Note note 47 — ANALYSIS OF THE PHENOMENA OF THE HUMAN MIND James Mill

47 The elements contributed by association are certainly more predominant in the pleasure of colours than in that of musical sounds; yet I am convinced that there is a direct element of physical pleasure in colours, anterior to association. My own memory recals to me the intense and mysterious delight which in early childhood I had in the colours of certain flowers; a delight far exceeding any I am now capable of receiving from colour of any description, with all its acquired associations. And this was the case at far too early an age, and with habits of observation far too little developed, to make any of the subtler combinations of form and proportion a source of much pleasure to me. This last pleasure was acquired very gradually, and did not, until after the commencement of manhood, attain any considerable height. The examples quoted from Alison do not prove that there is no original beauty in colours, but only that the feeling of it is capable, as no one doubts that it is capable, of being overpowered by extraneous associations.

Whether there is any similar organic basis of the pleasure derived from form, so far at least as this depends on proportion, I would not undertake to decide.

The susceptibility to the physical pleasures produced by colours and musical sounds, (and by forms if any part of the pleasure they afford is physical), is probably extremely different in different organisations. In natures in which any one of these susceptibilities is originally faint, more will depend on association. The extreme sensibility of this part of our constitution to small and unobvious influences, makes it certain that the sources of the feelings of beauty and deformity must be, to a material extent, different in different individuals.—Ed.