DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER DURING THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF LIFE.
Having examined the earliest and distinctly hereditary germs of the
laughing impulse in the child, we may pass to the consideration of its
expansion and specialisation during the first years. Although, so far
as I am aware, the new child-study has not yet produced a methodical
record of the changes which this interesting expression of feeling
undergoes, we may by help of such data as are accessible be able to
trace out some of the main directions of its development.
Two closely connected problems are involved here: (_a_) how the
expressive movements, the laugh and the smile, themselves change
and get differentiated; and (_b_) how the psychical process which
precedes and excites these expressive movements grows in complexity
and differences itself into the various forms of gaiety or amusement
enumerated above.
In dealing with these early manifestations we shall, of course, look
for reactions which are spontaneous, in the sense of not being due to
imitation and the lead of others. Yet it will not always be easy to
determine what are such. It has been pointed out above that laughter
is one of the most contagious of the expressive movements. Children,
therefore, who are much given to imitation may be {187} expected to
show this contagiousness in a particularly clear manner.
The difficulties are, however, not really so formidable as they might
at first seem to be. If a child is, on the one hand, highly susceptible
to the contagion of laughter, there is, on the other, no expression
of his feeling in which he is more spontaneous. The swift directness
of the “natural” or spontaneous laugh may be readily discriminated by
a fine observer. Not only so, but a difference may be detected in the
tone of the laughter when it is perfectly natural and real, and when
it is merely imitative and artificial. The note of affected laughter
is well known to careful observers of children. It is particularly
plain where a child is not merely reproducing the laughter of others
at the moment, but has it suggested to him by others that a thing is
laughable. Miss Shinn’s niece developed at the end of the second year a
forced laugh on hearing the word “funny” employed by others.
The best safeguard against this error is to choose an only child who is
well isolated from mirthful surroundings. This need not be so cruel an
experiment as it looks. In the social world of the merry little Ruth,
nobody, we are told, was a “laughing person”. This circumstance gives
great value to the observations made on this child. Her laughter was
probably as purely self-initiated as anything in child-life can be.
It may be added that, even if we could not eliminate the imitative and
the artificial element, there would still be a pretty wide field for
careful observation in the child’s own freer type of mirth. For, as
all his friends know, his hearty laughter is frequently a response to
things which leave us dull “grown-ups” wholly unaffected, or affected
in quite another way. {188}
With regard to the development of the expressive movements themselves
I can find but few data at hand. These are enough, however, to show
that the process of differentiation commences during the first year.
Mrs. Moore tells us that her boy in the thirty-third week acquired a
new form of smile “which gradually but not entirely supplanted the
(earlier) broad open-mouthed smile. . . . The nose was wrinkled up, the
eyes nearly closed. . . . This smile seemed to express an extreme and
more conscious enjoyment.”[120] Preyer remarks that his boy developed
in the last three months of the first year “a more conscious movement
of laughter,” which, presumably, had a different character as an
expressive movement. In the case of the boy C., of whom I have written
elsewhere, a new and clearly differenced note was detected in the laugh
of defiance (to be referred to later) which appeared early in the
second year. Mrs. Hogan says she noticed a “mischievous laugh” at the
age of fifty-five weeks, whereas Preyer remarks that the first “roguish
laugh” occurred in his boy’s case at the end of the second year. A more
precise record of the phonetic changes in laughter during the first two
or three years is greatly to be desired.
The movements of laughter are subject to the laws of movement in
general, Repetition and Habit. They tend to perfect themselves by
practice; and the result probably involves a strengthening and an
expansion of the wide-ranging organic commotion which makes up the
reaction. A child of four will laugh on being tickled much more
vigorously than one of two.[121] Moreover, the effect of repeated
exercises of the function would seem, as already {189} hinted, to
involve the setting up in the motor-centres, from which the discharge
in laughter issues, a condition of high instability, so that a very
slight application of the stimulus, or (as in the case of tickling) the
mere threat to apply this, suffices to evoke the reaction. Lastly, this
work of organisation will plainly involve a fixing of the connection in
the brain-centres between the effect of the stimulation and the motor
reaction. We say that the impulse of laughter has become associated
with a definite kind of sense-presentation. The instant response of
a child to the threatening fingers is a clear example of the result
of such an associative co-ordination. Other examples are seen when a
particular sight or sound takes on permanently a funny character. A
child that has come to regard a figure in a picture book or an odd
sound made by the nurse as funny will laugh whenever this recurs or is
spoken of, provided that the mood of the moment is favourable. This
is a noteworthy illustration of the way in which the action of the
novel and unexpected—which, as we all allow, has a large _rôle_ in
the excitation of laughter—may be replaced by that of an antagonistic
force, namely, habit, which itself appears to secure the hilarious
response.
