3F IS CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library BF575.L3 S95 Essay on laughter. Its forms. Its causes olin 3 1924 028 924 888 DATE DUE £- Tl^ ^\L5^-^^96frM r- GAYLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028924888 -7 2^^^ e ^ ^ c U AN ESSAY ON LAUGHTER BY TEE SAME AUTHOR. THE HUMAN MIND : a. Text-book of Psychology. 2 vols. 8vo, 21*. OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY. Crown 8vo, 9s. THE TEACHER'S HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY. Crown 8vo, 6s. 6rf. STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 8vo, 10s. 6d. CHILDREN'S WAYS : being Selections from "Studies of Childhood". With 25 Illustrations. Crown 8to, gilt top, 4s. 6cJ. LONGMANS, GBEEN, AND CO., LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY. AN ESSAY ON LAUGHTER ITS FORMS, ITS CAUSES, ITS DEVELOPMENT AND ITS VALUE JAMES SULLY, M.A., LL.D. AUTHOR OP "THE HUMAN MIND," "STUDIES OP CHILDHOOD," ETC. LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1902 13 /= 76' L3 ■S96- ^fi. ^Ai; (?3 TO MY CHILDREN AND MY PUPILS IN THE HOPE THAT IF THEY CULTIVATE BOTH BEAIN AND HEART, AND HAVE A QUICK EAB FOB THE MUFFLED MOANINQS ALONG THE BOAD, THEY MAY HEAR ALSO, ABOVE THE DEEPEB MUSIC, THE BLITHE NOTES OF LAUQHTEB. PEEFACE. The present work is, I believe, the first attempt to treat on a considerable scale the whole subject of Laughter, under its various aspects, and in its connections with our serious activities and inter- ests. As such, it will, I feel sure, lay itself open to the criticism that it lacks completeness, or at least, proportion. A further criticism to which, I feel equally sure, it will expose itself, is that it clearly reflects the peculiarities of the experience of the writer. The anticipation of this objection does not, however, disturb me. It seems to me to be not only inevitable, but desirable — at least at the present stage of our knowledge of the subject — that one who attempts to understand an impulse, of which the intensities and the forms appear to vary greatly among men, of which the workings are often subtle, and of which the sig- nificance is by no means obvious, should, while making full use of others' impressions, draw largely on his own experience. Portions of the volume have already appeared in Keviews. Chapter I. was published (under the viii PREFACE title " Prolegomena to a Theory of Laughter ") in The Philosophical Review, 1900 ; Chapter V., in the Reme Philosophique, 1902 ; and Chapter VIII., in The International Monthly, 1901. The parts of Chapters III. and VI. which treat of the psycho- logy of tickling appeared in the Compte rendu of the Fourth International Congress of Psychology (/F™' Congrhs International de Psychologie), Paris, 1901. Some of the ideas in Chapter X. are out- lined in an article on " The Uses of Humour," which appeared in The National Review, 1897. Some of my obligations to other writers and workers have been acknowledged in the volume. For friendly assistance in reading the proofs of the work I am greatly indebted to Mr. Carveth Eead, Dr. Alexander Hill, Prof. W. P. Ker, Mr. Ling Eoth, Dr. W. H. K. Rivers, Miss C. Osborn, and Miss Alice Woods. H6TEL DU Weisshokn, Val d'Anniviers, August, 1902. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Intboduotoey. Objections to a serious study of laughter Previous treatment of subject by philosophers . Their way of dealing with facts .... Examination of an illustration given by Dr. Lipps Common defects of theories ' Difficulties of attempt to treat subject scientifically ■ Scope of inquiry CHAPTER II. The Smile and the Lauqb. Need of studying the bodily process in laughter , Characteristics of the movements of the smile Expressive function of the smile . Continuity of processes of smiling and laughing . Characteristics of the movements of laughter Concomitant organic changes during laughter Physiological benefits of laughing EfEects of excessive laughter .... The laugh as expression .... Relation of expression to feeling in laughter Interactions of joyous feeling and organic concomitants Deviations from the normal type of laugh . CHAPTER III. Occasions and Causes of Lauqhteb. Laughter as provoked by sense-stimulus : tickling . Ticklish areas Characteristics of the sensations of tickling Motor reewjtions provoked by tickling . PAOK 1 i 6 9 17 19 20 25 26 27 27 30 33 31 37 39 40 44 48 50 52 53 56 CONTENTS strain How far attributes of sensation determine laughter of tickling The mental factor in effect of tickling Objective conditions of successful tickling . Tickling as appealing to a particular mood . 2. Other quasi-reflex forms of laughter Varieties of automatic or " nervous " laughter Common element in these varieties : relief from 3. Varieties of joyous laughter Prolonged laughing fit . The essential element in joyous laughter Occasions of joyous laughter (a) Play ... . . (6) Teasing as provocative situation (c) Practical joking and laughter . {d) Laughter as an accompaniment of contest (e) Occasions of unusual solemnity as provoking laughter Physiological basis of laughing habit FAOE 57 59 60 62 64 65 67 70 73 75 76 76 77 78 78 79 80 CHAPTER IV. Vaeieiies of the Laughable. The objective reference in laughter 82 Universal element in the laughable 83 Groups of laughable things 87 (1) Novelty and oddity 87 (2) Bodily deformities 88 (3) Moral deformities and vices 91 (4) Breaches of order and rule 94 (5) Small misfortunes 96 (6) Beferences to the indecent 98 (7) Pretences 101 i(j^8) Want of knowledge or skill 102 (9) Relations of contrariety and incongruity .... 107 (10) Verbal play and witticism Ill Co-operation of different laughable features .... 114 (11) Manifestations of playfulness in objects .... 116 (12) Spectacle of successful combat 117 CHAPTER V. Theories of the Ludicbous. 1. The Theory of Degradation Hg Aristotle's theory 120 Theory of Hobbes 120 CONTENTS Xli Prof. Bain's theory Critioism of theory of degradation 2. Theory of Contrariety or Incongruity Kant's theory of nullified expectation . Critioism of Kant's theory .... Function of surprise in efiect of the ludicrous Schopenhauer's theory of incongruity . Criticism of Schopenhauer's theory Difierent forms of the incongruous Summary of criticism of theories .... Attempts to unify the two principles . The laughable as failure to comply with a social requirement How primitive laughter comes into efiect of the ludicrous . Belation of sudden gladness to release from constraint Element of contempt in effect of the ludicrous . Laughter and the play-mood The play-mood in the efiects of the ludicrous Summary of results of inquiry into theories PAGE 121 122 125 12e 126 129 130 132 134 ,'13^ 136 a39:; 140 rTIi) 142 145 149 153 CHAPTER VI. The Obighn op Laughter. Problem of the origin of laughter in the race Supposed rudiments of mirth in animals .... The dog's manifestations of a sense of fun .... The mirthful displays of the ape First appearance of laughter in child : date of the first smile Date of the first laugh The laugh as following the smile Order of the two in the evolution of the race Conjecture as to genesis of the human smile How the primitive smile may have grown into the laugh . Problem of the evolution of the laughter of tickling . Effects of tickling in animals Date of first response to tickling in the child Tickling as inheritance from remote ancestors . Value of evolutional theories of tickling .... How laughter may have come into tickling 155 156 159 162 164 166 168 170 171 173 176 177 177 178 181 183 CHAPTER VII. Development of Laughteb dubing the Pibst Thbeb Years of Life. Problem of the early development of laughter in the individual . 186- Development of smile and laugh as movements 188 FAQE 189 194 xii ~ CONTENTS The general process of emotional development . . . • Relation of laughter of joy to that of play Development of laughter of joy '■^^ Emergence of laughter of surprise l"" First laughter of release from strain 19'^ 'Crude form of laughter of jubilation 198 Development of laughter as accompaniment of play .... 198 Early forms of laughing impishness 201 First manifestations of rowdyish laughter 203 response, even if the attacker be his familiar tickler, father or nurse ; and the same is true, he adds, of a child when suffering from vaccination, or when mentally preoccupied with some hurt for which he is seeking for sympathy, or with ' a story which he wants you to tell him. As Darwin puts it,_; the great subjective condition of the laughter of tickling is that the child's mind be in "a pleasurable condition," the state of mind which welcomes fun in all its forms. Possibly the position of lying on the back, which, according to Dr. L. Robinson, makes children more responsive to tickling, may, through a relaxation of the muscles, favour this com- pliant attitude of self-abandonment to the tickling fingers. We may perhaps sum up the special conditions of the laughter-process under tickling as follows : when a chUd is tickled he is thrown into an attitude of indefinite ex- pectancy. He is expecting contact, but cannot be sure of | the exact moment or of the locality. This element of un- J certainty would in itself develop the attitude into one of uneasiness and apprehensiveness ; and this happens save when the child is happy and disposed to take things lightly '< and as play. In this case we may suppose that the half-J developed mild form of fear is each time swiftly dissolved into nothing by a recognition of the unreality of the cause, 1 of the fact that the touches are harmless and come from the j good-natured mother or nurse by way of play. This recog- nition becomes clearer as the process is continued, and so there supervenes a new attitude, that of play, in which all 64 OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER : serious interpretation is abandoned and the gentle attacks 1 are accepted as fun or make-believe. If this is a correct analysis of the experience of the tickling which excites laughter, we, seem to have in it at a very early age elements which are to be found, in a more fully developed form, in the later and more complex sorts of mirth, namely, relief from a serious and constra ined attitude, a transition from a momentary apprehension induced by the presentation of the partially unknown, to ajoyous s^nse of harmless make-believe. That this is so is further evidenced by the familiar fact that a child, when used to the game, will begin to laugh vigorously when you only threaten with the advancing fingers. As a German writer observes, this is a clear case of Lipps' theory of annihilated expectation ; ^ only he omits to note that the laughter depends, not on the mere fact of annihilation, but on the peculiar con- ditions of it in this case, involving a slight shock at the approach of something partially unknown to a specially sensitive region of the organism, and the instant correction of the apprehension by a recognition of its harmlessness. Much the same kind of stimulative process seems to be present in the other and allied cases of reflex or quasi-reflex laughter. It is well known that certain sense-stimuli which excite sensations of a disagreeable character, but which,, though acute, are not violent, such as the application of a cold douche, are apt to provoke laughter. According to the German authority just quoted, the eflect depends here, too, on variation in respect of the intensity and the locality of the stimulation. He found further, in carrying out psychological experiments, that whereas the introduction of a stronger stimulus than was expected is apt to excite apprehension in ' G. Heymans, Zeitschrift fil/r die Psychol, und die Physiol, der Simme^ Bd. xi., ss. 31 ff. PROCESSES SIMILAR TO TICKLING 65 the subject, that of a weaker stimulus will excite laughter.^ Here, too, we seem to have a sensational reflex in which is present a distinctly mental element, viz., a moment of mild shock and apprehension at the sudden coming of something disagreeable and partially unknown, instantly followed by another moment of dissolution of shock in a pleasurable recognition of the harmlessness of the assault. 2. Laughter is not, however, always of this reflex form. It may arise without sensory stimulation in an '' automatic"! manner as the result of a cerebral rather than of a peripheral] process. This is illustrated by the seemingly causeless laughter which breaks out in certain abnormal states and j has an " uncanny " aspect for the sane observer. ] A well- known example of this is the eff'ect of the action on the brain centres of laughing gas and other substances. Such " automatisms " occur, however, within the limits of normal experience, as when la person laughs during a state of high emotional tension. I propose to speak of such seemingly uncaused reactions as nervous laughter.^ A common and simple variety of this nervous laughter , is the spasmodic outburst that often succeeds a shock of fear. A child will laugh after being frightened by a dog ; a woman often breaks out into a nervous laugh after a short but distinctly shaking experience of fear, e.g., in a carriage behind a runaway horse, or in a boat which has nearly capsized. And it does not seem that such laughter is pre- ceded by a perception of the absurdity of the fear, or of any similar mode of consciousness ; it looks like a kind of physiological reaction after the fear. ' Heymane, loc. cit. "The abnormal foims of automatic laughter, including the effects of stimulants, are dealt with by Kaulin, op. cit., 2toe partie, chap, xv., and 3*me partie. 5 66 OCCASldNS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER / The same thing will show itself in circumstances which / give rise to a prolonged mental attitude, involving a feeling I of apprehensiveness and of constraint. Thus a shy man, ! making his first essay as a public speaker, will sometimes i betray his nervousness on the platform by weird little I explosions of laughter as well as by awkward gestures. I have noted the same thing in strangers to whom I have spoken at a table d'hSte abroad. The way in which little spasms of laughter are apt to intrude themselves into situations which, by making us the object of others' special attention, bring an awkward consciousness of insecurity, is further illustrated in the behaviour of many boys and girls when summoned to an interview with the Head,' in the laughter which often follows the going up to take a prize before a large assembly^ and the like. The strong tendency to laugh which many persons ex- perience during a solemn ceremony, say a church service, may sometimes illustrate the same effect. When an jenforced attitude, difficult to maintain for the required (length of time, brings on the impulse, this will gather /strength from the growth of a feeling of apprehension west we should not be equal to the test imposed. r~ Another variety, coming under the head of nervous , laughter, is the sudden outburst which now and again occurs in a state of great emotional strain, having a dis- l^tinctly painful character, especially when it includes some- ' thing in the nature of a shock. I The news of the death of .'Ian acquaintance has been known to excite a paroxysm of 1 laughter] in a company of young persons from nineteen to twenty-four years of age.^ One may assume here that the 1 Given in the returna to Stanley Hall's inquiries. This explosion of laughter on receiving sad news occurs in cases of cerebral disorder. See Dugas, op. eit., p. 16. FORMS OF NERVOUS LAUGHTER 67 outbreak is not the direct result of the news, but depends on the effect of the shock, with the abnormal cerebral tension ( which this involves. /' A like spasmodic outburst of laughter occasionally occurs during a more prolonged state of painful emotional excite- ment. It sometimes intrudes itself into a bout of physical suffering. Lange speaks of a young man who, when treated for ulceration of the tongue by a very painful caustic, regularly broke out into violent laughter when the pain reached its maximum.^ Many persons when thrown into a prolonged state of grief, accompanied by weeping, exhibit a tendency to break out into laughter towards the end of the fit. Shakespeare illustrates this tendency when he makes Titus Andronicus, whose hand has been cut off, answer the question why he laughed with the exclamation : " Why I have not another tear to shed".^ Can we find a common element in these different forms'] of nervous or apparently unmotived laughter ? We appear r to have in all of them a preceding state of eonsciousnessj which is exceptionally intense and concentrated. ,'The situation of fear, of constraint on being made the object of others' unusual observation, of suddenly hearing news of deep import for which the mind is not prepared, of prolonged emotional agitation, these all involve an intensification of the psycho-physical processes which immediately condition our states of consciousness. Looking at these intensified ^ Quoted by Dugas, op. cit., p. 12. ^ Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth perpetrate a pun in a moment of intense excitement when Macbeth's hesitation goads her into a resolve to carry out the murder herself : — " I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal For it must seem their guilt ". Did he mean to illustrate by this the way in which emotional strain tends to lapse for a brief moment into laughter ? 68 OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER forms of consciousness more closely, we observe that ' ttey include something in the nature of psychical pressure, of Ithe presence of forces which make for disorder, whereas the i^tuation calls for severe self-control^' This special strain thrown on the voUtional process is illustrated in the demand for closer observation and calm reflection during a fit of fear, or other emotional excitement, which tends to bring about a state of wild movement and of disorderly ideas. It : is, I believe, \the specially severe strain belonging to such an attitude which is the essential pre-condition of the laughter. It makes the attitude a highly artificial one, and one which it is exceedingly diflficult to maintain for a long period. As such,! the attitude is eminently unstable, and tends, so to say, to break down of itself; and will CCTtainlyLjepUapse, partially at least, if _^e_demand seems, though only for a moment, to grow_Jees Jmperative. Hence the readiness with which such a means of temporary relief as laughter undoubtedly supplies is seized at the moment. It remains to determine the character of this sudden relaxation of the strain of attention more precisely. As ! a sudden collapse, it is clearly to be distinguished from the gradual breakdown due to " mehtal fatigue " and nervous J exhaustion. The psycho-physical energy concentrated for the special purpose of meeting the strain is by no means used up, but has to find some way of escape. Here, no doubt, we seem to come across Mr. Spencer's ingenious idea that laughter is an escape of nervous energy which_has suddenly been set free. It is no less evident that the redundant energy follows the direction of the risible muscles because no other commanding object for the attention presents itself at the moment. The innervation of these muscles is not a mere diversion of attention: it is a d ispersion of the energies which for the maintenance of attention ought to LAUGHTER AS RELIEF 69 be concentrated. \_We are never less attentive during our waking life than at the moment of laughter. ,' Yet even here, I think, the theory of a convenient waste-pipe arrange- ment is not adequate. There is, I take it, in the case a relief of sur-charged nerve-centres, which process would seem to be better described by the figure of a safety- valve_ arrangenient. It is not difficult to surmise why the liberated energy should follow this particular nervous route. There is no doubt that the motor apparatus, by the disturbances of which all such interruptions of the smooth flow of respira- tion are brought about, is very readily acted on by emotional agencies. Altered respiration, showing itself in altered vocalisation, is one of the first of the commonly recognised signs of emotional agitation ; and this effect has been ren- dered more clear and precise by recent experiments. We should expect, then, that the collapse of strained attitudes, with the great change in feeling-tone which this must carry with it, would deeply affect the respiration. We know, however, more than this. Severe efforts of attention are in general accompanied by a partial checking of respiration, an effect which seems to be alluded to in the French expres- sion, an effort " de longue haleine ". On the other hand, the termination of such an effort is apt to be announced by the sigh of rehef. Now, though the movements of laughter are not the same as those of sighing, they resemble the latter in their initial stage, that of deepened inspiration. May we not conclude, then, that laughter is likely to occur as another mode of physiological relief from the attitude of mental strain ? And supposing, as seems certain, that laughter in its moderate degrees, by bringing a new brisk- ness into the circulation, relieves the congested capillaries of the brain, may we not go farther and say that nature has 70 OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER probably come to our aid by connecting with the mental upheavals and the cruel strains here referred to, which pretty certainly involve a risky condition of the cerebral system of capillaries, a mode of muscular reaction which is peculiarly well fitted to bring the needed relief ? More special conditions may favour the movements of laughter in certain cases. As I have observed above, Darwin suggests that the rapid alternation of crying and laughing which occur among hysterical patients may be favoured by " the close similarity of the spasmodic move- ments "} In other words, the motor centres engaged, when in the full swing of one mode of action, may readily pass to the other and partially similar action. This would help to account for the short outbursts of laughter during a prolonged state of painful agitation, and to explain the fact noted by Descartes, that no cause so readily disposes us to laughter as a feeling of sadness.^ Our theory plainly requires that these sudden breakdowns or relaxations of strained mental attitudes should, even when only momentary interruptions, be accompanied by an agree- able sense of relief. I believe that those whose experience best qualifies them to judge will say that this is so. The dead weight of the fear, the poignancy of the grief, and the constraining eifect of the situation of gene, seem to yield at the moment when the " awful laugh " is snatched at. This comforting sense of a lightened load, though in part the direct result of a cessation of cerebral strain, would, as we have seen, pretty certainly derive added volume from the returning sense-reports telling of the ameliorated condition of the bodily organs. 3. We have considered two of the varieties of laughter ^ Op. cit., pp. 163, 208. ^ See Les Passions de I'dme, 26iiie partie, art. 25. LAUGHTER OF JOY 71 which lie outside the region of our everyday mirth. We may now pass into this region, and inquire, first of all, into the causes of those varieties which come under the head of joyous laughter. Here we shall best begin by touching on the simple and early form which may be called the overflow of good sp irits^ Darwin, as has been mentioned, rightly regards the full reaction of the laugh_ as the universal expression by our species of good spirits, of a joyous, state, of mind. We have now to examine the mode of production of this simple type. _^ It is important to note that all experiences of pleasure do not bring on laughter. There are quiet enjoyments of a soothing character which are far from generating the power- ful impulse needed for the movements of diaphragm and rib. To lie on a summer day in a hammock in a wood and indulge in the sweets of dolce far niente is to be out of reach of the tickling imp. States of enjojmient, too, which, though exciting, require a measure of close attention, such as those occasioned by a glorious sunset, or stirring music, do not start the spasmodic contractions of muscle. The enjoyment . that moves us to laughter , mast, it is evident, amount ,to_,gladness or joy. And this means, first "^ of all, that the pleasurable consciousness must come in the form of a large accession, and, for a moment at least, be ample, filling soul and body. As the expression " good spirits " suggests, the organic processes during such states of joyous- ness are voluminous and well marked. As a part of this heightened tide of vital activity, we have the characteristic motor expression of the gladsome mind, the movement of the limbs, the shouting and the laughing. Not all risings of the vital tide, however, produce laughter. Gentle and gradual augmentations of the sense of well-being f, 72 OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER and happiness hardly tend to stir the muscles concerned. The joyous outburst marks a svdden accession of ha^py consciousness. It has something of the character of a /'violent flooding of the spirit and the corresponding bodily i conduits. There is a negative condition, also, to which it may not be superfluous to allude. The flood-like rise of the happy mood which is to produce laughter must not be accompanied by any further demand on the attention. A girl reading a first love letter from the man whom her heart has chosen will be glad, and will grow gladder by leaps and bounds. But the fulness of laughter will not come while unread words still claim the eye. The laughter of joy is most noticeable, I think, under two sets of conditions. Of these the first is the situation of release.from externa,l restraint. The wild jubilant gladness of boys as they rush out of school, provided that they have the requisite reserve fund of animal spirits, is the stock example of this sort of laughter. The explosion seems here to be a way of throwing off the constraint and the didness of the classroom, and getting a deep breath of the delicious sense of restored liberty. So far as the outflow of good spirits is thus connected with an escape from a serious and difficult attitude — strenuous application of the energies of mind and body in work — ijb is plainly analogous to the nervous laughter already considered. But the swift accession of joy may come in another way, from the sudden transformation of one's world, from the arrival of some good thing which is at once unexpected and big enough to lift us to a higher level of happiness. With children and savages the sight of a new and pretty toy is sometimes enough to effect this. The charming bauble will so fill sense and soul that the joy of living leaps to a HOW JOYOUS LAUGHTER ARISES 73 higher plane and bursts into a peal of mirth. The unexpected sound of the father's voice at the end of a long day devoted to the things of the nursery was, we are told, enough to evoke a shout of laughter in a small American boy : it sufficed to bring back to the little fellow's consciousness another and a glorious world. We older folk have, for the greater part, lost the capacity of simply greeting delightful things in this way, a greeting in which there is no thought either of their meaning or of their interest for us. Yet we may meet the unexpected coming of friends with something of the child's simplicity of attitude. It is hard not to smile on suddenly seeing a friend in a crowded London street: hard to keep the smile from swelling into a laugh, if the friend has been supposed at the moment of encounter to be many miles away. Some of us, indeed, may retain the child's capacity of laughing with a joyous wonder at a brilliant explosion of fireworks. It remains to account for the persistent fit of laughter whicii frequenfly accdinpahies a prolonged gladness. Does not the fact that the child and the natural man, when taken with the mood of mirth, go on venting their good spirits in renewed peals teU against our theory that the outburst is caused by an accession of joy ? In order to answer this we must look a_little more closely at this so-called persistent laughter. The language of observers of unsophisticated human nature is sadly want- ing in precision here. When, for example, we are told by travellers that certain savages are always laughing, we know that we are not to take the statement literally. It means only what it means when a mother tells her visitor that her rogue of a boy is for ever laughing and shouting ; that under certain favourable conditions the laughing fit comes readily and persists longer than usual. In a lasting 74 OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER mood of jollity we are all strongly inclined- to, laiighaJ^nd need very little to call forth a long outbursts i' This pretematurally large output of laughter during a pro- onged state of high spirits finds its explanation in part in a dnd of physiological inertia, the tendency to go on repeat- ing movements when once these are started. The protracted iteration of laughter in a child is closely analogous to that of his half -unconscious singing to himself. This tendency of movements to perpetuate themselves in a mechanical way probably accounts for the lengthening of the single outburst in the case of a child violently seized with mirth. As mothers know, this reduction of laughter to a mechanical iteration of movement is apt to continue beyond the limits of fatigue and to bring on such unpleasant eflPeets as " hiccup ". It is probable, too, that the tendency during a prolonged state of mirth to recommence laughing after a short pause is referrible to a like cause : the physiological springs of the movements being once set going, the explosive fit tends to renew itself. Discounting this effect of physiological inertia, we seem to find that in these periods of prolonged high spirits laughter retains its fundamental character as a compara- tively short process which occurs intermittently. Where the laughing is not merely a trick played off by the bodily mechanism, but holds a germ of mind in the shape of a happy consciousness, it has its large and significant pauses. If this is so, it seems reasonable to suppose that the mental antecedent which brings on some new explosion is analogous to the sense of " sudden glory " which accounts- for the single joyous peal. Owing t_o the exceptionally strong disposition to laugh during such a period, the antecedent feeling need not be a powerful one, a very slight PROLONGED PITS OF MIRTH 75 momentary increase of the joyous tone suflScing to give a fresh start to the muscles. It is not difficult to suggest possible sources of such slight sudden augmentations of the happy feeling-tone. No prolonged state of consciousness is, strictly speaking, of one uniform colour ; in the boisterous merriment of an old-fashioned dinner-party there were alternations of tone, brilliant moments following others of comparative dulness. The course of the bodily sensations in these prolonged states of joy is in itself a series of changes, involving a sequence of exaltations upon relative depressions of the " vital sense ". The course of the presentations to eye and to ear in such a festive mood must be subject to like fluctuations in respect of their action upon the feeling-tone ; and the same applies to the flow of ideas which can find a place in the mind when thus affected. Lastly, it must not be forgotten that the movements of attention would of themselves always secure a certain rise and fall of enjoy- ment. We all know how, when we are gladdened by some new and unexpected happiness, the mind after a short digression returns to the delightful theme, and how, as a result of this return, a new wave of joyous feeling seems to inundate the spirit. There seems much, then, to be said for the hypothesis that all varieties of joyous laughter (when not reduced to a mechanical form) are excited by soraething in the nature of a sudden accession of pleasurable consciousness. Where the laugh is a new thing, unprepared for by a previous mood of hilarity, this rise of the spirits will, as we shall see later, probably involve a transition from a mental state which was relatively depressed. Where, on the other hand, a joyoua mood prolongs itself, all that seems needed for re-exciting the movements of laughter (provided that the muscular 76 OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER Energies are equal to the explosion) is the sudden increase / by an appreciable quantity of the pleasurable tone of the \ jconsciousness. We may further illustrate and verify this generalisation respecting the causes of joyous laughter by an examination of some of the more familiar circumstances in which this is wont to occur. Here we shall of course be dealing with the early and unsophisticated mind. Properly drilled " grown-ups " but rarely exhibit the phenomenon in its full intensity. (a) It is a matter of common observation that joyous laughter is a frequent concomitant of the play-attitude, especially at its first resumption. We have already found this illustrated in the laughter of "happy boys'' just liberated from school. Here the conditions indicated, a relief from restraint and a sudden expansion of joyous activity, are patent to all. Closely related to this situation of released bodily energies is that of relieved mental restraint. During a nursery lesson — if only the teacher is a fond mother or other manageable person — the child is apt to try modes of escape from the irksomeness by diverting the talk, and especially by introducing "funny" topics; and the execution of the bold little manoeuvre is frequently announced by a laugh. By such familiar infantile artifices the pressure is lightened for a moment, and the laugh announces a moment's escape into the delicious world of fun and make-believe. The impulse to be gay and to laugh runs, moreover, through the enjoyment of play. No doubt this in its turn may often grow exceedingly serious, as when the illness of dolly, or the thrilling horrors of a bear's cave, or of an attack by scalping Indians, are realistically lived out. Yet we must remember that this playful tampering with LAUGHTER IN PLAY AND TEASING 77 the serious, even on its genuine side, is a part of the enjoyment. The momentary terror is desired by healthy young nerves, because the thrill of it, when the certainty of the nothingness lies securely within mental reach, is delicious excitement. A fuller examination of the relation of laughter to play belongs to a later stage of our inquiry. (b) Another situation which is ^los^ly related iQ._pla.j^,. is that j^ being^^teased. By " teasing " is here understood those varieties of attack which have in them an element of pretence, and .dp not cross the boundary Kne, of serious intention to annoy. As thus defined, teasing enters into a good deal of child's play. Tickling is clearly only a special modification of the teasing impulse. In some of the earliest nursery play, the game of bo-peep, for instance, there is an element of teasing in the pretence to alarm by a feigned disappearance, as also in the shock of the sudden reappearance. The teaaer_Qf-a._chiM, whether he threatens to pinch him or to snatch at his toy, carries out a menace ; but it is a make-believe menace — a thing to be a wee bit afraid of for just a moment, yet so li^t and passing as- to bring instantly the delightful rebound^ of disillusion, if only the subject keeps good tempered. On the teaser's side (when it remains pure teasing) it is prompted by no serious desire to torment, by no motive more serious than the half -scientific curiosity to see how the subject of the experiment will take it. The explosions of a good-humoured subject under such gentle teasing are closely analogous to those of a tickled child : they spring from a sudden sense of relief, of elastic rebound, after repression. The svdft alternations of moments of nascent fear and of joyous recognition of the fun of the thing are eminently fitted to supply the conditions of a sudden rising of the spirits. The child that likes to be 78 OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER teased — in the proper way of course — is perfectly willing to pay for these momentary delights by the momentary trepidations. On the side of the teaser, the situation is also highly favourable to outbreaks of hilarity. If successful, he reaps the joy of the superior person, and glories in the cleverness of his experiments. The swellings of the sense of power as he watches his victim give just those experiences of " sudden glory " which a philosopher places at the base of all enjoy- ment of the laughable ; and, alas, in the less kindly these risings of the pleasurable consciousness may continue and even increase after the teasing has ceased to be play and becomes indistinguishable from the behaviour of a tor- mentor. ^ (c) Much the same kind of remark applies to practical jok- ing, which, when it is not weighted with the serious purposes of punishment and moral correction, is merely an expansion of this playful attack of the tickler and the teaser. When the victim reaches the moral height of being able to enjoy the performance, his enjoyment comes under the head of dissolved apprehension, or disillusion after taking things too seriously. By far the larger share of the pleasure of the practical joke certainly falls, however, to the perpetrator, who in this case, too, realises a " sudden glory," an increased sense of power. (d) Once more, laughter is a common accompaniment of all varieties of contest or sharp encounter, both physical and mental. When, as in the case of the savage, the schoolboy and the civilised soldier, it breaks out after bodily fight, it 1 Oo-operative teasing, when it methodically " naga " a boy because he happens, for example, to take the unfashionable side in some political dispute, making his school-life a, torment, had — with all deference to apologetic headmasters, be it said — better change its name. LAUGHTER IN CONTESTS 79 haa some of the characteristics of nervous laughter. It is a : (e) As a last group of situations favourable to the ex- perience of joyous expansion we have those in which, an unusual degree of solemnity is forced upon us. This has already been touched on. Extremes seem to meet here. It might be expected that an impulse born of the play-mood would find its natural dwelling-place in scenes of social gaiety and conviviality. And in the days when society was gay the festive board was doubtless the focus of the activity of the mirthful spirit. In our time it seems almost more natural to associate a laugh with a funeral ceremony than with a dinner-party. Yet the art of extracting fun from solemn things is not of to-day, as may be seen by a glance at the jokes of the church architect and the play writer of the Middle Ages. In such bizarre intrusions of the droll 80 OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OP LAUGHTER into the domain of the solemn we seem to find the struggling; of an irrepressible gladness of spirit against .the ..honds. which threaten to strangle it. Whether the invasion of the territory of the solemn by the jocose results in a barely mastered impulse to laugh, depends on variable conditions. The frivolous mind, hardly touched by the gravity of the occasion, wUl, no^qubt, often be the first to welcome the delivering hand. Yet it is an error to suppose that a tendency to laugh on a solemn occasion shows want of genuine emotion. The sincerest worshipper in a church may, if he have the_ requisite sensibility, be moved to laughter by some grotesque Jn- cident, such as the mal b, propos remark of a garrulous child. For the point of our theory is that laughter in such cases is an escape from pressure ; and the man who feels deeply at such a moment may experience an emotional pressure which equals, if it does not exceed, that of the external constraint which the non-reverent " worshipper " is experiencing. It is true, of course, that the deeper the feeling the greater the inertia that will have to be overcome before the laughing impulse can make way for itself. Yet here, again, we must remember that emotional temperaments vary, and that with some a genuine awe and even an intense grief may yield now and again for a moment to the challenge of the laugh- able when its note catches the ear. The last remarks suggest that in any attempt to deal with the conditions favourable to laughter reference should be made to those physiological characteristics which are supposed to determine the particular temperament of a man : his special bent, say, towards jollity on the one hand, or towards a brooding melancholy on the other. Our fore- fathers had pretty definite ideas about the sort of bodily constitution which was the foundation of the laughter- LAUGHTER ON SOLEMN OCCASIONS 81 loving temper. A full "habit" tending to obesity, as in Falstaff, was, and is, I believe, popularly supposed to be a mainstay of the laughing spirit. The saying "Laugh and grow fat " may imply a vague apprehension of this relation, as well as a recognition of the benefits of laughter. Yet the precise organic substrate of this happy endowment is un- known. Health and all that makes for " good spirits " are no doubt favourable to a voluble laughter of the elemental kind. On the other hand, as we shall see, the laughing capacity frequently co-exists with physiological conditions of quite another kind. Men are to be found of a lean habit, and with a strong bent to grave reflection, who are nevertheless able, not merely to provoke laughter from others, like the "melancholy Jaques," but themselves to contribute a sonorous laughter to the higher intellectual domains of mirth. It is conceivable that the disposition to laugh may have its own restricted physiological conditions in a special instability of the mechanism concerned. This again may presumably include some as yet undefinable property of the nerve-centres which favours rapid change in the mode of brain activity, and those sudden collapses of tension which seem to be the immediate physiological antecedent of the motor discharge in laughter. 