Principles of literary criticismRichards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong)
Philosophy
Principles of literary criticism
Richards, I. A. (Ivor Armstrong)
Criticism
To speak of the intrinsic pleasure-unpleasure of a sensation
is perhaps misleading. The pleasantness of a sensation as we
know is a highly variable thing. It may alter completely while
the strictly sensory characteristics of the sensation remain
as before. The difference in the same smell of liquor, before
and after an alcoholic excess is a striking example. A sound
which is pleasant for a while may become very unpleasant if it
continues and does not lapse from consciousness. And yet indisputably
it may remain _qua_ sensation the same. A sound-sensation
may remain unchanged in tone, volume and intensity yet vary widely
in pleasure-unpleasure. This difference is important. It is one
of the chief reasons which have caused feeling (pleasure-unpleasure)
to be distinguished from sensation as altogether of a different
nature. Tone, volume and intensity are features in the sound
closely dependent upon the stimulus, pleasantness is dependent
not on external stimulus but upon factors, very obscure at present,
in us. All here is conjecture. The close connection of stimulus
with sensation we know because it happens to be comparatively
accessible to experiment. And introspection of sensations of
external origin is for that reason much more easy than introspection
of most visceral or organic sensations. We can practise it freely
and repeat it and so control our results. To a lesser extent
those sensations of internal origin which we can in part consciously
control, those due to voluntary movements, share this double
accessibility. But all the rest of the multifarious conscious
goings on in the nervous system remain obscure. One broad fact,
however, is important. The effects in the body of almost all
stimuli of whatever nature are extraordinarily numerous and varied.
“You cannot show the observer a wall-paper pattern without by
that very fact disturbing his respiration and circulation.”[41]
And no man knows what other disturbances do not join in. The
whole body resounds in what would seem to be a fairly systematic
way. Whether the outpouring of this tide of disturbance makes
up a part of, gives a tone to consciousness, or whether only
the incoming reports of the results can be conscious is a question
upon which no conclusive evidence would seem to be yet available.
The incoming reports of some at least of these disturbances certainly
can become conscious. A lump in the throat, a yearning of the
bowels, horripilation, breathlessness, these are their coarser
and more obvious forms. Usually, they are less salient and fuse
with the whole mass of internal sensations to form the _cœnesthesia_,
the whole bodily consciousness, tinging it, altering its general
character in some one of perhaps a thousand different ways.
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