It may be added that so far as Habit comes in, reducing the importance
of the initial psychical stage, and rendering the reaction automatic,
the theory of Lange and James applies fairly well. The feeling of
genial hilarity is in this case largely the reflex mental effect of the
movements themselves, including the whole organic commotion brought
about.
Coming now to the development of the psychical element in laughter, we
may, by way of introduction, refer to certain principles which ought to
be useful.
(_a_) To begin with, any variety of emotional reaction {190} excited
by a particular kind of presentation appears, as it is repeated,
to undergo a process of development, taking on more of fulness and
complexity. A feeling of attachment to a person or to a place, or of
admiration for a cherished work of art, grows fuller and deeper with
the establishment of a relation of intimacy. Dimly realised resonances
of former like experiences melt into, and deepen the feeling, and new
elements are woven into it by associative complication, and by growing
reflection. This increasing complexity affects both the ideational
basis of the emotion and the closely connected emotional tone
itself.[122]
At first sight we might be disposed to think that the feeling of sudden
joy at the back of a merry explosion would prove to be an exception
to this law. Since an element of novelty, a sense of joyous mental
collapse under a sudden, yet harmless stimulus, runs through all our
laughter, there might seem to be no room for any increase of depth and
volume. But this is not so. A child’s feeling of the “fun of it” at
the approach of the tickling hand seems to gain in volume and force
with the repetition of the experience. The zest of the enjoyment of a
laughing romp with the nurse, or, better, with the father, of watching
the funny ways of a kitten, and so forth, grows fuller because of the
increasing complication of the psychosis behind the laughter.[123]
(_b_) In the second place the development of an emotion is essentially
a differentiation of it, not merely into a more definite kind of
experience as a whole, but into a number of {191} distinguishable
sub-varieties of feeling. In other words, the reaction is called forth
by new excitants and new modes of stimulation which give rise to
mental complexes somewhat different from those caused by the earlier
excitants. Thus, as we mentally develop, admirations having a richer
ideational structure and more complexity of feeling-tone take the
place of the first simple ones, which last die out or survive only as
rudimentary processes.
This enlargement of the field of exciting objects, with the concomitant
differencing of the emotional state into a larger and larger number of
shades, is the outcome of the whole process of mental growth. It means,
first of all, the growing differentiation of the child’s experience,
that is, of his perceptions and ideas, as well as the expansion of
his reflective processes. In this way a modified admiration attaches
itself to a new kind of object, _e.g._, works of art, virtuous actions,
when these come to be perceived and reflected on in such a way as to
disclose their admirable side.
In all such extensions the emotional reaction remains in its essential
elements one and the same experience. We may say, if we like, that
the expression has been “transferred” to a new situation or a new
experience, through the working of a force which has been called “the
analogy of feeling”.[124]
This process of extension by analogy of situation and attitude may
be seen to be a constituent in the development of laughter. Taking
its primitive form to be the expression of a sudden raising of the
feeling-tone of consciousness to the level of gladness—which elevation
may be supposed to {192} involve at least an appreciable sense of
relief from a foregoing state of strain or oppressive dulness—we may
readily see how the reaction is passed on, so to speak, to analogous
mental attitudes which are developed later.
Let us take as an example a child who, having reached a dim
apprehension of the customary behaviour of things begins to laugh at
certain odd deviations from this. Here the transition appears clearly
to be a kind of transference mediated by the identity of the mental
attitude with that of the laughter of an earlier stage, say at the
sight of the new and entertaining baubles. Similarly when, after the
consciousness of rule is developed, a child roguishly “tries it on” by
pretending to disobey, we may regard the new outburst of the spirit
of fun as a natural transition from an earlier variety, the laughing
pretence of running away from mother or nurse.
Nevertheless, we have to do here with more than a mere transference.
