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THE PLAY OF MAN
BY
KARL GROOS
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF BASEL
AUTHOR OF THE PLAY OF ANIMALS
TRANSLATED WITH THE AUTHOR’S CO-OPERATION
By ELIZABETH L. BALDWIN
WITH A PREFACE BY
J. MARK BALDWIN, PH. D., HON. D. SC. (OXON.)
PROFESSOR IN PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1901
COPYRIGHT, 1901,
BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
EDITOR’S PREFACE
The present writer contributed a somewhat lengthy preface and also an
appendix to the translation of the author’s earlier volume, The Play
of Animals, mainly because—apart from the expressed wish of Professor
Groos—he wanted to say something about the book. It is a pleasure to
him now to have the justification for it which comes from the adoption
by Professor Groos in this volume of the suggestions made in the
translation of the earlier one. The main points have all been accepted
and used by the author (see pp. 265, 376, 395, of this volume, for
example), and further discussions of them have been brought out. This
is said in view of the opinion of many that “introductions” are always
out of place.
A notable thing about the present volume, considered in relation to the
Play of Animals, is the modification of the theory of play as respects
its criteria—a point fully explained by the author in his Introduction
(see especially p. 5).
The present writer’s editorial function has been confined to the
insertion of various notes, and the suggesting to the translator
of certain renderings; both mainly of a terminological sort (see
pp. 5, 122, 133, 264, for examples). In this connection it has been
found possible to anticipate and follow the recommendations made in
the present writer’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (now
in press), seeing that Professor Groos is in active co-operation
with the committee engaged upon the German-English equivalents of
that work, in so far adopted here. A particular case is the group
of renderings: “Preparation” (Vorübung), “Habituation” (Einübung),
“Exercise” (Ausübung), all terms of the “Practice” (Uebung) theory
of play. Another case is the set of terms applied to the various
reactions of “Shyness”—e. g., “Bashfulness” (Schüchternheit), “Coyness”
(Sprödigkeit), “Modesty” (Bescheidenheit), “Shame” (Scham), etc.
Biologists will note the adoption of “Rudiment” for Anlage in its
biological sense.
Intrinsically the work will be found a worthy companion to The Play of
Animals, a book which has already become famous.
J. MARK BALDWIN.
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, _February, 1901_.
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
In this work my aim is to present the anthropological aspects of the
same subject treated of in my psychological investigation of animal
play, published in 1896, which may be said to have been a pioneer
attempt in its department. In the discussion of human play, however, I
am supported by valuable philosophical works, among which I acknowledge
myself especially indebted to those of Schaller, Lazarus, and Colozza.
In regard to the standpoint from which I approach the general problem
of play, it is hardly necessary for me to speak at length here. It is
the same practice theory on which I intrenched myself in the earlier
work. The difficulties in its way, arising from our as yet imperfect
understanding of human impulse life, are fully allowed for in the
introduction to the first section, and I am convinced that the results
attained by its adoption will, on the whole, justify the method of
treatment which I have chosen.
Since it was my interest in æsthetics which first induced me to turn
my attention to the subject of play, it is natural that the æsthetic
phase of the question should be conspicuous in this volume. Still,
I wish it to be distinctly understood that my inquiry has not been
conducted solely in obedience to such leadings, nor should it be judged
exclusively by æsthetic criteria. I have intentionally left many
questions open for more mature consideration, at some future time, when
I can give to them more thought than was possible in the year’s study
which I have devoted to play phenomena.
KARL GROOS.
BASEL, _December, 1898_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
EDITOR’S PREFACE iii
AUTHOR’S PREFACE v
THE SYSTEM OF PLAY—INTRODUCTION 1
PART I
_PLAYFUL EXPERIMENTATION_
I. PLAYFUL ACTIVITY OF THE SENSORY APPARATUS 7
1. Sensations of contact 7
2. Sensations of temperature 14
3. Sensations of taste 14
4. Sensations of smell 16
5. Sensations of hearing 18
(_a_) Receptive sound-play 19
(_b_) Productive sound-play 31
6. Sensations of sight 48
(_a_) Sensations of brightness 50
(_b_) The perception of colour 54
(_c_) Perception of form 60
(_d_) Perception of movement 67
II. PLAYFUL USE OF THE MOTOR APPARATUS 74
A. Playful movement of the bodily organs 75
B. Playful movement of foreign bodies 95
1. Hustling things about 95
2. Destructive (analytic) movement-play 97
3. Constructive (synthetic) movement-play 99
4. Playful exercise of endurance 101
5. Throwing plays 103
(_a_) Simple throwing 105
(_b_) Throwing with the help of a stroke or
blow 107
(_c_) Rolling, spinning, shoving, and skipping
foreign bodies 110
(_d_) Throwing at a mark 114
6. Catching 118
III. PLAYFUL USE OF THE HIGHER MENTAL POWERS 121
A. Experimentation with the mental powers 122
1. Memory 122
(_a_) Recognition 122
(_b_) Reflective memory 128
2. Imagination 131
(_a_) Playful illusion 131
(_b_) Playful transformation of the memory-content 135
3. Attention 144
4. Reason 152
B. Experimentation with the feelings 158
1. Physical pain 159
2. Mental suffering 160
3. Surprise 163
4. Fear 166
C. Experimentation with the will 169
PART II
_THE PLAYFUL EXERCISE OF IMPULSES OF THE SECOND
OR SOCIONOMIC ORDER_
I. FIGHTING PLAY 173
1. Direct physical fighting play 174
2. Direct mental contests 186
3. Physical rivalry 197
4. Mental rivalry 201
5. The destructive impulse 217
6. Teasing 220
7. Enjoyment of the comic 232
8. Hunting play 237
9. Witnessing fights end fighting plays. The tragic 244
II. LOVE PLAY 252
1. Natural courtship play 254
2. Love play in art 268
3. Sex in the comic 278
III. IMITATIVE PLAY 280
1. Playful imitation of simple movements 291
(_a_) Optical percepts 291
(_b_) Playful imitation of acoustic percepts 294
2. Dramatic imitation in play 300
3. Plastic or constructive imitative play 313
4. Inner imitation 322
IV. SOCIAL PLAY 334
PART III
_THE THEORY Of PLAY_
1. The physiological standpoint 361
2. The biological standpoint 369
3. The psychological standpoint 379
4. The æsthetic standpoint 389
5. The sociological standpoint 395
6. The pedagogical standpoint 398
INDEX 407
THE PLAY OF MAN
THE SYSTEM OF PLAY
INTRODUCTION
While many have undertaken, by various methods, to classify human
play satisfactorily, in no single case has the result been entirely
fortunate. Grasberger remarked, a quarter of a century ago, that
a permanent classification of play had not up to that time been
achieved,[1] and in my opinion the present decade finds the situation
essentially unchanged.
Under these circumstances, I can hardly hope that my own classification
will satisfy all demands, but I reassure myself with the reflection
that absolute systematization is and must remain, in the vast majority
of cases, a mere logical ideal. Yet even an imperfect classification
may justify itself in two ways: it may be very comprehensive and
practical, or its aptly chosen grounds of distinction may serve to open
at once to the reader the inmost core of the subject under discussion.
My special effort has been directed to the second of these uses,
adopting as I do the conception of impulse life as a starting point;
how far I may have attained to the first as well is for others to judge.
I consider the governing force of instinct as having been fully
established in the study of animal play. In the book[2] which deals
with this subject I reached the conclusion that among higher animals
certain instincts are present which, especially in youth, but also
in maturity, produce activity that is without serious intent, and so
give rise to the various phenomena which we include in the word “play.”
I shall treat of the biological significance of this fact in the
second, the theoretical section of this book. Here I confine myself to
remarking briefly that in child’s play (which, according to one theory
of our subject, is of the utmost importance) opportunity is given to
the animal, through the exercise of inborn dispositions, to strengthen
and increase his inheritance in the acquisition of adaptations to his
complicated environment, an achievement which would be unattainable by
mere mechanical instinct alone. The fact that youth is _par excellence_
the period of play is in thorough harmony with this theory.
An analogous position is tenable in the treatment of human play,
although the word instinct, while generally applicable, is not
universally so—a difficulty which is much more conspicuous here than
in the classification of animal play. We lack a comprehensive and yet
specific term for those unacquired tendencies which are grounded in our
psycho-physical organism as such. The word instinct does not cover the
ground with its commonly accepted definition as inherited association
between stimuli and particular bodily reactions. Even the imitative
impulse, which is responsible for the important group of imitative
plays, is not easily included in this idea, because no specific
reaction characterizes it.[3] It is safer, therefore, to speak of
such play as the product of “natural or hereditary impulse,” although
even that is not entirely satisfactory, since many psychologists
connect the idea of impulse with a tendency to physical movement.
There are undoubtedly deep-rooted requirements of our nature which
this definition does not include, and which must be given due weight
in our study of play. Thus, as Jodl, in agreement with Beaunis and
others, maintains, every sensory tract has not only the ability to
receive and act upon certain stimuli, but betrays itself originally
through desire for their realization.[4] And if we keep in mind the
tension toward special sensation, always present even in a state of
comparative rest and distraction of the sense organ, as well as those
external movements which are no longer the particular object of desire,
we find ourselves still further from the narrow idea of instinct in
relation to psycho-physical processes. In this dilemma we can only
hold fast to the fact of the primal need for activity, which, while
it can not, any more than the other, be included in the narrower use
of the terms, has nevertheless an unmistakable relation to the life
of impulse and instinct. And while it is true that mere intellectual
fiat is not adequate to the establishment of such causal connections,
one might be tempted, under the stress of dire need, to coin some
such term as “central instinct,” did not any added burden threaten to
plunge the already over-weighted term into a very chaos of obscurity.
The case is much the same, too, with other mental attributes. Who
is to decide whether it is lawful to assume a universal “impulse to
activity” (Ribot approaches such an assumption)[5] which may, according
to circumstances, become now effort after emotional excitement, now
desire for logical expression and the like? Or who shall pass on the
legitimacy of a revival of the hereditary central-impulse theory which
directs attention not to external physical movement, but exclusively
to such internal dispositions as are dependent on the psycho-physical
organization? Should this latter view prevail, biological psychology
will have before it the task of linking an ancient idea—it was
developed in Ulrici’s Leib und Seele in 1866—to the body of modern
science.
As it is likely to be some time yet before scientific terminology shall
have attained such clearness and perfection in a sphere by no means
easily accessible, that we may count on banishing all obscurity, I
must content myself with the term “natural or inherited impulse”[6]
as the basis of my classification. In far the greater number of cases
it is equivalent to simple instinct. But in the imitative impulse we
have something which is _analogous_ only to instinct, and in reference
to the higher mental dispositions to activity, the term “impulse” must
be expanded beyond its usual significance. I am well aware that my
classification lacks precision, but I venture to think that it affords
deeper insight into the problem than may be had by other means and that
some aspects of the subject, not evident from other standpoints, may be
brought out by this method of treatment.
The first important distinction made is that between the impulses
by which the individual wins supremacy over his own psycho-physical
organism without regard to other individuals prominent in his
environment, and such other impulses as are directly concerned with
his relations to others. To the first group belong all the manifold
impulses which issue in human activity, those controlling his sensory
and motor apparatus[7] as well as the higher mental dispositions which
impel him to corresponding acts. To the second group we assign the
fighting and sexual impulses, imitation, and the social dispositions
closely connected with these. Each of these manifests its own peculiar
play activity. Unfortunately, an adequate terminology here, too, is
wanting, and as the opposites “egotism and altruism,” “individualism
and socialism,” are not admissible in our classification, it is
difficult to designate the two groups with propriety. While awaiting
better names for them, I am forced to the very unsatisfactory expedient
of calling them impulses of the first order and impulses of the
second order.[8] To denote the playful exercise of the first order of
impulses, I shall use the expression “playful experimentation,” which
is already adopted in child-psychology, and also, by myself at least,
in animal psychology.
As all further subdivisions will be effected without difficulty in
the course of our investigation, I add here only a brief note on the
general characteristics of the playful exercise of these impulses. The
biological criterion of play is that it shall deal not with the serious
exercise of the special instinct, but with practice preparatory to it.
Such practice always responds to definite needs, and is accompanied
by pleasurable feelings. The psychological criterion corresponds with
it; thus, when an act is performed solely because of the pleasure it
affords, there is play. Yet, the consciousness of engaging in sham
occupation is not a universal criterion of play.
