8 



LANDSCAPE DESIGN 



Pleasure 



Pleasure in 

 Sensation 



knowledge of the material world, are called by psychologists sensation, 

 perception, and intellection, and the results of these processes are called 

 respectively sensations, percepts, and concepts. 



It should be remembered that although these various processes of 

 the mind can be talked of separately they may go on together. A man 

 makes no conscious distinction among them, and indeed even in the 

 case of perception he is usually quite unconscious of the process until 

 his attention is arrested by the thing perceived. 



All mental processes are accompanied by emotion, whether vivid 

 or pale, and when we say "pleasure," we mean only any of the many 

 different forms of emotion which are pleasurable ; that is, pleasure is 

 a name for a certain character of emotions. The three mental processes 

 which we have just mentioned may each be accompanied by pleasure 

 which we may conveniently call : sensory pleasure, perceptive pleasure 

 (including pleasure of imagination), and intellective pleasure ; and which, 

 like the three processes, are usually not consciously distinguished. 

 For instance, a man stands upon a terrace overlooking a garden. He 

 feels the sunshine, he smells the flowers, his eyes receive the stimulus 

 of bright color, and he gets from all this a pleasure of sensation, which 

 is simple, direct, and hardly capable of further analysis. At the same 

 time, however, he perceives the symmetrical arrangement of the beds, 

 the orderly progression of the heights of the flowers, and he gets from 

 this a perceptive pleasure. He may also be stimulated to imagine quite 

 another garden, of different design, for a different situation which he 

 has in mind, and from this unreal image he may derive a pleasure of 

 imagination as vivid as that given by the real garden before him. Fur- 

 ther he understands the permanence and economy of the construction, 

 he believes that a difficult problem has been well solved, in the real 

 garden or in that of his imagination, and he receives from this knowl- 

 edge intellective pleasure. 



If we analyze the sources of pleasure of sensation, we find that a 

 sensation will have a pleasant quality according to the duration, in- 

 tensity, and character of the stimulus. A sensation may be pleasurable 

 at first and then through its duration become painful or annoying, 

 as, for instance, too long hearing of a continued musical note, too long 

 gazing at a brilliant object ; or by continuance and repetition a sensation 



