to
hinder, rather than help each other.
This introspection was suggestive, giving rise to two more questions:
(1) When is variation allowable, and when not? Is it adapted only to
objects when taken, as ends-in-themselves, and not when considered as
means to something else, _i. e._, as means to make a series or border,
or anything which takes attention from themselves as unities with
individual meaning? (2) Is a distinctly symmetrical group as adapted
to repetition, as such, as one with merely equal divisions? Does it
not tend more to repose in itself, instead of to the motion necessary
for the apperception of a repeated series? These questions will be
considered later.
_Temporal type:_ R. felt a difference in the movement across, in that
in Fig. 20 it was from the centre of one unit to the next, while in
Fig. 19 there was no regularity in the movement.
L. felt the difference between the two apperceptions very strongly. In
Fig. 20 the movements seemed organized. He felt as if his attention
(if not his eyes) went back and forth from edge to edge of the unit,
finally settling in the centre; while in Fig. 19 the very essence
of the apperception was that every line was compared with every
other, meaning a great number of movements in both directions, _not_
stopping in the centre. If he did rest finally in the centre, in the
unit of Fig. 19, instead of seeming evenly repeated, it too became
symmetrically perceived, but the usual way to get from one such unit to
the next was to move _from_ and _to_ any point in the next adjacent,
other than the central one. In either case the pleasure came in
identification of the second figure with the first, and the feeling, "I
have seen it before." The pleasure lay in the process of recurrence of
sameness.
V. also, who had not felt much motion in Fig. 19 at first, felt it
strongly now in comparison with Fig. 20. He said in the former,
although he did not make actual movements across (in fact his eyes
were plainly at rest), he was sure he felt "dispositions to do so"
which were lacking in Fig. 20. The pleasure came in the first moment of
repose after finding the new unit was the same as the old.
After we had investigated the different methods of apperceiving groups
of repeated lines, and compared the effects of different groupings,
and studied the feeling of one unit alternating with another, another
question arose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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