PART I
_PLAYFUL EXPERIMENTATION_
I. PLAYFUL ACTIVITY OF THE SENSORY APPARATUS
1. _Sensations of Contact_
The newborn infant is susceptible to touch sensations. Movements
and loud cries can be induced directly after it has for the first
time become quiet, by pinching the skin or slapping the thigh.[9]
Experiments with the hands and mouth are most satisfactory, as these
organs are extremely sensitive from the first. During its first week
the child makes many purely automatic motions with its hands, and
frequently touches its face. When contact is had in this way with the
lips, they react with gentle sucking movements, and later follows
the playful sucking of the fingers so common among children. It is,
of course, difficult to say when such movements are conscious or
when they are the result of taste stimuli.[10] According to Perez, a
two-months-old babe enjoys being stroked softly, and from that moment
it is possible that it may seek, by its own movements, to provide touch
stimuli for itself. Here play begins. “Touch now controls. At three
months the child begins to reach out for the purpose of grasping with
his hand; he handles like an amateur connoisseur, and the tendency
to seek and to test muscular sensations develops in him from day to
day.”[11]
_a._ We will first notice grasping with the hand as it is connected
with taste stimuli. The merely instinctive movements of the first
few days are multiplied and fixed, by means of inherited adaptation,
progressively from the beginning of the second quarter year. The child
begins by handling every object which comes within his reach, even his
own body, and especially his feet, and one hand with the other.[12] In
all this not only the motor element, of which we will speak later, but
also the sensor stimulus becomes an object of interest, as Preyer’s
observation shows. “In the eighteenth week, whenever the effort to
grasp was unsuccessful its fingers were attentively regarded. Evidently
the child expected the sensation of contact, and when it was not
forthcoming wondered at the absence of the feeling.”[13] This practice
in grasping promotes the opposition of the thumb, which first appears
toward the end of the first quarter, and from that time the refinement
of the sense of contact progresses rapidly. At eight months Strümpell’s
little daughter took great pleasure in picking up very small objects,
like bread crumbs or pearls.[14] This illustrates the familiar fact
that play leads up from what is easy to more difficult tasks, since
only deliberate conquest can produce the feeling of pleasure in
success. At about this time, too, the child’s explorations of its own
body are extended, and their conclusions confirmed by the recognition
of constant local signs. “As soon as she discovered her ear,” says
Strümpell of his now ten-months-old daughter, “she seized upon it as if
she wished to tear it off.” In her third year Marie G—— found on the
back of her ear two little projections of cartilage, which she examined
with the greatest interest, calling them balls, and wanting everybody
to feel them. The nose, too, is repeatedly investigated. Although it
is seldom large enough to be grasped, still, as Stanley Hall says, it
is handled with unmistakable signs of curiosity, and often pulled or
rubbed “in an investigating way.”[15]
The value of the sense of touch for the earliest mental development is
testified to by the fact that the child, like doubting Thomas, trusts
more to it than to his sight. Sikorski says: “At tea I turn to my
eleven-months baby, point to the cracker jar, which she knows, and ask
her to give me one. I open the empty jar and the child looks in, but,
not satisfied with that, sticks her hand in and explores. The evidence
of her eyes does not convince her of the absence of what she wants.”[16]
In Wolfdietrich one verse runs:
“Die Augen in ihren (der Wölfe) Häuptern, die brannten wie ein
Licht,
Der Knabe war noch thöricht und zagt vor Feinden nicht.
Es ging zu einem jeden und griff ihm mit der Hand,
Wo er die lichten Augen in ihren Köpfen fand.”[17]
Older children lose the habit of playful investigation quite as little
as any of the other manifestations of experimentation, even when
the sensations encountered are not particularly agreeable. Richard
Wagner liked to handle satin, and Sacher Masoch delighted in soft fur.
In later life as well, Perez continues, all the senses strive for
satisfaction; when the adult is not forced by necessity to put all his
faculties at the service of “attention utile” he becomes a child again.
He easily falls back into the habit of gazing instead of looking,
of listening instead of hearing, of handling instead of touching,
of moving about merely for the sake of sensations agreeable or even
indifferent which are produced by these automatic acts.[18] We all know
how hard it is for school children to keep their hands still during
recitation. “I knew a little girl,” says Compayré, “who would undertake
to recite only on condition that she be allowed to use her fingers
at the same time, and she would sew and thread her needle while she
was spelling.”[19] The knitting of women while they listen is perhaps
of the same nature. Wölfflin remarks: “We all know that many people,
especially students, in order to think clearly need a sharp-pointed
pencil, which they pass back and forth through the fingers, sharpening
their wits by the sensation of contact.”[20] Then, too, there are the
innumerable toying movements of adults, such as rolling bread crumbs
and the like, all of which serves to introduce a short ethnological
digression. “In the year 1881,” relates the brilliant W. Joest, “when
I was travelling through Siberia, ... I noticed that many of the men,
requiring some occupation for their nervous hands during leisure hours,
played absently with walnuts, which had become highly polished from
constant use.” He saw stones, brass and iron balls, and the Turkish
_tespi_, whose original use is devotional, employed for the same
purpose; indeed, Levantines, who are not Mohammedans, often regard
these latter as special instruments of gaming and vice.[21]
Carrying a walking-stick is another playful satisfaction in which the
hand’s sensation of contact has a part, while the lead pencil, small
as it is, will sometimes satisfy the demand for “something in the
hand.” This is a genuine craving, which betrays itself in all sorts
of awkward movements if we try to deny its indulgence. Carrying a
cane is a remarkably widespread custom, and some think that the very
small stone hatchets so common in ethnological museums as relics of
a prehistoric time were used as cane handles in the stone age. Joest
says, in the article cited above, that walking-sticks are used in
millions of forms, on every continent and island of our earth. The
naked Kaffir uses a slender, fragile cane of unusual length, and,
according to P. Reichard,[22] his ideal of peace and prosperity is
embodied in “going to walk with a cane,” since this implies freedom
from the necessity of bearing arms. I close this digression with an
instance which borders on the pathological. Sheridan was waiting for
the celebrated Samuel Johnson, well known to be eccentric, to dine with
him, and saw the doctor approaching from a distance, “walking along
with a peculiar solemnity of deportment and an awkward sort of measured
step. At that time the broad flagging at each side of the streets was
not universally adopted, and stone posts were in use to prevent the
annoying of carriages. Upon every post, as he passed along, I could
observe he deliberately laid his hand, but, missing one of them, when
he had got at some distance he seemed suddenly to recollect himself,
and, immediately returning back, carefully performed the accustomed
ceremony and resumed his former course, not omitting one till he gained
the crossing. This, Mr. Sheridan assured me, however odd it might
appear, was his constant practice.”[23]
_b._ The mouth of an infant is, of course, very sensitive to touch
stimuli, and the lips and tongue are especially so. When Preyer put
the end of an ivory pencil into the mouth of a child whose head only
was born as yet, it began to suck, opened its eyes and seemed, to
judge from its countenance, “to be very agreeably affected.”[24] It
happens very soon that automatic arm movements accidentally bring the
fingers near the mouth, and such automatic sucking results. From it
the familiar habit of thumb sucking is formed, as well as the practice
of carrying every possible object to the mouth. “Your finger, a scrap
of cloth, a bottle, fruit, flowers, insects, vases, objects large and
small, attractive or repulsive, all seek the same goal.”[25] I think
Compayré is right when he says that it is not merely a case of duped
appetite which Preyer points out. “The child enjoys the mere contact;
it gives him pleasure to test with his lips everything that offers an
occasion for the use of his nerves and muscles.”[26] We find that in
later life many persons like to play about the lips with fingers,
penholder, etc. Many, too, who have outgrown the fascinations of thumb
sucking, still lay a finger lightly on the lips when going to sleep or
when half awake.[27] The pleasure derived from smoking is due perhaps
more than we realize to this instinct, and the common habit of holding
in the mouth a broken twig, a leaf, a stalk of grass or hay, so far as
it is not practice in chewing, belongs here. In K. E. Edler’s romance,
Die neue Herrin (Berlin, 1897, p. 137), portraits of the extinct
species of young lady are described. “In this one the lips pressed a
cigarette, while in other pictures a rose stalk, the head of a riding
crop, or some other object, not excluding her own dainty finger, was
held against them, showing that in those days the mouth must have
something to do as well as the hands, feet, eyes, and all the rest of
the body.”
Finally, it must be remembered that much of the enjoyment of delicate
food is due to the sense of contact. When certain viands are consumed
without hunger, because “they slip down so easily,” we have play
with touch sensations. This has something to do with the popularity
of oysters and of effervescing drinks. “It tastes like your foot’s
asleep,” said a small maiden on being allowed to taste something of the
kind—a proof of the close connection with touch stimuli.
A few words may suffice in regard to playful use of touch sensations
in other parts of the body. We have seen that an infant enjoys being
softly stroked, and we may assume that a soft bed is appreciated
early in life. The question is, whether the child or the adult
voluntarily produces such sensations for the sake of the pleasure they
afford. Perhaps this is why we like to roll about on a soft bed, and
more unmistakably playful is the fondness of children for throwing
themselves repeatedly into a well-filled feather bed or on piles of
hay, to feel themselves sink into the elastic mass. Violent contact
is indulged in in many dances. In the Siederstanz, which I myself
learned in the Gymnasium, the thighs were beaten with the hands.
Somewhat similar, but decidedly more violent, is the Haxenschlagen
of the Bavarian dances, and the ancients practised the ῥαθαπυγίζειν,
an alternate striking of the foot soles on the back. A verse is
preserved, written in praise of a Spartan maiden who succeeded in
keeping this up longer than any one else—one thousand times.[28]
Water affords delightful sensations of touch; in the bath, of course,
enjoyment of the movements and temperature is more conspicuous, but the
soothing gentleness of the moist element is not to be despised. For
confirmation I will cite Mörike’s beautiful verses:
“O Fluss, mein Fluss im Morgenstrahl!
Empfange nun, empfange
Den sehnsuchtvollen Leib einmal
Und küsse Brust und Wange!
Er fühlt mir schon her auf die
Brust,
Er kühlt mit Liebesschauerlust
Und jaucbzendem Gesange.
“Es schlüpft der goldne Sonnenschein
In Tropfen an mir wider.
Die Woge wieget aus und ein
Die hingegebnen Glieder;
Die Arme hab’ ich ausgespannt,
Sie kommt auf mich herzugerannt,
Sie fasst und lässt mich wieder.”
“O stream, my stream in the
morning beam!
Receive me now, receive
Me thrilling, longing as I am,
And kiss my breast and cheek;
I feel already in my breast
The cooling, soothing influence
Of fresh, delicious showers
And joyous, rippling song.
“The golden sunshine rains on me
In glittering drops. Soft waves
Caress my yielding limbs,
My outstretched arms receive
them
As they hasten up to clasp
And then release me.”
Here, as in all specialized pleasures, intensive emotion betrays
itself. In sea bathing the principal stimulus is found in the sharp
blow from the waves as they break repeatedly over one. Last of all, we
notice the sensation of movement in the air. We take off our hats to
let the wind play with our hair, and fanning is not always indulged in
merely for the sake of cooling off, but also for the sake of the touch
stimuli excited by the soft contact with waves of air.
2. _Sensations of Temperature_
There is a scarcity of material under this head, since the occasions
to produce such sensations, except for the serious purposes of cooling
or warming ourselves, are comparatively rare. Among the few that may
safely be called playful, the most prominent is the seeking for strong
stimuli for their very intensities’ sake, and because like all powerful
excitation, they give us the feeling of “heightened reality” (Lessing).
When we court the stinging cold of a winter day, or sit in spring
sunshine to get “baked through for once,”[29] we are as much playing,
I think, as when watching rippling water, or gazing at heaven’s blue
dome.[30] Cool air has the same refreshing effect as a cold bath, while
even in a warm bath the pleasantness of the temperature sensation is a
satisfaction quite apart from its cleansing and sanitary effects, and
most bathers will stretch themselves out to enjoy it for a little while
after soap and sponge have done their duty. Among the refinements of
the sense of taste, too, the stimulus of heat and cold is conspicuous,
as ices and peppermint, hot grog, spices, and spirits witness.
3. _Sensations of Taste_
Brevity of treatment is accorded to this class of sensations as well,
though in this case from no lack of data.
