[1] Related to the famous Rutgers family of New York City and New Jersey, Marshall had a privileged upbringing.

[2] He attended the finest New York private schools as a child, and studied architecture as both an undergrad and graduate student at Columbia.

[3] Marshall was also active with the New York City Art Commission, where he served as the executive secretary.

Aside from his devoted career in architecture, Marshall became fascinated by psychology and philosophy, and began studying paths where the two subjects intersected.

Marshall pursued these subjects without any formal training in psychology or philosophy, whatsoever; rather, they were merely interests to him.

He developed a wide range of interests in topics including intelligence, sensation, consciousness, emotion, religion, instinct, synesthesia, and dreams.

His first major appearance came with the publishing of his book Pain, Pleasure, and Aesthetics in 1894, known as his most famous and influential work.

[5] In this book, Marshall rejected the structuralist ideals of physiological and anatomical evidence pointing to pleasure and pain sensations.

William James, now known as one of the most influential American philosophers, praised Rutgers’ book endlessly.

Marshall combined all of these aspects into his own system that held pain and pleasure as the basis for all esthetic experiences and judgments.

[2] Though Marshall never held an academic position in the field of psychology, he became a figure that many psychologists looked to.

He was influential of Alexander Bain, Mary Calkins, Josiah Royce, and Edward Titchener.

In 1909, Marshall wrote a paper in response to Titchener's book Lectures on the Elementary Psychology of Feeling and Attention.

He repeatedly argued with psychologists who sough physiological explanations for psychological events, pegging these individuals as too dependent on natural sciences.

Understandably, many individuals who viewed psychology from a physiological or behaviorist perspective grew to dislike him.

Against his prior beliefs, Marshall stated that pacifists needed to lay aside the thought of peace and instead devote all energies to anything that might yield victory.

Though the study of aesthetics is still popular today, it is primarily from an arts and philosophy perspective, with no attention paid to Marshall's work.

However, Marshall's refusal to accept the role of nerves in pain resulted in his views becoming outdated and irrelevant.