82 CHAPTER IV. VARIETIES OP THE LAUGHABLE. In the preceding chapter we have examined those early and elementary forms of laughter which arise from the action of such causes as tickling, the attitude of play, and the sudden uplifting in a feeling of joy. These do not, it is evident, imply the existence of that specific faculty which we call the perception of the laughable in things, or what is commonly spoken of as the sense of the ludicrous. We have now to inquire into the mode of operation of this more intellectual cause of laughter, and to connect it, if possible, with that of the simpler processes of excitation. The peculiarity in this case is that there is not only an external excitant, such as tickling fingers, but an object of the laughter. A tickled child laughs because of the tickling, but not at this as an object. The same is true of a good deal of the laughter of play: it is only when play repre- sents something funny, or when the play-iUusion is inter- rupted by a moment's critical glance at the poverty of the doll or other plaything, that it gives rise to a proper enjoy- ment of the laughable ; and a like remark holds good of the laughter which springs out of a relief of tension and a sudden transition from grave to gay. In the laughter of educated men and women we see an intellectual element, the perception of a laughable quality in an object, and the justification of the action by a reference to this. The ex- , amination of this intellectual type of laughter will bring LAUGHTER AND ITS OBJECTS 83 us to what is undoubtedly at once the most interesting and the most difficult problem in our study. j The objective reference in laughter implied in speaking of the " laughable " may be illustrated by a glance at the contemptuous laughter of the victor surveying his prostrate foe. The boy of ten who danced and screamed and laughed after he had killed his playmate in a street fight ^ was hardly possessed with what we call a sense of the comicality of things. The laughter, though directed at something, had not, in the complete sense of the expression, its object. The boy himself would not have laughed at the spectacle at another time, but viewed it with quite different feelings. And the object would not have presented itself as laughable to others who chanced to see it. In other words, the laughter was not caused by a mere contemplation of an object, but was conditioned by a particular relation between the laugher and this object. To say that a thing is laughable, just as to say that a thing is eatable, implies an element of permanence and of universality. This is true even when a person says about a spectacle, e.g., that of a drunken man walking, " It is laugh- able to me," since he means that for his experience at least it is a general rule that the sight of such movements excites laughter. But the word laughable clearly connotes more than this, a universality which embraces others as well as the individual. A thing is only rightly so called when it is supposed to be fitted to provoke men's laughter in general. Language has been buUt up by men living the social life, and interested in common forms of experience, and the word laughable and all similar words undoubtedly refer to such common forms. 'Given by Stanley Hall in the article, "The Psychology of Tickling," etc., already quoted. 84 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE These common forms of experience may be conceived of narrowly or widely. Much of what is called laughable by a schoolboy, by a savage, or even by an educated Englishman, is made to appear so by the special habits and correlated modes of thought of Jbis community or his class. This clearly holds good of laughter at strange forms of dress, language and the like. Its " universality " is thus strictly conditioned. In dealing with the laughable we shall have constantly to allude to its relativity to particular customs and expecta- >,tions. It will be a part of our problem to disengage from among the common excitants of laughter what seems to possess a truly universal character. In speaking of an object of laughter as having universal potency, we do not imply that it will, as a matter of fact, always excite the outburst. The expression means only that a man will be ready to laugh at it, provided that he has certain requisite perceptions with the correlated emotional susceptibilities, and that nothing interferes with the working of these. Hence we shall have to speak of the laughable as answering to a tendency only, and to note the 'i^drcumstances which are apt to counteract it. It is obvious, for example, that the limitations of class-custom, so far as they make laughter relative, wiU render a man blind to what is "objectively" laughable in his own customs. In truth, the adoption of such relative and accidental standards, which marks all the earlier stages in the growth of intelli- gence and of aesthetic sentiment, is the great obstacle to a clear recognition of what is laughable in a wider and more strictly universal sense. Again, when we are considering the question of fact, " What do men reaUy laugh at ? " it is important to bear in mind that the tendency to laugh may, on the one hand, be rein- forced by a favourable psycho-physical condition at the UNIVERSAL ELEMENT IN LAUGHTER 85 moment, as well as by previously formed tendencies to apper- ceive things on their laughable side ; while, on the other hand, it may be checked and wholly counteracted by unfavourable conditions, such as a sad mood, or an acquired habit of looking at those aspects of things which excite f eehngs antagonistic to laughter. ! Owing to the action of these forces, we find, not only that one man may fail to discern the laughable in an object which moves another to a hearty outburst, but that in many cases in which two men join in laughing at something they may not be touched by the same laughable feature or aspect of the presentation. Nothing, indeed, has more of that appearance of caprice which comes from the influence of uncertain subjective factors than the laughter of men, even of those who have a normal sense of the ludicrous. A word more is needed on the language here used. The terms laughable and ludicrous may be employed interchange- ably up to a certain point without risk of confusion. At the same time it is well to note that the second is used in a stricter sense than the first. The term ludicrous seems to denote particularly what is not only an universal object of laughter, but an object of that more intellectual kind of laughter which implies a clear perception of relations. In everyday language we should speak of incidents and stories, of which the fim is obvious and broad, as " laughable " rather than as " ludicrous ". Closely connected with this emphasis on an intellectual element in the meaning of the term ludicrous, is its tendency to take on an ideal connotatioli, to mark off" what we deem to be worthy of laughter. Here, as in the case of other objects of an aesthetic sentiment, there is a half -disguised reference to the regulative principles of art. This control by an aesthetic principle or standard is more 86 VARFETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE clearly indicated in the use of " comic," a word, by the way, which is used more freely in some European languages than in our own. A comic spectacle means, for one who uses language with precision, a presentation which is choice, which comes up to the requirements of art, and would be excellent material for comedy. Our problem may now be defined as an analysis of the objects of our common perception and imagination which ordinary men tend to laugh at and to describe as laughable. This inductive inquiry into facts is, as implied above, a necessary preliminary to a discussion of the nature of the " ludicrous " or " comic " as an ideal or regulative conception. In order to find our way with some degree of certainty to the general characteristics of laughable things, we should do well to take at least a rapid survey of the objects of men's laughter as reflected in popular jests, "contes pow rire," " comic songs " and amusing literature in general ; as also in what may be called the standing dishes in the repasts of fun served up in the circus and other places where they laugh. No assemblage of facts of this kind adequate for scientific purposes has, so far as I know, yet been made ; ^ so that it must suffice here to indicate some of the leading groups of laughable objects which a brief in- spection of the field discloses. It may be assumed as a matter of common recognition that this field of laughable objects will lie in the main within the limits of the spectacle of human life. It is the situations, appearances and thoughts of men which yield to laughter the larger part of its harvest. At the same time allusion will be made now and again to provocatives ' Valuable beginnings may be found here and there ; for example, in the entertaining volume of a French comedian, Le Rire, par (B. C.) Coquelin, cadet. ODDITIES 87 lying outside these limits, which are certainly found in simple examples of the laughable. In attempting to form these groups one must give a warning. It is implied in what has been said above, that the things we laugh at have in many cases, perhaps in most, more than one distinguishably amusing facet. In trjring to classify them, therefore, we must be guided by what seems the most massive and impressive feature; and, as already suggested, it is not always easy to say what really is the main determinant of our laughter. (1) Among the things which are commonly said to be laughable we find many ob jects d istinguis hed by n ovelty. A ^esentation whidi differs widely from those of the ordinary type, and so has a stimulating_freshness, may, as we have seen, when agceeablfuaad^rf .-Suffidsat,. force, escitfi^-io laughter by suddenly relieving.the^duLnessof_ the common and oft-repeated, and raising the feeling-tone of the observer to the level of joyous excitement. The proper effect of a recognised laughable aspect only appears when experience begins to be organised and the mind of the spectator to perceive, dimly at least, a certain contrariety in the new presentation to the usual run of his perceptual experience, in other words, the aspect of " out-of-the-wayness " or oddity. Much of the laughter of children, and, as we shall see, of savages, at what is called " funny " illustrates this. A child will_Jaugh_vigffl'ously, for example, on first hearing a new and odd-sounding word, or on jrst_seeing a donkey roll on his back, a HighlandfiXL Jn-^MsJdltjJiis^ister's^ hair done up in curIingz|}.aperSj. and the like. In some of these cases, at least, the appreciation of the new object as odd or singular is aided by the agreeably lively character of the novel impression. This is true also of the amusing effect of two strikingly similar faces seen together ; for here the look 88 VARIETIES OP THE LAUGHABLE of oddity, which is explained by the circumstance that our ordinary experience is of dissimilarity between faces, is supported by the stimulative force of the likeness itself. This expansive effect of the new and the odd on our feeling may come too from the perception of things sub- human. The sight of a crab walking sideways, of an oddly-marked dog, of an eddy of leaves in autumn, and so forth will excite laughter in a child. A glance at the language employed in describing laugh- able objects suggests the large scope of the odd. Thus the " whimsical " and the " fantastic " in the realm of ideas and tastes, the '' extravagant " in the region of sentiment — these and the like seem to refer directly to what is peculiar, to the point of an amusing remoteness from life's common way. This enjoyable appreciation of the odd is in a particularly obvious way subject to the condition of relativity. To begin with, the amusing aspect is determined by, and so strictly relative to the manner of the hour ; so that, as the word " antic " shows, the old-fashioned begins to take on an amusing aspect as soon as it is so far displaced by a new custom as to be an out-of-the-way thing. Again, as already hinted, the odd is always relative to the custom of a locality or a class. A savage and a civilised man alike are wont to laugh at much in the appearance and actions of a foreign people ; and this because of its sharp contrast to the customary forms of their experience. Jhg^ chief coun teractive to be noted here is the im pulse to distrust and fear the new and unfamiliar. A child may often be noticed oscillating between laughter and fear as some new strange sight bursts upon him. A savage must feel himself secure before he can freely indulge in laughter at all the odd belongings and doings of the white man. (2) A special variety of the singular or exceptional which BODILY DEFORMITIES 89 is fitted, within certain limits, to excite laughter is deformitji^ or deviation from the tygical form. It is certain that, for the unsophisticated palate of the child and the savage, Jbodil^ deformity is a large source of mirth. The dwarf, thel hunchback, the cripple, the man with the big nose, and the hke have been great entertainers of youth. The tendency to regard such deviations from type as amusing extends, as we know, to our perceptions of animals and of plants. A limping quadruped or a tree with a wen-like excrescence seems to reflect a human deformity and to share in its laughable aspect. Even a lifeless obj ect may sometimes enter- tain us with its appearance of deformity. A ho use shored up aflects us in the same way as a man on crutches, and the back view of a rickety tilted cart, as it wobbles down a street, may gladden the eye much as the sight of a heavy, ill-balanced human figure attempting to run. While we may view the laughable aspect of bodily de^ formity as an example of the odd or deviation from the common pattern of our experience, we i^usLsoi' forget that it appeals to the more brutal element in. laughter. All ugly things had in them for the Greek mind something contempt- ible or disgraceful. Much of the point of men's laughter at deformity lies in a recognition of its demeaning efiect on the person who is its subject. It is a clear manifestation of the impulse to rejoice in the sight of what is degraded, base, or contemptible. It is not difficult to detect this note of con-' temptuous rejoicing in the derisive laughter of the coarser sort of boy and savage, the kind of laughter illustrated in Homer's description of the merriment of the Achaean chiefs at the sight of the misshapen Thersites, with his hump, his sugar-loaf head crowned with stubble, and his persecuting squint.^ Here we seem to have an unmistakable ingredient iJMorf, ii., 212fE. 90 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE of malignant satisfaction, of rejoicing at another's ills (Aris- totle's e'iri')(ai,peKaKLa). Roughly speaking, we may say that the laughable_force of a deformity varies with its. extent. The droll effect of an enlargement of the nose or of a reduction of the chin increases, within certain limits at least, with the amount of the aberration from the normal dimensions. Yet it would be difficult to establish any exact quantitative relation here. Again, all kinds of deformity are not equally provocative of laugh ter.7' In general, perhaps, positive additions or ex- /tensions, such as a big nose or big ears, are more conducive ' to merriment than reductions and losses ; they seem to seize i, perception more aggressively. Then there are varieties of the deformed which probably involve special kinds of droll suggest! veness. Certain squints and twistings of the human face divine may move us as expressions of the roguish ; a red nose or a shock of red hair may owe its force to its supposed moral symbolism. Long ears and other deformities affect us through their undignified reminder of affinity to a lower animal species. Much, however, in these preferences of the ruder sort of laughter looks quite capricious, and can only be set down to habit and imitation. r^ The impulse to laugh at deformity has a narrower and a wider counteractive. The first is pity, the second is the VJeeling of repugnance at the sight of ugliness. The inhibition of laughter at deformity by pity and kindly consideration is one of the marks of a refined nature. Where the unsightly feature suggests suffering, whether physical or moral, such consideration may completely counteract, the impulse. Since deformity is a variety of the ugly, and the percep- tion of the Ugly as such repels us, we have as a further counteractive a fine aesthetic shrinking from what is un- DEFORMITIES OF BODY AND OF MIND 91 sightly. A person endowed with this repugnance may have his capacity of enjoying the funny aspect of a deformity com- pletely paralysed. At the other extreme, we have a readi- ness to make fun of all bodily defects, even when they arej* a revolting spectacle. The area of enjoyment for most men lies between these extremes, when the displeasing element of the ugly is mitigated, so that its effect is lost in the stream of hilarity which its drollery sets flowing. It may be added that where deformity has been turned into a laughable quality the impulse to "make fun" has commonly been aided by other forces, more particularly a sense of relief from fear and a feeling of retaliation. This is clearly illustrated in the laughter of the people in the Middle Ages at the devil, the demons and the rest. Perhaps children's rather cruel laughter at the hunchback contains an element of retaliative dislike for a person who is viewed as vicious and hurtful. (3) Another group of laughable objects is closely related to the last. Certain moral d eformiti es and ^^cej_have always been a special dish_ra,_thefea.§t, of .laughter. We have only to think of popular jokes, the contes of the Middle Ages, and the large branches of literature known as comedy and satire, to see how eagerly the spirit of mirth has looked out for this source of gratification. So far as this laughter directs itself against a vicious dis- position, or deformity of character, such as vanity or coward- ice, and not against a lighter defect of external manners, it seems to involve a perception of something ugly, like a bodily blemish, and further some appreciation of its disgraceful or degrading aspect. It is a view commonly held, and as we shall see supported by the practices of art, that all vices are not eq ually -£t subjects for laughter. Some kinds seem to have a specially 92 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE amusing aspect. There may be peculiar features in the expression of the vicious disposition which give it value for the laughing eye. This is obviously true of drunkenness, for example ; and hardly less so of violence of temper, which has a large and impressive droUness in its display. Other vices, such as cowardice and miserliness, have something choice for the eye of laughter in the meanness of their display, the petty, contemptible practices to which they com- monly lead. The supreme place given to vanity among laughable moral failings seems to be explicable in part by this consideration. Nothing is more entertaining than the inflation in carriage and speech which comes from an overweening conceit. Hypocrisy, again, together with her kinswomen deceit and lying, seems to have a peculiar value for the mirthful eye by reason of her disguise, and the elemental joy which mortals young and old derive from a good peep behind a mask. As a last example we may take a porcine obstinacy over against the expression of others' wishes, the stupidity against which even " the gods contend in vain," a variety of the amusing which seems to tickle our sensibilities by presenting to us the rigidity of the machine in lieu of the reasonably pliant organism of the man. j This glance at the amusing side of what we caU moral / deformities suggests that when we laugh at these we are by no means always at the moral point of view, looking at actions and traits of character as immoral. This is seen, first of all, in the fact that, when we are laughing at what we view as vice, we do not, as some say, always recognise its littleness and harmlessness, visiting it, so to speak, with the merely nominal penalty of a laugh. Lying, or a dis- play of brutal appetite, may be turned into a subject of mirth when the least reflection would show that it is decidedly HOW LAUGHTER VIEWS OUR FAULTS 93 harmful. It is seen, further, in the fact that the laughable in this case extends far beyond the limits of what we commonly call vices. The excessive humility of the friend of our youth, Mr. Toots, is hardly less entertaining a spectacle than excessive vanity. It seems rather to be want of a certain completeness and proportion of parts in the moral structure which amuses here. This is yet more clearly illustrated by the fact that comedy, as we shall see, holds up to a gentle laughter want of moderation even in qualities which we admire, such as warmth of feeling, refine- ment of sentiment, and conscientiousness itself. Here again we may note that the "laughable" will be relative to the special experiences and standards adopted by the particular society. Contrast, for example, the fund of amusement which lies in the spectacle of drunkenness for a people addicted to, and therefore tolerant of, deep drinking, with that available for another people by whom the vice is shunned and judged severely. It is evident, indeed, that our readiness to be entertained by the look of excess or disproportion in a character will vary with the idea of the normal pattern. The old Greek way of scanning character differed, in certain respects, from that habitual, say in England to-day. In the case of what are palpable vices we have as counter- active tendencies, not merely the finer shrinking from the ugly, but the recoil of the moral sense in the distressed atti- tude of reprobation. Hence it may be said that the immoral trait must not be of such volume and gravity as to call forth the moral sense within us. Here, too, differences of temperament and habit, and, one may add, of the mood in which the presentation finds us, will affect the result. It is amazing to what an extent even reputable citizens are able to enjoy the presentment of moral failings, when they give 94 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE themselves up to the mood which seems to belong to a seat before the comic stage. (4) We may pass to a group of laughable presentations in which the feature specially fixated by the observer's mental eye is some_6reac,^ of order and rule. Laughable displays of vice involve this element, of course, but i n the cases now to be considered the violence done to rule is the more conspicuous feature. On the other hand,Jaughable vio- lations of rule are closely related to the oddities dealt with above. The donkey rolling on his back may be said, for the child's intelligence, to break, the rule of the donkey's, normal behaviour; .yet here the laughableness seems to spring im- mediately out of the fresh stimulating character of the ■novelty of the spectacle. In order that an action may impress us as disorderly, we must recognise, vaguely at least, that some custom or rule is disobeyed. The sight of a donkeji' stepping on to the pavement of a street, or quietly browsing in a garden, would amuse as an exhibition of the disorderly. Perhaps we have the boundary-line between what is merely odd and what is disorderly illustrated by the bizarre aspect of a boy in a class who deviates consider- ably in height from the approximately uniform height of the rest of the class. It has been pointed out by Dr. Lipps ' jthat even a house in a row may assume an amusing appear- L ance under like circumstances. Here the general uniformity, immediately presented to the eye, seems to supply the spectator with the idea of a rule which the odd-looking in- dividual is violating.^ Under the present head we shall keep to examples of the laughable where the breach of rule is palpable. 1 Loc. cit. 2 There is, of course, often a reciprocal effect in these cases, the non- compliant intruder serving to show up the absurd monotony of the row. UNRULY PROCEEDINGS 95 To begin with, disorderliness, the upsetting of the usual orderliness of life, is a great source of laughter to the young and even to many adults. All the more extravagant forms of jollity or " high spirits " are wont to pass into the dis- orderly. This applies not merely to uproar, but to such "jocose" proceedings as smashing windows, the enjoyment of which, as Addison reminds us, is by some laid down as the test of humour. This being so, we might expect that the appearance of the disorderly would wear an amusing aspect for ordinary men. This is certainly what we find. The crowd loves the spectacle of lawlessness and misrule in the harlequinade and elsewhere. The laughter-moving force of the presentment of a man always in a hurry, or continually changing his purpose, illustrates this effect of the disorderly. The comic value of the man in a rage depends too in part on this circumstance. All appearances of disorder where order is counted on, as in dress, are apt to provoke a smile of amusement. A squad of soldiers marching out of time, or out of line, is a recognised stimulus to laughter. Even the_ sight of a room turned upside down for a cleaning, or of the confusion of a dinner-table after a meal, takes on some- thing of this amusing aspect of the disorderly. The droll aspect of the disorderly becomes specialised in the breach of commonly-recognised rules of behaviour. The best marked cases are offencesagainst the code of good manners, and the rules of correct speech. Eude behaviour and gaucheries, solecisms, provincialisms, and confusions in the use of language, amuse us as breaches of familiar rule, though they may no doubt entertain us also as manifesta- tions of a naive ignorance. It is hardly needful to point out that men's judgments of the laughable element in breach of rule will be relative. 96 VARIETIES OP THE LAUGHABLE The code of manners will vary with the community and with the particular class, and will tend to change with time in the case of the same group. One has only to think of the variations, from period to period, in the fashionable modes of accost, of pronouncing words, and so on. [ ^The great force which tends to counteract this direction of laughter is the respect for order and rule, which has been formed slowly and with much difficulty, at least in the larger part of a community. It follows that if men who are supporters of rule are to laugh at a violation of it, the act of I lawlessness must not seem of a gravity sufficient to offend ^^his respect. This condition will be satisfied if it is mani- fest that the upsetting of rule, so far as it is intentional, is not serious but a sort of make-believe ; or that it is confined within the limits of the harmless, as in the case of the angry man vainly threatening denunciation against all and sundry ; or, again, that the failure to comply with rule is not intentional but due to ignorance. (5) We may now pass to a group of presentations where the laughable feature seems to reside in a situation or con- dition which is distinctly undesirable. Smaik. misfortunes, especially those which involve something in the nature of a difficulty or " fix," are for the ordinary onlooker apt to ■wear an amusing aspect. The loss of one's hat, a fall due t to a slip, or a tilting against another pedestrian, are recog- nised instances of the amusing in the spectacle of the streets. Such sights as Ajax slipping in the foot-race and getting his mouth filled with dirt {Biad, xxiii,, 770-85), John Gilpin on his runaway steed, a party in a boat left stranded on a sand-bank, the clown in the circus vainly trying to stop a runaway horse by clinging to its tail ; these and other illus- trations will readily occur to one familiar with the ways of laughter. The older popular entertainments, such as the SLIGHT MISFORTUNES 97 enjoyment of the performance of grinning through the horse- collar at the country fair, owed something of their value to this delight in seeing a man in a fix — if only that of being compelled to make a fool of oneself — especially when it was due to his lack of foresight.^ A more refined sense of the laughable seizes on the many " awkward " situations of social life, say the unconcealable gine that overtakes a fine lady when she makes a meritorious but ill-judged attempt to get into touch with one of the " lower class ". It is to be noted that many situations involving not only an irritating amount of inconvenience but real suffering may excite this kind of laughter in the vulgar. The spectacle, of a cripple dragging his body along has its amusing aspect, not only for jovial mortals but for superior beings. Homer represents the Olympian gods as dissolved in laughter at the sight of the lame blacksmith trying to discharge the dainty office of the cup-bearer Ganymede. We see the same uri-i feeling rejoicing at mishap in the laughter of the savage and of the coarser product of civilisation at certain forms of punishment, particularly the administration of a good thrash- ing to a wife, or to some ugly piece of mischief, as Thersites. Even " polite society " seems to have a relish for this form of amusement, if we may judge from the entertainment which the fashionable crowd on one side of the English Channel appears to find in scanning the gloomy figures and wan faces of the passengers as they land after a storaay passage. Here, again, the deep malignity of man peeps out in a rejoicing at the sight of others' hurt (Schadenfreude). _. Among these mirth-provoking misadventures, situations and incidents which manifestly involve Joss of dignity fill a large space. The spectacle of a flying hat pursued by its ' See an article, " The Analytical Humorist," by H. D. Traill, Fort- nightly Bevieio (N.S.), vol. Ix., p, 141. 7 J 98 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE ,{ owner owes much of its " funniness " to the fact that the Uq§s of a symbol of dignity is involved. Possibly certain bodily deformities, especially a failure of the nose or of the chin, may derive something of their laughableness from our perception of the loss of a dignified feature.^ The laughter which is wont to greet the sight of a man left with a baby on his hands illustrates the same effect. The favourite / situations in the lighter popular comedy, as that of the man I who is henpecked, and who is subject to a mother-in-law, amuse so much because of the deep descent of the " head " vpf the house which they involve. The stimulating force of this kind of presentation is the greater where the undignified situation overtakes one who is holding at the time an exalted position, as when a preacher in the pulpit is caught r stumbling on too homely an expression, or a judge on the Lbench giving way to an oppressive somnolence. As in the other instances, we have here to note the limita- tions introduced by the variable nature and circumstances of the spectator. Misfortune, the sufiering of indignity, clearly appeals to a kind of feeling quite dissimilar to that of^.miEth^., Where pity is strong and alert much of the f laughter at mischances, at difliculties, and so forth, is restrained. On the other hand, this pity for men in misadventure comes of knowledge and of insight; and where experience and training have not given these, the restraining influence on laughter will be wanting. Hence the familiar fact that youngsters, though not less capable of pity than their elders, will laugh at sights, such as the old lady slipping and falling, which touch the heart of those V who know what they really mean. (6) We may now touch on a group of laughable objects 1 Mr. Kipling suggests that the want of a proper nose in a family is regarded as a disgrace among the Hindoos {Kim, p. 81). LOSS OP DIGNITY 99 which has a close kinship with more than one of the groups already illustrated, though it stands apart by right of well- marked peculiarities. I refer to laughter a,t^the^-i7ideeent or obscene, whether in actual presentation qr^n suggestirai^ Any serious attempt to illustrate the variety of the sources of men's ordinary laughter must, I think, find a place for this group. Among men, and one may add the gods, the uncovering of that which decency insists on hiding is a powerful provocative of laughter. In their more direct j and potent workings indecent presentations appeal to the j loud mirthfulness of the coarse mind, to the gros rire of ' the man tossing the gros sel, as Mr. Meredith has it. They | bulk among the jocosities of savage tribes — or at least I many of these — and of the less refined among civiKsedj societies. Culture is a great restraining influence herej Yet it would be an error to suppose that educated men who are also of the laughter-loving are destitute of this sensibility. The impulse to greet merrily an allusion to the indecent, when it comes unexpectedly, taking us off our guard, so to speak, and when it is neither too pronounced nor enlarged upon, is, I believe, universal among men who laugh. The laughter at a suggestion of what not only civilised but even savage society seeks to veil from view would seem to be most naturally regarded as a case of the improper, or breach of accepted rule. To make reference to these matters is to break through a well-understood social con- vention. This breach, moreover, carries with it a plump descent into the depths of the undignified ; for since society has willed to throw the veil here any attempt to uplift it implies something shameful. The disgrace falls on the person who is the subject of the allusion — in all cases where there is a definable person concerned. In others, where 100 VARIETIES OP THE LAUGHABLE the allusion is directed to a common " infirmity " of human nature, the indignity done is, of course, more widespread. Not only so, we feel on hearing such an allusion that there flisa, lapse of dignity all round in speaker and hearers alike. ^.The blush of the refined hearer attests this feeling of i shame. "Tet to describe the effect here as due to breach of rule and lapse of dignity is certainly not to give a full account of the modus operandi of this variety of the laughable. ''If to speak of these things is forbidden and branded as I an offence to good taste, on the other hand that which l^is alluded to is a real and an inseparable part of our nature. The enjoyment of these allusions may accordingly be / viewed under another aspect as a rejection of the artificial -an favour of simple unadorned nature. The casting aside for the moment of the decent veil and the facing of what /' is customarily hidden away seems, indeed, to be attended \ by a distinct feeling of' liberation from restraint and of (_ joyous expansion. Hence, probably, the fact noted by historians of mediaeval manners that the coarseness of the jocosity appeared to increase with the magnitude of the feast. The mood of exuberant hilarity favours the slackening of all artificial restrictions. The same con- sideration may, perhaps, explain the hold which coarse jokes, if only they have just the right quantum of salt, maintain on the humorous palate of the strong and virile among men of intellect. In this brief account of the mirthful aspect of the indecent I have confined myself to what discloses itself to conscious- ness in the moderate forms of laughter, common among civilised men who practise a certain self-restraint. Yet we know that the outbursts which are provoked, in coarser men at least, by the uncovering of sexual matters have a deeper THE INDECENT 101 source in the obscure parts of our animal organisation. Our sources of knowledge with respect to the condition of men when they are seized with the sexual orgasm, including the testimony of mythology, suggest that laughter here assumes the function of voicing -a state of riotous self-glorification of the animal part of our nature, when fully released for a moment ; and, further, that here, as in some forms of nervous laughter, it has an organic connection with a condition of emotional paroxysm. It is hardly necessary to point out that relativity has a large empire in this branch of the laughable. ' A man's / idea of what is obscene will be relative to the standards I of his society, which may vary considerably. The English-J man living abroad is apt to be impressed by the fact that men and women, otherwise as refined as his own people, hesitate less to call a spade a spade and to allude in con- versation to subjects which are tabu at home. Similarly, the modern reader of Shakespeare may be shocked by the freedom of speech of the cultivated women of another age. Further, as implied above, the readiness to laugh here will be modified profoundly by refinement of feeling. If it is true that all men are capable of enjoying an allusion to the indecent, provided that it is delicately executed, it is no less true that only coarse-minded men are able to drink frequently or deeply at this rather muddy spring of laughter.