See Lagrange's Physiology of Bodily Exercise, especially chapter ii. It is a significant fact that, as Sergi remarks (Les Emotions, p. 330), the physiological results of dancing are identical with the physiological results of pleasure.
Groos, Spiele der Menschen, p. 112. Zmigrodzki (Die Mutter bei den Volkern des Arischen Stammes, p. 414 et seq.) has an interesting passage describing the dance—especially the Russian dance—in its orgiastic aspects.
Féré, "L'Influence sur le Travail Volontaire d'un muscle de l'activité d'autres muscles," Nouvelles Iconographie de la Salpêtrière, 1901.
"The sensation of motion," Kline remarks ("The Migratory Impulse," American Journal of Psychology, October, 1898, p. 62), "as yet but little studied from a pleasure-pain standpoint, is undoubtedly a pleasure-giving sensation. For Aristippus the end of life is pleasure, which he defines as gentle motion. Motherhood long ago discovered its virtue as furnished by the cradle. Galloping to town on the parental knee is a pleasing pastime in every nursery. The several varieties of swings, the hammock, see-saw, flying-jenny, merry-go-round, shooting the chutes, sailing, coasting, rowing, and skating, together with the fondness of children for rotating rapidly in one spot until dizzy and for jumping from high places, are all devices and sports for stimulating the sense of motion. In most of these modes of motion the body is passive or semipassive, save in such motions as skating and rotating on the feet. The passiveness of the body precludes any important contribution of stimuli from kinesthetic sources. The stimuli are probably furnished, as Dr. Hall and others have suggested, by a redistribution of fluid pressure (due to the unusual motions and positions of the body) to the inner walls of the several vascular systems of the body."