Up tp the age of 30 or beyond, poetry of many kinds.. gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took great delight in SHakespeare
Formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried to read Shakespeare, and found it to be so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost any taste for pictures or for music... I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me exquisite delight which it formerly did... My mind seems to have become a machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. but why this should have cause that atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend I cannot concieve... the loss of these tastes, is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebleing the emotional part of our nature.. Charles Darwin in his autobiography
2007-07-27
14:30:18
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9 answers
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Philosophy