^ (7) Another group of laughable presentations has_a certain analogy with the last. Popular mirth has made a pro- ' It may be well to add, by way of caution, that the feeble semblance of laughter which a modem theatre-goer is apt to produce when he sees something risqui is not a simple form of laughter at the indecent. It is the outcome of a highly artificial attitude of mind, in which there is an oscillation of feeling between the readiness of the natural man to indulge and the fear of the civilised man that he may be carried too far. 102 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE minent target of men's pretences. To peep behind the mask and seize the make-believe is a sure means of providing ourselves with laughter. So large, indeed, is the part of affectation and disguise in social life, that not only the ruder popular art, but comedy has made them one chief source of its entertainment. The flavour of the laughter varies greatly according to the moral complexion of the pretence. Seeing through the transparent make-believe of the child sets us laughing in one key ; the detection of the half -unconscious humbug, in another ; and that of the artful impostor, in yet another. That the appreciation of this embodiment of the laugh- able is relative, may not be at once evident. Yet a glance at the numerous little hypocrisies not only allowed, but even exacted by polite society, will suffice to show how [the standard may vary. The dulling influence of use is ' exceptionally apparent here. The shams of life cease to amuse us — save a very few — when they are numerous and ' ubiquitous. The Englishman who laughs at the little pretences of society abroad, may be quite incapable of i discerning the amusing side of quite similar simulations and dissimulations in the ways of his own society. r^ Here, too, as in the case of moral blemishes generally, ' the impulse will be restrained by the tendency to judge \ seriously, and by the higher degrees of moral sensitiveness. 1 Men of easy morals will laugh cynically, perhaps, at forms 1 of imposture which would shock those of a finer moral I texture. , (8) We may now pass to a species of the laughable which has a more markedly intellectual character. Among the j exhibitions of human quality none appears to have had its ( ludicrous mark more widely recognised than that of wamt \ of knowledge or of skill. Here, again, our friend, the clown MEN'S PRETENCES 103 of the circus, comes to our aid. The spectacle of his futile attempts to imitate the exploits of the skilled horseman and other experts stirs the risibility of the multitude to one of its fortissimo outbursts. Ignorance of locality, especialiy"\ when it lands a traveller in a mess, is a common source I of merriment to the rustic onlooker. Children, savages, 1 and all simple folk delight in such exhibitions of ignorance J and incompetence. The more restrained amusement or "society" at the want of savoir faire in the uninitiated shows that this enjoyment of the spectacle of ignorance by the well-informed is widespread. The value of the spectacle 1 is evinced by the fact that when in argument a man I desires to win the laugh of onlookers to his side, he will i do his best to show up a laughable degree of ignorance 1 in his fellow-disputant. The presence of the expert in a— J gathering of bucolics is a situation pregnant with possi- bilities of mirthful enjoyment. Let the delightful discussions of Mr. Hardy's Wessex folk suflSce as illustration. These amusing uncoverings of ignorance and inability are a spicy ingredient in the mutual quizzings of men belonging to distinct peoples or classes, such as the savage and the white man, the sailor and the landsman. This will be illustrated later on. In these cases the spectator may not count on the pos- session by others of knowledge or skill. The man who laughs has at most a vague expectation that outsiders should be equal to those of his own set. The laugh at ignorance j and incompetence takes on another and more ironical ring \ when knowledge and competence are reasonably to be ex- ] pected, as for example when an oflScial shows a striking j incompetence for the duties of his office. The spectacle of human ignorance grows particularly entertaining when it has to do with matters supposed to be 104 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE \ of common knowledge. M. Bergson gives us an example in the observation of a disappointed traveller on hearing that there was an extinct volcano in the neighbourhood : " They ; had a volcano and allowed it to go out ".' It is this element of ignorance of what is generally known which, in part, gives the amusing aspect to many breaches of rule, par- ticularly those of language. So firm is our assumption„that everybody, even the foreigner, ought to be able to^geak our language that we cannot hear a gross mispronunciation or misapprehension of meaning without feeling it to be naive. - Shakespeare in the same play makes us laugh at the bad English of Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans. Of course the fun is greater if the foreigner stumbles unwittingly into an observation which tells against himself ; as when a German visitor to London, being asked how his wife was, answered, "She is generally lying, and when she is not lying she is swindling," meaning to say " lying down " and " feeling giddy " (" hat Schwindel "). The ludicrous side of the paradoxical, of what is violently opposed to common-sense — a matter to be dealt with more fuUy presently — illustrates the effect of intellectual naivete. All exaggeration in description and other extravagance of ■statement are laughed at, in part at least, as showing ignor- jance of what is credible. On the other hand, insistence on the well known and the obvious, especially when it is ac- companied by a laboured argument, amuses us by ignoring the circumstance that the hearer or reader is already quite familiar with the matter. A delightful exhibition of the naive intelligence is given by a gross misapprehension of what is happening or of what is being said at the moment. The Londoner may delight his country listener with his misunderstandings of ^ Op. cit., p. 45. WANT OF KNOWLEDGE OR SKILL 105 what to the latter seems perfectly self-explanatory. The tickling force of such misapprehension is heightened when it involves an idea which is the very reverse of the truth. The good story of the Yorkshire juryman who remarked that " Lawyer Scarlet gets all the easy cases " turns on the delicious inversion of causal relations. When travelling once in a train I heard a mother say to her Httle girl, who had been complaining of the heat, "The more you think of it the worse it will be " ; upon which the child remarked in a drily humorous tone, "I should say the worse it is the more I shall think of it". The mother's remark had probably seemed an inversion of the true relation. Other examples of what we call naivete come, in part at least, under this head. The want of tact, the bringing in of that which has no relevance to the circumstances or the ideas of the moment, is an excitant of laughter for men of all levels of culture. The inappropriate ways in which the kindly savage or child tries to minister to his visitor's comfort are a pretty example of such simplicity. Irrelevances in conversation and discussion, such as moT cb propos, mistakings of the issue, unfortunate suggestions of reasons, and the like, are among the recognised tributaries of the river of laughter. These irrelevances make a large contribution to the lighter enjoyment of social intercourse. An irrelevance having a peculiarly broad effect is a response to a question which wholly misses its point, as when one reads of a man on a descending balloon who asked a yokel, '' Where am I ? " and received for answer only the / absurdly obvious, " In a balloon ". J Children's naivete — a mine of wealth to the discerning seeker after the laughable — Ulustrates this tickling property of a perfect simplicity of intelligence, and of those irrelev- 106 VARIETIES OP THE LAUGHABLE ances of behaviour and of utterance which by their mighty compass seize and occupy for the instant the field of con- templative vision. /One of its most valuable manifestations Is the habit of quietly substituting the child's point of view /for the adult's. A large number of the " funny remarks " of children illustrate this. Here is an example. An im- prover of occasions asked a child who had seduced her grandfather into a rather alarming romp, " Isn't grandpapa very kind to play with you, dear ? " and received the sharp correction, " I'm playing with him ". A bare reference may be made to other illustrations of the intellectual simplicity which entertains the mirthful eyej The effect of prejudice and passion in narrowing the 'mental outlook and setting up erroneous views of things is a favourite subject of comic treatment. As we shall see, the spectacle gains a higher value when the degraded intelligence approaches that of the disordered, and the amusing person, wholly preoccupied with his illusions, utters a string of remarks so widely irrelevant to the actual circumstances of the moment as to upset the gravity even of^a serious spectator. The limiting influence of relativity in the appreciation of this branch of the amusing has been pretty plainly illus- trated in what has been said. The lack of skill or of know- ledge which excites our merriment is the lack of that which is a familiar possession of our set, which accordingly we, at least, tend to look for in others. Hence, the man of society is amused at your not knowing one kind of thing, say, the history of the British Peerage, the bucolic at your ignorance of another, say, the ways of calves, and so forth. The simplicity of a child's mind only impresses us in relation to our own grown-up and complex ways of thinking. Even the absurdities of paradox are relative, for what we are NAIVETfi 107 pleased to regard as the stable, unalterable body of common- sense is, in reality, subject to change. (9) We will now touch on a group of facts on which writers on the ludicrous are accustomed to lay stress. The spectacle of a child wearing a man's hat, fully considered above, shows us the laughable directly and unmistakably as a juxtaposition of two foreign elements, the semblance of a whole made up of incongruous parts. Here we see the sense of fun fixing its eye on relations. It is recognised by all that the perception of certain relations, more particularly the unfitting, the disproportionate, the incongruous and the logically inconsistent, plays a large part in calling forth the more refined sort of laughter. In dealing with this laughable aspect of relations we must draw a distinction. When a person laughs, say, at the imbecile movements of a skater as he tries to save himself from a fall, or at an outrageous costume, or at the fantastic language of some pr^cieuse, he may be aware of half-per- ceiving a relation ; such as want of fitness, extravagant departure from the normal. He knows, however, that his mental eye is not focussed for this relation ; on the contrary, he feels as if the presentation in itself, by giving the re- quired jerk to his apperceptive tendencies, were directly provocative of mirth. On the other hand, he will, I believe, hold that / there are cases where the enjoyment of the laughable depends on the '• mental eye directing itself to a relation. The relation may ' not be apprehended in a perfectly precise way; but the l point is that it is mentally seized, if only for the fraction of a second ; and, further, that a degree of definiteness is I given to the apprehension of the relation by a glimpse, at [ least, of the related terms. . ; This localising of the laughable in a relation is most ~ 108 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE evident in the case of those complex presentations where lack of harmony and of mutual fitness — what we call^in,-_, congruity — appear in the several parts of the whole which are present to the eye, and forces itself on the-attentioji.,in a thoroughly aggressive fashion. A country woman dis- playing in her dress or in her speech a bizarre mixture of the peasant and the fine lady, a proposal to climb a moun- tain in dainty high-heeled shoes, the couching of a vote of thanks in language far below or above the needs of the occasion, these pull at the muscles of laughter because they strike us as a forcing together of things which hurtle and refuse to consort. The same holds true of cases in which the incongruity lies between one presentation and another which has preceded and is still present to the imagination, as in the clown's utter failure to reproduce the model action of the expert which he sets out to equal. Even in cases where the laughable incongruity holds be- I tween things both of which are not present at the same or \nearly the same moment, a direct glancing at the relation, in- volving at least a dim representation of the absent member of the related twain, may be requisite for a full enjoyment. It is probable, for example, that Homer's gods, when they laughed uproariously at the sight of the grimy and lame Vulcan essaying the part of Ganymede, mentally recalled the image of the latter and carried out a comparison be- tween the two. Similarly in many of our nicer judgments of the amusingly excessive in dress, speech and so forth, we_may, as suggested above, envisage the relation to a standard of measure in this direct way.^ ^ It may, no doubt, be a question whether the relation made " focal " in consciousness in such cases lies between two parts of a complex presentation, or between the presen- ' Compare above, pp. 13 ff. THE INCONGRUOUS 109 tation as a whole and a represented standard arrangement. When, for example, we laugh at the intrusion of a too lively gesture into the pulpit, do we mentally fixate the incongruity between the situation and the action, or mentally go back to the idea of the customary and suitable kind and amount of gesture, and view the present performance as disagreeing with these ? This point may be reserved for later consideration^ The view that in the cases just illustrated we have to do with another variety of laughter, that of the mind or intelligence, is confirmed by the reflection that much of it ia excluded from the popular category. The masses can enjoy a palpable contradiction between profession and performance — witness the enjoyment aflbrded to the popu- lace of the Middle Ages by the spectacle of the moral inconsistencies of the monks.^ But when it comes to the appreciation of inherent inconsistencies within the character, such as want of stability of purpose, fickleness in the aifections and so forth, the need of a certain acuteness in perceiving relations, and of quickness in mentally reinstating what is not present, may greatly restrict the area of the enjoyment. Gross and palpable inconsistencies, such as those represented in the delightful monologue L'Indecis, with which M. Coquelin (alne) rejoices us, are accessible to popular laughter, but most of the self-contradictions with which a Moli^re, a George Eliot, or a George Meredith refreshes our spirits are " caviare to the general ". Much the same is true of the laughter which gladdens the measuring eye when it lights on the unmeasured, the Ex- cessive, the disproportionate. ' As our mode of olassifloation shows, we may regard these as primarily instances of laughable degradation. Nevertheless, some apprehension of contradiction is clearly involved. 110 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE One subdivision of this domain of the laughable is the logically incongruous or the ahswrd. Here, again, we touch on a region into a large part of which culture must give the key of admission. An example of such a laughable absurdity is found in that which conflicts with our deepest and most unalterable convictions. What is logically far-fetched or paradoxical is a familiar provocative of mirth. Since this case, like that of laughing at an extravagant costume, does not imply a direct and clear perception of relation, but onlyja kind of harmless shock to our firmly rooted apper- ceptive tendenciesj we may expect to find illustrations of it low down in the scale of intelligence^' As we shall see later, children will be moved to mirth by the presentation of an idea that directly conflicts with their crude standards of the possible ; and savages show the same impulse to laugh at what is manifestly opposed tq^their fixed traditional standS3s of trutL So it is with suggestions and proposals^ which strike the more mature intelligence as paradoxical, that is to say, as a kind of assault on its deeply fixed habits of belief, and what it is pleased to call its " common-sense ". Ideas which strike it as revolutionary, whether they appear in the domain of social custom, of political activity, of morals, or of scientific explanation, are greeted by voluminous laughter. Darwin's idea of man's descent from an ape-like ancestor, when first introduced, probably excited almost as much hilarity as indignation. More restricted is the area for amusement supplied by logical inconsistencies. The spying out of amusing incon- sequences in a man's various utterances is the work of an expert. A contradiction must be very palpable, and the contradictory statements must be very near to one another in time, in order that food for laughter may reach the many. The best example of this laughter at contradiction in popular THE ABSURD 111 mirth is, I suppose, the "bull," where the incompatibility stares out at you from a single statement, and sets your sides shaking ; as in the argument, attributed to an Irish statesman, that, in the prosecution of a certain war, " every man ought to be ready to give his last guinea to protect the remainder "} One might naturally suppose that in the appreciation of these more intellectual forms of the laughable there would be no room for the restraining action of relativity. An incongruous relation would seem to be one and the same object for all men's intuitions, and the least affected by accidents of temperament and external circumstances. Yet this supposition is not quite correct. Such incongruities as < moral and logical inconsistencies have, it must be remem-i bered, their disagreeable and even their painful aspect. | When discovered in the character or in the intellect of a'i person known to be of a high consistency, a contradiction i would naturally offend the admiring spectator, j Here," too, then, we have to add the qualification, "provided that there is nothing disagreeable and repellant in the manifestation". Not only so, with respect to much that is popularly called paradox it is to be remembered that the standard of truth employed is far from being that of the eternal verities. As the allusion to the ridicule poured^ on Darwin's theory of natural selection shows, what one \ generation laughs at as plainly contradictory to funda- ■ mental notions may be quietly recognised as a familiar | truth by its successor. _i (10) A group of laughable presentations making large appeal to the more intellectual kind of laughter meets us in ' Prom a speech delivered by Sir Jolrn Parnell in the Irish House of Commons, 179S. See W. B. Le Fanu, Seventy Tears of Irish Life, oh. xvi. (" Irish Bulls "). 112 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE verbal play and amusing witticism. A closer examination of the nature of wit will come later. What seems most manifestly characteristic of verbal forms of the " funny " is the intrusion of the playful impulse. Children's word-play shows this clearly enough. New words are for them sounds to be reduced to familiar ones, and the funnier the results of this reduction the better are .they pleased. This leads by a step to punning, where quite intelligible words or phrases are purposely altered so as to I bring in a new meaning ; or where without any verbal alteration the substitution of a new meaning for the primary and obvious one effects the required change. The playful Pimpulse to get as far away as possible from rule and restric- i tion, to turn things topsy-turvy, to seize on the extravagant \ and wildly capricious, is clearly enough recognisable here. Much of this word-play, too, has a close kinship with make- believe ; a natural and obvious meaning is the pretence in this case, whereas the reality is the half-hidden meaning introduced by the inventive wag. 'All the same it seems to — me that this group of laughable objects has its place close to that of the incongruous and absurd.! A pun that claims any intellectual rank must have a point, a bite, and this would appear to be most naturally secured by introducing an element of irony and rendering the primary and obvious meaning of the sentence ludicrously false. When, for example, a preacher whose ponderous dulness had set his congregation genteelly scuttling was said to have delivered " a very moving discourse," the point of the witty thrust lay in the complete opposition between the best and the worst result of eloquence brought together in the two meanings of " moving," an opposition which gives the trenchant irony to the description. In cases, too, where there is no verbal trickery the lighter VERBAL PLAY AND WITTICISM 113 kind of wit shows the same tendency to a playful capricious- ness of fancy. It delights in substituting for our ordinary points of view and standards of reference others which strike the hearer as amusingly fanciful and extravagant. This is illustrated by much of our entertaining talk, which is wont to try to escape for a moment from the leading- strings of sober sense ; as when a person d, propos of a moon looking wan and faint some hours after an eclipse observed that she seemed not yet to have got over the effects of the eclipse. In this department of contemplative amusement we see once more the limitations introduced by differences of temperament and mental attitude, as well as of experience and knowledge. Nowhere, perhaps, is the habitual inclination of the balance between seriousness and love of fun in a man more clearly indicated than in his readiness to tolerate and enjoy word-play and the entertaining side of nonsense generally. One to whom words and serious points of view are sacred things, will barely suffer any form of this recrea- tion. On the other hand a ready appreciation of these pranks of wit means that the listener's fancy has the requi- site speed of wing. It means, too, commonly, that his intelligence is in touch with the wit's standpoint, with his experience and circle of ideas. Bucolic wit is a sealed book to the superior gentleman from the town ; the merry verbal sports of the judge, the statesman, the theologian and so forth, reflecting like their dreams daily types of experience and habits of thought, are apt to fall flat on the ears of those who are not in touch with these. The above may, perhaps, serve as a sufficiently full enumeration of the more prominent of those attributes or aspects of laughable things which, some in some cases, others in others, make direct appeal to our mirth. 8 114 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE That each of these may of itself thus start the currents of laughter will, I believe, be admitted by those who are familiar with the field of human mirth. There is, I hold, [ample evidence to show that 'what is embarrassing, what is contrary to rule, what is demeaning, what is unreal and pretentious, and the rest, do each, under certain limiting ^gonditions, move men's laughter. It is, no doubt, difficult to supply a perfect demonstra- tion of the fact of the intrinsic laughableness of each jpt these features. It has already been pointed out that in many of the most agreeable instances of the laughable different stimuli combine their forces. This is so much the case that it is sometimes difficult to decide which of the co-operating attributes is the most prominent. For / example, the spectacle of the lackey donning the externals of a fine gentleman — ^a favourite subject of mirthful treat- ment by Moli^re and others — may amuse us as a transparent I pretence, as a fine display of insolent vanity, or, again, as an amusing caricature of the extravagant absurdities of ^^fine manners. Extravagance in dress and the like is frequently found in the company of a deliciously erroneous idea of one's own importance. Intellectual naivete may peep out at us and a moral naivete look over its shoulder, as in the remark of a lady whom the astronomer Cassini had invited to see an eclipse, when she found that she had arrived too late : " M. de Cassini will be good enough to begin again for my sake "} As I have remarked, the unfitting is in a large number of cases an introduction of something unworthy ; as when a man at a dinner-party almost suggests something of an animal violence in his mode of eating, or an orator resorts to a " wooden " manner of speech or gesture, or when an unhappy simile hurls ' See Bergsou, op. cit., p. 45, COMBINATION OF LAUGHABLE FEATURES 115 the hearer into the lowest region of the commonplace, a proceeding satirised in the well-known lines from Butler's Hudibras : — And like a lobster boil'd, the morn Prom black to red began to turn. As a last example of the many-sidedness of the laughable we may name affectation, particularly when it takes the form of aping another's manners ; for this may amuse us as a bit of acting seen through, or as an incongruous in- trusion of a foreign element into the natural character of the imitator, or, again, as a weakness, a lack of intellectual or of moral initiative. Nevertheless, the appearance of cross - division in our ^ scheme is really no objection to it. By collecting a suffi- cient number of instances, and noting how the presentation of a certain feature affects us when it is plainly the pre- ponderant stimulus, and how it will continue to affect us in much the same way when its concomitants vary, we may satisfy ourselves that each of the aspects here named is effective as a provocative of laughter. It will be for experimental psychology, if ever its methods are competent to grapple with the subject, to make this clearer. There is another objection, which, though related to the last, is to be carefully distinguished from it. Even in cases where the laughable feature is clearly localised there may seem something arbitrary in our mode of de- scribing it. For example, it may be said, why distinguish the relation of the unfit and kindred relations as a special group, since in all cases they may be regarded as products and expressions of a defective intelligence or taste ? To raise this difficulty now is, however, to anticipate our theoretical problem, how far these several varieties of laughable feature lend themselves to reduction to a 116 VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE common principle. In naming each of the above groups I have sought to envisage the laughable aspect as the natural man, innocent of theoretic aims, would envisage it. What is important here is to emphasise both the frequent combination of entertaining features in the objects which excite our laughter, and the fact that one and the same feature may be envisaged in more than one way. These two circumstances throw an interesting light on the mean- ing of the long discussions and the want of agreement among theorists. In drawing up this list of the laughable features in things I have said nothing about the connection between this part of the inquiry and that which preceded it. Yet the connection has not been wholly hidden. In the enter- taining effect of new things we have found an element of the laughter which springs from a sudden expansion of joy. In the laughter excited by the indecent we have noted a trace of the laughter of " sudden glory " and of what I have called nervous laughter. Lastly, in dealing with the entertaining quality of the more sportive wit we seem to have got near the laughter of play. This connection would appear the more clearly if we were to extend our list by adding a pair of groups. These are (11) laughable objects which affect us as expressions of a merry mood ; and (12) laughable situations which in- volve a relation akin to that of victor and vanquished. A word or two on each of these must suflSce. ' (11) There is little doubt that all presentations which are instantly interpreted as manifestations- of a fun-kmng^ dis- position tend to excite merriment. This is true of series of sounds, musical as well as non-musical, which have in their rapid staccato movement a resemblance to those of laughter. It holds good also of play-like movements, such as the OTHER EFFECTS OF THE LAUGHABLE 117 freakish gambols of a just loosened pony, or of a circus clown. The exprfiaaioiL^^ttie mirtiiful temper in things awakens- a sjnnpathetic_ laughter in the observer. Here, perhaps it would seem to be more correct^ tQ,^ay that we laugh not at ov over, -but, if onejnay so say, to the playful freak.^ Nevertheless, we shall find that what we recognise as objectively laughable cannot be understood save by reference to these appearances of plaj^ul challenge. (12) That the sight of a man winning in a struggle or getting the better of another in some way is fitted to furnish amusement, is indisputable. This obviously falls in part under the head of laughter at the spectacle of I another's difficulty or scrape ; but it certainly deserves a-1 separate place in an enumeration of the larger and popularly distinguished sources of merriment. There is no need to emphasise the fact that the social spectacle owes much of its interest to combat, competition, all that is understood by men's measuring their powers one against the other. The amusing side of this interest is found in the gleeful satisfaction which the impartial spectator derives from each successful stroke, whether on ; the one side or on the other. The attraction of all eujj counters of wit in the market-place, in the political domain, on the stage and so forth, illustrates this. Popular literature will show that the plain man has fed his mirth bounteously from this source. The situations which minister to this feeling of " sudden glory ' in an onlooker are not confined to those of contest. All displays of a capacity to get the better of another seem to be entertaining to the many. Just as the sight of a man chastising his wife is good sport for the savage onlooker, so the spectacle of taking down, of discomfiture and humi- liation — especially if it involves an element of deception or - 118 VARIETIES OP THE LAUGHABLE befooling, and so takes on the look of outwitting — may yield excellent fun to the civilised spectator. '" A more refined variety of the perception of the laughable occurs when we look on Nature or fate as discomfiting man, playing tricks on him or outwitting him. So far as this idea of irony comes into our view of things, any misfortune, especially if it involves disappointment of hopes and frustra- tion of efforts, may excite a note of laughter which has an " over- tone " of triumphant mockery. The enjoyment of the spectacle of one man triumphing over another or showing superiority to him will in all cases be limited by conditions already sufficiently indicated. Since the laughter excited here is, presumably, in its characteristic ingredient a reflection by way of sympathetic imagination of the victor's sudden glory, it must be included in the more brutal variety. If a lively sensibility produces quickly enough a sympathetic apprehension of the feelings of the vanquished, it will effectually check the impulse to laugh. Finally, a bare allusion may be made to the way in which the laughter of relief from emotional or other strain comes into our appreciation of the laughable in things. The amus- ing aspect of all lapses from dignity in religious and other ceremonies cannot, I believe, be understood merely as an illustration of an inconsequence and irrelevance, but must be connected with the powerful tendency to throw off a heavy and depressing mental load by a moment's mirth. The laughter at what is lawless, and still more at the indecent and the profane, certainly derives a part of its gusto from a sense of relief from restraint, which is a main ingredient in the enjoyment of all license. But the fuller discussion of the way in which the primal sources of laughter contribute to the impressions we receive from laughable objects belongs to another chapter. 119 CHAPTER V. THEOEIBS OP THE LUDIOBOUS. OuB survey of laughable things has led us to recognise certain groups which appear to induce the laughing mood : each presenting its special variety of laughable feature. One group may be aa,id,primd facie, to exhibit mischances, another some form of human defect, another, again, something of the misfitting or incongruous, and so forth. We may now advance to the theoretic problem of unifying and explaining these varieties of the laughable. Here, for the second time, we must touch on the views propounded by authorities on the subject under the name of Theories of the Ludicrous. Happily, it is not necessary to burden the reader with a full account of these. We shall of course pass by all doctrines deduced from a priori meta- physical conceptions, and confine ourselves to those which make a show, at least, of grounding themselves on an analysis of facts. Of these I shall select two or three typical theories which come to us with the claims of distinguished authorship. We shall test these by examining how far they succeed in comprehending the diversity of fact now before us. 1. The first of these typical theories localises the secret force of the laughable in something unworthy or degraded in the object. According to this view, the^unction^of laughter is to accojnpany and give voice to what may be called the derogatory impulse in man^ his tendency to look 120 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS out for and to rejoice over what is mean and undignified. This may be called the Moral Theory, or Theory of De- gradation. Aristotle's brief remarks on comedy in the Poetics^ may be taken as illustrative of this way of envisaging the laughable^ Comedy, he tells us, is " an imitation of characters of a lower type — ^not, however, in. the full sense of the word bad " ; and, again, the Ludicrous (to 76X0101') is a subdivision of the ugly (rou alcT'xpov), and consists in " some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive".^ Of an adequate theory of the subject there is here, of course, hardly a pretence. It Seems strange, indeed, that a great thinker with the works of his compatriot Aristophanes before him should have placed the ludicrous wholly in character, altogether overlooking the comic value of situation. Still, the reference of the laugh- able to the category of ugly and disgraceful things — for TO alaxpov on its moral side connotes the disgraceful (com- pare the Latin " turpe ") — may be said to imply a germ of the principle of degradation. A more careful attempt to construct a theory of the ludicrous by a reference to something low or degrade^, in the o bject is embodied in the famous doctrine of Thomas Hobbeay According to this writer, " the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from sudden con- ception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison witti the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly ". In this theory our laughter is viewed as arising, not immediately from a perception of something low or undignified, but only mediately from this perception, through a recognition of our own superiority and an accompanying emotional movement, namely, an expansion of the "self -feeling," a sudden quicken- ing of the sentiment of pride or power. Nevertheless, the ' Poetics, V. i. (Butcher's translation). THEORY OF DEGRADATION 121 theory^ may be said to come under the principle of degrada- tion, in so far as it makes the process of laughter start with a perception of some point of inferiority, that is to say of a comparative loss of dignity, in the laughable object. The main point of this theory, that whenever we.,enjoy the ludicrous we are consciously realising, aur superiority to another, will, I think, hardly bear examination. That in this enjoyment there may be, and often is, an element of this agreeable sense of elevation I readily allow, and I shall try to show presently how it gets there. But jt . is altogether inadequate^ as an exhaustive account of the several varieties of our laughing satisfaction. Even in the groups of cases to which it seems to be most plainly applicable, for example, those of mischances and awkward situations, it is not a sufficient explanation. Is there any discoverable trace of the uplifting of pride, of the temper of " Schadenfreude " — the malicious satisfaction of watching from the safe shore the tossings of mariners in a storm — in the instantaneous response of our mirth to the spectacle of <^ the skater's wild movements when for a moment he loses equilibriuEQ, or of the hat wind-driven far from its proper seat on the respectable citizen's head ? Is there time here for mentally bringing in the contrasting idea of our own immunity ? Has the laugh the characteristic taste of the outburst of contempt which is excited by the consciousness of victory, of taking somebody down ? In dealing with this type of theory, it seems only fair to test it in the more mature form given it by a recent writer. , Prof. Alexander Bain defines " the occasion of the ludicrous " as "the degradation of some person or interest possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion ". The most nig,rked improvements here on Hobbes' statfifljentare (1) that consciousness of our own superiority 122 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS jieed not come in, since we may laugh sympatheticallj'jwith another who scores off his adversary, and so forth ; (2) that the object degraded need not be a person, since human affairs in general, e.g., political institutions, a code of manners, a style of poetic composition, may be taken down ; and (3) that, as in Aristotle's theory, certain limiting conditions, namely, absence of counteracting emotions, such as pity or disgust, are recognised. These extensions on the one hand and limitations on the other are clearly meant to safeguard the Hobbesian principle against the attacks to \ which it so dangerously exposes itself.