Closely connected with these facts, perhaps only a somewhat
different aspect of them, is the phenomenon of motor mechanization.
Any movement repeated tends to become a circular reaction, as it
is called; that is, the end of one repetition serves as a cue
for the beginning of the next. Now, in regularly recurring
stimuli, giving rise, as will be later shown, to motor reactions,
which are differentiated through the natural periodicity of the
attention (physiologically the tendency to motor discharge), we
have the best condition for this mechanization. In other words,
a rhythmical grouping once set up naturally tends to persist.
The organism prepares itself for shocks at definite times, and
shocks coming at those times are pleasant because they fulfill
a need. Moreover, every further stimulus reinforces the original
activity; so that rhythmical grouping tends not only to persist,
but to grow more distinct,--as, indeed, all the facts of
introspection show.
All this, however, is true of the repetition of objectively
equal stimuli. It shows how an impulse to rhythm would arise
and persist subjectively, but does not of itself explain the
pleasure in the experience of objective rhythm. It may be said
in general, however, that changes which would occur naturally
in an objectively undifferentiated content give direct pleasure
when they are artificially introduced,--when, that is, the
natural disposition is satisfied. This we have seen to be true
in the of color contrast; and it is perhaps even more valid in
the realm of motor activity. Whatever in sense stimulation
gives the condition for, helps, furthers, enhances the natural
function, is felt both as pleasing and as furthering the particular
activity in question. Now, the objective stress in rhythm is but
emphasis on a stress that would be in any case to some degree
subjectively supplied. Rhythm in music, abstracting from all
other pleasure-giving factors, is then pleasurable because it
is in every sense a favorable stimulation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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