Kussmaul’s investigations[31] show that, as a rule, the child prefers
sweets from its birth, and will reject anything bitter, sour, or salt,
although, until the later developed sense of smell is perfected, it
is incapable of more delicate taste distinctions.[32] On the whole,
we find that with children such distinctions are less varied than
among adults, the sweet of candy and the acid of fruits furnishing the
staple material for their playful use of the sense. It is true that the
pleasure which they derive from these is extreme. I well remember what
unheard-of quantities of these viands were consumed at our birthday
_fêtes_ at school in Heidelberg, by children from six to nine years
of age, not at all because they were hungry, but from mere pleasure
in the taste. For we find even in children that enjoyment of eating
is no more confined to the satisfaction of hunger than is æsthetic
pleasure limited to the contemplation of the beautiful. When Marie G——
was barely three years old she displayed an unmistakable preference
for piquant flavours; even those which were evidently disagreeable in
themselves she enjoyed, trying them again and again for the sake of the
stimulus they afforded—a taste which is much more common among adults
than with children.
A review of the pleasures and practices of the table at various periods
and among various peoples is an alluring but here impracticable
undertaking. Let it suffice to cite one example from the ancients,
that most celebrated of all descriptions of revelry at the board,
the cœna Trimalchionis of Petronius, which W. A. Becker has made
use of in his Gallus. The following will serve as a characteristic
ethnological instance of the enjoyment of flavours, which are, to
put it mildly, decidedly equivocal. In Java the durian tree bears
green prickly fruit, about the size of cocoanuts and with a flavour
which, according to Wallace, furnishes a new sensation well worth
journeying to the Orient for. The smell of it is something frightful—a
cross between musk and garlic, with suggestions of carrion and
“overripe” cheese. The taste is aromatic, satisfying, and nutty,
like a combination of cream cheese, onion sauce, and burnt sherry.
This fruit is rigidly excluded from the hotels, as its odour would
instantaneously pervade every room, but it is sought elsewhere by the
guests and eaten with avidity. Semon says of it: “This fruit, like
our strong, rich cheeses, is detested by those who are not fond of
it.”[33] What various associations are connected with the pleasures
of the palate is shown by the _epitheta ornantia_ of a wine list,
such as strong, fiery, soft, fresh, lovely, sharp, elegant, hard,
spicy, fruity, and smooth. Huysmans, in his novel A Rebours, gives a
pathological example of amusement derived from taste association in the
following passage. After describing the life of the nervously diseased
Des Esseintes, he goes on: “In his dining room was a closet containing
miniature casks on dainty sandalwood stands, each one fitted with a
silver cock. Des Esseintes called this collection his mouth organ. A
rod connected all the cocks, and they could be turned with a single
movement answering to the pressure of a knob concealed in the woodwork,
filling all the little glasses at once. The organ was standing open,
the register with the inscriptions of flûte, cor, voix céleste, etc.,
displayed, and all was ready for use. Des Esseintes sipped here and
there a few drops, playing an inner symphony and deriving from the
sensations of his palate pleasure like that produced on the ear by
music.”
4. _Sensations of Smell_
The ability to distinguish the character of odours seems to be a
later development than taste differentiation. At least this is the
case with regard to the enjoyment of agreeable smells. Among children
of various ages experimented on by Perez, one of ten months showed
some appreciation of the perfume of a rose,[34] but most children are
probably first rendered susceptible to pleasure from scents by their
association with flavours. Girls, however, seem to enjoy sweet smells
as such more than boys do, though M. Guyan relates that he recalls
vividly the _émotion penetrante_ which he experienced on inhaling for
the first time the perfume of a lily.[35]
With reference to adults, the same writer may be cited: “In spite of
its relative incompleteness, the sense of smell has much to do with our
enjoyment of landscape, whether actually viewed or vividly portrayed.
No portrayal of Italy is complete without the softened atmosphere
which recalls the perfume of its oranges, nor of Brittany or Gascony
without the crisp sea air which Victor Hugo has so justly celebrated,
nor of pine forests without suggestions of its aroma.” “The passion
for smoking,” says Pilo (I give this to show how complicated our
apparently simple enjoyments may be), “is so general because almost all
the senses are flattered impartially by it; visceral, muscular, and
taste sensations are involved in the use of the lungs which it calls
for, the lips, tongue, teeth, and salivary glands through feelings
of temperature; the senses of taste and smell through the piquant,
aromatic flavour; hearing, in a very direct and intimate way, through
the crackling of the leaves and the rhythmic inhaling and exhaling of
the breath; and, finally, the sense of sight in gazing at the glowing
cigar and soft, gray ashes and curling smoke which winds and glides
upward in a fantastic spiral; while the brain, under the soothing
influence of the narcotic, enjoys a repose enlivened by dreams and
visions.”[36] Complete as this description appears, it yet misses one
point—namely, the sucking movements which, from the recollections of
the earliest months of life, we associate with pleasurable feeling.
We may find the Des Esseintes of Huysmans’s romance useful once more.
“Wishing now to enjoy a beautiful and varied landscape, he began to
play full, sonorous chords, which at once called up before the vision
a perspective of boundless prairie lands. By means of his vaporizer,
the room was filled with an essence skilfully compounded by an artist
hand and well deserving of its name—Extract of the Flowery Plain....
Having completed his background, which now stretched itself before
his closed eyes in bold lines, he breathed over it all a light spray
of essences, ... such as powdered and painted ladies use—stephanotis,
ayapapa, opoponax, chypre, champaka, sarkanthus—and added a suspicion
of lilac, to lend to this artificial life a touch of natural bloom and
warmth of genuine sunshine. Soon, however, he threw open a ventilator,
and allowed these waves of heavy odour to pass out, retaining only
the fragrance of the fields, whose accent and rhythmical recurrence
emphasized the harmony like a _ritornelle_ in poetry. The ladies
vanished instantly, the landscape alone remained; after an interval,
low roofs appeared along the horizon with tall chimneys silhouetted
against the sky, an odour of chemicals and of factory smoke was borne
on the breeze his fans now produced, yet Nature’s sweet perfumes
penetrated even this heavily weighted atmosphere.”
5. _Sensations of Hearing_[37]
In the consideration of this important sphere of play activity we
encounter one of the special problems of our subject. Since Darwin’s
time it has been customary to explain the art of tone and the musical
element in poetry as an effect of sexual selection. But while I am
convinced that these arts do on one side bear the very closest relation
to sexual life, yet I believe that Spencer is right in warning us that
the exclusive reference of such phenomena to sexual selection is hardly
warranted. The courtship arts of birds, it is true, are sufficiently
striking, yet we must remember, aside from the fact that prominent
investigators have raised serious objections to the application of the
theory even to them, that birds have but a distant kinship to man. As
regards our closer relatives in the animal world, Darwin himself says,
“With mammals the male appears to win the female much more through the
law of battle than through the display of his charms.”[38] And among
mammals, again, monkeys are not distinguished by any special arts of
courtship. The acoustic phenomena cited by Darwin are summed up in the
cry of the howling ape and the musical notes of the species of Gibbon
from Borneo and the Sumatran ape described by Selenka.[39] Of other
such arts, only one is noteworthy in monkeys as being also practised by
man, and even that not directly in connection with love-making—namely,
the disposition to display the back. It has not yet been proved that
the monkey’s wonderful dexterity serves him especially in courtship.
The supposition has much in its favour, it is true, but finds little
support from what we know of his sexual life. Brehm covers the ground
pretty well when he says, “Knightly courtesy serves him little
with the weaker sex; he must take by force the rewards of love.”
Ethnology shows us, too, that an exclusive or even a preferential
reference of music and poetry to sexuality can not be assumed among
primitive races. Having thus stated the doubts in advance, it may be
interesting to glance once more over the psychology of play, with a
view to discovering which arts and æsthetic pleasures may have arisen
independently of sex. In such a review of hearing plays we are likely
to find much which tends to expand and also to limit the Darwinian
theory—nothing which will refute it.
Hearing plays may serve merely as a means for the satisfaction of
acoustic impulses, or to give necessary exercise to motor apparatus,
and, while this whole inquiry can not be said to penetrate further than
to the antechamber of æsthetic perception and artistic production, an
obvious distinction at once becomes apparent—namely, that between the
receptive or hearing function and the production of sounds and tones.
From the suckling’s delight in his own guttural gurglings to the most
refined enjoyment of a concert-goer, from the uncouth efforts of the
small child to produce all sorts of sounds, to the creative impulse
which controls the musical genius, there is, in the light of history, a
progressive and consistent development.
(_a_) Receptive Sound-Play
Pleasure in listening to tones and noises shows itself remarkably
early, although, as is well known, the child is born deaf. Infants
but two or three days old will stop crying in response to a loud
whistle, and Perez has noted signs of enjoyment of vocal and
instrumental music during the first month. Preyer reports of the
seventh and eighth weeks: “There seems to be a marked sensitiveness
to tone, and perhaps to melody as well, for an expression of the
most lively satisfaction is discernible on the child’s face when its
mother soothes it with lullabys softly sung. Even when it is crying
from hunger a gentle sing-song will cause a cessation such as spoken
words can not effect. In the eighth week the baby heard music for the
first time—that is, piano playing. Unusual intentness of expression
appeared in his eyes, while vigorous movements of his arms and legs
and laughter at every loud note testified to his satisfaction in this
new sensation. The higher and softer notes, however, made no such
impression.”[40] The little boy in Sully’s Extracts from a Father’s
Diary manifested displeasure at first on hearing piano playing, but
soon became reconciled to it, and his mother noticed that while his
father was playing the child became heavier in her lap, “as if all
his muscles were relaxed in a delicious self-abandonment.”[41] Perez
relates of a child six months old, on a visit to two aunts: “As the
first of the young women began to sing he listened with evident
delight, and when the other one joined in with a rich and melodious
voice the child turned toward her, his face expressing the utmost
pleasure, mingled with wonder and astonishment.”[42] This seems to
indicate that agreeable tones and variety of movement are at first
more appreciated than is the actual beauty of the melody. According to
Gurney, appreciation of melody as such first appears in the fourth or
fifth year.[43] It is otherwise with rhythm. Just as ethnology shows
us that from the first inception of music rhythm was more prominent
than melody, so it seems that the child too, as a rule, is sensitive
to rhythmical cadence even when the beauty of melody is lost upon him.
The regular ticking of a watch excites lively interest in the merest
infant. Sigismund says: “I have often seen three- and four-year-old
children skip about when they heard enlivening band music, as if they
wished to catch the time of the rhythmic movement, an impulse which
indeed affects adults as well,[44] as all well know.” Here we have
inner imitation, the central fact of æsthetic enjoyment, displayed by
the veriest babes. Children show their enjoyment of rhythm, too, in
their preference for strongly accented poetry.[45] Even half-grown boys
and girls take but little note of sense, compared with the interest
which they bestow on rhythm and rhyme. That a normally endowed girl
could interpret the words of a poem, Singing on its Way to the Sea, as
Singing on its Waiter, etc., without having her curiosity aroused, can
only be explained by this fact.[46] Is it not a frequent experience of
full-grown men to be suddenly struck with the profound truth hidden
in some epigrammatic form of expression whose euphony has a hundred
times delighted them? They have actually failed up to that time to
grasp the clear, logical meaning of the verse or passage. Indifference
to the words of their songs is most marked among primitive peoples,
while with children an instinctive demand for some employment of their
organs of hearing has much to do with their pleasure in harmony and
rhythm. The following facts justify this statement: The disposition
toward acoustic expression is particularly susceptible to satisfaction
from sensuously agreeable stimuli, such as are responsive to harmony,
melody and rhythm, partly on known and partly on unknown grounds.
Here Fechner’s principle of co-operation is applicable—namely, that
two pleasure-exciting causes working together produce a result which
is greater than their sum—and is so strong, in fact, as to extend the
sphere of sound-play far beyond that of the sensuously agreeable.
Absolute silence makes us uncomfortable, and, when it is lasting,
conveys to the mind a special quality of emotion, as in optics there is
a positive feeling of blackness. So it happens that we take pleasure in
noise as such even when it is not agreeable. This applies especially to
children. “Les bruits choquants, aigus, glappissants, grondant,” says
Perez, “ne leur sont pas désagréable de la même manière qu-aux grandes
personnes.” Marie G—— manifested in her third year the liveliest joy in
the grinding and squeaking of an iron ring in her swing. To small boys
it is a treat to hear a teamster crack his whip. My brother-in-law when
a boy cherished for years the ambition to make all the electric clocks
in our house chime in concert with a great musical clock. A sense of
discomfort is produced sooner, however, by a variety of discordant
sounds to which we are passively listening, than when the din is
self-produced—a distinction which extends into the domain of art, as
testifies many a piano virtuoso.