^ Even in this new and more guarded form, however, the theory will not bear the strain put upon it. It will account fairly well for some of the forms of the laughable in our list, such as slight misfortunes or mischances, defects, moral and intellectual, which do not shock or otherwise hurt our feelings, also certain forms of make-believe which are distinctly hypocritical and so capable of being regarded at once as moral defects, and (being seen through) as discom- fitures. It may apply also, as has been hinted above, to the effect of the obscene ; though I, at least, feel that with- out some forcing the effect cannot be interpreted in this way. There seems to me to lurk in our laughter here something of the joy of the child, of the Naturkind, Walt Whitman, at the sight of what is customarily hidden away.^ Leaving this, however, as a more doubtful case, let us turn to other groups. Is it possible to regard aU laugh- able exhibitions of incongruities as degradations? Is the 'A further and most important enlargement of Hobbea' principle is made by Bain when he urges that the spectacle of degradation works upon us, not merely by way of the emotion of power or glory, but by way of the feeling of release from constraint. This point will more conveniently be dealt with later. ^ Compare above, p. 100. BAIN'S THEORY 123 charming unsuitability of the " grown-up's " coat and hat to the childish form viewed by the laughing spectator as a degradation when he " lets himself go " ? Are we laughing at the clothes as degraded by being thus transformed, or at the child's naivety as a degradation of human intelligence ?> I confess that such a way of interpreting the spectacle strikes me as grotesquely forced. The look of the whole thing in the complete unfitness of its parts seems to affect one as a delicious absurdity before the sweet simplicity below the surface is detected. Our author does his best to show that mere incongruity, where nothing is degraded, does not raise the laugh. I readily grant that he has made out his case, so far as to show that in most of the pungent and potently moving examples of the incongruous an element of degradation, of malicious detraction is present. But this is not enough. The question is whether it is always present, and whether in the cases where it is present it is thesole excitant of our mirth. X believe that a finer analysis shows that this is not so. Where, for example, is " the degraded " in a child's laughter at the sight of his nursery all topsy-turvy on a / cleaning day ? Does he view the nurse as put to shame by the setting of chairs on tables and so forth, instead of observing the proper local congruities ? or does he think of the room as something quasi-human which takes on an improper look as he himself does when he makes himself in a glorious mess? Slight movements of fancy of this kind may be present : but do they lie at the sources of his^ laughter and constitute its main moving force ? As another way of testing the theory, we may glance at those examples of the odd or out of the way in which we find nothing of deformity, and do not seem to focus our mental glance on any loss of dignity, but are content to be 124 THEORIES OP THE LUDICROUS amused at the queer spectacle for its own sake. I have seen a child of three or so go into a long fit of laughter at the antics of a skittish pair of horses just turned loose on a common. Did the child see anything of the mean, dis- graceful, undignified in these new and lively movements ? Were they not immensely, overpoweringly funny, just because they were outrageous deviations from the customary proper behaviour of horses when saddled or harnessed to a carriage ? I feel the impulse to laugh at a " guy " in the street who captures my roving nonchalant eye long before 1 1 reflect on any loss of dignity which the bizarre costume may signify. In sooth, if, in this first happy moment, any distinct thought of the personality behind the wild, startling figure floats up to the surface of consciousness, it is a friendly one. I am disposed to like and feel grateful to the person who thus for an instant relieves for me the insufierable dulness of the spectacle of London citizens all dressed according to one stupid fashion. Or let us take another group : the relish for word-play and the lighter kinds of wit. Here, again, I concede to Bain that the taking down of somethiag a good peg-interval intensifies our satisfaction : but it seems impossible to main- tain that our mirth depends altogether on the recognition of this. A good pun, a skilful turning of words so as to give a new and startlingly disconnected meaning, can hardly be said to owe its instant capture of our laughing muscles to our perception of a degradation of language and the habits of serious speech. On the contrary, I should say that any focussing of thought on this aspect would considerably weaken and might altogether arrest the laughing impulse. It is to the serious person who keeps his mouth firmly closed that this feature of the case addresses itself. Is there not here, even in the case of mirthful men, some of the delight THEORY OF INCONGRUITY 125 of the playful child who amuses himself by turning words and expressions into queer nonsense just for the fun of the thing ? 2. We may now pass to the second of the main types of theory which have been proposed as explanations of the working of the laughable on our feeling and the correlated muscular mechanism. Its distinctive mark is that, instead of setting behind our enjoyment of the ludicrous an emotion, or a change in our moral attitude, namely, a sense of our own superiority or of something else's degradation, it sets a purely intellectual attitude, a modification of thought- activity. The laughter, according to this second theory, results from a peculiar effect on our intellectual mechanism, such as the nullification of a process of expectation or of an expectant tendency. It is this perfectly disinterested intel- lectual process which brings about the feeling of the ludicrous and its expression in laughter. This may be called the In- tellectual Theory, or Theory of Contrariety or Incongruity. Since we have already touched on this mode of conceiving of the effect of the ludicrous in criticising the view of Dr. Lipps, a brief examination of it may content us here. It may be noted in passing that this way of dealing with the ludicrous is characteristically German. The dominant note in the philosophy of Kant and his successors has been to regard all determinations of experience as fundamentally a rational process. Just as in the domain of ethics these thinkers conceive of what British Ethicists have been wont to call the Moral Sentiment as essentially a process of Reason, so in that branch of Esthetics which deals with the Comic we find them disposed to regard the effect of the ludicrous, less as the excitation of a concrete and familiar emotion, such as Pride or Power, than as a special modi- fication of the process of thought. 126 THEORIES OP THE LUDICROUS Kant may be taken as the first great representative of this theory. According to him, wit — the only variety of the ludicrous which he touches on — is a kind of play, namely, that of thought. In everything that is to excite.a.liyely laugh there must be something absurd. It is! " an affection aris- ing from the sudden transformation of a strained (gespannte) expectation into nothing". ' The transformation is, of course, not directly enjoyable to the understanding : it seems to in- duce gratification indirectly by means of a furthered bodily process. This, by the way, is a noteworthy concession by a German thinker to the claims of the poor body to recogni- tion in these high affairs of the understanding, a concession which his followers quickly struck out. He gives as an example of his theory the story of a Hindoo who, when sitting at an Englishman's table, and seeing a bottle of beer turned into froth, expressed astonishment. Being questioned as to the reason, he remarked : " I am not at all astonished that it should flow out, but I do wonder how you ever got it in". I have enlarged on Kant's theory mainly because of the authority of the author. German critics themselves recog- nise how absurdly inadequate is the little he says on the subject as an explanation of the effect of the laughable.^ A few words will perhaps make this plain. It is evident that what Kant was thinking of under the head of the ludicrous was merely those exchanges of witty words and amusing stories which naturally enough formed a principal pastime of the devoted Konigsberg thinker^ Yet, even when considered under this narrow aspect, his theory shows itself to be palpably insulEcientJ It is noteworthy 'Kant's contribution to tlie theory of tlie ludicrous is contained in a single " Remark " appended to a discussion of the Fine Arts and Taste. See Dr. Bernard's translation of his Kritik of Judgment, pp. 221-4. KANT ON LAUGHTER 127 that, in seeking to make it fit the remark of the Hindoo quoted above, Kant feels himself called upon to contradict the suggestion that we laugh /" because we deem ourselves cleverer than this ignorant man ". This objection, which could not fail to occur to one who remembers Hobbes.j can- not, however, be summarily dismissed by a bare assurance such as Kant gives us ; and, as a recent writer remarks, " there is good reason to suppose that we laugh at the ignor- ance (better, 'at the naivete') of the man who seeks the difficulty in a wrong place ".^ One may go farther and venture the assertion that it is impossible to explain any laughable incident, story or remark as due altogether to dissolved expectation or surprise. In examining the adequacy of Kant's theory to this purpose, I set out with the natural presupposition that, j when using the word expectation, [he does not mean a definite anticipation of some particular concrete sequel to what is presented to the mind at the momenta In the illustration given, he would not have meant J;hat the questioner had a well-defined expectant idea of another explanation of the Hindoo's astonishment. It is only fair to assume that he meant merely what the word " expect '' means when, on meeting a friend in a London street whom I had supposed to be out of England, I say "I did not expect to see you ". In other words, " expectation " stands here for a general attitude of mind, a mode of apperceptive readiness to assimilate any idea of a certain order, that is to say, standing in a recognisable relation to what is pre- sented^'' 'It is the attitude in which we appreciate the evolution of a plot in fiction when this appears natural and does not give a shock to consciousness. | ' ^ Article " On the Philosophy of Laughing," by the Editor, The Mcmist, 1898, p. 255. 128 THEORIES OP THE LUDICROUS Employing the word in this sense, one may say that, even when we laugh on receiving the solution to a conundrum which has teased and baffled us, it is not because of the dissipation of an expectant attitude. This conclusion is suggested by the familiar fact that, when at the end of our self-puzzhng we are told that there is no solution, and when consequently we are unmistakably the subjects of an annulled expectation, we are very likely not to laugh ; or, if we are good-natured enough to do so, it is as a result, not of any disappointment, but of a discovery that we have been hoaxed. This laugh at one's befooled self — which we shall not be disposed to repeat if the trick is tried a second time — so far from illustrating the principle of annulled expectation is a particularly clear example of that of lowered dignity. The best kind of example of the laughable for Kant's purpose would seem to be something odd and fantastic in dress or manners. Here, as I have allowed, a kind of shock is inflicted on our fixed apperceptive tendencies. But to speak of a process of dissipated expectation here seems to be hardly accurate. As I have hinted, the sudden appearance of the unexpected moves us to laughter prim- arily as a delightful novelty. It seems to follow that Kant's principle of nullified expectation offers no adequate explanation of those forms of the ludicrous which are most promising for his pur- pose. I may add that [it fails because it makes no serious attempt to mark ofl" the domain of the laughable by certain well-defined characteristics. We have seen that the objects which excite our laughter are things human, or akin to the human. The theory of degradation evidently recogmsea this : by making the ludicrous consist in a loss of dignity it points at once to the human sphere. But the theory RELATION OF SURPRISE TO LAUGHTER 129 that the effect of the ludicrous comes from an annihilation of a strained expectation suggests that it has nothing speci- ally to do with the spectacle of human life. As I have not included the capability of dissipating expectation among the laughable features of objects, I may indicate what I hold to be the function of surprise in the effect of the ludicrous. Surprise, the effect of a presentation for which the mind is not perfectly pre-ad- justed at the moment, seems to be a common condition of vivid and exciting impressions, certainly of those which induce a state of gladness. Hence we need not wonder that it should be found among the antecedents of that outburst of gladness which we call laughter.' Nevertheless, it seems probable that the part played_by surprise in tiie^^joymerit of the laudable has been ex- aggerated. Does the Londoner who laughs again and again at the rough jocosities of the Punch and Judy show, depend on annihilated expectation for his mirth ? Dogberry's love of a mildewy old story is by no means peculiar to him. A really good joke continues to amuse long after the first effect of surprise has worn off. | A like conclusion is reached by remembering that even when a definite attitude of ex- pectation for the coming of the ludicrous turn is assumed, laughter's greeting is none the less hearty. When racy stories are circulating and the lips move in anticipation of some new joke it seems an odd way of describing the effect to say that it is due to a dissipation of expectation. There surely seems to be more of realisation than annihila- tion here, even though the precise form of the impending attack on our laughter is unknown. In certain cases, more- over, as when we are watching with amusement the actions of one on whom a practical joke is being played — actions which wej_ being ia the secret of the plot, are able to fore- 9 130 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS cast with a considerable degree of precision, the element of surprise dwindles to the vanishing point. The essential condition of our laughter would thus appear to be, not the meeting of the amusing presentation with a state of complete unpreparedness of mind at the moment, but such a degree of contrariety between the presentation and our fixed and irrepressible apperceptive tendencies as will, even in spite of a pre-adjustment, secure something of a mild, momentary- shock.^ A more carefully developed example of the mode of conceiving of the laughable which finds its essence in the annihilation of a rational attitude is supplied by Schopen- hauer. According to this writer, the process which deter- mines our laughter is describable as an intellectual^ ej^trt. and its frustration. '/' In every instance (he tells us) the phenomenon of laughter indicates the sudden perception of an incongruity between a conception (Begrifi) and a real object, which is to be understood jOT ' thought ' through (i.e., by means of) this conception."^] The incongruity be- tween the perception and the conception under which the understanding necessarily strives to bring it must be of such a degree Jhat the perception strikingly difiers from the conception. / The greater and the more unexpected the incongruity, the more violent (heftiger) will be our laughter. The author's example of the absurdity of the presenta- tion of the curve and straight line trying to force itself under the incongruent conception of an angle is intended to illustrate this theory.^ Here is another which has a ' I find after completing this paragraph that the point dealt with, namely, that surprise, in the sense of the efiEeot of mental unpreparedness, is not an invariable antecedent of our response to the laughable, has been urged by a French writer, M. Oourdaveaux. His critic, M. Dugas, does not seem to me to have effectually combated it. (See Dugas, op. ait., p. 63 fi.) * See above, p. 6. SCHOPENHAUER'S THEORY 131 more promising look. A man who has been arrested by soldiers is allowed to join them in a game of cards. He is found cheating and is kicked out, his playmates quite forgetting that he is their prisoner. Here, according to Schopenhauer, we laugh because the incident, the ejection of a prisoner just arrested, will not fit into the general rule, "cheats at the card-table should be thrust out". This form of the Intellectual theory clearlj_avoids the objection to Kant's version, that we frequently laugh at things when there is no discoverable trace of a preceding expectation involving something in the nature of an idea; for we take it as meaning that the conception arises after, and as a result of, the perception. It is further indisputable, as Kant has shown us, that in our explicit judgments, as when we say, " This painting is (or is not) a work of Eubens," a general form of representation or something in the nature of a concept may take part, the percept being (or refusing to be) subsumed under this. At the same time, as was urged in the first chapter, the distinct calling up of this general representation is occa- sional only, and, therefore, not a pre-requisite of a perception of conformity or non-conformity to the normal type. When I envisage a person as correctly or as oddly dressed, I do not in either case need to have a schematic repre- sentation of the proper typical style of dress. The same holds good of many cases in which a definite rule, say of language or good manners, is felt to be complied with or to be broken : we do not need to call up a distinct repre- sentation of the rule. At most we can speak here of a conceptual tendency, of an apperceptive acceptance or rejec- tion of a presentation, certain features of which are specially attended to as characteristic of the type or general form ; or, on the other hand, as marks of deviation from this. 132 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS Even if we adopt this amended form of Schopenhauer's theory, we find that it is not sufficient for explaining his examples. Of the fanny tangential angle no more need be said. Nor will his illustration of the self-befooled warders bear close inspection. To begin with, one may note a certain arbitrariness in the use of a mode of interpretation which plainly allows of an alternative. We can say equally well, either (with Schopenhauer) that the extrusion of a cheat who is also a prisoner will not fit into the general rule " cheats have to be ejected," or that the extrusion of a prisoner who is also a cheat will not fit into the rule that prisoners have to be confined.^ It seems to be more fitting here also to regard the incongruity — so far as the perception of this is the direct cause of our laughter — -as holding between two aspects of the incident presented. The man is envisaged at once as a cheat and as a prisoner, and as such comes under two regimes which directly conflict. The perception of the fun of the story surely begins with a discernment of this mutual interference of two systems of rule. Yet this is certainly not all or the chief part of the per- ception. The unstinting laugh comes only when we view the keepers as naively " giving themselves away " to their prisoner by consenting to become playraates, and so putting themselves under a rule which wholly destroys their rSle as custodians. Here, too, then, the principle of incongruity shows itself to be insufficient. It only remains to add that if Schopenhauer's theory turns out to be inadequate even when applied to an example chosen by himself, it is pretty certain to fail when applied to other groups of instances of the laughable in our list, in which incongruity does not seem to be a potent 1 Compare what was said above dpropos o£ the child and the hat, p. 14. FUNCTION OP CONCEPT IN LAUGHTER 133 ingredient, if indeed it is present at all. To suggest, for example, that our laughter at small and harmless vices, such as Aristotle speaks of, is the outcome of a suddenly- conceived incongruity between a " real object " or presen- tation and' a conception sounds sufficiently forced. Would the author of the theory have been prepared to say that in these instances we have present to our mind the concept of a perfectly virtuous man, and that our laughter comes of our failing to bring the perception under this conception ? Surely the intrusion of any such exalted " concept " would be fatal to our enjoyment of the laughable aspect of vice. Facts, moreover, contradict this view on every hand. It may suffice to allude to one of the world's great purveyors of laughter. Sir John Falstaff. According to this theory, we ought to laugh most at his vices when he first reveals them, since this is the moment when we should be most likely to bring to bear on him the " concept " of a proper decent gentleman. But is it not the fact that we laugh more freely when we have quite ceased to think of him as a possible embodiment of sobriety and decency, and when we apperceive his behaviour by help of the conceptual tendency answering, not to the type of virtuous citizen, but to the general manner of behaviour or the character of John Falstaff himself ? The same is true in everyday life. We are, I think, most ready to laugh at a man's foibles, say, his vanity or his exaggerations of speech, when we know the man and can say, " Oh, it is only So-and-So ! " Neither the theory of Kant nor of Schopenhauer seems, then, to be competent to do what it undertakes to do, to explain the various forms and impressions of the laughable. These two theories, in spite of their difference, agree in regarding the incongruity which excites our laughter as lying between what we perceive and what our previous V 134 THEOklES OF THE LUDICROUS experience and our pre-existing ideas and apperceptive habits have prepared us to accept as natural and proper. But our examination of the instance of the ill-matched hat and head supplied by Dr. Lipps, as also our fuller discussion of the relation of incongruity in the preceding chapter, has led us to recognise an amusing contrariety between different parts of a presentation, of what may be called internal incongruity in contradistinction to the external dealt with by Kant and Schopenhauer. Hence we have to inquire how these two modes of apprehending incongruity are related. That, prima facie, we have to do in this case with a real difference in the mode of perception, seems indisputable ; let the reader compare the effect of the two spectacles, a man wearing an extravagantly tall hat, and a small boy wearing a hat of the height of a man's ; or, again, a tiny man alone, and a short man by the side of a tall woman. In some instances, indeed, we may see that there is an intrinsic repugnance between the parts of a presentation, as when two colours in a woman's dress violently clash, or when a statement is palpably self-contradictory. Here there seems to be no reference, however vague, to previous experience or the customary. At the same time we may easily see that this field of the internally incongruent is a very narrow one. Much of what looks like this turns out, on closer inspection, to be, in part at least, externally deter- mined. This is true of what we call a bizarre mixture of incongruent elements in mode of attire or in manners ; for it is experience and the habits of social life which dispose our minds to regard them as foreign one to the other. Much of our mirthful gratification at exhibitions of the incongruous arises through a perception of the intrusion of something foreign into a situation. When, for example, we observe a INADEQUACY OF INTELLECTUAL THEORY 135 rather sprightly gesture in the pulpit, we mentally view this action against a background which is the situation of the moment. Now this situation is by no means wholly presented : it is a presentation greatly enlarged and pro- foundly modified by the addition of a general significance. The attitude of the spectator's mind, face to face with the scene, is determined by apperceptive tendencies which imply a readiness to expect a certain kind of behaviour. And this, again, evidently means that certain directions of imaginative activity, and something in the nature of a " generic image " and of conceptual thought, are stirring. This efiect of experience and apperceptive habits in modifying our per- ceptions is probably illustrated in all our appreciations of the amusingly incongruous. To revert once more to the spectacle of the man's hat on the child's head, may we not say that in this case, also, we envisage the hat as an inter- loper in the situation — the sweet sanctum of the nursery ? It seems to follow that Kant and Schopenhauer were wise, when dealing with incongruity, in emphasising the apperceptive factor. Contrariety to what we are accustomed to is undoubtedly the great determining element in the ill-assortments of things which provoke our laughter. Hence, in examining the theories of these two writers, we seem to have dealt with the intellectual principle in its most comprehensive and most favourable form. Nor do I see how any transformation of this principle will make it an adequate theory. The entertaining instances of mischances and awkward situations, of takings down, of moral and intellectual failings, these and other varieties of the laugh- able dealt with above steadily refuse to yield up their secret at the bidding of this theory. Let us now sum up the results of our criticism of the theories. We seem to have found that, whereas neither of 136 THEORIES OP THE LUDICROUS the two chief types ol theory covers the whole fiekl of the laughablej each has its proper, limited domain. It is certain that in many cases we laugh at an incident, a situation, an action, where the provocative is best described as a loss of dignity. It is equally certain that in many other cases our laughter; springs directly out of a perception, more or less distinct,,of incongruity. That Ithese principles have each a large sway over our laughte{ has been sufficiently illustrated in the preceding chapter:; also that they frequently co-operate in one and the same amusing presentation. Hence we might expect that the advocate of each theory would be able to find his illustrations, and would sometimes manage to pounce upon one just after it had been carried off by his rival. ^ But, it may be urged, even if both principles are shown to be valid they may be unified. If by this is meant that the incongruous and the undignified or unworthy, con- sidered as abstract ideas, are identical, or that logically each involves the other, I am not concerned to discuss the point. It is enough for our present purpose to urge that the modes of perception and the shades of feeling involved are clearly distinguishable. The same fundamental distinction would nullify the attempt to subsume one of these principles as a special case under the other. If we set out with the Intellectual principle, we may, without doubt, succeed in showing that many, if not all, amusing losses of dignity— such as a slight disgrace, or a bungling into a "fix" — logically involve a contrariety between what is presented and the normal custom or rule. But our question is one not of the logical analysis of meaning but of the psychological analysis of process, and I can find no evidence in favour of the theory ^ Cf. above, p. 114 ; also the article in The Monist already quoted. PROPOSED SYNTHESIS OP PRINCIPLES 137 that when we laugh at these things we have at the moment any apprehension of such a contrariety. It is the same if we start with the other or Moral prin- ciple. Incongruities which are lapses from standard ideas may certainly, as already conceded, be regarded as degra- dations. And it may be possible to show that in all cases of incongruity some loss of dignity is logically implied. Yet even if it be so, the psychological contention will still stand that in many cases of incongruity, including our old friend the child in the father's hat, we have a full sense of relishing the incongruity and yet none at all of enjoying a degrada- tion. Where is the degradation in the spectacle of a crow on a sheep's back which may flood a child with mirth ? In truth, if our theorists had only condescended to take note of so small a matter as children's enjoyment of the world's fun, the hypothesis of degradation could never have stood its ground so long. Yet another way of evading a glaring dualism may suggest itself. Allowiug that the two principles are each valid, we might, at least, be able to combine them in the form of a single generalisation. This is what is done by Hazlitt, for example, who, though he iinds the essence of the laughable in the incongruous, defines the ludicrous as involving disappointment of expectation by something having deformity or (something) inconvenient, that is what is contrary to the customary and desirable.^ Herbert Spencer's expression, a "descending incongruity," is clearly a very similar mode of combining the principles.^ Lipps' theory of incongruity, with its distinction of a little, and a belittling presentation, might also, I think, easily be made to illustrate another mode of such combination. More recently Fouillee ^English Comic Writers, lect. i., " Wit and Humour". 2 "The Physiology of Laughter," Essays, i., p. 206. 138 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS and others have urged that the one principle in a manner supplements the other. ^ It is evident, however, that this apparent mode of escape will not avail us. The combined theory implies that all cases of the laughable are at once incongruities and degrada- tions, that is to say, perceived and felt to be such. In dealing with the principles separately, however, we have seen that, in the case of each alike, there are well-recognised examples of the laughable to which it does not apply. This conclusion manifestly carries with it the proposition that there are cases to which a combination of the principles does not apply. A last attempt to escape this theoretic dualism would be to urge that the two principles rule in distinct realms. In that of the ludicrous proper, it might be urged, we have to do with the intellectual principle : it is only when the sphere is enlarged to include all that is laughable, and so the region of the ridiculous, that the principle of lowered dignity comes in.^ Theorists may insist on such distinctions, but it seems to me that they cannot be maintained as hard and fast boundaries. As has been shown above, laughable things do not all afl'ect us in quite the same way. A spice of malice comes into much of the laughter that greets the spectacle, say of a bit of successful trickery ; yet this does not make the experience substantially different from that of enjoying some striking example of incongruity, say a good Irish "bull". When the note of derision begins to sound clearly, there is of course no longer any suggestion of an effect of the laughable pure and simple. The attempt to analyse our perceptions of the laughable ' Aooording to Pouillee, contrast is the formal element, faultiness (" le d^faut "), the material. See Dugas, op. cit., p. 85 S. 2 HazUtt defines the ridiculous as the highest degree of the laughable, which is " a proper subject for satire," loc. cit. NO SINGLE CAUSE OF LAUGHTER 139 in the hope of discovering some single uniting principle has proved to be abortive. We find in the end that two causes of la ughter remain on our hands.^ The most promising way of bringing the several laughable qualities and aspects of things under one descriptive head would seem to be to say that they all illustrate a presentation of something in the nature of a defect, a failure to satisfy some standard-requirement, as that of law or custom, pro- vided that it is small enough to be viewed as a harmless plaything. Much, at least, of our laughter: at the odd as opposed to the customary, at the deformed; at failure in good manners and the other observances of social life, at defects of intelligence and of character, at fixes and mis- fortunes — so far as the situation implies want of foresight — at the lack of a perception of the fitness of things, and at other laughable features, may undoubtedly be regarded a& directed to something which fails to comply with a social requirement, jet is so trifling that we do not feel called upon to judge the shortcoming severely, I am sure that to look at the laughable in this way is an indispensable step in the construction of a theory of the subject. We must, as we shall see presently, supplement the common mode of dealing with laughter as an abstract psychological problem, by bringing into view its social function. Yet this does not necessarily mean that the consideration of this function will lead us straightway to- a simple theory of the ludicrous. As hinted in the preceding chapter, tire may easily exaggerate the more serious function of laughter, and this point will be made clearer in subsequent chapters. That the eflfects of the laughable cannot all be brought under the head of means of social correction or improvement, ' Compare Bibot, La Psychologie des sentiments, p. 344. 140 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS may, even at this stage of oui inquiry, be seen by considering another point, to which we will now turn. No analysis of the qualities of things in which the laughable resides will enable us to account for the mirthful eifects of these, even while we remain within the limits of what is commonly recognised as the ludicrous. This has been illustrated in the preceding chapter, and a word or two more may suffice to make it clear. I have tried to show that some at least of the spectacles that shake us with laughter do so by satisfying something within us akin to the child's delight in the gloriously new and extravagant. This, again, means that these spectacles make appeal to that primitive form of laughter, already illustrated, which is called forth by some sudden increase of joy. Our rejoicing at the sight of the clown's droll costume and funny movements has in it something of the laughing joy of the savage when he is shown some mechanical wonder of Europe, something of the laughing joy of the infant at the sudden invasion of his nursery wall by a dancing sunbeam.* A little more reflection on the groups of laughable things will show that other ingredients of this primitive laughter are present in our appreciation of the ludicrous. Dr. Bain finds himself compelled to eke out the deficiencies of the Hobbesian principle by urging that the spectacle of degradation may move us to laughter, not merely b y excit- ing the feeling of power or superiority (as Hobbes said), b ut by supplying a sudden release from a state of constraint. The abandonment of the serious attitude in church when some trivial incident occurs is an instance of a lowering of the dignity of a thing, or an occasion, which refreshes 1 M. Bergson has a glimpae of tlie oo-operation of " child's fun " in our laughter, op. cit., p. 69 ; but he fails to see the magnitude of this factor. JOY IN THE EFFECT OF THE LAUGHABLE 141 us with a sense of liberation.^ This idea carries us much farther than the author thinks. The joyous deliverance from pressure and constraint will, I think, be found to reinforce other mental agencies in many cases of ludicrous presentation in which no degradation is discoverable. Some- times the constraint is very severe ; witness the effect when the narrator of a funny story knows how to wind up the emotion of fear to just the right pitch in order to give us the delicious run down of the mental works when the funny ddnoiiement bursts upon us. Here our laughter has a large support in the joyous relief from nervous tension. In other cases, again, the release comes as an interruption of a solemn occasion by the intrusion of something dis- connected, and, by contrast, trifling. The tittering in a church at a small contretemps has been our illustration. There is incongruity here between two orders of ideas, if you like ; or, as I should prefer to put it, between two levels of interest. For the point is that the interruption must seem ludicrous by exhibiting clearly a trifling character, by powerfully suggesting a non-reverent point of view. As hinted above, these two sources of laughter, a sudden oncoming of gladness and a relief from restraint, are closely connected. The unexpected presentation which gladdens us seems commonly to bring a kind of relief. This is certainly true of all cases in which the preceding state was one of conscious depression and ennui. The laughter of the young, in response to our often cumbrous attempts to amuse them, may be an escape from a certain strain which belongs to a state of ennui, from the confinement or restraint which the poverty of their surroundings at the moment imposes on them.