Among adults it is probably true that sound-play is either entirely
or in part connected with the pleasure we derive from ringing and
resonance, subject to much the same limitations as we have applied to
children. Underlying it all we find, though it is not always easily
recognisable, enjoyment of the stimulus as such. I would instance the
cheery crackling of flames in a fireplace, the _frou-frou_ of silken
garments, the singing of caged birds, the sound of wind, howling of
storms, rolling of thunder, rustling of leaves, splashing of brooks,
seething of waves, etc. Most of these, it is true, contain elements
of intellectual pleasure as well, and so through association link
themselves to genuine æsthetic enjoyments. Yet the satisfaction in mere
sound as such is also unmistakably present, being most evident perhaps
where strong stimuli are involved, since these have a directly exciting
effect, while weaker ones, on the contrary, are soothing. Edler’s
romance, Die neue Herrin, gives a good instance of this emotional
sensibility abnormally exaggerated. “Thomasine was exactly like a child
in her dread of silence, and spared no effort to enjoy pleasant sounds,
whether produced by herself or from other sources.... When her birds
were silent she resorted to the music room, with its musical box and
two grand pianos.” This seems to confirm the idea that mere desire
for sound as such is an important element in the attention given to
music. The art of primitive races illustrates this as well as our own
marches, dances, etc. Gurney distinguishes two methods of listening
to music: the one accompanied by intelligent appreciation, the other
“the indefinite way of hearing music,” which is only cognizant of
the agreeable jingle or harmony. I think there is a form of the
satisfaction still more crude; when we note the indifference of many
habitual concert-goers to fine chamber music we must infer that the
power of stimulus is the principal source of their apparently absorbed
enjoyment. Gurney, too, seems to recognise this elementary factor when
he says: “While it is natural to consider as unmusical those persons in
whom a musical ear is lacking or is only imperfectly developed, and who
therefore can not at all reproduce or perhaps recognise melodies, such
persons often derive extreme pleasure of a vague kind from fine sound,
more especially when it rushes through the ear in large masses.”[47]
Not to penetrate too far into the realm of æsthetics, we will attempt
to answer but two of its more obvious questions, which, however,
are by no means simple ones. Whence is derived the strong emotional
effect (1) of rhythm and (2) of melody? (Some thoughts on the acoustic
effects of poetry will be presented in the next section.) Rhythm may
be regarded as the most salient quality of music, and seems to have
antedated melody considerably among primitive peoples. While nothing
is easier than to recognise the pleasure it affords, the derivation
of its exciting effect on the emotions is most difficult to trace.
Widely diverse theories have been advanced in the various attempts
to solve this riddle. Rhythm is a conspicuous instance of the unity
in variety which characterizes beauty. It satisfies this intellect,
and is calculated to rivet the attention by exciting expectation. It
answers to our own organization; the step, the heart-beat, breathing,
the natural physical processes, are all rhythmic, as well as the
alternation of waste and repair in the nervous system. But while these
facts undoubtedly contribute to our enjoyment of rhythm, they can
hardly account adequately for its intense emotional effects.
At this point the Darwinist comes to the rescue, and says that its
employment in courtship sufficiently explains these effects, taking
into account their hereditary association. He dwells on the sexual
excitation which quivers in the purest enjoyment of music, and is
“likely to excite in us in a vague and indefinite manner the strong
emotions of a long-past age.”[48] Far be it from me to discard this
hypothesis hastily, particularly as I have no better one to offer, but
since it appears to afford but a meagre chance of solving the problem,
we may venture to seek enlightenment in another supposition. It is
to be found in Souriau’s system of æsthetics, which in my opinion
is not yet fully appreciated. As Nietzsche has said, “As in art, so
with any æsthetic fact or appearance, a physiological condition of
transport is essential,”[49] so, too, Souriau insists that art employs
every possible means to induce in us a semi-trance or hypnotic state,
and through it renders us approachable to a degree which would be
impossible when we are normally alert.[50]
Now, rhythm is to the last degree such a transporting agency, owing to
its strong hold on the attention. Weinhold and Heidenhain have induced
hypnosis by means of the ticking of a watch, and in so doing have only
employed an agency which has similar uses the world over. Just as most
of the inhabitants of the earth have learned the use of narcotics,
so too are they eager to adapt such an intoxicant as rhythm proves to
be.[51]
We may read numberless statements of hypnotic conditions being turned
to account for religious and magical ends. Next to measured movements
of one’s own body, we find that listening to rhythmic sounds and
the monotonous repetition of incantations is the surest key to this
state of dreamy consciousness.[52] In Salvation Army methods the
catchy, swinging songs are an indispensable means of eliciting the
ecstatic condition, though, through the power of auto-suggestion,
the expectation of the state is also strongly influential. It is the
singing, however, as Souriau says, which throws the hearer into a state
of mild hypnosis and renders him accessible to any suggestion.[53] When
the end in view is a religious one, the ecstatic subject sees all sorts
of visions, and can swear to the appearance of saints or gods. When the
measure is martial in its suggestions, the subject becomes belligerent;
when it excites sexual feeling, he responds in that direction; in
short, his soul, being entirely under the influence of the hypnotist,
will reflect, and involuntarily respond to, every suggestion. We
see, then, that these intense emotional effects are only in part
attributable to sound as such; rhythm is not entirely responsible for
them, but figures rather as a contingent cause through which suitable
suggestions act as the immediate cause of emotional disturbances.
“Hypnotism,” says Souriau, “is but a means, never an end. Art employs
this means the better to control our minds and keep our imagination in
the limits prescribed by her suggestions. What we owe to her is not
sleep, but the dream.”[54]
This view seems to correspond with the facts. When we drum a familiar
air with the fingers the regular time-beat is not at all stirring,
indeed it is sometimes quite the contrary. When, however, agreeable
or interesting associations are connected with it the rhythm at
once induces in us a condition of the utmost susceptibility to
suggestion. Any change in intensity or time then calls forth our
capacity for “embodiment” (_Einfühlung_) or inner imitation in such
force and completeness as would be altogether unattainable without
this deep-seated propensity of ours for measured rhythm. In many
cities it is customary, when fire breaks out, to ring a church bell
in quicker time than its usual stroke, and by reason of the indirect
factor—namely, their significance as a warning—the uniform sounds
produce the most profound effect on æsthetically sensitive persons.
Even those who would be unaffected by the announcement that another
part of the city was in flames are deeply moved on hearing the tolling
bell. The harmless tones become appalling. They seem to proclaim the
destruction of the world, and the imagination dwells on the idea that
nothing will be left in existence but these terrific, all-pervading
waves of sound. The intense feeling aroused by drum-beats is similar to
this. Since every loud sound is calculated to arouse our involuntary
attention, a rhythmical succession of loud sounds irresistibly
holds our consciousness, and, in the case of martial or festive
music, association aids in casting the spell and, with the acoustic
pulsations, forms a strong combination to which for the moment our
whole being is subjected.
It is, however, when rhythm develops into melody that we experience
the utmost force of its suggestive power.[55] It is interesting to
see how well Hanslick describes this preliminary condition of musical
enjoyment—this trance-like state—only to censure it. “The elements of
music, sound, and movement hold many emotional music lovers willing
captives. It is surprising how large the number is of those who hear,
or rather feel, music in this way. Since they are susceptible only
to what is elementary, they attain but a vague supersensuous and
yet sensuous excitement, answering to the commonplace character of
the music which appeals to them. Lounging half asleep in the boxes,
they yield themselves to the swing of the melody without taking note
of the exalted passages which may swell, yearn, jubilate, and throb
with increasing appeal. These people, sitting in a state of undefined
ecstasy, form the body of ‘the appreciative public,’ and do more than
any other class to discredit what is best in music. Science can now
supply these hearers who are void of spirituality and seek only the
effects of rhythm in music with what they need, by means of an agency
which far surpasses art in this effect—namely, chloroform. It will
plunge the whole organism into a lethargy pervaded by lovely dreams,
and, without the vulgarity of drinking, will produce an intoxication
which is not unlike its effect.”[56] Hanslick is quite right in one
respect: the trance condition as such is not confined to musical
enjoyment; but he overlooks what Nietzsche makes so clear, that it is
an indispensable physiological condition of the most intense form of
æsthetic pleasure. His position is more that of the critic than that
of the pleasure seeker. His saying that “the laity ‘feel’ music most
and the cultivated artist least” shows this. First and foremost to him
is his “intellectual satisfaction in following and anticipating the
motive of the composition, in being confirmed in his judgment here or
agreeably disappointed there.”[57] The element of æsthetic enjoyment
in this I have characterized, in my Einleitung in die Aesthetik (p.
187), as internal imitative creation. But the purest, highest, and
most spontaneous pleasure is that in which we have no thought for the
artist, but yield ourselves whole-heartedly to the beautiful object.
Here is the essence of the problem, and here the condition of transport
becomes most prominent, though it is never entirely wanting, even
in the outer circles of æsthetics, where it becomes comparatively
unimportant, as, for instance, in the satisfaction afforded us by the
happy arrangement of the heads of a discourse.
In trying to find out just what it is that rhythm suggests to us in
simple tones that succeed one another at agreeable intervals we may
advance the hypothesis—to use a somewhat strained expression—namely,
that it makes the impression of a dancing voice. By this I mean that
in the enjoyment of melody there is a mental fusion of two kinds of
association, one the analogue of pleasing movement in space, and
the other the analogue of vocal expression of mental and emotional
processes. The two are so incorporated as to produce a new entity
which, as a whole, is unlike any other. The fact that we represent
tone-beats by up-and-down motion in space has never been satisfactorily
explained, although the greatest variety of reasons has been
advanced.[58] Yet it is unquestionable that we do, and that the act is
one of our most cherished mental recreations; to use Schopenhauer’s
expression, nothing else produces the “idea of movement” in such purity
and freedom as do tone-beats. A series of tones more or less rapid,
says Siebeck, can adequately reproduce the rhythm of movement “without
a visible physical basis, which, by reason of its relation to other
associated images, would tend to destroy the impression of movement
considered purely as such.”[59] On this, too, depends the extraordinary
facility of tone movement, of which Köstlin says that it “glides,
turns, twists, hops, leaps, jumps up and down, dances, bows, sways,
climbs, quivers, blusters, and storms, all with equal ease, while in
order to reproduce it in the physical world a man would have to dash
himself to pieces or in some way become imponderable.”[60] All this
goes to prove that our pleasure in the realization of movement is never
more perfectly ministered to than in music. Spellbound by the magic
of rhythm, our consciousness repeats, voluntarily and persistently,
the varying dance of tones, and, freed from all incumbrances, floats
blissfully in boundless space, like Musa in Keller’s dance legend.
But melody is more than a mere alternation of tone. It is also a
kind of language, by means of which the soul’s deepest emotions seek
expression. While it does suggest up-and-down motion in space, at the
same time it stands for the audible expression of our mental life. It
would be misleading to attempt to explain this illusion from simple
analogies between speech and music, since it is itself primarily a mode
of expression, and we involuntarily make known our feelings and desires
by means of it; by such association of tone with voice the former comes
to point for us to life and its manifestations. There are, however,
many points of resemblance between melody and the verbal expression of
feeling. Dubos has devoted some attention to this relation, and, among
contemporary writers, Spencer has most clearly set forth the analogy.
But he makes the mistake of applying it to the origin of music, rather
than as an explanation of our enjoyment of it, and is decidedly at
fault in the statement that music originated in passionate and excited
speech.[61] It can attain reflection only by means of the changing
time and stress of melodic and rhythmic movement, as well as the
appropriation of the numerous sounds and intervals which are hidden in
feeling speech, and which take effect on the listener. Yet even this
statement must not be interpreted too literally. Just as scenery often
owes its impressiveness to vague suggestions of human interest, just as
thunder sounds like an angry voice without being an exact copy of it,
so the analogy between music and speech may be very real without their
becoming identical at any point. The song of birds will perhaps best
illustrate my meaning. Why does the nightingale’s note seem plaintive
and that of other birds cheerful or bold? Certainly not because we
know the bird’s feelings, but because there is an indefinable likeness
between our own vocal expression of emotion and the bird’s song,
which, in spite of its vagueness, calls forth in us the most direct
response. And it is exactly so in the other case. We can not expect to
change an emotional declamation into the same kind of melody simply by
fixing the pitch and regulating the intervals, for melody has its own
laws, to which speech is not amenable. We see, then, that though the
analogy is a real one and a constant, it must not be carried too far.