^ ' See The Emotions amd the Will, " The Emotions," chap, xiv., §§ 38-40. " Cf. Dugas, op. cit, p. 128 ft. 142 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS There is another conceivable way of bringing together the effect of sudden gladness and relief from restraint. It has been urged that all laughable things affect us by way of a shock of surprise followed by a sense of relief. Leigh Hunt, for example, thinks that when we laugh at something we receive a shock of surprise which gives a check to the breath, a check which is in proportion to the vivacity of the surprise ; and that our laughter is a relief from this.' This theory embodies a sound physiological principle, one which we have already adopted, but it seems to go too far. As I have tried to show, a shock of surprise, as we ordinarily understand the expression, is not an in- variable antecedent of our response to laughable things. On the other hand, it may be urged with some reason that even in cases where this full shock of the unexpected is wanting, there is a moment of strain as the presentation affronts the custom-trained eye, and that the laughter is the expression of the condoning of this affront, the acceptance of it as harmless play. In order to complete our psychological analysis of the tendencies which combine in our enjoyment of ludicrous things, we need to glance at one other variety of primitive laughter, that of contempt. In dealing with this in Chapter III. we drew the line between it and the true enjoyment of the laughable as something " objective ". Yet it would be a profound error not to recognise the fact, that there is a real kinship between the two. To begin with, the laugh of con- tempt, say over a prostrate foe, or over one whom we have succeeded in teasing by playing off on him some practical joke, readily passes into an enjoyment of the laughable proper. It is obviously in part a laugh at something. Not only so, as a laugh it may be presumed to involve a less ' Wit and Sumow, p. 7. CONTEMPT IN EFFECT OF THE LAUGHABLE 143 serious attitude in the successful spectator than a sneer, say, or the hurling of opprobrious words. It will naturally- direct itself to something in the undignified look of the dis- comfited party which would be likely to be recognised by others also as laughter-moving. Again, though I hold that Hobbes' theory, as he himself formulates it, errs by insisting on the swelling of the spectator's self-consciousness into a feeling of superiority or power, it seems to me to be indisputable that all examples of the laughable which clearly fall into the category of mild degradations do give us a sense of uplifting, something akin to Hobbes' " sudden glory ". As we are reminded by Dr. Bain, malevolence or malice has its protean disguises, and one of them is undoubtedly the joy of the laugher. The note of malicious crowing, of Schadenfreude, may, no doubt, be most distinctly heard in some of the laughter of satire and of the more brutal sort of joke. Yet I suspect that a trace of it lurks, like a beaten foe, inexpugnable though greatly reduced in strength, in a large part of our laughter. There are one or two facts which seem to me to point to the conclusion that superiority is implied in, if not tacitly claimed by, the forms of laughter which have a distinctly personal aim. One of these is the familiar fact that any- thing in the shape of a feeling of inferiority to, or even of respect for, the laughable person inhibits the laughter of the eontemplator. But other facts seem to me to be still more conclusive. Of these the first is that if a person finds himself distinctly involved in the disgrace, the absurd situation, or whatever else provokes laughter, he no longer laughs, or laughs in another key. I see my estimable fellow-pedestrian lose his hat at a street corner where the wind lies in ambush: my soul expands exultingly. The moment after, I, too, may fall a victim to the ambuscade, in 144 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS which case I probably stop laughing and become the subject of a different emotion. Or, if I am "laughing animal" enough to keep up the hilarity, the laugh will have changed. All the glory, the sense of uplifting, the exultation will have fled, and the new laugh, which embraces myself along with another unfortunate, will have in it something of humilia- tion, will at most have shrunk into a " chastened joy ". The second fact is still more decisive. If no superiority is implied in our common laughter at others, how does it come about that we all have so very obstinate a dislike to be made its object ? The most amiable of men find it hard enough to rise to the level of a bare toleration of others' laughter: the man who can reach the sublime height of finding a real and considerable gratification in it must be a hero, or — as some would say — a craven. There are men of a genuine and most blameless humour who are hardly, if at aU, less keenly sensitive to the attack of another laugher than the most serious of prigs. Is this understandable unless we suppose that laughter at a person is instinctively interpreted as an assertion of superiority over him ? It would seem then to be a reasonable view, that if laughter in ordinary cases involves superiority, and is so regarded by its object, the enjoyment of it by its subject will be very apt to bring with it a taste of superiority. This, I conceive, is the element of truth in Hobbes' theory. The foregoing considerations seem to show clearly that the realm of the ludicrous is not a closed and clearly bounded territory, as the theorists for the most part assume it to be. Our enjoyment of its amusing sights connects itself with, and indeed absorbs into itself, tendencies which we may observe in the laughter of children and uncivilised adults. And, if so, the fact seems to reqmre us to go back upon those primitive tendencies in order to see how far the connection GLORY IN GREETING THE LAUGHABLE 145 holds, that is to say, how far the effects of the ludicrous can be regarded as due to the play of those tendencies. An analysis of the primitive forms of laughter, which pre- cede its regulation by a reference to ideas, has disclosed the fact that it is the expression of pleasure, yet not of all pleasure, but only of the sudden oncoming or increase of pleasure, of what we call gladness. It has shown us, further, that this joy of laughter is, in many, if not in all cases, conditioned by a sudden relaxation of mental strain, and may, indeed, be described by reference to this condition as a sense of relief from pressure. This was seen to hold good alike in those graver situations in which nervous laughter is apt to occur, in the lighter ones, such as the escape of schoolboys from the classroom to the playground, and in the still lighter ones in which the strain relaxed is momentary only, of which the laughter induced by tickling is the best representative. Now it seems evident that we have in all these experi- ences something analogous to play. The natural alliance of laughter with the play-mood has already been touched on.^ We may now go a step farther and say that these spurts of joyous consciousness which, in simple natures un- trammelled by thought of appearances, express themselves in laughter are of the essence of Play. To be glad with the gaiety of laughter, to throw off the stiff and wearing attitude of seriousness and to abandon oneself to mirth and jollity is, in truth, to begin to play. The deep kinship between laughter and play discloses itself as soon as we begin carefully to compare them. Let us look at some of their common characteristics. Play contrasts with work, not as rest or inactivity con- trasts with it, but as light pleasurable activity contrasts > See p. 76, ff. 10 146 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS with the more strenuous and partly disagreeable kind. The same holds good of laughter. It is light pleasurable activity in contrast to the more burdensome activity of our serious hours. Again, play is free activity entered upon for its own sake. That is to say, it is not directed to any end outside itself, to the satisfaction of any want, save that of the play-impulse itself ; and so it is free from external restraint, and from the sense of compulsion — of a " must " at the ear, whether embodied in the voice of a master or in that of a higher self — which accompanies the attitude of the worker. Similarly, when we laugh we are released from the strain and pressure of serious concentration, from the compulsion of the practical and other needs which keep men, in the main, serious beings. It follows at once that play is relative to work, that it is enjoyed as a relief from graver occupations, and cannot be indefinitely prolonged. And, as has been hinted above, the same holds true of laughter and what we appropriately describe as playing the fool. In saying that play is spontaneous activity, freed from the imperious rule of necessity, I do not mean that it is aimless. The play-impulse provides its own ends; for, without something to aim at, it could not become conscious activity in the full sense. Thus in the case of children, at any rate, and possibly of young animals also, playing at some form of combat implies, as Prof. Groos urges, a keen striving for something akin to conquest. In other words, the instinct which underlies the activity seems to bring with it the setting up of something like an end. Similarly with respect to those varieties of children's play which aim at the realisation of an idea, and so resemble art. In this case, too, an instinct, namely, imitative production, prompts to the semblance of a serious conative process, the striving RELATION OP LAUGHTER TO PLAY 147 after an end. The same applies to mirthful activity. In playing off a joke on another we certainly have a definite aim in view. In neither case, however, is the end regarded as a serious or important one. Play ceases to be pure play just as soon as the end, for example conquest, begins to be regarded as a thing of consequence to the player ; and, in like manner, laughter ceases to be pure mirth just as soon as the end, say the invention of a witticism, is envisaged as a solid personal advantage, such as heightened reputation.* A like remark applies to the intrusion of the serious attitude into play when this takes on an elaborate form requiring some concentration of attention. This does not destroy the playful character of the activity so long as the end is not viewed as matter of serious import. In this respect, too, laughter resembles play, for we may take considerable pains in shaping our practical joke without ever losing hold of fun as our end. This brings us to another point of kinship between play and laughter. Each, though marked off from the things of the real serious world, has to do with these in a manner. The play both of animals and of children is largely pretence, that is to say, the production of a semblance of an action of serious life, involving some consciousness of its illusory character. This seems inferrible, in the case of animal play, e.g., the make-believe combats, from the palpable restriction of the movements within the limits of the harmless.^ And with regard to the play of the nursery, it 1 Prof. Groos does not, I think, bring out clearly enough the distinc- tion here drawn, though he may be said to half-recognise it when he speaks of "joy in conquest " as the end of play combats (Plwy of Arwmals, pp. 291, 292). ^This restriction sometimes takes on a look of a oonative process of self-control, e.g., when an older cat, not used to play, is importunately challenged by a lively kitten. 148 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS is probable that all through a play-action there is, in spite of the look of absorbing seriousness, a dim awareness of the make-believe. It is fairly certain that we have to do in this case with a double or " divided " consciousness.' And, as has been illustrated above, laughter is wont to hover about the domain of the serious. In both cases we find the love of pretence playing pranks with the real world, divest- ing things of their significance and value for the serious part of our mind, and transmuting them by fancy into mere appearances for our amusement. Another point of similarity may be just alluded to. Recent discussions on the nature of play have served to bring out its utility or serviceableness. Not only is the sportive activity of children and young animals of physio- logical benefit as wholesome exercise, it is now seen to be valuable as a preliminary practice of actions which later on become necessary. Thus in play-combats children and young animals begin to learn the arts of skilful attack and defence.^ Much of this benefit of play-activity is due to the circumstance that it is a mode of organised co-operation and supplies a kind of training for the serious social activity of later years. I shall hope to show later that laughter has a like value, not merely as a source of physiological benefit to the individual, but as helping us to become fit members of society. It seems hardly needful to point out that since the fact of this utility is known neither to the player nor to the laugher, it does not in the least afiect the truth of our contention, that their activity is not controlled by external ends which have a practical or other serious value. ' On this " divided consciousness " in play see Groos, Play of AnimaU, p. 303 ff. ' On the uses of animal play see Groos, The Play of Man, Part III., sect. 2, and Lloyd Morgan, Animal Behamour, chap, vi., sect. 2. IDENTITY OP PLAY AND LAUGHTER 149 Our comparison justifies us in identifying play and mirth, so far as to say that when we play and when we laugh our mood is substantially the same. Common language seems to support this view. "Fun," "frolic," "sport," "pastime," these and the like may be said to cover at once all joyous play and all varieties of mirth. We are justified, therefore, in making the principle of play fundamental in our theory of laughter.^ We may now proceed to illustrate rather more fully the presence of the play-attitude in the higher domain of laughter, the enjoyment of ludicrous spectacle. To begin with, much of the laughable illustrated above may be regarded as an expression in persons or things of the play-mood which seizes the spectator by way of a sympathetic resonance. Examples have been given in the laughter excited by the spectacle of aimless actions which have the look of frolicsomeness. As our name " word-play " clearly suggests, verbal jokes are recognised as an outcome of the play-mood which throws oflf for the nonce the proper serious treatment of language. Again, the odd when it reaches the height of the extravagant has an unmistakable look of play-license. Much of the amusing eflect of disguise, of pretence, including certain kinds of " aping," appears to involve some recognition of the make-believe aspect of play. The disorderly, even when it applies to a room, is, to say the least, powerfully suggestive of the ways of rompish play. Many irregu- larities of thought and action readily take on the look of a self-abandonment to play ; for example, irrelevances and confusions of idea, droll, aimless-looking actions, such as going ofi" the scene and coming back again and again, 1 Among previous writers on the subject M. Dugas seems to be the one ■who has had the clearest apprehension of the essentially playful character of laughter (op. cit., chap, vi., especially p. 115 seq.). 150 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS senseless repetitions of actions by the same person or by others — a common entertainment of the circus and the popular play-house. As a last example, we may instance the effect of the incongruous when it assumes a trifling aspect on a solemn occasion. This is surely amusing be- cause it is so like the interruptions of child's play. How far can this principle be carried ? May not a good deal of the amusingly incongruous in behaviour and in circumstances, of intellectual and of moral collapse, when this wears the aspect of folly, be said to affect us as an expression of the play-mood ? And is not our amusement at the sight of certain mischances which have the look of a tripping up, an outwitting or befooling, either by others or by circumstance or " fate," traceable to a per- ception of something indistinguishable from playful teasing? Yet we must not rely on this expression of the playful too much. There seem to be many cases of the laughable, for example, amusing vices, absences of mind, and all irrelevances which bring in the solemn where it is out of place, where that which is expressed is a mood the very opposite of the playful. Nor do we need to push this principle to an extreme. Even if the laughable spec- tacle does not wear the look of a play-challenge, it can bring up the playful mood in the spectator in another way. It may so present its particular feature as to throw us off our serious balance, and by a sweet compulsion force us to play with it rather than to consider it seriously. A brief reference to our store of laughable things may suffice to illustrate this. To begin with our laughter at novelties, the odd, the extravagant, what is it but the outcome of a play-impulse, a gay caprice which wills for the instant not to take objects seriously, but to disregard their real nature and significance, PLAYFUL EFFECT OF THE LUDICROUS 151 practical, theoretical, and even aesthetic, for the joy of making them playthings for the eye ? Or, if the suggestion of a rule, broken by the newcomer into our field of perception, obtrudes itself, our laughter announces that the infraction does not matter, that the violation of custom's good law itself is passed over and turned into fun by the blithe play-spirit in us. It is the same with mischances, awkward fixes, and all sorts of moral and intellectual shortcomings. These things obviously have in them what should appeal to our serious- ness : they come up for judgment as pitiable, as regrettable, often as distinctly culpable. Yet we laugh and cast aside our judicial responsibilities just because the mood of the moment disposes us to be indulgent, and because the attitude we take up in viewing the ofience as a little one instantly brings up the love of play, the impulse to turn the significant into enjoyable nonsense. Once more, in our laughter at artful allusion to the obscene, it is the same swift transition from the serious attitude to that of play which seems to be at the bottom of our merriment. Here again it is the littleness — a quantity, as pointed out, varying considerably with the quality of the laugher — which disarms the serious atti- tude and allures it to play. In pretences, both hypocrisies and less serious kinds, which raise the laugh, we note the same swift lapse into the play-attitude. For, in order to enjoy these vain shows with perfect gaiety, we must be ready to bring a mental " blind spot " to bear on everything in them which has serious moral significance. Here, too, we take a leap into the world of the player, transmuting what has something of seriousness, something even of offending hurtfulness, into a mere plaything. 152 THEORIES OP THE LUDICROUS The more intellectual varieties of the ludicrous disclose the same deep-seated characteristic. The incongruous, the absurd, the tricks of ambiguous speech, these are things which offend us as serious mortals bent on having con- sistency of ideas and clearness of utterance in our social world. They evoke our laughter when they take such a form as to upset this serious attitude and to win us over to regarding them as nothing but entertaining show. In all the more intellectual laughter at things we seem to find the perfect form of the mind's play. I say " perfect " because psychologists as well as others are wont to speak of poetic imagination as playful activity, though this, as con- trolled by the ends of art, is seriousness itself compared with the freer movements of ideas when the sportive temper takes us. One other illustration of the role of the playful spirit in the sphere of the laughable must not be overlooked. I have dealt with the intrusion of the trivial into solemn scenes as an expression of the child's playfulness. But, as has been suggested above, it is more than this. Scenes of great formality, where a degree of severe self-control is en- forced which is trying to mortals of only a limited gravity, are apt to throw us into a state of highly unstable equilib- rium. Hence the welcome we are disposed to give to anything which touches the playful susceptibilities in us. Under such circumstances small occurrences, which at other times would pass wholly unmarked, are grasped at and become laughable things for us, just because of the great necessity of man to escape now and again into the freedom of play. As already implied, this saturation of laughter with the spirit of playfulness is characteristic only of the gayer kind, that which is purified from all tinge of seriousness. So far PLAY OP INTELLECT IN LAUGHTER 153 as our jocose impulses lend themselves to serious purposes, as for example in the laughter of satire, the playful character tends to become less clearly recognisable. Not that here, too, we are unable to find a resemblance between laughter and play ; for, as we know, much of what we call play or sport has its serious interest, and the player, like the laugher, may easily slip across the line which divides the playful from the serious attitude. Nevertheless, we shall need to insist on the point that laughter is a thing of different tones, some more playful than others, and that its nature and its function can only be clearly determined by distinguishing these. The result of our inquiry is that the impressions of the laughable cannot be reduced to one or two principles. Our laughter at things is of various tones. It gathers up into itself a number of primitive tendencies ; it represents the products of widely removed stages of intellectual and moral evolution. This is virtually admitted by all who recognise the Intellectual and the Moral principle ; for our laughter at seeing dignity unfrocked is presumably of more ancient origin than the " laughter of the mind," which discoursers on the ludicrous are for the most part thinking of. Our argument takes us farther, namely, to the conclusion that the efiect of the laughable, even of what is given by philosophers as a sample of the ludicrous, is a highly complex feeling, containing something of the child's joyous surprise at the new and unheard of; something too of the child's gay responsiveness to a play-challenge ; often something also of the glorious sense of expansion after compression which gives the large mobility to freshly freed limbs of young animals and children. A consequence of this recognition of the relation of the laughable to our laughter as a whole is that we shall need to alter our method of treating the subject. Our problem 154 THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS naturally transforms itself into the question : can we trace out the organic differentiation and integration of the several psychical tendencies which our analysis has disclosed ? In other words, we find that we must resort to the genetic method, and try to explain the action of the ludicrous upon us in the modest scientific fashion by retracing the stages of its development. Such explanation may some day be crowned by a distinctly philosophical one, if a finer logical analysis succeeds in discovering the essence of the ludicrous ; for the present it seems to be all that is available. It wUl at once be evident that a large investigation into the origin and development of the laughing impulse will take us beyond the limits of pure psychology. We shall have to consider how the impulse grew up in the evolution of the race ; and this will force us to adopt the biological point of view, and ask how this special group of movements came to be selected and fixed among the characters of our species. On the other hand, laughter is more than a physiological and psychological phenomenon. As hinted above, it has a social significance, and we shall find that the higher stages of its evolution can only be adequately dealt with in their connection with the movement of social progress. Lastly, it will be by tracing the evolution of laughter in the human community that we shall best approach the problem of the ideal which should regulate this somewhat unruly impulse of man. Such a study would seem to promise us a disclosure of tendencies by which laughter has been lifted and refined in the past, and by the light of which it may consciously direct itself in the future. 155 CHAPTER VI. THE ORIGIN OP LAUGHTER. To attempt to get back to the beginnings of human laughter may well seem to be too ambitious a proceeding. Beginnings are small things, and may easily escape detection, even when they lie well-lit not far from the eye. How, then, can we hope to get at them when they are hidden in the dark- ness of the remote past ? It is evident that our method here can only be the modest one of conjecture, a method which must do its best to make its conjecture look reasonable, while it never loses sight of the fact that it is dealing with the conjectural. Our aim is to get an intelligible supposition, by the help of which we may explain how laughter broke on the earthly scene, adding one more to the many strange sounds of the animal world. This bit of conjectural inquiry will begin by trying to answer the question : By what process did the laugh, from being a general sign of pleasure, become specialised into an expression of the uprising of the mirthful, fun-loving or jocose spirit ? It will then address itself to the problem : What has been the course of development of the spirit of fun and of its characteristic mode of utterance ? It would not, of course, be possible to attempt even a conjectural account of these far-off and unchronicled events, but for the new instruments of hypothetical construction 156 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER with which the Theory of Evolution has furnished us. In attempting so hazardous a task we have, at least, the ex- ample of one of the most modest of men to draw us on. Charles Darwin has taught us how to be at once daring and cautious in trying to penetrate the darkness of the ages behind us ; and one can wish nothing better than to be able to walk worthily in his steps. It will be evident that in essaying an effort which can at best end in only a plausible guess we must use every avail- able clue. This means, not merely that we try to trace back the history of mirthful utterance, alike in the evolution of the individual and of the species, to its rude inchoate forms, but that we search for vestiges of utterances vaguely re- sembling human laughter in the animal world. This last suggestion may well seem to the reader like another blow to man's early pride of race. The worthy naturalist who called his species the " laughing animal " did not probably trouble himself about the question of the dignity of the attribute. Since laughing was one of the things that only man could do, it served as a convenient way of describing him. Yet, since the later evolutional psy- chology has led us to be more generous in recognising in the lower animals something closely similar to our own processes of reasoning, we need not be greatly shocked to hear that it is actually crediting other species than our own with a simple sense of fun, and a characteristic manner of expressing the feeling ; that is to say, an utterance answering to our laugh. Now here, if anywhere, we must be on our guard. In attempting to detect traces of mirthful expression in animals we are exposed to a two-fold danger : that common to all observation of animal ways — a too anthropomorphic kind of interpretation ; and that of mistaking in other beings, SUB-HUMAN RUDIMENTS OF MIRTH 157 whether human or sub-human, what we envisage as funny, for their conscious fun. It is eminently natural, when we do not screw ourselves up to the severely scientific attitude, to see signs of chuckling glee in animals. I remember how I watched somewhere in Norway, in the early morning, a magpie as he stood for some time ducking his head and throwing up his long tail, accompanying these movements with chuckle-like sounds ; and how I found it exceedingly hard not to believe that he was having a good laugh at something, possibly the absurd ways of the foreign tourists who visit his coast. Yet, judged by the standard of scientific observation, this "natural" interpretation was scarcely satisfactory. Since our aim compels us to be scientific, we cannot accept common modes of interpreting the " mischievous " performances of animals. Many of a monkey's tricks are " funny " enough ; yet we may seriously doubt whether he enjoys them as, practical jokes. His solemn mien certainly does not suggest it; but then it may be said that human jokers have a way of keeping up an appear- ance of gravity. A consideration of greater weight is that what looks to us much like a merry joke may be a display of the teasing instinct, when this goes beyond the playful limit, and aims at real annoyance or mischief. The remark probably applies to some of the well-known stories of "animal humour,'' for example, that of Charles Dickens about the raven. This bird, it may be remem- bered, had to share the garden with a captive eagle. Having carefully measured the length of this formidable creature's chain, he turned to good account the occasion of the giant's sleep by stealing his dinner; and then, the rightful owner having presumably woke up, made an impudent display of eating the same just safely outside the 158 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER eagle's " sphere of influence ". This doubtless showed some cunning, and something of spite ; but it is not clear that it indicated an enjoyment of the fun of the thing. That this teasing and playing of tricks by animals may " now and again approach the human attitude of malicious mirthfulness is not improbable. A cat that " plays " with its captive mouse, half -pretending, as it seems, not to see the small thing's hopeless attempt to "bolt,'' may, perhaps, be enjoying something of the exultant chuckle of a human victor. So, too, some of the mischievous behaviour of a lively and imperfectly domesticated monkey, which a simple-minded sailor has brought to his mother by way of making her happy, may disclose a germ of the spirit of fun, of a malicious playfulness which is capable of enjoying its jokes as such. Yet, while we may question the truth of the proposition that these mischievous actions are enjoyed as practical jokes — in the way in which Uncle Remus represents them — we need not hesitate to attribute to animals a simple form of the child's sense of fun. This trait appears most plainly in the pastimes of the young of many familiar species, including our two domestic pets, pastimes which are quite correctly described as animal play. The particular forms of this playful activity, the tusslings, the attacks and retreats on both sides, the chasings and the rest, are pretty certainly determined by special instincts.^ But, as play, these actions are an expression of high spirits and of something analogous to a child's love of " pretending". Is it not a bit of playful make-believe, for example, when a dog, on seeing the ap- proach of a canine stranger, " lies low " wearing the look of an alert foe ; yet, as soon as the stranger approaches, " gives 'Karl Groos connects both the tusslings and the teariugs of young animals with the instinct of sex-oompetition {Play of Amrnals, p. 35 fi.). ANIMAL JOKES AND SENSE OF FUN 159 away the show" by entering with an almost disgraceful celerity into perfectly friendly relations with him ? It is the same when a dog teases another dog by startling him, showing signs of enjoying the trick. H. M. Stanley writes : " My dog took the same delight in coming up quietly be- hind a small dog and giving a terrifying bark as does the child in jumping out from a corner and crying ' boo ' "} Owing, to no little extent, perhaps, to the fact of its edu- cation by man, the dog gives much the clearest indications of a sense of fun. No one can observe a dog during a walk with his child-comrades without noting how readUy he falls in with their playful proposals. The infectiousness of an announcement of the playful temper is clearly illustrated here. The dog imitates the gambols, and will even seem to respond to the vocal outbursts of his merry playmates. Darwin has rightly recognised a germ of our '"sense of humour" in a dog's joining in the game of stick- throwing. You throw a bit of stick for him to fetch, and having picked it up he proceeds to carry it away some distance and to squat down with it on the ground just before him. You then come quite close as if to take the stick from him, on which he seizes it and bears it off exultingly, repeating the little make-believe with evident enjoyment.^ I have tested a dog again and again when playing with him in this fashion, and have satisfied myself that he is in the play-mood, and knows perfectly well that you are too ; so that if you pretend to be serious and to command him in your most magisterial voice to give up the stick he sidles up with a hollow show of obedience which could impose on nobody, as if to say, " I know better : you are not really serious ; so I am going on with the game ". All ^ The Psychological Review, 1899, p. 91. ^ Descent of Man, 'P&Tt I., cha^p. Hi. 160 THE ORIGIN OP LAUGHTER the notes of a true sense of fun seem to be present in this case : the gay and festive mood, a firm resolve desipere in loco, and a strong inclination to play at " pretending ". Prof. Lloyd Morgan gives an example of what certainly looks like a dog's merry make-believe in which man's lead takes no part. The writer tells us that he used at one time to take an intelligent retriever to a sandy shore, where the dog engaged spontaneously in the following pastime. He buried a number of small crabs in the sand, and then stood waiting till a leg or a claw appeared, "upon which he would run backwards and forwards giving short barks of keen enjoyment ".' I find it hard to doubt that this was a genuine outburst of joyousness and of something indistinguishable from a love of fun, and that it was connected with the " coming off" of a practical joke. The repetitions of the burial when the dog had seen that it was ineffectual, points clearly to a consciousness of the make-believe character of the per- formance. Whatever a dog's powers of jocosity when uninstructed by man, it seems safe to set down a good share of his highly developed sense of fun to his profound susceptibility to man's educative influence ; which again (as the difference between the educability of the dog and of the cat at once shows) implies an unusual strength of those instincts of attachment to man which have made him almost the type of fidelity. How far, one wonders, will this educative influence of man be likely to go in the case of the most companionable of our domestic pets ? W. Preyer teUs us, that the dog is lie of imitating the signs of human gaiety, that an ' Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 407. The author strikes me as al- most excessively cautious in accepting these evidences of canine jocosity. THE SENSE OF FUN IN DOGS 161 intelligent specimen, when confronted with our laughter will draw back the corners of his mouth and leap into the air with a bright lustre in the eye.^ Here we seem to, have a rudiment of a genuine laugh, and may perhaps cease to speak rather confusingly of a dog's " laughing with his tail ". G. J. Romanes relates that he had a dog who went some way towards qualifying himself for the office of clown. This animal would perform a number of self-taught tricks which were clearly intended to excite laughter. " For instance, while lying on his side and violently grinning, he would hold one leg in his mouth." Under these circum- stances " nothing pleased him so much as having his joke duly appreciated, while, if no notice was taken of him, he would become sulky".'' This animal must, one supposes, have been in an excep- tional degree a "funny dog". It seems a pity that the observer did not take a " snapshot " at that grin so that it might be a shade less abstract and " in the air " than the grin of the Cheshire cat, as treated by Mr. Lewis Carroll. What seems clear is, that the physiognomy of a dog manages to execute a weirdly distorted semblance of our smUe. With respect to the vocal part of the expression, we must not expect too much. The bark may not be able to adjust itself to our quick explosions of gaiety. It is commonly said that the dog has a special bark for expressing pleasure, and it seems likely that he employs this when he is said to be seized by the sense of the funniness of things. On the moral side, the possibility of the dog's becoming a humorous beast looks more promising. He certainly exhibits rudiments of feelings and mental attitudes which ' W. Preyer, Die Seele des Emdes, p. 197. ''Quoted by Lloyd Morgan, loc. cit. 162 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER seem in man to be closely related to a reflective humour. As the inner circle of his human friends know, he can be terribly bored. I saw, not long since, a small dog under- going the process of chaining by his mistress before she took him into a shop. He drew a long yawn, and his appearance was eminently suggestive of a keen sense of the absurdity of the shopping habits of ladies, a sense which only wanted the appropriate utterance to become a mUd, tolerant kind of satire. Yet one must be mindful of one's own warning against a too hasty interpretation of such actions. We may now turn to animals much nearer purselves in the zoological scale. Among monkeys we obtain, undoubtedly, something more closely akin to our smUe and laugh. Darwin has made a careful inquiry into the similarities between the two. He tells us that some of the essential features of the facial expression during a laugh, the drawing backwards of the corners of the mouth, the formation of wrinkles under the eyes, etc., are " characteristic and expressive of a pleased state of mind in various kinds of monkeys "? With respect to laughter-like sounds, Darwin gives us several pertinent facts. A young chimpanzee will make a kind of barking noise when he is pleased by the return of any one to whom he is attached, a noise which the keeper interprets as a laugh. The correctness of this interpreta- tion is confirmed by the fact that other monkeys utter a kind of " tittering sound " when they see a beloved person. A young chimpanzee when tickled under the armpits pro- duces a more decided chuckling or laughing sound. " Young ourangs, also, when tickled will make a chuckling sound and put on a grin." It has been found by Dr. L. Robinson that the young of ' Expression of Emotions, p. 208 ; cf. p. 132 ff . RUDIMENT OF LAUGHTER IN APES 163 the anthropoid apes are specially ticklish in the regions of the surface of the body which correspond with the ticklish regions in the case of the child. Not only so, a young chimpanzee will show great pleasure when tickled, rolling over on his back and abandoning himself to the pastime, much as a child does. When the tickling is prolonged he resembles a child further by defending ticklish spots. So, too, does a young ourang. It may be added that young apes, like many children, make a pretence of biting when tickled. To sum up : the young of the higher apes have something resembling our smile and laugh, and produce the requisite movements when pleased. Their attempt at laughter, as we might be disposed to regard it, appears as a sign of sudden joy in circumstances in which a child will laugh, e.g., on the reappearance of a beloved companion after a considerable interval. It further occurs when the animal is tickled, along with other manifestations which point to the existence of a rudiment of the child's capacity for fun and for the make-believe of play. One more fact should be added in order to bring out the similarity here to the human attitude towards the laughable. It is probable, from the testimony of several observers, that monkeys dislike being laughed at.^ Now, it is true that the enjoyment of fun and the dislike to being made its object are not the same thing. Nor do they seem to vary together in the case of men ; otherwise the agelast would not be so often found among those who keenly resent being the object of others' laughter. Nevertheless, they may be regarded in general as correlative traits ; creatures which show a distinct distaste for being made the objects of laughter may be supposed to be capable of 1 See Darwin, Ths Descent of Man, Part I., chap. iii. 164 THE ORIGIN OP LAUGHTER the laughing attitude, so far at least as to be able to understand it. Turning now from sub-human kinds of laughter to the full expression as we know it in ourselves, we may briefly trace the history of the smile and laugh during the first years of life. Here the question of the date of the first appearance of these expressive movements becomes im- portant ; and happily we have more than one set of careful observations on the point. With respect to the smile, which is commonly supposed to be the first to show itself, we have notes made by Darwin and by Preyer. According to the former, the first smile appeared, in the case of two of his children, at the age of forty-five days, and, of a third, at a somewhat earlier date.i Not only were the corners of the mouth drawn back, but the eyes brightened and the eyelids slightly closed. Darwin adds that the circumstances pointed to a happy state of mind. Preyer is much fuller here.^ He points out the difficulties of noting the first true smile of pleasure. In the case of his own boy, it seems, the move- ments of the corners of the mouth, accompanied by the formation of dimples in the cheek, occurred in the second week, both in the waking and in the sleeping state. The father thinks, however, that the first smile of pleasure occurred on the twenty-sixth day, when after a good meal the child's eyes lighted on the mother's face. This early smile, he adds, was not an imitation of another's ; nor did it imply a joyous recognition of the mother. It was just the instinctive expression of a feeling of bodily satisfaction. ' So in The Expression of the Emotions, pp. 211, 212. In the notes contributed to Mind, vol. ii. (1877), p. 288, two infants are spoken of, one of which smiled when forty-five, the other when forty-six days old. ' The references are to his work, Die SeeU des Kindes, 4te Auflage. DATE OF INFANT'S FIRST SMILE 165 Other observers differ, too, in respect of the date of the first occurrence of the true expressive smile. For example. Dr. Champneys puts it in the sixth, Sigismund in the seventh week, agreeing roughly with Darwin ; whereas Miss Shinn gives as the date the latter half of the first month, and so supports Preyer's observations. Another lady, Mrs. K. C. Moore, would go farther than Preyer and say that the first smile occurs on the sixth day of life.^ It may be added that Miss Shinn is more precise than Preyer in her account of the early development of the smile. She tells us that, whereas the first smile of her niece — whom we will henceforth call by her name, Ruth — (latter half of first month) was merely the outcome of general comfort, a smile occurred in the second month which involved an agreeable perception, namely, that of faces bending over the child in which she took great interest. This smile of special pleasure, express- ing much gaiety, occm-red when she was lying fed, warm, and altogether comfortable. It is fairly certain that these differences indicate some inequalities of precocity in the children observed. At the same time, it seems probable that the several observers are dealing with different stages in the development of the smile. Preyer shows clearly that it undergoes considerable expansion, involving increased complexity of movement, and the addition of the important feature, the brightening of the eye. Mrs. Moore gives no description of what she saw on the sixth and seventh days, and is presumably referring to a vague resemblance to a rudiment of a smile which had no ^ Champneys and Sigismund are quoted by Preyer. Miss Shiun's ob- servations are given in her work, Notes on the Development of a Child, p. 238. Mrs. Moore's are to be found in her Essay, The Mental Development of a Child, p. 37. Dr. L. Hill writes that he noted the first smile in his boy when he was three weeks old, and in his girl when she was some days older. 166 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER expressive significance ; and some things in Prayer's account lead us to infer that he is speaking of a less highly de- veloped smile than Darwin.^ All that can certainly be said, then, is that the movements of a smile, as an expression of pleasure, undergo a gradual process of development, and that an approach to a perfect smile of pleasure occurs some time in the second month of life. If we turn to the dates assigned to the first occurrence of a laugh, we find the uncertainties are at least equal to those encountered in the case of the smile. Darwin illustrates how a smile may gradually take on an accompaniment of sound which grows more and more laughter-like. One of his children, who, he thinks, first smiled at the age of forty -five days, developed about eight days later a more distinct and impressive smile, accompanied by a little " bleating " noise, which, he adds, " perhaps represented a laugh ". It was not, however, till much later (113th day) that the noises became broken up into the discrete sounds of a laugh. Another child of his, when sixty-five days old, accompanied his smile by " noises very like laughter ". A laughter, with all the indications of genuine fun behind it, occurred in the case of one of his children on the 110th day, when the game was tried of throwing a pinafore over the child's face and then suddenly withdrawing it, this being varied by the father's suddenly uncovering his own face and approaching the child's. He adds that, some three or four weeks before this, his boy appeared to enjoy as a good joke a little pinch on his nose and cheeks. Preyer puts the date of the first laughter-like sounds, as ' See especially wiiat lie says about an unusual expression, including " a strongly sparkling eye," which occurred in the eighth week, op. cit., p. 194. DATE OF FIRST LAUGH 167 he puts that of the first smile, earlier than Darwin. He says he observed a visible and audible laugh in his boy on the twenty-third day. This was a chuckling at the view of a rose-tinted curtain. The sounds were repeated in the following weeks at the sight of slowly swinging coloured objects and at new sounds, e.g., those of the piano. At the same time he tells us that a prolonged loud laughter, re- cognisable as such by a person not looking at what was going on, first occurred in the eighth month when the boy was playing with his mother. Among the other observers it may suflSce to refer to one of the most careful, Miss Shinn. This lady, who, it will be remembered, puts the date of Ruth's first smile as early as the first month, assigns the child's first genuine laughter to the 118th day. It was excited by the sight of the mother making faces. It is worth adding that Ruth reached her third performance eleven days later.^ In this case, too, it is probable that we have to do, not merely with differences of precocity in the children ob- served, but with the difficulties of determining what is a clear example of the expression concerned.'^ There is no doubt that the full reiteration of our laughter is reached by stages. This is brought out fully by Darwin, and is allowed by Preyer. Yet how much of the series of more or less laughter-like sounds produced by an infant during states of pleasure is to be regarded as entering into the development of laughter, it is not easy to say. Miss Shinn heard Ruth give out curious little chuckling sounds of two syllables on the 105th day, that is thirteen days before she produced her ' I am indebted to Miss Shinn for a sight of her complete original notes ; and some of my references are to these. * It is regrettable that Preyer does not describe with some precision the sounds produced by his boy on the twenty-third day. 168 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER laugh. She adds under the date, 113tb day, that is to say, five days before the laugh, that the child had developed new throat sounds, crowing, croaking, etc., and showed a strong disposition to vary sounds in a pleasurable mood. It seems highly improbable that these sounds were not preparatory stages in the development of the laugh.i It is fairly certain that laughing comes after smiling. Preyer'a words may no doubt seem to suggest that the first laugh (twenty-third day) comes before the first smile (twenty- sixth day) ; but his account of the development of the two shows plainly that this is not his meaning. He distinctly says that laughter is only a strengthened and audible (laut) smile ; and remarks, further, that " in all (children) alike the utterance of pleasure begins with a scarcely noticeable smile, which quite gradually passes into laughter in the course of the first three months ''. He adds that this development depends on that of the higher brain centres, and the capability of having perceptions.^ The first laughter is, like the smile, an expression of pleasure. As Preyer puts it, the laughter is a mere heightening of the look of pleasure. It marks, however, a higher level of agreeable consciousness. Whereas the first clumsy experiments in smiling denote nothing but a com- fortable state of repletion, the first attempts at laughter are responses to gladdening sense-presentations, such as swinging coloured objects, and the new sounds of a piano. This laughter at new visual and aural presentations was followed, according to Preyer, between the sixth and the ' Miss Shiun insists that the laugh did not develop out of the chuckle, since apparently it appeared, as many articulate sounds appear, with something of a sudden completeness. But this is just what we should expect if the laugh is an inherited movement. ^Op. cii., p. 197. EARLY FORMS OF LAUGHTER 169 ninth week by a laughter more distinctly joyous or jubilant, as the child regarded his mother's face and appeared to recognise it. This laughter of mental gaiety seems at an early age — about the fourth month — to ally itself with movements of the limbs (raising and lowering of the arms, etc.) as a complex sign of high spirits or gladness. ^ How far the provocative of laughter mentioned by Darwin, namely, suddenly uncovering the child's head (or his own) implied a rudiment of fun, I am not sure. It shows, however, the early connection between laughter and agreeable surprise, that is to say, a mild shock, which, though it borders on the alarming, is on the whole glad- dening. One other early form of laughter, which is found also in certain young animals, is that excited by tickling. This has been first observed, in the case of the child, in the second or the third month. Preyer's boy laughed in response to tickling in the second month. ^ Dr. Leonard Hill tells me that his little girl, who was by-the-bye specially sensitive to titillation, responded first by laughter in the tenth week. Since our analysis has led us to regard the effect of tickling as largely mental, and as involving a playful atti- tude, this fact confirms the conclusion that the specialised laughter which is the accompaniment of play occurs in a well-defined form within the first three months. To sum up : We find, within the first two or three months, both the smile and the laugh as expressions of pleasure, including sensations of bodily comfort and gladdening sense-presentations. We find, further, in the reflex reaction of laughter under tickling, which is observable about the ' Preyer puts this at the end of the first half-year, which seems to me to be late. 2 Op. cit., p. 96. 170 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER end of the second month, the germ of a sense of fun, or of mirthful play ; and this is indicated too in the laughter excited by little pinches on the cheek at the end of the third month. It is certain that these tendencies are not learned by imitation. This is proved by the fact, established by Preyer, that imitative movements do not occur in the normal child till considerably later, and by the fact that the child, Laura Bridgman, who was shut out by her blindness and deafness from the lead of companions, developed these expressions. We must conclude, then, that they are inherited tendencies. Here the psychologist might well stop in his inquiries, if Darwin and others had not opened up the larger vista of the evolution of the species. Can we, by carrying the eye along this vista, conjecture how these instinctive movements came to be acquired in the course of animal evolution ? The first question that arises in this inquiry is whether the smile or the laugh was the earlier to appear in the course of racial development. The expressions of animals below man do not offer any decisive clue here. The an- thropoid apes appear both to produce a kind of smile or grin, and to utter sounds analogous to our laughter. It may, however, be contended that this so-called laughter is much less like our laughter than the grin is like our smile. In the absence of better evidence, the fact that the smile appears first in the life of the child must, according to a well-known law of evolution, be taken as favouring the hypothesis that man's remote ancestors learned to smile before they could rise to the achievement of the laugh. This is further supported by the fact that, in the case of the individual, the laugh when it occurs announces a higher form of pleasurable consciousness, the level of perception SMILE AS PRECEDING LAUGH 171 as distinguished from the level of sensation which is ex- pressed by the first smile. Lastly, I am informed that among imbeciles the smile persists lower down in the scale of degeneration than the laugh. Dr. F. E. Beddard writes to me: "I remember once seeing a defective human monster (with no frontal lobes) whose only sign of intelligence was drawing up the lips when music was played "} It is commonly held that, since the expression of pain, suffering, or apprehension of danger among animals is a much more pressing necessity for purposes of family and tribal preservation than that of pleasure or contentment,, the former is developed considerably earlier than the latter. According to this view, we can understand why the adum- brations of a smile and a laugh which we find in animals closely related to man have been so imperfectly developed and appear only sporadically. Supposing that the smile was the first of the two ex- pressive movements to appear in the evolution of the human species, can we conjecture how it came to be the common and best-defined expression of pleasurable states ? In deal- ing with this point we may derive more definite aid from Darwin's principles. The fact that the basis of a smile is a movement of the mouth at once suggests a connection with the primal source of human as of animal enjoyment ; and there seems, more- over, to be some evidence of the existence of such a connection. A baby after a good meal will, I believe, go on performing something resembling sucking movements. The first smiles may have arisen as a special modification of these movements when there was a particularly lively feel- ing of organic contentment or well-being. I believe, further, ' On the point of the priority of the smile in the process of evolution, see Th. Bibot, La Psychologie des Sentiments, p. 346. 172 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER that an infant is apt to carry out movements of the mouth when food is shown to it. A similar tendency seems to he illustrated by the behaviour of a monkey which, when a choice delicacy was given it at meal-time, slightly raised the corners of the mouth, the movement partaking of the nature of "an incipient smile ".^ Again, our hypothesis finds some support in the fact that, according to Preyer and others, the first smiles of infants were noticed during a happy condition of repletion after a good meal.^ Supposing the smile in its origin to have thus been organically connected with the pleasurable experience of sated appetite, we can easily see how it might get generalised iuto a common sign of pleasure. Darwin and Wundt have made us familiar with the principle that expressive move- ments may be transferred to states of feeling resembling those of which they were primarily the manifestations. The scratching of the head during a state of mental irri- tation is a well-known instance of the transference. There are, I believe, facts which go some way towards verifying the supposition of a transference of eating-i^igns to states of lively satisfaction and pleasure generally. Savages are wont to express keen pleasure by gestures, e.g., rubbing the belly, which seem to point to the voluminous satisfac- tions of the primal appetite. The clearest evidence, however, seems to be furnished by the account of a baboon given us by Darwin. This creature, after having been made furiously angry by his keeper, on making friends again, "rapidly moved up and down his jaws and lips and looked pleased ". ' Darwin, Expression of the Emotions, p. 133. ^A. Lehmann, in his interesting account of the development of the emotions and their expression in the individual, suggests that the first im- perfect smile of the infant, which expresses the pleasure of sweetness, is genetically related to the movements of sucking (Hauptgesetze des mensM. QefahlsUbens, ss. 295, 296). GENESIS OP SMILE 173 Darwin adds that a similar movement or quiver of the jaws may be observed in a man when he laughs heartily, though with us the muscles of the chest rather than those of the lips and jaws are " spasmodically aiFected "} Judging from the interval between the occurrence of the first smile and of the first laugh in the life of the individual, we may conjecture that laughter did not grow into a full reiterated sound in "primitive man," or his unknown immedi- ate predecessor, till much later. We should expect that a considerable development of vocal power would be a condi- tion of man's taking heartily to this mode of emotional utterance. The study of the infant certainly supports this idea. The babble of the second and third months, which is made up of a reiteration of many vocal and consonantal sounds, may prepare for laughter, as it certainly does for speech. The observations of Miss Shinn, quoted above, on the expansion of the range of vocal sound before the occurrence of the first laugh are most significant here. They seem to point to the fact that in the evolution of the species the first laughter was selected from among a great variety of sounds produced in pleasurable states. Let us now suppose that our immediate animal ancestor has reached the level of clear perceptions, and is given to the utterance of certain reiterated sounds during states of pleasure. Let us further conceive of him as having his sympathies developed up to the point of requiring a medium for expr^essing not only pains but pleasures, and more particularly for calling others' attention to the presence of cheering and welcome objects, e.g., of a member of the family who has been abroad for a time. Such an animal would need to improve on his primal smiles and grins. He would require vocal utterances of some strength in order ' Darwin, Expression of the Emotions, pp. 134, 135. 174 THE ORIGIN OP LAUGHTER to reach distant ears, something answering to the cackle of the hen when she has discovered some choice morsel and desires to bring her brood to her side. How is this im- provement to be effected ? One may hazard the guess that the process may have been something of this kind. The position of the open mouth during a broad smile was, we may reason, in itself favour- able to the production of vocal sounds. We may, after the analogy of positions of the eyes, speak of it as the " primary position " of the vocal chamber when opened. This primary position would pretty certainly be specially favourable to the utterance of a certain kind of sound, let us say that commonly indicated by " eh," ^ together with something of the guttural or chuckling accompaniment of this in the sound of laughter. We may then infer that, when some Of the reiterated babble-like sounds were produced during states of pleasurable satisfaction, the same (primary) position would be taken up. We should thus get, as psycho-physical concomitants of the sensed position of the opened mouth during a broad smile or " grin," not only a disposition to re- iterate the "eh" or some similar sound as a completion of the whole action, of which the opening of the mouth is the first stage, but a definite associative co-ordination between the movement of opening the mouth and the reiterated actions of the muscles of the respiratory and vocal apparatus. In this way we may understand how, when the pleasurable state expressed by a smile increased in intensity, as, for example, when the happy feeling excited by the sight of a face passed into the joy of recognising a member of the family, the ^ As pointed out above, the French e sound seems to be the common one in children's laughter. Preyer tells us that the corresponding sound in German (0) occurs in the first infantile babble (Development of Intellect, p. 239). TRANSITION FROM SMILE TO LAUGH 175 movements would widen out into those of a laughter-like utterance. It appears to me that, in this connection, the observed course of development of laughter in the individual is not without its suggestiveness. Miss Shinn remarks that Kuth's mouth was opened wide on the 113th day — five days before the first laugh — while the child was tossed and tumbled. Under date of the 134th day, again, we read of much laughter of an inaudible kind, consisting of broad laughter- like smiles ; and these observations certainly show that about the date of the first laughter an expanded smile, indistinguishable from a laugh save by the absence of the respiratory and vocal adjunct, was frequent. In other words, they tell us that about the time when she achieved her first laugh she was freely practising the intermediate facial step between the earlier smile and the true laugh. This theory would plainly illustrate Mr. Herbert Spencer's principle, that states of feeling affect the voluntary muscles in the order of increasing calibre, the smaller being called into play by feelings of lower intensity, the larger by those of higher intensity. But this theory is not enough. We must take into account also the order of frequency of use, and of consequent liability to discharge in the connected nerve-centres. It seems probable that the muscles engaged in the movements of the mouth and those exercised in phonation would, for these reasons, be specially liable to be acted upon. These wider tendencies would, according to the above hypothesis, be assisted by special associations. These would secure the combination of the two groups of movements, which I have assumed to have been employed independently as utterances of pleasurable feeling : namely, those involved in smiling, and those underlying the first happy reiterated sounds of a quasi-infantile babbling. 176 THE ORIGIN OP LAUGHTER One element in the laugh, its explosive vigour, seems unaccounted for on this hypothesis. Here, I think, the eifect of relief from strain, which is so common a factor in human laughter, may be called in. The earliest laughter of the child seems to illustrate this element. For example, that which occurs during tickling, in a game of bo-peep, and at the sight of the mother makiag faces may be said to arise from a serious attitude suddenly dissolved. Perhaps the first great laugh was produced by man or by his proximate progenitor, when relief came after fear or the strain of battle. So far as primitive laughter was the out- come of such concentrated energy seeking relief, this circum- stance would help to account for the prolongation as well as for the strength of the sounds. Our conjecture cannot lay claim to be a hypothesis. It makes no attempt to explain the precise forms of the changes which enter both into the smile and into the laugh. At best, it is only a rough hint as to a possible mode of genesis. I have here treated of the genesis of laughter under its more general aspect as an expression of pleasurable states of feeling. We have seen, however, that within the first three months of hfe another and clearly speciaUsed variety of laughter emerges, namely, that called forth by tickling. It foUows from our analysis of the efiect of tickling that it is one of the earliest manifestations, in a clear form, of the laughter of fun or of play. As such, it demands special attention in any attempt to explain the development of laughter. As a specialised reaction having a clearly marked reflex form, it is natural to ask whether laughter in response to tickling is not inherited, and, if so, how it arose in the evolution of the race. And we find that suggestions have TICKLING OF ANIMALS 177 been made for explaining the genesis of this curious phenomenon. We will first glance again at the facts, and then examine the hypotheses put forward for explaining them. Here, again, the question how far animals are susceptible of the effect becomes important. I have already alluded to Darwin's remark, that if a young chimpanzee is tickled, more particularly under the armpits, he responds by a kind of laughter. The sound is of a chuckling or laughing kind. The emission of these sounds is accompanied by retraction of the corners of the mouth, and sometimes by a slight amount of wrinkling in the lower eyelids.^ Dr. Louis Kobinson publishes other observations of the effect of tickling on the young of anthropoid apes. He tells us that a young chimpanzee when tickled for some time under the armpits would roll over on his back showing all his teeth and accompanying the simian grin by defensive movements, just as a child does. A young ourang at the Zoological Gardens (London) behaved in a very similar way. The young of other animals, too, betray some degree of ticklishness. Stanley Hall remarks that a dog will retract the corners of his mouth and thus go some way towards smiling if tickled over the ribs.^ Dr. Robinson finds that horses and pigs are also ticklish ; and he thinks that these animals have specially ticklish regions, which correspond to a considerable extent to those which have been ascertained in the case of the child. We may now refer to the first appearances of the tickling reflex in the child. As pointed out above, the response by defensive movements appears shortly after birth, whereas 1 Ex^ession of the Emotions, pp. 132-3. 2 See the article already quoted on "The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing," etc., p. 33, 178 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER the earliest instance of a response by laughter occurs in the second, or in the first half of the third month. It is to be noted that this date is distinctly later than that of the first laughter of pleasure, though it is not far removed from that of the first clear appearance of the laughter of gaiety or jubilation. These chronological facts bear out the theory that the laughter of a tickled child has a distinct psychical ante- cedent. On this point Dr. L. Robinson writes to me as follows : "I have never been able to succeed in eliciting laughter from young infants under three months old by means of tickling, unless one also smiled and caught their attention in some such way ". This evidently points to the influence of mental agencies even in the first stages of laughter from tickling. With respect to the parts in which the tickling first excites laughter, difierent observers appear to have reached dissimilar results. Preyer distinctly speaks of the tickling of the sole of the foot as provoking laughter in the second month. Whether he tried other parts he does not say. Dr. Leonard Hill tells me that one of his children first responded to tickling when the titillation attacked the palm of the hand, or ran up the arm. Responses to the tickling of the neck and soles of the feet came later. The fact that the efiect of tickling becomes so well defined by, or soon after, the end of the second month, proves pretty conclusively that it is an inherited reflex ; and the evolutionist naturally asks what it means, what its significance has been in the life of our ancestors. Dr. Stanley Hall carries back evolutional speculation very far, and suggests that in tickling we may have the oldest stratum of our psychic life, that it is a survival of a process in remote animal progenitors for which touch was the only „REMOTE_ANCESTRY^P_IlCKLlIiG 179 sense. He supposes that in these circumstances even light or"ininimal"touches, say those coming from the movements of small parasites, being unannounced by sight or other far-reaching sense, would be accompanied by dispropor- tionately strong reactions. He does not attempt to explain how laughter grew out of these reactions. He does indeed call them reactions "of escape," but he does not follow up the idea by hinting that the violent shakings of the body by laughter, when it came, helped to get rid of the little pesterers. In truth, this ingenious thinker hardly appears to make the explanation of the laughter of tickling, as distinguished from the other reactions, the subject of a special inquiry.^ A more serious attempt to explain the evolution of the laughter of tickling has been made by Dr. Louis Robinson. He, too, hints at the vestigial survival of experiences of parasites, but appears to think that these account only for the disagreeable effects which are brought about when the hairy orifices of the nostril and the ear are tickled. This limitation strikes one as a little arbitrary. The reaction of laughter, which Dr. L. Hill called forth when he made his fingers run up the arm of his infant, is surely suggestive of a vestigial reflex handed down from ages of parasitic pestering.^ With regard to the laughing reaction, which, as we have seen, he considers to involve a distinct mode of stimulation, he suggests that it is an inherited form of that common mode of play among young animals, which consists in an exchange of good-natured and make-believe attacks and defences, or a sort of game of sham-fight. ^ See tlie article already quoted. ^ Dr. Kobinson considers that another agreeable efiect of tickling may- be an inherited echo of the caresses of man's progenitors. 180 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER In support of this theory he lays stress on the fact that susceptibility to tickling is shared in by the young of a number of species of animals standing high in point of intelligence, including not only the higher apes, but the dog and the horse. He adds that, in general, there is a con- comitance between the degree of playfulness of a young creature and that of its ticklishness, though lambs and kids which are not ticklish are allowed to be an awkward exception. If tickling is a playing at fighting we may expect it, like other kinds of play, to mimic serious forms of assault. Now we know that the first rude attacks of man, so far as we can gather from the movements of a passionate infant, took the forms of striking, tearing with the nails and biting. Tickling may be said to be a sort of mild pretence at clawing. Dr. Robinson tells us that about 10 per cent, of the children he has examined pretended to bite when they were tickled, just as a puppy will do. Dr. Robinson goes a step farther and seeks to show that the areas of the bodily surface which are specially ticklish in children are those likely to be attacked in serious warfare. In nearly all of them, he says, some important structure, such as a large artery, is close to the surface and would be liable to injury if the skin were penetrated. They would thus be highly vulnerable regions, and consequently those which would be singled out for attacks by teeth or claws. He argues that the same relation holds in the case of animals which attack one another in the same way as man. The regions of special ticklishness in their case, too, appear to correspond, roughly at least, with vulnerable regions. Indeed, in the young chimpanzee and the young ourang these ticklish areas are approximately the same as in the child. TICKLING AS PLAY-COMBAT 181 From all this he concludes that ticklishness, being bound up with the mimic warfare which fills so large a space in the life of many young animals, has its utility. The strong liking to be tickled, which children and, apparently, some other young animals express, serves, in combination with the playful impulse to carry out this gentle mode of attack, to develop mimic attacks and defences which are of high value as training for the later and serious warfare. These applications of the evolution theory are certainly interesting and promising. I think the idea of relief from parasites might be worked out further. May it not be that the light touches given by the fingers of the parent, or other member of the ancestral family when hunting for parasites on the surface of the young animal, have, by association with the efieets of relief from the troublesome visitors, developed an agreeable feeling-tone ? As we have seen, the laughter of tickling has a distinctly mental antecedent ; it appears in the child, only when he is begin- ning to enjoy laughingly little pinches on the cheek, and otherwise to show a germ of a sense of fun. The light touches, reminiscent at once of unpleasant settlers, and of delivering fingers, would, one imagines, be exactly fitted to supply that dissolution into nothing of momentary apprehension indicated by our analysis of the mental factor in tickling. With respect to Dr. Robinson's hypothesis, it may be ac- knowledged ungrudgingly to be a brilliant piece of hypothe- tical construction. But, as the writer frankly confesses, the facts, here and there, do not point in its direction. A very serious objection is the fact that the sole of the foot and the palm of the hand are not taken into account in his attempt to establish a correspondence between the ticklish areas of 182 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER the surface and a high degree of vulnerability. In Stanley Hall's returns it is the sole of the foot which is most fre- quently mentioned as a ticklish area ; and, as we have seen, it was the first to give rise to laughter in the case of one child at least.i There is another and more serious objection to Dr. Robin- son's theory as an explanation of laughter. One may urge that the occurrence of such violent movements would, by shaking the body and by inducing fatigue much earlier than need be, pretty certainly be detrimental to that prolonged practice of skill in attack and defence, to which Dr. Robin- son attaches so much importance. The supposition that tickling is a variety of play de- veloped by natural selection among combative animals is, I think, highly probable. The play of animals, like that of children, is largely a form of social activity involving a playmate ; and is apt, as we know, to take the form of attack and defence, as in chasing, throwing over, pretending to bite, etc. These playful attacks are, as we have seen, closely related to teasing ; indeed, teasing may be viewed as merely a play-imitation of the first stage of combat, that of challenging or exciting to contest.^ Tickling pretty ob- viously finds a fitting place among the simpler forms of playful combat which have a teasing-like character. More- over, these forms of social play all seem to show, in a particularly clear manner, the utility referred to in the preceding chapter. 1 Stanley Hall also suggests that the most ticklish parts, which, accord- ing to his inquiries, are the sole of the foot, the throat, etc., are the " most vulnerable ". But he does not explain what he means by vulnerable here, and certainly does not appear to use the word in the sense given it by Dr. L. Eobinson. ^ Groos deals with the teasing of animals under the head of " Fighting Plays " {Play of Ammals, p. 136 ff.). UTILITY OF LAUGHTER IN TICKLING 183 Now, this idea will, I think, help us to understand how loud and prolonged laughter came to join itself to the com- bative game of tickling and being tickled. If play — pure, good-natured play — was to be developed out of teasing attacks, it would become a matter of the highest importance that it should be clearly understood to be such. This would mean, first of all, that the assailant made it clear that his aim was not serious attack, but its playful semblance ; and secondly, that the attacked party expressed his readiness to accept the assault in good part as sport. It would be of the greatest consequence to the animal that chanced to be in the play- mood and wished to make overtures of friendly combat that he should be sure of an equally gamesome attitude in the recipient of the challenge. One may see this by watching what happens when a dog, unwisely trying to force a frolic on another dog, is met by a growl and possibly by an un- covering of the canine teeth. Now, what better sign of good-temper, of readiness to accept the attack as pure fun, could nature have invented than the laugh ? The smile is, no doubfc, a pretty good indicator in some circumstances. Yet one must remember that the rudimentary smile of an ape- like ancestor may, now and again, have been misleading, as our own smiles are apt to be. A laugh would presumably be less easy to affect in such circumstances than a smile ; and, in any case, it would be far less liable to be over- looked. In saying that the laughter which accompanies tickling and other closely allied forms of play in children owes its value to its being an admirable way of announcing the friendly playful mood, I do not mean that other signs are absent. Dr. L. Robinson reminds us that a tickled child will roll over on his back just like a puppy. The laughter and the rolling over seem to be two congenitally connected 184 THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER modes of abandonment to the playful attack. In the young of other ticklish animals, e.g., the puppy, the rolling over may of itself suffice to give the friendly signal. It seems not unlikely that this consideration, the utility of laughter as a guarantee to a playful challenger that his overtures will be received in the proper spirit, applies to the evolution of all laughter which enters into such forms of social play as the pretence to attack, to frighten, and gener- ally what we call good-natured teasing. It has been suggested that teasing might well be taken as the starting- point in the evolution of play.^ By adopting this idea, and by regarding laughter, in its elementary form, as essentially a feature of social play, we might set out with this con- sideration of utility in constructing our theory of the evolution of laughter. One is tempted, too, to follow this course by the fact, recognised in common language, that much, at least, of the later and more refined laughter is analogous to the effect of tickling.