How far variation of stress is concerned with emotional expression is
interestingly shown in Wundt’s attempt to classify temperament on this
basis:
———-—+—-——————-—-—-—+—-—-—-—————
│ Strong. │ Weak.
———-—+—-——————-—-—-—+—-—-—-—————
Fast │ Choleric. │ Sanguine.
Slow │ Melancholic. │ Phlegmatic.
———-—+—-—-—-——————-—+—-—-—-—————
With regard to intervals, let any one attempt a mournful “O dear!” and
a jubilant “All right!” in the major and minor thirds, and he will
not remain in doubt for a moment as to which is the suitable one for
each occasion. Gurney’s experiments with children resulted in the same
emotional effects when the piano was very much out of tune as when
it was correct,[62] and the attempt of Helmholtz to find a physical
explanation signally failed. All these facts point to the independence
of the musical interval.
In concluding, I repeat that these two analogies are capable of
fusion, as my figure of “dancing voice” implies.[63] If we try, for
instance, to determine what constitutes the masculine, almost harsh,
quality of Bach’s melodies, we will find on inspection that his best
arias have a variety of formal qualities of which it is difficult
to say whether they pertain more to movement in space or to voice
expression. There is pre-eminently a fulness of accent which imparts
even to the weaker notes a certain impetus (_Béreíté dích Zîón_).
Moreover, his propensity to begin with two strong accents directly
contiguous (_Méin gläúbiges Heize_, _In Déine Hände_), which impart to
the whole a massive character from the very first, as well as the many
repetitions abruptly introduced in a different pitch, and the strongly
accented final syllables where again two frequently come together;
all these are characteristics which tell in two directions. Here is
melody governed by the laws of harmony in its forceful, clear, and
irresistibly progressive movement, as well as in the expression which
it gives to a purely masculine personality, full of earnest purpose and
sure of himself and his aims. Only by the fusion of these two lines of
association do we get at the full significance of the piece.
(_b_) Productive Sound-Play
An embarrassing copiousness of material greets us when we turn to
the subject of sounds and tones spontaneously produced. In them too
we recognise the beginnings of, or rather the introduction to, art.
Adherence to facts requires our classification to distinguish between
vocal and instrumental music, and we will first consider voice practice
and afterward the production of acoustic effects by means of other
agencies, both in their playful aspects.
The child’s first voice practice consists in screaming. So far as it is
a merely reflex expression of discomfort it does not concern us, but
it is probable that the crying of children becomes practice for the
organs of speech. Discomfort may still be its first occasion, but the
continuation of the cry is playful. “L’enfant qui crie,” says Compayré,
“a souvent plaiser à crier.”[64] Children of two and three years
show this very plainly; the howl begun in earnest is often prolonged
from playful experimentation.[65] And the same is probably true of
the customary moaning wail of women over their dead. O. Ludwig says
somewhere that a woman subdues pain when she can not escape it by means
of the sensuous relief which she finds in noisy moaning.
More important than crying are the babbling, chattering, and gurgling
of infants, which begin about the middle of the first three months.
This instinctive tendency to motor discharge produces movements of the
larynx, mouth, and tongue muscles, and the child that attains now to
the voluntary production of tone is fairly launched in experimentation.
Without this playful practice he could not become master of his voice,
and the imperative impulse to imitation which is developed later would
lack its most essential foundation. From among the numerous reports
of the first efforts of infants in the direction of speech we will
select Preyer’s very satisfactory observations: “At first, when the
lall-monologue begins the mouth assumes an almost infinite variety of
forms. The lips, the tongue, lower jaw, and larynx are all active, and
more variously so than in later life; at the same time the breath is
expelled loudly, so that now one, now another sound is accidentally
produced. The child hears these new sounds, hears his own voice,
and delights in making a noise as he enjoys moving his limbs in the
bath.[66]... On the forty-third day I heard the first consonants. The
child, being comfortably seated, gave utterance to numerous incoherent
sounds, but at last said clearly _am-ma_. Of the vowels, only _a_
and _o_ could be distinguished then, but on the following day the
baby astonished us by pronouncing the syllables _ta-hu_ with perfect
clearness. On the forty-sixth day I heard _gö_, _örö_, and five days
later _ara_. On the sixty-fifth day _a-omb_ sounded in his babbling,
and on the seventy-first, at a time when he was most contented, the
combination _ra-a-ao_. On the seventy-eighth day, with unmistakable
signs of satisfaction, _habu_ was pronounced. At five months he said
_ögö_, _ma-ö-ĕ_, _hӑ_, _ŏ_, _ho_, _ich_. The rare _i_ (English
_e_) was clearer here than in the third month, and at about this time
began the loud crowing as an expression of delight. The unusually loud
breathing and the clearly voiced _h_ in connection with the labial _r_
in _brrr-hà_, are specially indicative of pleasure, as are also the
_aja_, _örrgö ā-ā-i ŏā_ sounds which, toward the end of
the first half year, a child lying comfortably, indulges in. To this
list, too, should be added the constantly repeated _eu_ and _oeu_ of
the French _heure_ and _cœur_, and the German modified vowels _ä_
and _ö_. It often happens that the mouth is partly or entirely closed
by the various movements of the tongue, causing the imprisoned breath
to seek any possible outlet and giving rise to many sounds that are not
employed in our speech, such as a clearly sounded consonant between
_b_ and _p_ or _b_ and _d_, and also the labial _brr_ and _m_, all
of which evidently please the child. It is noteworthy that without
exception these sounds are expiratory, and I have never known any
attempt to produce similar inspiratory ones.[67] In the eleventh month
the child began to whisper; he also produced strong, high, and full
notes of varying tone, as if he were speaking in a language strange
to us. In his monologue a vowel sound would be repeated, sometimes
alone, sometimes in a syllable, as many as five times without a pause,
but usually three or four times.[68] The mechanical repetition of the
same syllable such as _papapa_, occurs oftener than alternation with
another, as _pata_, and the child will frequently stop short when
he notices in the midst of his complicated lip and tongue movements
and the expansion and contraction of his mouth that such a variation
of acoustic effects is being produced. He actually appears to take
pleasure in systematically exercising himself in all sorts of symmetric
and asymmetric mouth movements, both silently and vocally.”[69]
Not to prolong this section unduly, I devote only cursory notice to
the various voice plays of older children and adults, which may be said
to correspond with the lall-monologue of infants and give expression to
delight by shouting, whistling, yelling, crowing, humming, smacking,
clicking, and the like. An example from the ancients is the “stloppus”:
“C’est un amusement qui consiste à enfler see joues et à les faire
crever avec explosion en les frappant avec les mains.”[70]
Another example, which, however, distorts the idea of play and makes
it border on the pathological, is given in Boswell’s Life of Johnson:
“In the intervals of articulating he made various sounds with his
mouth, ... sometimes making his tongue play backward from the roof
of his mouth, as if clucking like a hen, and sometimes protruding it
against his upper gums in front, as if pronouncing quickly, under his
breath, _loo_, _too_, _too_; all this accompanied sometimes with a
thoughtful look, but more frequently with a smile. Generally, when he
had concluded a period in the course of a dispute by which he was a
good deal exhausted by violence and vociferation, he used to blow out
his breath like a whale.”[71]
Two specially interesting motives are operative in producing playful
voice practice—namely, the stimulus of what is agreeable and the
stimulus of difficulty—and these we will find introducing us to
the formal side of poetry. The pleasurable stimulus here takes the
form of enjoyment of the repetition of like and similar sounds of a
particular stress. This pleasure in repetition is a remarkable thing
from many points of view; on the motor side there is a tendency to
use the original sound as a model for the new one (Baldwin’s circular
reaction), while in listening to self-originated tones and sounds
primary memory is employed, that lingering of what has been heard in
the consciousness which makes it possible to secure harmony of the new
note with the previous one. The rhythm which we have been investigating
is a simple form of such repetition, and a child will enjoy it in
poetry as much as in music. At about the beginning of the fourth year
children are often observed to make the attempt to talk in measure and
assume the rôle of the productive artist. In general, the result is a
senseless succession of words and syllables arranged rhythmically.[72]
Marie G—— frequently pretended to read such jingles to her dolls.
The measure most popular with children seems to be the trochaic.[73]
This partiality still earlier takes in whole groups of sounds, as the
mechanically measured repetition of the lall-monologue bears witness.
Perez gives two good examples. “A little girl,” he says, “repeated from
morning till night, for fourteen days, _toro_, _toro_, _toro_, or else
_rapapi_, _rapapi_, _rapapi_, and took great delight in the monotonous
rhythm. Another child, nearly three years old, kept up these refrains
in speaking or crying, and would take a great deal of trouble to use
them in answering questions, although his parents made every effort to
rid him of this vagary. For three months this little parrot continued
to repeat in a loud voice the syllables, unintelligible to himself
or any one else,[74] _tabillè_, _tabillè_, _tabillè_.” R. M. Meyer,
who sees in the meaningless refrain the germ of poetry, will find in
such extraordinary persistence a confirmation of his view.[75] It is
difficult to say whether there is not an inherited tendency connected
with courtship in the instinctive impulse toward the gratification of
such motor and sensor apparatus as is involved in this.
Be that as it may, it is undeniable that the repetition of meaningless
rhymes, as well as of reasonable words and passages, is important
to poetry as a whole. I would refer in this connection to Grosse’s
Beginnings of Art, and for my own part confine myself to selecting a
few interesting examples. The first is the chain rhyme, such as always
delights a child. The following is from a favourite song of theirs:
“Reben trägt der Weinstock;
Hörner hat der Ziegenbock;
Die Ziegenbock hat Hörner;
Im Wald der wachsen Dörner,
Dörner wachsen im Wald.
Im Winter ist es kalt,
Kalt ist’s im Winter,” etc.
“Vines bear grapes;
Billy-goats have horns;
Horns has the billy-goat;
In the woods grow thorns,
Thorns grow in the woods.
In winter it is cold,
It is cold in winter,” etc.
A negative form is:
“Ein, zwei, drei,
Alt ist nicht neu,
Neu ist nicht alt,
Warm ist nicht kalt,
Kalt ist nicht warm,
Reich ist nicht arm,
Arm ist nicht reich,” etc.
“One, two, three,
Old is not new,
New is not old.
Warm is not cold,
Cold is not warm,
Rich is not poor,
Poor is not rich,” etc.
A chain rhyme which dates back to the fourteenth century has this same
echoing effect, and, as Zingerle remarks, “affords a striking proof
that the children’s verses of that period had the same form as our
own.”[76]
A striking analogue of this is found in many poems of the Molukken
dwellers. They consist of four-lined strophes, whose first and third
lines form the second and fourth of each preceding one. This often
results in absolutely inconsequent insertions, whose only office is to
promote the echo effect and onward[77] swing, yet sometimes the thought
is well sustained. Here is an instance:
“Jene taube mit ausgebreiteten Flügeln,
Sie fliegt in schräger Lage nach dem Fluss.
Ich bin ein Fremder,
Ich komme hierher in die Verbannung.
“Sie fliegt in schräger Lage nach dem Fluss.
Tot wird sie mitten im Meere aufgefischt.
“Ich komme hierher in die Verbannung,
Weil ich es wegen meiner elenden Lage so will.
“Tot wird sie mitten im Meere aufgefischt,” etc.[78]
“The dove with wide-spread wings
Flies along the winding stream.
I am a stranger,
I come an exile here.
“She files along the winding stream
And is drawn up dead from the sea.
I come an exile here,
Since that is my bitter fate.
“She is drawn up dead from the sea,” etc.
While the genuine refrain originated in the chiming in of the chorus
with the other singers, this chain singing must have begun from new
voices taking up the verse where others dropped it. For a last word on
the subject, take this exquisite poem of Goethe’s, which combines the
chain repetition with the charm of a refrain:
“O gieb vom weichen Pfühle
Träumend ein halb Gehör!
Bei meinem Saitenspiele
Schlafe! Was willst du mehr?
“Bei meinem Saitenspiele
Segnet der Sterne Heer
Die ewigen Gefühle.
Schlafe! Was willst du mehr?