^ Nevertheless, as we have seen, the best evidence attainable points to the conclusion that this simple form of the laughter of social play was preceded by, and grew out of, a less specialised kind of laughter, that of sudden accession of pleasure. We may conjecture that the laughter provoked by tickling was reached in the evolution of our race soon after this reaction passed out of its primal and undifferen- tiated form as a general sign of pleasurable excitement, and began to be specialised as the expression of mental gaiety and of something like our hilarity. The fact, noted above, ^ H. M. Stanley, Psychological Beview, 1899, p. 87. 2 This idea, that when we laugh at ludicrous things the process is funda- mentally analogous to that of being tickled, has been made the basis of a curious and suggestive physiological theory of laughter, developed by a German writer. See Ewald Hecker, Die Physiologie und Psychologic des Lachens v/nd des Komischen. THE OLDEST FORM OP LAUGHTER 185 that children only laugh in response to tickling when they are in a pleasurable state of mind seems to confirm the hypothesis that the love of fun, which is at the bottom of tickling and makes it perhaps the earliest clear instance of mirthful play with its element of make-believe, first emerged gradually out of a more general feeling of gladness. 186 CHAPTER VII. DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTEB DURING THE PIEST THREE YEARS OP LIFE. Having examined the earliest and distinctly hereditary germs of the laughing impulse in the child, we may pass to the consideration of its expansion and specialisation during the first years. Although, so far as I am aware, the new child-study has not yet produced a methodical record of the changes which this interesting expression of feeling undergoes, we may by help of such data as are accessible be able to trace out some of the main directions of its development. Two closely connected problems are involved here : (a) how the expressive movements, the laugh and the smile, themselves change and get differentiated ; and (b) how the psychical process which precedes and excites these expres- sive movements grows in complexity and differences itself into the various forms of gaiety or amusement enumerated above. In dealing with these early manifestations we shall, of course, look for reactions which are spontaneous, in the sense of not being due to imitation and the lead of others. Yet it will not always be easy to determine what are such. It has been pointed out above that laughter is one of the most contagious of the expressive movements. Chil- dren, therefore, who are much given to imitation may be HOW TO GET PURE CHILD'S LAUGHTER 187 expected to show this contagiousness in a particularly clear manner. The difficulties are, however, not really so formidable as they might at first seem to be. If a child is, on the one hand, highly susceptible to the contagion of laughter, there is, on the other, no expression of his feeling in which he is more spontaneous. The swift directness of the " natural " or spontaneous laugh may be readily discriminated by a fine observer. Not only so, but a difference may be detected in the tone of the laughter when it is perfectly natural and real, and when it is merely imitative and artificial. The note of affected laughter is well known to careful observers of children. It is particularly plain where a child is not merely reproducing the laughter of others at the moment, but has it suggested to him by others that a thing is laughable. Miss Shinn's niece developed at the end of the second year a forced laugh on hearing the word " funny " employed by others. The best safeguard against this error is to choose an only child who is well isolated from mirthful surroundings. This need not be so cruel an experiment as it looks. In the social world of the merry little Ruth, nobody, we are told, was a "laughing person". This circumstance gives great value to the observations made on this child. Her laughter was probably as purely self-initiated as anything in child-life can be. It may be added that, even if we could not eliminate the imitative and the artificial element, there would still be a pretty wide field for careful observation in the child's own freer type of mirth. For, as all his friends know, his hearty laughter is frequently a response to things which leave us dull " grown-ups " wholly unafl'ected, or affected in quite another way. 188 DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER With regard to the development of the expressive move- ments themselves I can find but few data at hand. These are enough, however, to show that the process of differentia- tion commences during the first year. Mrs. Moore tells us that her boy in the thirty-third week acquired a new form of smile " which gradually but not entirely supplanted the (earlier) broad open-mouthed smile. . . . The nose was wrinkled up, the eyes nearly closed. . . . This smile seemed to express an extreme and more conscious enjoyment." ^ Preyer remarks that his boy developed in the last three months of the first year " a more conscious movement of laughter," which, presumably, had a difierent character as an expressive movement. In the case of the boy C, of whom I have written elsewhere, a new and clearly difier- enced note was detected in the laugh of defiance (to be referred to later) which appeared early in the second year. Mrs. Hogan says she noticed a " mischievous laugh" at the age of fifty-five weeks, whereas Preyer remarks that the first " roguish laugh " occurred in his boy's case at the end of the second year. A more precise record of the phonetic changes in laughter during the first two or three years is greatly to be desired. The movements of laughter are subject to the laws of movement in general. Repetition and Habit. They tend to perfect themselves by practice ; and the result probably involves a strengthening and an expansion of the wide- ranging organic commotion which makes up the reaction. A child of four will laugh on being tickled much more vigorously than one of two.^ Moreover, the efiiect of repeated exercises of the function would seem, as already 1 Loc. cit., p. 39. ^ I am indebted for this fact to Dr. L. Hill. I believe a like remark applies to all the laughter of play. CHANGES IN MOVEMENTS OP LAUGHTER 189 hinted, to involve the setting up in the motor-centres, from which the discharge in laughter issues, a condition of high instability, so that a very slight application of the stimulus, or (as in the case of tickling) the mere threat to apply this, suffices to evoke the reaction. Lastly, this work of organ- isation will plainly involve a fixing of the connection in the brain-centres between the effect of the stimulation and the motor reaction. We say that the impulse of laughter has become associated with a definite kind of sense-pre- sentation. The instant response of a child to the threaten- ing fingers is a clear example of the result of such an associative co-ordination. Other examples are seen when a particular sight or sound takes on permanently a funny character. A child that has come to regard a figure in a picture book or an odd sound made by the nurse as funny will laugh whenever this recurs or is spoken of, provided that the mood of the moment is favourable. This is a noteworthy illustration of the way in which the action of the novel and unexpected — which, as we all allow, has a large rSle in the excitation of laughter — may be replaced by that of an antagonistic force, namely, habit, which itself appears to secure the hilarious response. It may be added that so far as Habit comes in, reducing the importance of the initial psychical stage, and rendering the reaction automatic, the theory of Lange and James applies fairly well. The feeling of genial hilarity is in this case largely the reflex mental effect of the movements themselves, including the whole organic commotion brought about. Coming now to the development of the psychical element in laughter, we may, by way of introduction, refer to certain principles which ought to be useful. (a) To begin with, any variety of emotional reaction 190 DEVELOPMENT OP LAUGHTER excited by a particular kind of presentation appears, as it is repeated, to undergo a process of development, taking on more of fulness and complexity. A feeling of attach- ment to a person or to a place, or of admiration for a cherished work of art, grows fuller and deeper with the establishment of a relation of intimacy. Dimly realised resonances of former like experiences melt into, and deepen the feeling, and new elements are woven into it by associative complication, and by growing reflection. This increasing complexity affects both the ideational basis of the emotion and the closely connected emotional tone itself.^ At first sight we might be disposed to think that the feel- ing of sudden joy at the back of a merry explosion would prove to be an exception to this law. Since an element of novelty, a sense of joyous mental collapse under a sudden, yet harmless stimulus, runs through all our laughter, there might seem to be no room for any increase of depth and volume. But this is not so. A child's feeling of the "fun of it " at the approach of the tickling hand seems to gain in volume and force with the repetition of the experience. The zest of the enjoyment of a laughing romp with the nurse, or, better, with the father, of watching the funny ways of a kitten, and so forth, grows fuller because of the in- creasing complication of the psychosis behind the laughter.^ (6) In the second place the development of an emotion is essentially a differentiation of it, not merely into a more definite kind of experience as a whole, but into a number of •The nature of the process of emotional development is more fully treated, and the relation o£ its efieot to that of the dulling action of repeti- tion is indicated, in my work, The Human Mmd, vol. ii., p. 75 ft. ' Of course, increase of volume might arise through a widening of the sensational factor in the experience, due to the larger diffusion of somatic stimulation, which, as already remarked, is an element in the expansion of laughter. GROWTH OP LAUGHING PSYCHOSIS 191 ■distinguishable sub-varieties of feeling. In other words, the reaction is called forth by new excitants and new modes of stimulation which give rise to mental complexes some- what different from those caused by the earlier excitants. Thus, as we mentally develop, admirations having a richer ideational structure and more complexity of feeling -tone take the place of the first simple ones, which last die out or survive only as rudimentary processes. This enlargement of the field of exciting objects, with the concomitant differencing of the emotional state into a larger and larger number of shades, is the outcome of the whole process of mental growth. It means, first of all, the growing differentiation of the child's experience, that is, of his per- ceptions and ideas, as well as the expansion of his reflective processes. In this way a modified admiration attaches itself to a new kind of object, e.g., works of art, virtuous actions, when these come to be perceived and reflected on in such a way as to disclose their admirable side. In all such extensions the emotional reaction remains in its essential elements one and the same experience. We may say, if we like, that the expression has been " trans- ferred " to a new situation or a new experience, through the working of a force which has been called " the analogy of feeling "} This process of extension by analogy of situation and attitude may be seen to be a constituent in the development of laughter. Taking its primitive form to be the expression of a sudden raising of the feeling-tone of consciousness to the level of gladness — which elevation may be supposed to 1 This expression is commonly used only where an expression is passed on to a palpably dissimilar feeling. But an essentially similar process takes place, according to my view, within the limits of development of what we call the same emotion. 192 DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER involve at least an appreciable sense of relief from a fore- going state of strain or oppressive dulness — we may readily see how the reaction is passed on, so to speak, to analogous mental attitudes which are developed later. Let us take as an example a child who, having reached a dim apprehension of the customary behaviour of things begins to laugh at certain odd deviations from this. Here the transition appears clearly to be a kind of transference mediated by the identity of the mental attitude with that of the laughter of an earlier stage, say at the sight of the new and entertaining baubles. Similarly when, after the consciousness of rule is developed, a child roguishly " tries it on" by pretending to disobey, we may regard the new outburst of the spirit of fun as a natural transition from an earlier variety, the laughing pretence of running away from mother or nurse. Nevertheless, we have to do here with more than a mere transference. Such extensions always involve some amount of complication and enrichment of the mirthful experience. These later forms of mental gaiety depend on the develop- ment of more complex psychoses, both on the intellectual and on the emotional side. The first amusement at the sight of the ill-matched, the inconsequent, implies the advance of an analytic reflection up to the point of a dim perception of relations. A large part of the extension of the field of the laughable depends on this intellectual advance, a finer and more precise apprehension of what is presented, in its parts and so as a whole, as also in its relations to other things. With respect to the other condition, expansion of the emotional life, it is enough to remark that certain forms of laughter which fall within the first years of life arise directly out of a deepening of the emotional consciousness as a whole, e.g., the awakening of the " self-feeling," as seen COMPLICATION AND DIFFERENTIATION 193 in the laughter of success or triumph ; or, on the other hand, of tenderness and sympathy, as illustrated in the first rudiments of a kindly humour. We see, then, that, as a feature in development, differen- tiation into a multiplicity of forms is inseparably connected with another feature, complication. The gradual appearance of a number of laughters variously toned, such as that of slightly malicious elation at collapse of dignity, of entertain- ment at an intellectual inconsequence, and of a kindly amusement at a petty disaster, means that the elemental feeling of joy is getting modified by accretions or absorp- tions of new psychical elements. A final remark is needed to prevent misapprehension. Among the several processes of complication which underlie this differentiation of the laughing psychosis, some tend to arrest or tone down the reaction. It is thus that, when sympathy comes to be united with the laughing impulse^ the gaiety of the latter is apt to become subdued into something between a smile and the gentlest of laughs. In addition to this inhibitory effect of heterogeneous emotional elements we have that of new conative attitudes. A child soon finds out that a good deal of his rollicking laughter is an offence, and the work of taming the too wild spirits begins.^ With these general considerations to help us, we may now look at the course of development of the laughing experience during the first three years. It may be premised that the smile and the laugh only become gradually differentiated as signs of qualitatively dissimilar attitudes. In the case of Ruth the two expres- sions remained for a time interchangeable, and frequently ' The application of the principle of arrest to the changes in emotional states has been made with great success by Th. Bibot in his volume, Psy- ehologie des Sentiments, p. 260 flf. 13 194 DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER alternated in the same fit of joyous delight. But about the 129th day the smile, it is remarked, began to take on one of its specialised functions, the social one of greeting. Coming now to laughter, we have found that it begins at an early date to pass from a general sign of sudden increase of pleasure or good spirits into something akin to mirthful play. This has been illustrated in the early responses to tickling, and, a little later, to simple forms of a laughing game (e.g., bo-peep). By what process of change, one may ask, does the impulse to laugh when the heart suddenly grows glad pass into the laughter of play ? Allowing, as seems certain, that the play- impulse is inherited, can we point out any psychological connection between the two ? The answer has already been given in substance in our general analysis of the causes of laughter. A sudden rise of pleasurable consciousness, when it possesses the mind and becomes gladness, say the infant's flood of delight at the swinging coloured baubles, necessarily dissolves, for the time, the tense, serious attitude into a loose, play-like one. The child's consciousness is now all gladness in face of his bauble ; and play is just another way of effecting this dissolution of the serious attitude into a large gladness. Not only so, but the elemental mood of laughter resembles the play-mood, since it finds its satisfaction in pretence or make-believe. The gladdening object divested of all serious interest becomes a play-thing, a mere semblance of the thing of practical account which the child observed in the serious moments. Its greeting by the senses may be described, indeed, as a kind of play of these senses. Hence, the specialisation of the primal laughter of delight into that of fun would appear to be one of the simplest processes in the whole development of the emotion. LAUGHTER OF JOY AND OF FUN 195 We may now briefly trace out some of the phases of development of these two primal forms of laughter. With regard to the laughter of delight and jollity, we find, to judge from the careful record of Ruth's emotional utterances, that there is a rapid development during and after the fourth month.^ In this month, we read, the child was thrown into a state of vivacious delight — which expressed itself in smiles, in movements, in cooing and crowing — by the faces and voices which may be said to have "played" to her as she sat at table. The advent of the meal was that of a new joyous world, and, if the child could have spoken, she would probably have exclaimed, " Oh, what fun ! " The large change effected by the return of a familiar face and voice after an absence was only another way of transforming her world into a merry one. Towards the end of the fifth month, the note-book speaks over and over again of "jollity" and "high spirits," of the child's " laughing with glee when any one smiled or spoke to her," of "being exceedingly jolly, smiling, kicking and sputtering," and so forth. This growing gleefulness seemed to be the outcome of new expansions of the pleasurable consciousness, of a piu-e " Lebenslust ". No doubt it had its obscure source in a pleasurable coenaesthesis, the result of merrily working digestive and other processes of organic life. Yet it had its higher conditions, also, in the expansion of the life of the senses and in the growing range of the muscular activities. Laughter and shouts of joy would, we are told, accompany not merely the inrush of delightful sights and sounds, but the new use of bodily powers in exploring and experimenting. 1 Miss Shinn's observations are recorded in Parts III. and IV. of her Notes. 196 DEVELOPMENT OP LAUGHTER This gaiety in taking possession of her new world showed itself in the greeting of friendly faces. The new appearance of her grandfather after an absence excited her laughter on the 133rd day. By about the middle of the year, the child had, like Preyer's boy, developed a jubilant greeting for her social belongings, nodding a friendly nod with all the signs of huge delight. These outbursts of laughing joy may sometimes be seen to have been preceded by a distinctly disagreeable state of feeling. In the case of Ruth, we are told that the fit of jollity broke out, on one or two occasions, upon "instan- taneous relief from great general discomfort ". Again, on the 222nd day, having awoke and felt timid, she laughed with joy and a sense of relief when her mother came into the room. I have other evidence to show that this laughter of overflowing gladness is often to some extent a relief from constraint. Thus, a boy of one and a half years who had a new nurse, and for some days behaved with great gravity when with her, was during the same period "extremely hilarious " when alone with his parents. The gladness of the world grew larger to this happy girl when, towards the end of the seventh month, she was taken into the open air, and, shortly after, allowed to lie on a quilt and roU on the ground. The wooing of the passing freshness, the play of sun and shadow, the large stir of life in moving and sounding things, all this possessed her and made her " laugh and ejaculate with pleasure ". With this may be compared a note on a boy nine months old, who, lying in a clothes-basket in a garden one summer's day, looked up at the leaves dancing in the sunshine and laughed with " a hearty noisy laugh ". The development of bodily power in this same half- year brought our little maiden much gleeful laughter. EARLY FORMS OF GAIETY 197 Any experience of movement, passive as well as active, filled her with noisy hilarity. To ride on anybody's foot brought out, at the end of the fifth month, the unmis- takable signs of hilarious rapture. A month later, the gleeful explosion was called out by the new frolicsome ex- perience of being jumped and tossed. Similar expressions of mirth occurred when new active movements were accom- plished. In the record of the middle of the ninth month, we are told of a medley of movements, tumbling on the floor or lawn, sitting up and lying down, raising herself on the feet and hands, etc., which brought her " singular joy ". A part of the gleefulness of this widening experience of movement is due to its unexpected results. It seems probable that the first successful experiments in crawling, climbing and the rest may give rise to new complexes of muscular and other sensations which come as a joyful surprise. Such delightful surprises grow more varied and impressive when the arms and hands begin to experiment. For example, a little girl, aged two and a quarter years, happened when throwing a ball at random to jerk it over her head, and was seized with a spasm of hilarity. The gleeful outburst is apt to occur, too, later on when a child first achieves the feat — half -wonderful, half -amusing — of walking, of running and of jumping.^ In these expanding processes of jollity or gleefulness we may detect the beginnings of more specialised forms of laughing enjoyment. Thus, in the outburst of merri- ment which winds up a successful attempt to climb, we recognise the germ of that mode of reaction which is apt to follow at the moment of sudden relaxation of tension on the attainment of an end. We may be sure that a child 1 For a pretty reminiscent description of a first experience of running and jumping, see Pierre Loti, Boman d'tm Enfant, ii., p. 4 fE. 198 DEVELOPMENT OP LAUGHTER of nine months finds the effort to stand a very serious and exhausting strain ; and may infer that the laughter which occurs in this case is largely due to momentary relaxations of this strain. But again, these experiences clearly supply conditions favourable to the emergence of that " sudden glory " which enters into successful effort. The " .shouting and laughing " of little Ruth (forty -five weeks) on completing the magni- ficent exploit of climbing the staircase had, as her aunt's epithet " exultant " recognises, something of the free- breathing jubilation of the successful mountain - climber. We are told further that, in the tenth month, Ruth would break into the same exultant laugh after some successful mental effort, such as pointing out the right picture when this was asked for. Here, then, we have the laughter of a joyous feeling-tone complicated by new elements. These include, not merely the delightful feeling of relief after prolonged effort, but some dim form of an agreeable consciousness of growing power and of an expanding self. In the glee on mastering a new movement, e.g., riding on somebody's foot, we see traces of a more distinctly playful mood. We may now follow out the development of this large variety of gamesome mirth. The overflow of the health-filled reservoirs of muscular activity begins at an early stage to wear an unmistak- able aspect of playfulness. The first exercises in crawling, accompanied by various sounds of contentment and glad- ness, are indeed recognisable by all as a kind of play. As the forces of the organism establish themselves a more manifest bent to a romping kind of game appears. This, as a game in which co-operation enters, involves a develop- ment of the social consciousness, and its gleefulness comes FROM GLADNESS TO MIRTH 199 in part from the reverberations of mutual sympathy. A good example of the hilarity of a romping game is Ruth's uproarious delight, in the seventh month, when dragged about on a carpet, an experience which involved, of course, much loss of equilibrium and some amount of awkward bumping. That the bumps were of the essence of the enjoyment is confirmed by the fact that, in the tenth month, she would like to stand, holding on to a chair, and then deliberately to let herself go so as to " come down sitting with a thud," winding up the performance by "looking up laughing and triumphant ". Another game involving exciting jolts was liked in the middle of the twelfth month. The child was shot in her carriage, now from the aunt to the mother, and now back, each little ride ending up with a jolt, over which she grew very merry. Later on, (at the end of the twentieth month) she laughed heartily on being knocked down by her dog in a too pushful bit of play ; and she enjoyed in like manner some pretty rough play at the hands of a nine-year-old boy companion. This mirthful treatment of romps, which must have in- volved a palpable amount of discomfort, is interesting as showing how laughter plays aboiit the confines of the serious. This little girl seems, up to the age of three, at least, to have been curiously indifierent to pain. Yet she was not wanting in the common childish timidity. It looks, then, as if the fun of these rather rough games turned on dissolutions of nascent attitudes of apprehension, and, consequently, the laughter expressed something of a joyous contempt of fear. Indeed, it seems likely that an element of this joyous rebound from a half-developed state of fear entered into much of this child's laughter, already illustrated, on succeeding in a rather risky experiment, such as climbing the staircase. We read that, like other vigorous 200 DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER children, she was a keen pursuer of new experiences, even in cases in which she knew that some pain was involved. The passion for trying new experiments seems to have urged her on, in spite of nascent fear ; and the final shout- ing and laughing may well have announced, along with the joy of successful effort, a sense of triumph over the weaker timid self. The ability, illustrated in these hardy experi- ments, to turn situations suggestive of danger into " larkish " play, was a singular proof of the firm foundation on which this child's prevalent mode of gaiety reposed. In some cases Ruth's play would take on a form which clearly involved a triumphing over fear. Thus, we are told that when, on the 429th day, she was asked to find '' auntie " in the dark she at first stood still and silent. Then, when her head was touched by somebody's hands, she broke into laughter and started off by herself to explore in the dark. Later on, with the growth of a bolder spirit, this laughing triumph over fear extended itself, so that in the twenty-ninth month she played at bear with her uncle, going into a dark room, with her hand in her aunt's, and enjoying " the exhilaration of unreal alarm " ; and when the uncle sprang out from his dark hiding-place, growling fearfully, she " laughed, shrieked and fled all in one ". If the uncle went a little too far in the use of the alarming she would check him by saying, " Don't do that again ". In these cases, it is evident, we have a complex psychosis with alternating phases. The awful delight which vents itself at once in a laugh and in a shriek and a flight is cer- tainly of a mixed feeling-tone. The laughter is the note of a triumphant spirit, and yet of one in which, in the moment of triumph, the nascent fear leaves its trace. In these laughing games we have clearly an element of MIRTH AS REBOUND FROM FEAR 201 make-believe. A firm persuasion, low down in consciousness, of the harmlessness of the coming bump and of the human bear in the blackness keeps the little girl's heart steady and turns the adventure into fun. At the same time, the play ■3,8 "pretending" would seem to involve at least a half- formed expectation of something, and probably, too, a final taste of delicious surprise at the fully realised nothingness of the half -expected. In some forms of play-pretence this element of final annihilation of expectation becomes more conspicuous and the distinct source of the hilarious exulta- tion. When, for example, in the eleventh month, Kuth sit- ting on the floor held out her arms to be taken up, and the mother, instead of doing this, stooped and kissed the child, there was a perfect peal of laughter again and again. The increase of muscular activity shown in the laughing romps leads to the extension of mirthful enjoyment in an- other way. A vigorous child, even when a girl, grows aggressive and attempts various forms of playful attack. As we have seen, to tickle another is merely one variety of a large class of teasing operations, in which the teased as well as the teasing party is supposed to find his merriment. Regarding now the child as teaser, we see that he very early begins to exercise at once his own powers and others' en- durance. The pulling of whiskers is one of the earliest forms of practical jokes. Ruth took to this pastime in the first week of the fifth month. By the end of the sixth month the little tormentor had grown aware of her power, and " became most eager to pull, with laughter and exultant clamour, at the nose, ear, and especially the hair, of any one that held her". The boy C, at the same age, delighted in pulling his sister's hair, and was moved by her cries only to outbursts of laughter. As intelligence develops, these practical jokes grow more cunning. Another little 202 DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER girl, of whom I have written elsewhere under the initial M., when seventeen months old, asked for her father's. " tick-tick," looking very saucy ; and as he stooped to give it, she tugged at his moustache, '' and almost choked with laughter ". With this teasing of human companions we have that of animals. When sixteen months old, Ruth would chase the' cat with shouts of laughter. Another child, a boy, about the same age, went considerably further, and taking the toilet pufF from its proper place went deliberately to- " Moses," the cat, who was sitting unsuspectingly before the fire, and proceeded to powder him, each new application of the pufi" being accompanied by a short chuckle. There is no need of reading into this laughter the note of cruel exultation over suffering.^ Ruth's mischievous doings would take forms which had not even the semblance of cruelty. There was merely impish playfulness in the act of snatching off her grandmother's spectacles and even her cap, with full accompaniment of laughter, in the twenty-second month when lifted to say good-night. In much the same spirit the other little girl, M., delighted, when two years old, in untying the maid's apron strings and in other jocose forms of mischief. The laughing mood in these cases is understandable as a rioting in newly realised powers, a growing exultation as the consciousness of ability to produce striking effects grows clearer. Ruth, in her eleventh month, blew a whistle violently and looked round laughing to her aunt and the others present. Here, surely, the laughter was that of ' The nearest approaoli I have met with to a suggestion of a wish to inflict pain in this early practical joking is the following : The child M. when two years old stood on her mother's foot saying, " Oh, my poor toe ! " But it seems reasonable to say that in such moments of frolic pain is quite unrepresentable. MIRTH AS RIOTOUS EXULTATION 203 rejoicing in a new power. This sense of power implies a clearer form of " self -feeling ". A child may grow keenly conscious of the self in such moments of newly tried powers, as he grows in " the moments of intense pain ". This laughter, then, furnishes a good illustration of the sudden glory on which Hobbes lays emphasis. I have assumed that in this laughing mischief we have to do with a form of (playful) teasing. The little assailant enjoys the fun of the attack and counts on your enjoying it also. The indulgence of others, even if they do not show an equal readiness for the pastime, removes all thought of disobedience, of lawlessness. Yet things do not commonly remain at this point of perfectly innocent fun. The gathering energies of the child, encouraged by indulgence in games of romp, are pretty certain to develop distinctly rowdyish proceedings. Ruth, for example, when about twenty-one months old, scrambled defiantly on to the table at the close of a meal, seized on the salts, and scampered about laughing. About the same time this new spirit of rowdyism showed itself in flinging a plate across the room and other mutinous acts. Little boys, I suspect, are much given to experiments in a violent kind of fun which they know to be disorderly. One of them, aged two years eight and a half mouths, was fond of " trying it on " by pulling hair-pins out of his mother's hair, splashing in the puddles in the road, and so forth, to her great per- plexity and his plainly pronounced enjoyment. In these outbursts of laughing rowdyism we see more than an escape of pent-up energies, more than a mere overflow of " high spirits " ; they are complicated by a new factor, something of the defiant temper of the rebel. A child of two has had some experience of real disobedience, and may be said to have developed simple ideas of order 204 DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER and law. We may reasonably infer, then, that in this turbulent fun there is some consciousness of setting law at defiance. The presence of this new psychical factor is seen in the alteration of the laughing sounds themselves. In Ruth's case, we are told, they were " rough " and unlike the natural and joyous utterance. It is further seen in the method of the fun, for, as Miss Shinn observes, Ruth " tried repeatedly to see how far she could go safely in roguish naughtiness". I think we find in this behaviour a clear instance of laughter becoming an ingredient in the attitude of throwing off a customary restraint. It is the early analogue of the laughter of the rowdies bent on window-smashing, of the riotous enjoyment of the people at festal seasons when the lord of misrule holds sway. The degree of conscious defiance of order may, no doubt, vary greatly. In much of what we view as the disorderly mirth of a child this ingredient of the laughing mood may be small and sub-conscious ; yet at times it grows distinct and prominent. Thus, Ruth, in the eleventh month, de- veloped a special expression for the attitude of defiance when disobejring, namely, a comical face with a wrinkling of the nose, together with laughter. The boy 0., early in the third year, would give out a laugh of a short mocking ring on receiving a prohibition, e.g., not to slap his dog companion. He would remain silent and laugh in a half -contemptuous way. Sometimes in his moods of defiance he would go so far as to strike a member of his family and then laugh. His laugh was sometimes highly suggestive of the mood of de- rision. In this note of warlike challenge we have a point of kinship with the " crowing " laughter of the victor. Yet it is doubtful whether a child at this early age reaches the GERM OF ROWDYISM 205 mental attitude of a mocking contempt. Preyer tells us that he has never observed scornful laughter within the first four years.^ When the consciousness of the unruly in these "high jinks " becomes distinct and begins to be oppressive, the laughter will be less boisterous and express more of playful pretence. The child learns to be satisfied with making a feint to rebel, with a make-believe unruliness. Ruth, on the 236th day, laughed when pretending to disobey by biting ofl' the petals of flowers, and on the 455th day, by stuffing buttons into her mouth. The boy C, when about the same age, had his little way of turning disobedience into a game. In the seventeenth month, when he was bidden by his mother to give up a picture he had got possession of, he walked up to her and made a show of handing over his unlawful possession, and then drew his hands back with much laughing enjoyment. A more complicated psychical attitude appears when such laughing pretence at disobedience takes on a " roguish " aspect. Here we have, not only an element of slight uneasi- ness, but one of self-consciousness, which together give a distinct complexion to the whole mental attitude and to its expression. This ingredient of a timid self-consciousness or shyness under the scrutiny of others appears, as we know, some time after the simpler forms of fear. In Ruth's case it seems to have showed itself on the 123rd day in a distinctly ■' roguish " attitude. When at dinner and spoken to by her grandfather, she turned her head as far as she could. On the 141st day, too, when held in her nurse's arms, she ' Op. cit., p. 196. I have heard of it occurring in u, girl at the age of three and a half. The point should certainly be determined by more pre- cise observations. 206 DEVELOPMENT OP LAUGHTER smiled at her grandfather and others and then ducked her head. This expression of roguish self-consciousness had more of the look of a nervous explosion in the eleventh month, when the girl laughed on being set on her feet in a coi'ner where she was much noticed ; and again, in the thirteenth month, as she tumbled about and showed herself off. This laughter, with something of the gSne of self- consciousness in it, was, we are told, not to be confounded with the expression of a complacent self-consciousness. The element of an awkward shyness comes into much of the early playful " trying it on ". In the case of the boy C, just mentioned, it was seen in the sly, upward look of the eyes and the short, half -nervous laugh, when he was face to face with authority and disposed to play at disobedience. The fuller roguish laugh occurs frequently along with a risky bit of play, as when a boy of one and a half year would point to himself when asked for a finger-recognition of somebody else. In such cases the laughter seems like an attempt to get rid of the element of risk. When the mask- ing of the impulse of fun by timidity is greater, the ex- pression reaching only to a tentative smile, the roguishness of a child may easily wear a look of kinship with our grown-up humour.^ A full account of the development of laughter during these first years, as an ingredient of the play-mood, would be of great value. It would, in particular, help us to see how the reaction comes to be definitely co-ordinated with the sense of make-believe, and the attitude of throwing ofl" the burdensome restrictions of reality. The vocal mirth of children, as they give reins to their fancy, attests to • Preyer first observed roguish laughter at the end of the second year {op. cit, p. 196). He does not define the expression " schelmisohes Xiaohen ". ROGUISH MIRTH 207 the weight of this burden and to the intense delight which ■comes from its momentary abandonment. In seeking for the first traces of the laughter of play ^nd of defiance, we are not greatly troubled by the inter- fering influence of others. No doubt this influence is at work even here. The nurse and the parents are pretty certain to laugh at much of the roguish " trying it on " ; and this laughter will react upon the child's own merriment. In play, too, in which others usually take some part, there is this action of older persons' laughter. Still, in the main, the utterances are spontaneous, and at most are reinforced by way of some sympathetic rapport with another. It is otherwise when we come to consider the first instances of laughing amusement at the presentation of " funny " objects. The lead of others now complicates the phenomenon to a much more serious extent. The re- cognition of an object as "funny" implies some detection of a quaUty which acts on others as well as on the self ; ^ consequently, it presupposes a certain development of the social consciousness. Hence, some cautiousness is needed in noting the first clear examples of a perception of the quality. Before language comes and supplies a means of self -interpretation, we cannot safely say that because a child laughs in presence of an object there is a recognition of something objectively "funny". As we have seen, such laughter may be fully accounted for by supposing that the object has an exhilarating or gladdening effect on the child's feeling. On the other hand, when language is added we have to cope with the difficulty, already touched on, that a child's pronouncements are apt to be controlled by what others laugh at and call funny. Nevertheless, here, too, the child's spontaneity and his way of discovering his own ' Compare above, p. 83. 208 DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER sources of amusement may enable us to overcome the diflSculties. Our study of the conditions of the perception suggests that a true enjoyment of presentations as oddities is not to be expected at a very early date. And this, first of all, for the reason that the new, especially if it is strange, even though fitted to draw forth a joyous laugh, may easily excite other and inhibitory attitudes. An infant, during the fii-st year of life, if not later also, is apt to be disturbed and apparently alarmed at the approach of new objects, so as to be unafiected by its rejoicing aspect ; or, if he feels this, the laughter may be accompanied by signs of fear. Ruth, on her 254th day, greeted a kitten which her father brought to show her with " all gradations from laughter and joy to fear ". In the second place — and this is of more importance — the recognition of an object as funny presupposes the work of experience in organising a rudimentary feeling for what is customary. This, again, involves a development of the social consciousness and of an idea of a common order of things. Now all this requires a certain amount of time. It hardly seems reasonable to look for a true apprehension of the laughable till some time after the appearance of an imitation of others' laughter and play -gestures, which was first observed, in the case of the boy C, in the ninth month. Nor could it weU be expected until after a child had acquired some understanding of others' language, so as to note how they agree in naming and describing certain objects as funny, which understanding only begins to be reached in the second half of the year. Hence, I should hesitate to speak of a clear recognition of a laughable object as such before the last quarter of the year. It seems to me, for example, a little rash to say that a boy of five months, who always laughed inordinately when a very jolly-looking physician. EARLY PERCEPTIONS OF THE FUNNY 209 the image of Santa Glaus, paid him a visit, displayed a " sense of humour "} When once the idea of objects of common laughter begins to grow clear a child is, of course, able to develop perceptions of the funny along his own lines. This he certainly seems to do pretty briskly. The freshness of his world, the absence of the dulling effect of custom which is seen in the perceptions of older folk, renders him an excellent pioneer in the largely imknown territory of King Laughter. Among the sense-presentations which awaken the infantile laugh are new and queer sounds of various sorts ; and they may weU be selected for a study of the transitions from mere joyous exclamation to a hilarious greeting of what is "funny". Early in the second half of the first year, a child in good health will begin to surmount the alarms of the ear, and to turn what is new and strange into fun. About the 222nd day brave little Ruth was able to laugh, not only at such an odd sound as that produced when her aunt rattled a tin cup on her teeth, but at that of a piano. Preyer's boy, later in the year, was given to laughing at various new and out-of-the-way sounds, such as that of the piano, of gurgling or clearing the throat, and even of thimder. Odd sounding articulations appear to be especially provo- cative of laughter about this time. As early as the 149th day, Ruth laughed at new sounds invented by the aunt, such as " Pah ! Pah ! " Queer guttural sounds seem to have a specially tickling effect. After words and their commoner forms have begun to grow familiar, new and odd-sounding words, especially names, are apt to be greeted with laughter. The child M., when one year nine months old, was much impressed by the ' See Mrs. Hogan's Study of a Child, p. 18. 14 210 DEVELOPMENT OP LAUGHTER exclamation "good gracious ! " made by her mother on dis- covering that the water was coming through the ceiling of a room ; and the child would sometimes repeat it in pure fun "shaking with laughter". When she was two years seven months old she laughed on first hearing the name "Periwinkle". In these and similar cases of the hilarious response to sounds we seem to have, well within the first nine months, a germ of a feeling for the odd or droll. The early develop- ment of this sense of the funny in sounds is aided by their aggressive force for the infant's consciousness, and by the circumstance that for the young ear they have pronounced characteristics which are probably lost as development ad- vances, and they are attended to, not for their own sake, but merely as signs of things which interest us. The psychical process involved in the transition may be described as follows. Sounds, while by reason of their suddenness and unexpectedness they are apt to take the consciousness off its guard and to produce a kind of nervous shock, are of all sense-stimuli the most exhilarating. The sudden rousing of the consciousness to a large joyous com- motion is the fundamental fact. Nor will the jar of the shock, when the sense-organ develops and becomes hardier, interfere with this. On the contrary, it will add something in the shape of an agreeable rebound from a nascent atti- tude of uneasiness.^ The laughter of the child at the first sounds of the piano, which have frightened many a child and other young animal, is, in part, a shout of victory. There is here, too, an element of " sudden glory " in the re- joicing, as the new expanding self is dimly conscious of its superiority to the half-alarmed and shrinking self of the moment before. ^ 0/. what was said in chap, v., p. 142, apropos of Leigh Hunt's theory. SENSE OF THE FUNNY IN SOUNDS 211 In this case, it is evident, we have to do with a greeting of the laughable which will vary greatly according to the psycho-physical condition of the child. The same child that laughs at a new sound to-day will to-morrow, when in another mood, be disturbed by a quite similar surprise of the ear. But more is involved in this laughter. The sudden and slightly disturbing attack of the ear by new sounds is apt to wear for the child's consciousness a game-like aspect. We have only to think of the nursery rhymes, alluded to by Miss Shinn, in which the excitement of fun is secured by an explosive shock at the end, games closely analogous to the rides which terminated in a good bump. In these rhymes the fun lies in the shock, though only half-unexpected — a shock which has in it the very soul of frivolous play, since it comes at the end of a series of quiet orderly sounds. May not the new sounds, the guttural utterances and the rest, aifect a child in a like manner as a kind of disorderly play ? For a child's ear, pitched for the intrinsic character of a sound, they may hold much which is expressive of the play-mood. This will apply not only to utterances like the " Pah! Pah ! " which are clearly recognised as play, but to many others produced by a nurse or a mother who is given to entertaining. Perhaps the gurgling sounds which moved the mirth of Preyer's boy appeared laughter-like. This tendency to look on certain sounds as a kind of play seems to supply a psychical link in the development of a feeling for the odd and out-of-the-way as such. We have seen how the play-impulse "tries it on" when the re- straints of rule grow too irksome. I suspect that the mirthful appreciation of the queer and out-of-the-way grows out of this inclination to a playful disorderliness or law-breaking. A child is apt to feel oppressed with the rules of propriety 212 DEVELOPMENT OP LAUGHTER imposed on him. By these rules quite a terrible multiplicity of noises is branded as " naughty," and the prohibition tends to fix the playful impulse precisely in the direction of the forbidden sounds. Children have a way, moreover, of pro- jecting their experiences and their inclinations into things ■which we call lifeless. What more natiu-al, then, that they should feel these incursions of violent and quite improper- sounding noises to be a kind of playful throwing aside of order and rule ? In the domain of the visible world, suddenness of pre- sentation rarely reaches, perhaps, the point of shock or joltiness. Yet there is ample scope, here, too, for the working of the unexpected on the child's sensibilities. The first visual excitants of laughter, the sudden uncovering of the face in bo-peep, the unexpected return of the familiar face after an interval of absence, the instant transformation of the accustomed features when the mother " makes a face," show how directly the surprisingly new may act on the young muscles of laughter. Here, too, we may see how the hilarious enjoyment of the new and out-of-the-way emerges out of play-mirth. The distorted face of the mother produces a laugh when it has ceased to alarm and is taken as fun.^ According to one observer, this making of faces grows into a standing pas- time towards the end of the second year.^ Is not the greeting of the baby-face in the mirror, which in Ruth's case occurred on the 221st day (eighth month), and in that of Preyer's boy at the end of the ninth month, a kind of accost of a newly discovered playmate ? Perhaps the laughter of a little boy, of one and a half year, already referred to, at the jumping of a ping-pong ball and at a ' Ruth's laughter at the mother's face was certainly very early. * Hogan, op. cit., p. 71. RESPONSES TO MERRY SIGHTS 213 spring- blind going up or coming down with a run, expressed a recognition of something play-like. This co-operation of the play -inclination in the perception of the laughable in visual presentations is still more plainly illustrated in the effect of actions and postures. The quickness of the eye of mirth for expressions of the mood of romping play is seen in a child's laughter, already referred to, at the gambols of a horse or other animal. Ruth was much entertained on her 441st day by the antics of a dog. Especially enlivening is the appearance of quick, play-like movements in grave elders addicted to decorous deportment. The girl M., at the age of eighteen months, broke into boisterous laughter on seeing her father as he ran to catch a train, with his handkerchief hanging out of his pocket. This sudden revelation of the playful temper may come to the child by way of postures and expressions. The awful laws of propriety soon tend to give the look of playful licence to certain bodily postures, especially that of lying down. The boy C, when twenty months old, laughed heartily on seeing his sister lying on the ground out of doors. Making faces, pouting lips and the rest become playful just because they are felt to be improper, the sort of thing one only does in a disorderly moment, playful or other. May not the drolleries — to the child's conscious- ness—of animal form, for example the long neck of the giraffe, owe something to suggestions of improper jocose actions, such as trying to stretch oneself into Alice-like dimensions ? •^In this blithe recognition of the irregular in others' be- haviour we have the rudiment of an appreciation of the laughable, not only as a violation of rule but as a loss of dignity. This is apparent in such cases as the boy's laughter at the prostrate form of his sister, illumined as 214 DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER it was by the observation that, at the age of twenty-six months, he expressed great contempt at the spectacle of a Japanese gentleman stretched on the grass in the suburban Heath, which was the child's daily resort, and which he seemed strongly disposed to subject to his own code of manners. Possibly, too, there was a touch of this apprecia- tion of lowered dignity when the same boy, at the age of twenty-eight months, laughed greatly on seeing his father batter in an old hat. The laughter, complicated now by a new element of conscious superiority, probably took on a crowing note, though our dull ears may not be equal to a clear detection of the change. Not only so, it is possible that the laughter of children, common in the second year, at signs of disorderliness in the hair or dress of others, and especially superiors, implies a perception of something like lowered rank. In this effect of the new in the visible world different tones of mirth are no doubt distinguishable. As the higher forms of perception begin to develop the primitive laughter of joy may persist and combine with later and more specialised kinds. Ruth's voicing of merriment, in the thirteenth month, on having a new pair of mittens put on her, was largely an outburst of joy, though some dim sense of the oddity of the thing probably combined with this. On the other hand, the laughter called forth in the little girl M., at the age of twenty-one months, by the spectacle of a doll that had lost its arms presumably had in it, along with a sense of something weirdly absurd in the mutilated form, a pretty keen sub-consciousness of dollish proprieties set at defiance. Other directions in the development of this early laughter at entertaining spectacles may be said to have their origin in the fun of play with its pretence or make-believe. Mrs. DISCRIMINATION OF FUNNY ASPECTS 215 Hogan's boy, at the age of two years and two months, would laugh at his nurse's pretended efforts to put on his shoes, which, instead of getting on, flew away wildly into freedom. This laughter was evoked at the fun of the thing, and probably involved an interpretation of the nurse's action as play. Yet it had in it also, I think, the trace of an appre- ciation of the absurdity of the farcical collapse of effort. This is borne out by the fact that the boy, about the same time, would also laugh when the nurse, not in play, tried by jumping to hang a garment on a nail just too high for her. He may, of course, have regarded this, too, as but a con- tinuation of the play. Yet it seems reasonable to suppose that the merry current had one of its sources in the per- ception of the amusing aspect of failure, of effort missing its mark and lapsing into nothingness. I confess to have been surprised at what looks like the precocity of some children in the matter of honouring the proprieties of conduct. The little girl M., when only fourteen months old, is said to have laughed in an "ab- surdly conscious way" at a small boy who stood by her perambulator asking for a kiss. That kiss, we are told, was not forthcoming. Was the laugh merely an incident in a mood of nervous shyness, or did it signify a dim per- ception of " bad form " on the part of the proposer ? Much care is needed in the interpretation of such expressive reactions. A small boy of eighteen months laughed when his pants slipped down. But this may only have resulted from a sense of the fun of the irregularity of the proceed- ing, aided perhaps by others' amusement. A true feeling of shame is, of course, not developed at this age ; yet a child may have caught from instruction a feeling of the shocking impropriety of an ill-timed casting aside of the clothes- trammels. 216 DEVELOPMENT OP LAUGHTER We may find in the laughter of the child, within the period of the first three years, pretty clear indications of the development of a rude perception of amusing incon- gruities in dress and behaviour. The young eye has a keen outlook for the proprieties in the matter of clothes. Ruth, who was in the thirteenth month amused at seeing her new mittens put on, showed amusement about the same date when her pink bonnet was put on her aunt's head. In this case, the play-significance of the action for the child's con- sciousness is apparent. It seems fairly certain, indeed, that this higher form of a recognition of the laughable grows out of the play -interpretation. When at play children not only throw off rules of decorum and do improper things, they put aside ideas of appropriateness and launch out into bizarre discontinuities and contrarieties of action and speech. The play-attitude, as lawless and free, tends to inconsequence. Hence the readiness with which a child interprets such inconsequences as play. It is the same when a child laughs at droll stories of the doings of animals and persons. He may take fables and other fancies seriously enough at times, but if his mind is pitched for merriment, he will greatly appreciate the ex- travagant unsuitabilities of behaviour of the heroes of his nursery books. The little girl M., when two years seven months old, laughed gaily at a passage in a story about kittens, in which they are made to say, " Waiter, this cat's meat is tough ; " asking in the midst of her merriment, " Did you ever saw such funny tits ? " Along with this rudiment of merry appreciation of the spectacle of the incongruous, we have the first crude mani- festation of the closely related feeling of amusement at the absurd. Children are said to have no measure of the pro- bable and possible, and to accept the wildest fancies in GLIMPSES OF THE UNFITTING 217 unquestioning faith. Yet experience begins her educative work during these first three years, and one may detect sporadic traces of a feeling for what is gloriously incredible. A boy, already alluded to, aged about one and a half year, laughed as his aunt asked him what the waves, which he was gravely observing, were saying. The boy C, when twenty-two months old, grew quite hilarious over the idea of flying up into the air. Some one had suggested his flying like a bird, and he proceeded to cap the suggestion, adding, " Tit (sister) fy air," " gee-gee (horse) fy air". The last idea of a flying horse especially delighted one innocent, as yet, of Greek mythology. Lastly, a bare allusion may be made to the early develop- ment of an appreciation of word-play and the lighter kind of wit. That this grows out of the play-element, the love of pretence, is at once evident. Verbal fun, " trying it on " with an incorrect use of words and so forth, is a common outlet of the rollicking spirits of childhood. Mrs. Hogan's boy, at the age of one year eight months, developed a fancy for calling things by their wrong names, a knife a " fork," for example. Eath did the same towards the end of the third year. The fun derived from punning seems to be immense in the case of many children at the close 'of our period, as when a boy on hearing his mother say she had just called on Mrs. Fawkes asked, "Did you call on Mrs. knives too ? " This easy childish mode of satisfying a jocose bent is seen also in the use of false statements, not seriously, but " in fun," as the child has it. Ruth had a fit of such merry fibbing at the end of the third year. A child will often " try on " this kind of verbal game, when called up for a moral lesson.^ This same roguish impulse to " try it on " with the ^ See my Studies of Childhood, pp. 274-5. 218 DEVELOPMENT OP LAUGHTER authorities leads to something like a play of wit in repartee. The merry interchange of intellectual attack and defence, which relieves so many serious relations of adult life, grows naturally enough in the case of children out of their relation of subjection to the grown-ups. The playful experiment in the direction of disobedience is frequently accompanied by pretty exercises in verbal fencing, the joke of which the perpetrator himself, at any rate, greatly enjoys. Such sportive dialectic may arise, too, by way of meeting serious correction. A girl of two and a quarter years was told by a foolish nurse that if she put out her tongue she would get spots on her face. After listening gravely she turned on her instructress and, putting her finger on a little pimple on the latter's chin, asked with " a most mirthful smile," " How Lizzie (the nurse) det dat 'pot dere den ? " Enough has been said, perhaps, even in this slight ex- amination of children's laughter, to show that within the first three years all the main directions of the mirth of adults are foreshadowed. Humour itself, which is supposed only to come with maturity of feeling and reflection, begins to announce itself in a modest way during this period. The boy C, in his twenty-first month, had managed to twist his india-rubber horse, so that the head was caught between the tail and the legs. He laughed out loudly at first, then waxed tender, saying in a pitiful tone, " Poor Gee-gee," and so swung from the one emotional attitude to the other.^ This appearance of the two feelings, distinct though con- tiguous, is, of course, a very different thing from the highly organised sentiment which we call humour. Miss Shinn 1 Moat of the observations here quoted, on the laughter of the boy C. , have appeared before in a chapter of my volume, StvMes of Childhood. The reader who is familiar with this chapter will, I feel sure, pardon the repetition. RANGE OF INFANT MIRTH 219 tells us that, in the case of Ruth, the period of infantile gaiety has been followed by one of serious practicality, into which humour does not enter. Perhaps it will come later. In any case we have to recognise in this laughter of the first years something far removed from the humour of the adult. It is a pure primitive gaiety, uncomplicated by reflection and sadness. It is enough for my purpose if it can be seen to disclose faint embryonic tracings of the main lines of differentiation in the development of human laughter. 220 CHAPTER Vm. THE LAUGHTER OP SAVAGES. In the last chapter we took a glance at the primitive forms of human laughter as illustrated in children. We may now supplement this by a brief inquiry into the merri- ment of the childhood of the race, so far as this is reflected in the laughter of those savage tribes which have come under the direct observation of the civilised man. We shall expect the two domains to disclose similar features, spontaneity, absence of reflection, whole-hearted simplicity. At the same time we shall expect the study of the laughter of savages to bring us more directly in touch with the social conditions which help to determine the directions of mirth. The study of the savage mind is the study of a collective mind, that is to say, of a typical form of ideas, sentiments, and psychical tendencies generally, running through a community. Its modes of merriment, like its more serious emotional manifestations, have been observed as common traits of members of a tribal society. A word may be said at the outset with respect to the sources of our information. It is a commonplace that civilised man finds all his powers taxed when he tries to get into touch with the mind of a savage. The difficulties of this access will naturally be greater when the trait to be observed is an emotion which, while it ia wont to display itself with an instinctive directness so long as the surround- OPENNESS IN DISPLAY OP FEELING 221 ings secure freedom, tends to hide itself as soon as any- thing strange appears which induces a feeling of gSne. The presence of strangers, so far removed from the plane of life of savages as the missionaries or officials of a civilised nation, would, one supposes, act as such a check to their risible impulses. It is possible, too, that the stranger who visits a savage tribe may supply, quite unknowingly perhaps, in his look, dress, and manner of behaviour, a number of pro- vocatives of laughter which are resisted from a feeling of what is due to a guest. That there is some hiding of the merry mood here is not a mere matter of inference, since travellers distinctly testify to the fact. The undisciplined savage wiU now and again show a degree of self-restraint comparable with that which an educated Frenchman will show when in a Paris street he is addressed by a hardy British youth in what the latter cheerfully supposes to be the language of the country. The following story may serve as an example. A public meeting was being held in a native village in Africa. An Englishman who was present got up on a recumbent trunk of a tree, which is used as a seat in native villages. The log rolled and the Englishman fell heavily. Yet the whole meeting looked as grave as if the accident had been a part of the programme. An uninstructed observer might have hastily inferred that the tribe was wanting in a " sense of humour ". The narrator of the incident knew better, and gives the incident as a proof of the great power of self- restraint displayed. The same writer observes that African savages, while allowing a European traveller to humour them and treat them as children, will "amuse themselves at his expense after he is gone, and, indeed, while he is present, if they know that he cannot understand their speech "} » Eev. Duff Maodonaia, Africana (1882), i., pp. 266-7. 222 THE LAUGHTER OF SAVAGES These considerations will prepare us to understand how some have regarded savages as dull creatures, who know not how to laugh. That this view is commonly held by those who have not visited them is suggested by a passage in one of Peacock's stories. In Crotchet Castle Mr. MacQueedy puts forward the thesis that laughter is "an involuntary action developed in man by the progress of civilisation," and adds that " the savage never laughs "} It is only fair to say that travellers themselves have not been so foolish as to uphold this view. At the same time, some of them have drawn hasty conclusions from the fact that they happened never to have heard members of a par- ticular tribe indulge in laughter. A curious illustration of this reasoning from inadequate negative evidence is the dis- pute that took place, not so long ago, as to whether a people of Ceylon, known as Weddas (or Veddas), came into the cate- gory of the laughing animal. It was confidently asserted by a certain Mr. Hartshome that they never laughed, even when they were experimented upon, and were confronted with the spectacle of others convulsed. Another visitor may help us to understand this by his remark that they vary " between a taciturn and almost morose mood when hungry, and a laughing reckless mood when not hungry". Hartshorns must evidently have observed them in a hungry mood. Could it have been that, unlike Mary Kingsley, as some of us remember her playfully observing, he had something about him which kindled appetite ? ^ 'It is true that this astounding proposition is answered somewhat ironically by Rev. Dr. Polliott, who says, " Give him modern Athens, the learned friend (Brougham) and the sham intellect Society — they will de- velop his muscles ". Yet it seems odd that this confident assertor was not taken to task for his amazing ignorance. ^ The dispute may be followed by the curious by turning up the follow- ing: Indian Antiguary, vol. viii., p. 316; cf. E. Desohamps, Pays des DISCREPANT REPORTS OF VISITORS 223 Other illustrations of a too confident basing of a conclu- sion on failure to observe may be found. Thus it is said by one traveller, Bates, that the Brazilian Indians are of a phlegmatic, apathetic temperament. A more recent visitor, Von den Steinen, gives us a different impression, remarking in one instance that " the silent Indian men and women con- tinually chattered, and Eva's laughter sounded forth right merrily" (lustig heraus).-' These apparent discrepancies in the notes of difterent observers point, I suspect, to something besides such acci- dents as the particular mood in which the tribe is found. The ability to provoke laughter is not possessed by all : witness the failure of many meritorious attempts by adults to excite children's merriment. Something of the easy good-nature which disarms timidity, of fraternal sympathy, and of the knack of making your audience believe you are like themselves, seems needed to draw forth all the mirth- fulness of these children of nature.^ We must always allow for this factor in the personal equation of the observer of savage ways. It is refreshing to find that missionaries have so often succeeded in getting at the lighter moods of the heathen. It speaks well for their genial humanity. The general impression one derives from these accounts is that savage tribes are certainly not given over to a sullen despair, but on the contrary have a large and abundant mirth. Like children, they appear to express Veddas, pp. 378-9 ; The Taprobanian, vol. i., p. 192 ff. The German visitor, Sarasin, upholds the v?riter in the latter periodical, and says that the Veddas "laohen gerne," though some of them are bad tempered, and laugh but little. NaturforscJmngen auf Ceylon, pp. 378 and 540. ^ Carl von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvolkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 61. ''This applies, of course, to the detection of the whole of the social qualities which make up good-nature. F. Nansen attacks the missionary Egede for his misrepresentation of the Greenlanders in calling them cold- blooded creatures. See Eskvmo Life, pp. 100, 101. 224 THE LAUGHTER OF SAVAGES their emotions with great freedom, and their laughter and other signs of good spirits are of the most energetic kind. Darwin tells us that his correspondents, missionaries and others, satisfied him on this point. Loud laughter accom- panied by jumping about and clapping of the hands, and frequently carried to the point of a flooding of the eyes — these are conspicuous characteristics to be met with among the Australians and other savage tribes.^ Other testimony supports Darwin. Sturt, for example, tells us that the natives of Central Australia are a merry people, and sit up laughing and talking all the night long.^ The more recent observations of Lumholtz support the view that the natives are "very humorous".^ The Maoris (of New Zealand) are said by one traveller to be " remarkable for their natural gaiety : they are merry fellows : always laughing and joking, especially during the adventures of a journey ".* Of the Tasmanians we read : " There is not a little love of fun in the despised aborigine ",^ Similarly, the South Sea Islanders are " more accustomed to jesting, mirth and humour than irritating and reproachful language ".* The natives of Tahiti, again, "jest upon each other with greater freedom than the Europeans "J So, the Tongans have " a strong sense of the ludicrous " which they show in " the ordinary inter- course of life ".* Mr. Ling Roth, writing of the natives of Borneo, speaks of " the chafi" and fun so dear to the heart of every Kanowit ".' 1 Expression, of the Emotions, p. 209. ^Central Australia (18S3), ii., p. 138. ' Among Cammbals (1889), p. 291. * Angaa, Australia and New Zealand (1847), ii., p. 11. "Bonwiok, The Daily Life of the Tasmanians (1870), p. 174. "Ellis, Polynesian Resea/rches (18.32), 1., p. 96. 'TurnbuU, A Voyage Bownd the World (1818), p. 372. sBrskine, The Western Pacific (1853), p. 159. 'Natives of Sarawak and Brit. N. Borneo, i., p. 84. EXUBERANCE OF MIRTH 225 In other regions, too, and among other races we light on the same exuberance of mirth. This is true of the natives of Africa, when they are unspoiled by Europeans. The Kafirs were said, by one who knew them earlier, to be generally speaking a good-humoured people with a keen relish for amusement, and ready to join in a jest.^ Visitors to the Gold Coast found that the natives dearly loved a joke, and had a most lively sense of the ludicrous.^ Miss Kingsley, as is well known, found in the West Africans a people still given to mirth and jokes. In a letter to me she writes : " I think the West African, unadulterated, the most humorous form of human being there 'is, and this makes him exceedingly good company for me ". Nor is this joyous exuberance confined to the natives of warm climates. We find examples of it in the chiUy North. One who visited the Indians of the Canadian Red River (the Chippewas) about forty years ago says, that they are " full of frolic and fond of relating anecdotes ; they laugh immoderately at any trifling joke or absurdity and seem thoroughly to enjoy existence ".^ These recurring statements of travellers about the mirth- fulness of savages are to some extent supported by other evidence. The writer on the Tasmanians, already quoted, gives us a number of their difierent local names for fun. When a people — and especially a savage people — has a name for a thing, it is a fair inference that it has some considerable acquaintance with the thing itself. To say that this or that tribe is given to laughter and joking does not, of course, imply that the merry temper is > Bev. Jos. Shooter, The Kafirs of Natal (1857), p. 232. » Cruioksliaiik, The Gold Coast of Africa (1853), ii., p. 253. 'Hind, OanaMan Bed River Exploring Expedition (1860), ii., p. 135. Other examples of the mirthfulness of savages are given by Herbert Spencer, Vesorvptwe Sociology, Div. I., Pt. 2 — A. 15 226 TUB LAUGHTER OF SAVAGES the constant or even the predominant one. We are told, indeed, in certain cases that the mood is a changeable one, and that these undisciplined men and women resemble children in their rapid transitions from grave to gay. Thus one traveller to the Gold Coast remarks that the inhabitants will change suddenly from reckless gaiety to despondency.^ On the other hand, as may be seen from our quotations, the predominance of the gay temper, as expressed in the habitual smile and readiness to laugh, seems to be a distinguishing trait of certain savage peoples. One traveller, writing of the Patagonians, teUs us that their faces were " ordinarily bright and good-natured," and that two of them in particular, whom he knew intimately, " always had a smile on their faces ".^ On the other hand, there is reason to think that some tribes stand out from the general run of good-natured, merry folk by a habitual preponderance of the grave and austere in their bearing. Rengger, for example, remarks of the Indians of Paraguay that they are serious and gloomy (diister), laugh only rarely, and never break into loud laughter.' There are probably serious savage tribes, as there are serious children in England and other civilised countries. It would be strange, too, if the treatment of American Indians and other aboriginal races by their civilised conquerors should not have developed now and again, even in naturally merry folk, something of a gloomy demeanour, at least in presence of the white man. Hence, these exceptional cases do not seem to impair our general conclusion, that laughter has a large dwelling-place among the uncivilised peoples of the earth. • Cruiokshank, Gold Coast of Africa, he. cit. 'i Musters, At Home with the Patagonians (1873), p. 167. 3 Saugethiere von Paraguay (1830), a. 10. DIFFERENCES AMONG TRIBES 227 The descriptions of the movements expressive of mirth, given by these visitors to savage tribes, are not as a rule full or exact. This might be taken to mean that the laugh- ter of a savage is much like our own. Yet this would be a rash inference ; for we must remember that it is not easy for one imtrained in the finer kinds of observation to note with precision movements so complex and so rapidly changeful as those which express gladness and mirth. The apparatus of the photographic camera and of the phono- graph has not as yet, I believe, been made use of for the purpose of registering these presumably primitive forms of laughter ere they vanish from the earth. Darwin, as we have seen, has satisfied himself as to the flooding of the eyes. The concomitant movements of hands and feet seem to be common. A more precise account of these movements is given by Ling Roth. The Tasmanians, he tells us, accompanied their loud bursts of laughter with movements of the hands to the head and quick tapping move- ments of the feet.^ The loud, deep-chested character of the men's laughter is sometimes specially noted. A recent visitor to Central Africa regrets that, under European influence, the deep-chested, hearty laughter of men is being replaced by what is known as the " mission giggle " in the younger folk.^ 1 have come across, too, one attempt to describe with some exactness the expression of a happy mood when it flows on more quietly. The good spirits of the Andamanese, it appears, show themselves in a sparkling of the eyes, and a wrinkling of the surrounding skin, also in a drawing back of the corners of the mouth which remains partially open.^ It may be concluded that the facial movements and ^ Ab