“Die ewigen Gefühle
Heben mich hoch und hehr
Aus irdischem Gewühle.
Schlafe! Was willst du mehr?
“Vom irdischem Gewühle,” etc.
“O from that soft couch
Dreamily lend an ear!
Lulled by my violin’s music
Sleep! What do you wish for more?
“Lulled by my violin’s music
Like the spell of the starry skies,
A sense of the infinite moves you.
Sleep! What do you wish for more?
“A sense of the infinite moves you
And me to loftier heights,
Away from earth’s striving tumult,
Sleep! What do you wish for more?
“Away from earth’s striving tumult,” etc.
When the repetition is of single letters and syllables, instead of
whole sentences, we call it alliteration and rhyme. A few examples
will suffice to show that both are as important to the sound plays
of children as to the poetry of adults. The alliteration may be mere
repetition, as even the babbling babe loves to duplicate sounds, and
while sometimes logical connection of ideas is conveyed as well (Haus
und Hof, hearth and home), children enjoy meaningless sound-play quite
as well.
“Hinters’ Hanse Hinterhaus
Haut Haus Holderholz
Hetzt Hund und Hühnerhund
Hart hinter’m Hase her.”
“Meiner Mutter Magd macht mir mein mus mit meiner Mutter Mehl.”
“Können Kaiser Karls’ Köch
Kalbsköpf und Kabisköpf kochen?”
“Round the rugged riven rock the ragged rascal rapid ran.”
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.”
“Didon dina, dit-on, du dos d’un dodu dindon.”
As an example of original production, take this composition of Willie
F——’s, which he liked to recite as he pushed his wagon about the room:
“Wein, wein, wein, wein, wein, wein, wam,
Wein, wein, wein, wein, wein, wein, wam,” etc.
The verse of Ennius, “O Tyte, tuti Tati, tibi tanta, tyranne tulisti,”
shows that adults, too, enjoy such alliteration, not only as a promoter
of poetic beauty, but also for the mere play of sound.
Rhyme is often mere reduplication,[79] its agreeableness being due to
the actual musical quality to which identity and variety contribute,
to repetition as such, and to its unifying effect on the two words
or lines concerned. Children show enjoyment of rhyme at a very early
age, and as soon as they can talk often amuse themselves with such
combinations as Emma-bemma, Mutter-Butter, Wagon-Pagon, Hester-pester,
and the like.[80] And there are many counting out rhymes where the
original meaning of the words is lost, and only the jingle remains, as:
“Ane-Kane, Hacke-Packe,
Relle-Belle, Rädli-Bägli,
Zinke-Pinke, Uff-Puff:
Das fûle, futze Galgevögeli
Hocket hinten ûff.”
“Wonary, uary, icary, Ann,
Philison, folison, Nicholas, John,
Quimby, quamby, Virgin Mary,
Stringulum, strangulum, Buck!”
“Eindli-Beindli. Drittmann-Eindli,
Silberhauke, Finggefauke,
Pärli, puff, Bettel duss.”
“Anige hanige, Sarege-sirige,
Ripeti-pipeti-knoll!”[81]
To regard these rhymes as the direct inventions of the children
themselves would be as mistaken as to attribute folk poetry to the
masses. Most songs for children originate with grown people, yet they
are childish and contain only what children can appreciate, for the
principle of selection decides their fate. At the same time, original
artistic production is exhibited by children in alliteration and rhythm
as well as in rhyme. Thus, I noticed in Marie G——, when she was about
three years old, a disposition to sportive variation of familiar rhymes
appearing simultaneously with the rhythmic arrangement of words. The
first rhyme evolved entirely from the profundities of her own genius
came to light at the beginning of her fourth year, in the shape of this
strange couplet, which she repeated untiringly:
“Naseweis vom Wasser weg
Welches da liegt noch mehr Dreck.”
Another child, Rudolf F——, also in his fourth year, declaimed
persistently this original poem:
“Hennemäs’che, Weideidäs’che,
Sind ja lauter Käsebäs’che.”
Pleasure in overcoming difficulties is an essential feature of all
play. The determined onset against opposition, which is so conspicuous
in play, shows how important is the fighting instinct, so deeply rooted
in us all. Even in the lall-monologue, when the child accidentally
produces a new sound by means of some unusual muscular effort, he
intentionally repeats it (Baldwin’s persistent imitation[82]). Older
children playfully cultivate dexterity of articulation by repeating
rapidly difficult combinations of sounds. The commonest are those where
the difficulty is mainly physiological, as Wachs-Maske, Mess-Wechsel;
Der Postkutscher putzt den Postkutschkasten; L’origine ne se
desoriginalisera jamais de son originalité; Si six scies scient six
cyprès; She stood at the door of Burgess’s fish-sauce shop welcoming
him in; If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where is the
peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked? And many similar ones.
Others require quickness of wits as well, as in these verses:
“This is the key to the gate
Where the beautiful maidens wait.
The first is called Binka,
The second Bibiabinka,
The third Senkkrenkknokiabibiabinka.
Binka took a stone,
And for Senkkrenkknokiabibiabinka broke a bone,
So that Senkkrenkknokiabibiabinka began to moan.”[83]
Occasionally some obscurity in the language used involves a comic
element, as—
“Basanneli, Basanneli,
Schlag ’uff und stand a Licht
Es geht a Haus im Geist herum,
Ich greif, er fürcht mich an.
Zünd’s Kühele an, zünds Kühele an,
S’Lauternle will a Kälble han,
Und wie der Teig am Himmel steht,
Da schiesst der Tag in Ofa.”[84]
A. Bastian relates of the Siamese children that they delight in
repeating difficult sentences and alter their meaning while speaking
rapidly, as Pho Pu Khün Me Pu (The grandfather near the grandmother) is
changed to Pho Ku Khün Me Ku (My father near me, his mother), or Pit
Patu Thöt, Pit Patu Thot (Shut the door, Shut the temple door), Mo Loi
Ma Ha Phe, Phe Loi Pai Ha Mo (The floating pot bumped against the boat,
and _vice versa_), etc.[85] “Negro mothers on the Loango coast,” says
Pechnel-Loesche, “teach their children verses which trip the tongue
when spoken rapidly.”[86]
A similar sport for adults is afforded by the students’ song, Der Abt
von Philippsbronn, in which the syllable “bronn” must be repeated four
times. After the first time there is a “Pst!” sound, after the second a
“Pfiff!” after the third a “Click!” and after the fourth a snore, all
given as rapidly as possible. The accelerated _tempo_ in the country
song in Don Juan and in the wedding feast of the dwarfs in Goethe’s
Hochzeitslied are of the same character.
Other instruments besides the human voice are employed in sound-play.
Even parrots and monkeys have found pleasure in other noises than the
practice of their own voices. The young gorilla, in his exuberance of
spirits, drums on his own breast, or, with even more satisfaction,
on any available hollow object, such as a bowl, a cask, etc. The
child’s first auditory satisfaction derived from any act of his own
is probably the splashing of water; another is the rustling of paper.
Preyer says: “The first sound produced by himself which gave the child
evident satisfaction was the rattling of paper. He often indulged in
this, especially in his nineteenth week.”[87] Strümpell noticed the
same thing at six months, and also that it gave his little daughter
pleasure to pat the table with the palm of her hand[88] (rhythmic
repetition again). The boy observed by Sully was in the beginning of
his eighth month when he one day accidentally dropped a spoon from
the table where he was playing with it. “He immediately repeated the
action, now, no doubt, with the purpose of gaining the agreeable shock
for his ear. After this, when the spoon was put into his hand he
deliberately dropped it. Not only so, like a true artist, he went on
improving on the first effect, raising the spoon higher and higher, so
as to get more sound, and at last using force in dashing and banging
it down.”[89] At nine months Preyer’s child beat twelve times on
the stopper of a large caraffe with increasing force. “On the three
hundred and nineteenth day,” he goes on, “occurred a notable acoustic
experiment which denoted much intellectual progress. He struck the
spoon on his tray just as his other hand accidentally moved it. The
sound was deadened, and the child noticed the difference. He took
the spoon in his other hand and struck the tray, deadening the sound
intentionally, and so on repeatedly. In the evening the experiment
was repeated, with the same result.”[90] Possibly Preyer is right
in regarding this as a sort of scientific experiment on the part of
the child to investigate the causes of the deadening of the sound,
but Perez thinks the child’s action is accounted for by his desire
to feel in both hands alternately the effect of the blow and of the
shock.[91] However that may be, we are forced to agree with the German
student entirely when, from these observations, he finally draws the
conclusion: “The restless experimentation of little children and of
infants in their first attempts at accommodation, and even their
apparently insignificant acts (such as the rattling of paper in the
second quarter), are not only useful for the development of their
intelligence, but are indispensable as a means of determining reality
in a literal sense. We can never estimate how much of the common
knowledge of mankind is attained in this way.”[92]
Without pausing to enumerate the various instrumentalities employed in
childish sound-play, we will leave the infant and pass on to consider
the insatiate demands of our sensory organism. It seems that, in order
to maintain our present life, an incessant rain of outer stimuli
must beat upon us, like that atomic storm which many believe pours
constantly upon the heavenly bodies and accounts for gravitation.
Indeed, the opinion has been advanced, and apparently supported by some
pathological phenomena, that the cessation of all peripheral stimuli
marks the dissolution of psychic existence. Certainly the sense of
hearing has large claims to notice in this connection—we all know the
gruesomeness of absolute silence. This may be why children are so
indefatigable in making noises, patting their hands, cracking their
knuckles,[93] snapping and drumming with the fingers, stamping and
beating with the feet, dragging sticks about, creaking and slamming
doors, beating hollow objects, blowing in keys, banging on waiters,
clinking glasses, snapping whips, and, in short, delighting in tearing
and smashing noises generally.[94] And adults are not much behind
them. These same sounds in other forms please us too, as, for example,
the clinking of spurs, snapping a riding whip, rattling sabres, the
tinkling of tassels and fringe, the rustle of flowing draperies. The
versatile walking cane, too, comes in for a thousand uses here—in
striking, beating, and whistling through the air. Going for a walk
one winter day, I fell behind two worthy scholars who were deep in
an earnest discussion. We came to a place where the drain beside
the road was filled with beautiful milk-white ice. Crack! went the
older man’s cane through the inviting crust, in the very midst of his
learned disquisition. The student everywhere is a past master in such
sport, as his unfortunate neighbours find out to their sorrow in the
watches of the night. The measured hand clapping, which the child
learns so early, occurs in the dances of the people. I have mentioned
the maddening rapidity of the Haxenschlagen. Enjoyment of crushing or
rending destructible objects is characteristic of every age. I will
cite as an example Goethe’s famed boyish exploit. After throwing from a
window and smashing all his own store of breakable ware, incited by the
appreciative cheers of the neighbours, he descended to the kitchen and
seizing first upon a platter found that it made such a delightful crash
that he must needs try another. He continued the entertainment until
he had demolished all the dishes within his reach. In such a case, of
course, enjoyment of the sound is not the only source of pleasure. Joy
in being a cause is conspicuous when the clatter is self-originated,
and sometimes renders even unpleasant sounds attractive, like
scratching with a slate pencil, for instance. Besides, there is the
satisfaction of impulses to movement, and often, too, the destructive
impulse like that for overcoming difficulties is closely related to the
propensity for fighting.
In all this we have not yet touched on the subject of acoustic
playthings, and it is so large that I can only throw out a few
suggestions as to the likeness between primitive musical instruments
and the noise-producing toys of children. We have seen that even the
ape has discovered the principle of instrumental music, and puts it to
practice by pounding with his hand on a stick or some hollow object.
A baby does the same thing, and will take great delight in beating
persistently and with a certain regularity on a table with his hand,
on the floor with a stick, or on his tray with a spoon. If we regard
these sounds thus playfully produced by beating on some foreign object,
together with some notion of time, as affording probably the first
suggestion of a musical instrument, we are met by two possibilities:
either the stick itself is considered as the source of the noise or
else the object it strikes is so regarded. In the simple instruments
of savages both possibilities are realized. The Australian bell is a
thick, bottle-shaped club of hard wood which, on being struck, gives
forth a peculiar long note, and the drum with which the women accompany
the dancing of the men is only a tightly stretched opossum skin, which
they have been wearing on their shoulders.[95] Stringed instruments
were derived from the bow; Homer sang of the clear sound which Odysseus
drew from the tightly strung bow, and Heraclitus uses a complex figure
of speech involving the bow and the lyre. The South African “gora”
is only a modified form of this trusty weapon of the Bushman. The
modification consists in introducing on one side, between the end of
the cord and the bow, a trimmed, leaf-shaped, and flattened quill,
which is placed upon the lips of the performer and set in motion by his
breath.
How can we explain these inventions otherwise than as the results of
indefatigable experimentation on the part of either children or adults?
Wind instruments no doubt arose from contracting the lips and blowing
through the fist or from playful investigation of the properties of
arrows and the hollow ornaments worn on the neck, while vibratory ones,
like the gora, no doubt find their prototype in the blowing on leaves
and grass blades, which children are so fond of. Where there is no such
thing as scientific experimentation, playful experimentation becomes
the mother of invention and of discovery.
While it is thus not improbable on the whole that child’s play has
had much to do with the origination of primitive instruments, we
find, too, that children have borrowed many of their toys from the
grown people. Things which, from the crudest beginnings, have been
brought to a high degree of perfection are reproduced in miniature
and simplified form for the little ones. Instances of this are too
common and familiar to require illustration here. Even in remote ages
it was the custom to give children little bows, wagons, dolls, etc.,
as well as copies of musical instruments. In the province of Saxony
queer clay drums, shaped like an hourglass, have been unearthed; they
must belong to the stone age, and among them is a tiny specimen, which
can hardly be anything else than a toy.[96] It often happens that
instruments which have entirely gone out of use among adults continue
to be playthings for the children for thousands of years. This is the
case with the rattles which are now the merest plaything, having no
interest for grown people, except as a means of quieting an infant,
yet their original connection with it was probably much closer, as our
progenitors used such instruments at dances, feasts, etc., for the
pious purpose of driving off evil spirits.[97] There is a widespread
custom among savage tribes of frightening away the enemies of the
stars by noisy demonstrations, especially during the absence of the
moon. As these observances gradually become obsolete, the rattling
instruments are saved from oblivion by being handed down as toys to
the hospitable little people, without, however, entirely losing the
glamour of their religious office. Becq de Fouquières says, in speaking
of the many religious practices that are connected with children’s
toys: “Ses premiers joujoux dont en quelque sorte des talismans et
des amulettes.”[98] Many rattles have been found in the graves of
prehistoric children, together with clay figures of animals, marbles,
etc. Schliemann found a child’s rattle, ornamented with bits of metal,
in the “third city” at Hissarlik, and Squier found a snail shell filled
with tiny pebbles, with the mummy of a child, in Peru.[99] Amaranthes,
in the beginning of the eighteenth century, in his remarkable Woman’s
Lexigon, defines a child’s rattle as “a hollow instrument made of
silver, lead, wood, or wire, trimmed with bright coral and with little
bells either inclosed in it or attached to the outside.”[100] Older
boys make a rattle of a dried bladder, with peas in it.
As I have dwelt on the probability of the invention of the first
musical instruments by means of playful experimentation, I will now
touch briefly upon another view. Karl Bücher, in his admirable treatise
on Arbeit und Rhythmus, develops the hypothesis that rhythmic art is
derived from physical labour. Physical labour which employs the limbs
with perhaps some simple implement assumes spontaneously a rhythmical
character, since this tends to conserve psychic as well as physical
force. The sounds arising as the work proceeds suggest the germ idea
of instrumental music and lead to involuntary vocal imitation. Thus,
poetry and music are engendered in the very midst of toil, and only
later, when they attain to independent existence, are dance motions
substituted for the movements of physical labour, and frequently become
adaptations of them (as in pantomime dances, for instance).
Convinced as I am that this theory contains a genuine though perhaps
one-sided[101] contribution to the proper explanation of rhythmical
art, I am unable to concur in what Bücher regards as its logical
consequence—namely, that musical instruments are adaptations of the
labourer’s tools. “We know,” he says, “that labour rhythmically carried
on has a musical quality, and since savages, having no appreciation
of pitch or harmony,[102] value rhythm alone, it is only necessary
to strengthen and purify the tone produced by the implement and to
complicate the rhythm, in order to produce what is in their estimation
high art. Naturally, to accomplish this the tools were differentiated;
varying conditions, as they arose in their labours, became the occasion
of further efforts for the perfecting of tone and timbre, and the art
instinct, struggling for expression, first found it in such rude music.
So originated musical instruments from these tools of manual labour,
and it is a noteworthy fact that beaten instruments were the first to
appear, and are to-day the favourites of savages. We find among them
the drum, gong, and tam-tam, while with many tribes the only instrument
is the kettledrum, which clearly proclaims its origin, being in many
cases nothing more than a skin tightly stretched across the grain
mortar or a suitable pot or kettle. Primitive stringed instruments also
were struck, like the Greek pleptron, the tone of a violin and of the
strings themselves being a later discovery. Wind instruments, too, are
of very ancient origin, the commonest being the flute and reed pipe,
both of which are rhythmic. The ancient Greeks used them first to mark
time and as accompanying instruments.”[103]
I hardly think that this view will meet with general acceptance. The
wind instrument, whose importance to primitive peoples Bücher somewhat
underestimates, did indeed serve the purposes of rhythm principally,
but it would be difficult to trace its derivation from any manual
tool. Nor does it follow that rattles and flappers came from the use
of hammers; while the drum, whose prototype he finds in the grain
mortar, is in use by tribes who have no mortars. I conclude, therefore,
that musical instruments can, with more probability, be accounted for
as the result of instinctive sound-play and the experimentation with
noise-producing implements, which accompanies it.
6. _Sensations of Sight_
Turning his face toward the light is about the only manifestation of
sight sensation displayed by the infant during his first few days.
Many young animals find themselves very much at home in the outer
world as soon as they are born, but such is not the case with a child.
He must attain to a clear perception of external objects by toilsome
experimentation, which commonly requires about five months for its
completion, though the fifth week as well as the fifth month marks
an epoch in the practice of sight. “The average time is about the
fifth week,” says Raehlmann, “when the capacity to ‘fix’ an object is
attained—that is, to take cognizance of the retinal picture of what
comes within the line of his vision, as it is thrown on the macula
lutea. About this time, too, the eye movements, which till then are not
definitely co-ordinated, become regulated, while associated movements,
such as elevating and depressing the line of vision (the latter
somewhat later than the former), also appear.... But movements for the
purpose of directly subjecting to fixation objects which lie in the
periphery of the field of vision are entirely wanting at this period.
The second epoch, that at five months, is marked by the development
of orientation in the field of vision. At this time begin actual
glancing movements, which shift the line of vision and bring peripheral
retinal images on to the macula lutea. Contemporaneously with this, a
definite system of innervations is established, especially for those
muscles which are employed in shifting the line of vision. Secondly,
the winking reflex is perfected by the approach of objects from the
periphery of the field of vision. Thirdly, at this time the first
experiments in touch controlled by sight are instituted, and serve
to bring tactile perceptions into relation with those of sight. The
interval between birth and the fifth week, as well as that from this
time to the fifth month, is employed in the acquirement of such sense
perceptions as react collectively on the organ and commit it to special
uses and control. So, on the authority of repeated experience, whatever
is unsuitable is gradually excluded, and only those eye movements
are retained which further the proper convergence of the two retinal
images.”[104] Of course, the power of vision is by no means completely
developed at five months, though the technique of the function, so
to speak, is by that time essentially perfected. Now begin the real
tasks of visual practice: acquiring familiarity with external objects,
imprinting the visual images on the mind, and widening the scope of
association. On entering the subject of child’s play which is connected
with vision it is evident that there are four points for us to keep
in mind—brightness, colour, form, and movement. The inner images and
concepts, which go hand in hand with such perception (especially with
the notion of movement), do not, so far as I can see, form part of our
study, since while an effect of the highest importance they do not
constitute one of the objects of play.[105]
(_a_) Sensations of Brightness
Sensations of brilliance seem to arouse feelings of pleasure at a
remarkably early period. Thus Preyer says: “Long before the close of
the first day the facial expression of the babe held facing the window
changed suddenly when I shaded his eyes with my hand.... The darkened
face looked much less satisfied.”[106] Toward the end of the first week
the child turned his face toward the window when he had been placed
otherwise, and seemed pleased to see it again. During the second week
a child will sometimes cry when taken into the dark, and can only
be quieted by having the sensation of brightness restored. Thus, we
see that in the very first week there is at least a premonition of
experimentation. In his second month the infant will break out into
joyful cries at the sight of gilded picture frames or lighted lamps,
illuminated Christmas trees or shining mirrors. Even in Wolfdietrich
the delight of children in bright and shining things is recorded:—
“Do vergaz es sînes frostes und spielte mit den ringen sîn.
also daz kleine Kindel sîner sorgen gar vergaz,
dô greif ez on die ringe und sprach: waz ist daz?
des Halsperges schoene daz Kindel nie verdroz.”[107]
And it seems to grow with his growth in other directions. The following
are some of Sigismund’s notes on his daughter’s third quarter: “The
child is now passionately fond of light, and in the evening, when the
darkening room is lighted up, she regularly shouts aloud and dances
for joy.... This coincides with the fact that artificial illumination
stimulates adults also to a genuine and boisterous gaiety. Our feasts
and dances are always held at night, and indeed it is difficult to
attain the requisite dithyrambic pitch in the daytime.”[108] Nansen
wrote, when the electric light blazed for the first time on the
frozen-in Fram: “What a tremendous influence light has on the spirits
of men! This light enlivened us like a draught of good wine.”[109]
To what degree this feeling is universal is shown by the fact that
bright and shining objects are highly prized the world over. The school
child, the savage, the cultured man, display the same preference;
there is no essential difference whether it is a scrap of glass for
which the negro gives a generous portion of his worldly goods, or
the blazing diamond coronet for which the lady in society parts with
hers. That our coins are made of gold and silver is attributable to
the high polish which they take, and which won great favour for them
in prehistoric times. Poets of all ages have celebrated the brightness
of the human eye, and because light makes us cheerful we speak of the
brilliancy of an entertainment, the beaming joyousness of the golden
day. The strongest light effects are produced by flame and by the
heavenly bodies. The strange attraction which flame exerts on insects,
fish, and birds is familiar to all. Romanes’s sister relates in the
journal which she kept, about a capuchin ape, that the clever little
fellow rolled strips of newspaper into lamplighters and stuck the end
into the fire, to amuse himself watching the flame.[110] Primitive
men must have experimented with fire in the same way when they came
in contact with it in lightning strokes and volcanic phenomena, and
in their earliest use of it for boring their stone hatchets. Without
playful experimentation, this most important acquisition of mankind,
the mastery of fire, could hardly have been attained. The little ones
in our homes would find playing with fire one of their favourite
diversions if we did not use every means to prevent it, on account
of the danger. In spite of all warnings, the untoward fate of little
Polly Flinders of nursery memory is daily becoming the experience of
numberless children.
With grown people the light and glow of fire are of the first
importance in both religious and secular festivities. I need only refer
once more to Sigismund’s saying, quoted above. The charm of moonlit and
starlit nights is one of the deepest joys that Nature affords us, which
only the regal splendour of sunshine can surpass. Perhaps it has never
been more worthily sung than in these verses of Mörike’s, which the
very spirit of Shakespeare seems to have dictated:
“Dort, sich, am Horizont lüpft sich der Vorhang schon!
Es träumt der Tag, nun sei die Nacht entfloh’n;
Die Purperlippe, die geschlossen lag,
Haucht, halbgeöffnet, süsse Athemzüge;
Auf einmal blitzt das Aug’ und wie ein Gott, der Tag
Beginnt im Sprung die königlichen Flüge!”[111]
The human longing for light is so strong that it becomes for him the
natural symbol for divinity, a fact on which we have not time to dwell,
except to note the significance of the heavenly bodies and of fire in
religion. The self-devised Nature worship of young Goethe, who greeted
the rising sun with an offering, is interesting, and still more so is
the statement of the deaf-mute Ballard that, as a boy of eight years,
he arrived by his own unaided efforts at some sort of metaphysical
and religious thought, and felt a kind of reverence for the sun and
moon.[112] This is the effect of light which has so great a part in
the mythology of all peoples. Even in the Old Testament account of the
creation light is the first thing which God called out of chaos. “And
God saw that the light was good.”
We find brightness of aspect especially affected in the industrial arts
and in painting, and the employment of shining and glowing substances
in decoration is too familiar to need comment. They are found in the
ornaments of the Stone period, such as necklaces of animals’ teeth,
bits of ivory and shells, as well as among savage tribes of the
present day. Grosse says: “The ornaments of these people may be called
brilliant not in a figurative, but in a literal sense, and there is
hardly any quality which contributes so much to the decorative effect
of an object in savage estimation as brightness. The natives of Fire
Island frequently hang fragments of a glass bottle on their neck band,
considering them very superior adornments, and Bushmen are happy when
they are made the proud possessors of iron or brass rings. However,
they are by no means dependent on such windfalls from a higher race,
and when the ornaments of civilized man and barbarian are both wanting
and precious stones are not available they betake themselves to Nature,
who can well supply their needs. The sea tosses up polished shells upon
the beach, vegetation furnishes bright seeds and shining stalks, and
animals give their shining teeth, as well as fur and feathers.”[113]
In painting, light effects in connection with colour are of the
greatest importance, and are skilfully managed by many masters of the
art. Rembrandt may be said to possess the highest genius for their
treatment. Without going into particulars of technique, I may note
that the pleasure which we derive from light effects in painting may
be referred to two opposite extremes. We know that it is out of the
question for the painter to transfer to his canvas Nature’s extremes
of light and shade, only about half of the eight hundred ascertained
degrees of brilliancy being available to him.[114] Helmholtz has
shown in an interesting manner how the artist may triumph over this
difficulty. It proves to be a special case for the application of
Weber’s law; the adjustment of intensities is not in proportion to
the actual force of the stimuli, but to their relative force. Thus,
when the painter tempers the brilliance of Nature he actually gives a
more faithful representation, because the toned-down light against the
deepened shadows of a picture produces the same effect on the senses as
the clear beams of sunlight in contrast with its luminous shadows.[115]
This so-called normal technique is objected to on diametrically
opposite grounds. Some painters, refusing to darken and falsify Nature,
seek to make their shadows as bright as are those in the diffused
light of day. As it is impossible, however, to represent the actual
intensity of the light, their attempt to reproduce the actual is only
half realized. The true contrast between light and dark fails, and
the result is the faded, obscure, hazy appearance which characterizes
the work of extremists of this school. In the other direction the
attempt is sometimes made to darken the shadows so excessively as
actually to make the difference between light and shade greater than
it is in Nature. Caravaggio and Ribera, Lenbach and Samberger, furnish
examples of this kind of painting. Their work is done on the principle
of darkening the shade, in order to bring out the light more sharply;
eyes, brow, and hands in their pictures seem to surpass the clearness
of Nature because of this difference, which is greater than that of
reality. These artists are true lovers of light.
(_b_) The Perception of Colour
The exact period in a child’s life when susceptibility to colour
impressions arises has not been determined. Preyer’s son seemed
interested in a rose-coloured curtain, with the sun shining on it, on
his twenty-third day,[116] but who knows whether it was the colour
that pleased him or only the brightness? And the same doubt hangs over
a hundred other observations taken in the first months of life, as,
for example, this of Sully’s: “Like other children, he was greatly
attracted by brightly coloured objects. When just seven weeks old he
acquired a fondness for a cheap, showy card, with crudely brilliant
colouring and gilded border. When carried to the place where it hung,
... he would look up to it and greet his first love in the world of
art with a pretty smile.”[117] Since we can not be certain that it was
not the mere brilliancy which produced this effect, Sully is quite
right when he says: “The first delight in coloured objects is hardly
distinguishable from the primordial delight in brightness.”[118]
Raehlmann thinks, however, judging from the child’s positions and
actions, that one can—though not till considerably later than the fifth
week—be sure that it perceives a difference between objects of similar
form and complementary colour.[119] And it is probably quite safe to
assume that there is pleasure in gay colours by the end of the first
three months.
Here we are met at once by the question, Does the child prefer any
particular colours? Most observers agree that the child displays
more interest in the warm colours—red and yellow—than in the colder
ones.[120] Baldwin, on the contrary, found from his experiments
with a baby nine months old (not using yellow, however) that blue
was chosen oftenest.[121] Although Preyer denies the validity of
Baldwin’s experiment, it seems to me quite possible that here, as
well as elsewhere, there is room for the manifestation of individual
preference.[122] The choice of yellow and red can hardly be a necessary
one. For example, I find Grosse’s rule, that children will always
empty the vermilion cup in a paint box first and will, when allowed to
choose, always take a flaming red, by no means invariable. Marie G——
(five years old) turns oftener to the blue in her paint box than to
the red. She herself pointed out lilac as her favourite colour, and
weeks before my question she persisted in using bits of lilac silk in
her embroidery, though her mother had taken them away from her. Having
chosen the lilac, she however added, after a pause for reflection,
“Red is pretty, too.” Another little girl, Deti K——, at the same time
answered the question as to what colour she liked best, “Lilac too, but
bright.” Still another named first lilac, then rose, and after these
red and yellow. I consider it not improbable that in many children of
fine sensibility the stimulus of crude red and yellow is too strong
to be particularly agreeable. This supposition perhaps explains the
exceptions to the rule, and also seems to interfere with the likening
of children to savages, which was formerly so useful. Observations of
the children of such tribes have never been made, to my knowledge.
Before going on, however, to consider the case of savages, we must look
briefly into the problem suggested by the fact that there is choice of
any colour. The child’s susceptibility to the cooler colours, and even
its perception of them, especially blue and gray, has been questioned.
Preyer says: “The inability of my two-year-old child to recognise blue
and gray can be argued not only from his occasional failure to do so,
but also from the evident difficulty he encounters in connecting the
commonly used and familiar names ‘blue’ and ‘gray’ with any special
sensations, while ‘yellow’ and ‘red’ were correctly applied several
months ago. Were the sensations of blue and gray as clear as those of
red and yellow there would be no failure to recognise the colours.
The child does not know what green and blue mean, though he does know
red and yellow.... Even at four years blue was oftener called green
in the morning twilight, though to me it was clearly blue. The child
was greatly astonished to find that his blue stocking had become gray
overnight. For years very dark green was called black.”[123] These
striking observations seem indeed partially to confirm the hypothesis
of Geiger, Gladstone, and Magnus, who came to the conclusion, from the
study of ancient picture writing, that primeval man distinguished only
the three primary colours (the Young-Helmholtz theory)—red, green, and
violet. From these were derived orange and yellow, while blue was the
very last to be discovered. Yet, indeed, so far as any philological
support is concerned, the hypothesis can hardly be maintained either in
regard to the ancients or to modern low-standing tribes.
In the remains of buildings and plastic works, which are older than any
picture writings, traces are found of all the colours of the spectrum,
and the philological test, when applied to civilized peoples, does not
yield the confirmation which advocates of the theory desire. While it
is true that the Esthonians have no word of their own for blue (their
_sini_ is borrowed from the Russian), but the apparent deduction from
that fact is rendered doubtful, to say the least, by this passage from
Raehlmann: “Some time ago I tested an old Esthonian peasant woman with
a gray starling. She was not quite sure of the name of the colour, and
changed it often. On closer questioning about her ideas of colour, she
seemed to have the spectral series correctly in mind, distinguishing
the colours as blood, wax, grass, and sky. She had never needed other
terms with which to express her sensations, but she took pains to
convince me that she had perfectly clear ideas on the subject of
colour.”[124]
But how is it with the savage tribes? Here we find, indeed, that for
the painting of their bodies, as well as for other ornaments, the warm
colours are almost exclusively chosen. Besides black and white, hardly
any other colours than red and yellow are found at all. “The Australian
has always, in his bag of kangaroo skin, a supply of white clay and of
red and yellow ochre. For ordinary occasions he contents himself with
dabs on cheeks, shoulders, and breast; on holidays he paints his whole
body.”[125]
Bushmen rub their faces and hair with red ochre; red is the Fire
Islander’s favourite. Other savages use, with deep blue-black, a
blazing vermilion, a combination which imparts to their faces the
wildest and most forbidding expression. Among the famous discoveries
which Fraas has described so well[126] was a lump of kneaded paste
about as big as a nut, compounded of iron rust and reindeer fat, and
intensely red in colour. Probably every huntsman of the Ice period had
one of these to colour his body with. The same colours are chosen for
their other ornaments as well. The Australians stripe their girdles
and neck and brow bands with red, white, and yellow, and the same or
similar colours are in demand with the Bushmen and Fire Islanders.
Among the Botoku red feathers, as the most costly decoration, form
the insignia of rank. Others wear yellow feathers in the hair, and
the same ornament floats above the brow of the Australian hunter. The
cool colours are scarcely ever seen in primitive ornamentation, even
in combination with red and yellow. Blue decorations are extremely
rare, and the Eskimo’s lip wedge of green nephrite is quite unique
in colour.[127] From this brief survey we reach the conclusion
that primitive man is not so sensitive as we are to the stimulus
of the colder colours. In the painting of the body and some other
ornamentation the prevalence of red and yellow may be partly attributed
to the more general distribution of these pigments, but such a reason
can not be assigned in the case of feathers, and we can not therefore
deny the probability that for the savage simple green and blue lack
the charm which they possess for the cultivated eye.[128] That the
cooler colours are imperfectly perceived, however, is an unwarranted
supposition in the provisional stage which our knowledge of the subject
has up to the present time attained.[129] With them, as with children,
probably the cooler colours fail to arrest their attention and excite
their interest as they do ours. Whether this is the result of a kind of
colour blindness or whether it is due solely to the intensive emotional
effect of the warm colours it is difficult to say. The extraordinary
want of susceptibility to reflected colour displayed by educated
adults proves that the lack of æsthetic interest may assume the form of
partial colour blindness. There are thousands, for example, who have
never noticed the intense blue of a shaded cement road under a clear
sky, although they may have seen it a hundred times. And they will
complain bitterly of the gross inaccuracy of a picture which faithfully
reproduces what is actually before them.
We may not dwell on the pleasure that is derived from colour in natural
scenery, in ornament and in clothing, in the arts and industries, for
the theme is practically inexhaustible, and we would hardly have space
for even the baldest enumeration of its leading divisions. It would,
for example, be well worth while to trace the historical development
of the various standards of taste in such matters, to which this
pleasure has at different times conformed. The special emphasis given
to colour in the last decade has deeply influenced our poetry, and
is characteristically illustrated in the writings of Jacobsen and G.
Keller. The following passage from Martin Salander could hardly have
been written in any century before the present one: “The setting sun,
whose level rays shone through the handsome dining room, glittered on
the golden lining of a large beaker, which stood before him, freshly
filled with ruddy wine. The yellow gleam shot with indescribable beauty
through the heart of the rich red transparent fluid. Martin raised his
eyes from the glowing colour picture, which, coming direct from the
open sky, was like a flaming seal for his thoughts. A sprightly lady
sitting opposite him noticed that a rosy shimmer from the cup spread
over his animated face, and begged him to sit still, for he looked
beautiful. Flattered, he kept his face unmoved while the reflection
vibrated with the wine in the cup, for a slight tremor ran along the
table and disturbed the contents of the cups.” It is interesting, too,
to note that boys concern themselves much less about colour than girls
do, and yet the history of painting seems to show that the masculine
sex has a finer colour sense than the feminine. This is probably
explained by the fact that boys early develop the fighting instinct,
and the active motor side of their nature keeping perceptive play
activities more in the background, without necessarily depreciating
their inborn capacity for enjoyment of colour.
I now turn to the subject of play with colour, as it is practised by
adults. In his classification of the arts Kant has, strangely enough,
inserted a colour art besides painting, because he looks upon the
latter as pre-eminently linear. As a matter of fact, there are several
colour arts. Such, to a certain extent, was the glass tinting of the
middle ages, which resembles æsthetic tapestry weaving more than it
does painting. Pyrotechnics, too, produce very lively enjoyment by
means of the play of light and colour, and finally we have that modern
invention, the serpentine dance, which seems to be quite near to music
in the direction of sensuous gratification, while far below it as a
means of intellectual expression. Those modern painters who strive only
to impart colour-tone and harmony, to make the effect of their pictures
resemble that of music, are far surpassed by the serpentine dance (a
fact which is sufficient to prove that such an aim is mistaken). Here
is actual rhythmical movement, ecstasy terminating in itself, waving
and attenuation as of tone, and, above all, the thing that moves us so,
the succession of glowing colours on a dark background, whose intensity
takes hold of the beholder’s soul as only the noblest of musical
instruments or perfectly harmonious voices can.
(_c_) Perception of Form