Such extensions always involve some amount of complication and
enrichment of the mirthful experience. These later forms of mental
gaiety depend on the development of more complex psychoses, both on
the intellectual and on the emotional side. The first amusement at the
sight of the ill-matched, the inconsequent, implies the advance of an
analytic reflection up to the point of a dim perception of relations.
A large part of the extension of the field of the laughable depends
on this intellectual advance, a finer and more precise apprehension
of what is presented, in its parts and so as a whole, as also in
its relations to other things. With respect to the other condition,
expansion of the emotional life, it is enough to remark that certain
forms of laughter which fall within the first years of life arise
directly out of a deepening of the emotional consciousness as a whole,
_e.g._, the awakening of the “self-feeling,” as seen {193} in the
laughter of success or triumph; or, on the other hand, of tenderness
and sympathy, as illustrated in the first rudiments of a kindly humour.
We see, then, that, as a feature in development, differentiation
into a multiplicity of forms is inseparably connected with another
feature, complication. The gradual appearance of a number of laughters
variously toned, such as that of slightly malicious elation at collapse
of dignity, of entertainment at an intellectual inconsequence, and
of a kindly amusement at a petty disaster, means that the elemental
feeling of joy is getting modified by accretions or absorptions of new
psychical elements.
A final remark is needed to prevent misapprehension. Among the several
processes of complication which underlie this differentiation of the
laughing psychosis, some tend to arrest or tone down the reaction.
It is thus that, when sympathy comes to be united with the laughing
impulse, the gaiety of the latter is apt to become subdued into
something between a smile and the gentlest of laughs. In addition to
this inhibitory effect of heterogeneous emotional elements we have that
of new conative attitudes. A child soon finds out that a good deal of
his rollicking laughter is an offence, and the work of taming the too
wild spirits begins.[125]
With these general considerations to help us, we may now look at the
course of development of the laughing experience during the first three
years.
It may be premised that the smile and the laugh only become gradually
differentiated as signs of qualitatively dissimilar attitudes. In the
case of Ruth the two expressions remained for a time interchangeable,
and frequently {194} alternated in the same fit of joyous delight. But
about the 129th day the smile, it is remarked, began to take on one of
its specialised functions, the social one of greeting.
Coming now to laughter, we have found that it begins at an early date
to pass from a general sign of sudden increase of pleasure or good
spirits into something akin to mirthful play. This has been illustrated
in the early responses to tickling, and, a little later, to simple
forms of a laughing game (_e.g._, bo-peep).
By what process of change, one may ask, does the impulse to laugh when
the heart suddenly grows glad pass into the laughter of play? Allowing,
as seems certain, that the play-impulse is inherited, can we point out
any psychological connection between the two?
The answer has already been given in substance in our general analysis
of the causes of laughter. A sudden rise of pleasurable consciousness,
when it possesses the mind and becomes gladness, say the infant’s flood
of delight at the swinging coloured baubles, necessarily dissolves, for
the time, the tense, serious attitude into a loose, play-like one. The
child’s consciousness is now all gladness in face of his bauble; and
play is just another way of effecting this dissolution of the serious
attitude into a large gladness. Not only so, but the elemental mood
of laughter resembles the play-mood, since it finds its satisfaction
in pretence or make-believe. The gladdening object divested of all
serious interest becomes a play-thing, a mere semblance of the thing
of practical account which the child observed in the serious moments.
Its greeting by the senses may be described, indeed, as a kind of play
of these senses. Hence, the specialisation of the primal laughter
of delight into that of fun would appear to be one of the simplest
processes in the whole development of the emotion. {195}
We may now briefly trace out some of the phases of development of these
two primal forms of laughter.
With regard to the laughter of delight and jollity, we find, to judge
from the careful record of Ruth’s emotional utterances, that there
is a rapid development during and after the fourth month.[126] In
this month, we read, the child was thrown into a state of vivacious
delight—which expressed itself in smiles, in movements, in cooing and
crowing—by the faces and voices which may be said to have “played”
to her as she sat at table. The advent of the meal was that of a new
joyous world, and, if the child could have spoken, she would probably
have exclaimed, “Oh, what fun!” The large change effected by the return
of a familiar face and voice after an absence was only another way of
transforming her world into a merry one.
Towards the end of the fifth month, the note-book speaks over and
over again of “jollity” and “high spirits,” of the child’s “laughing
with glee when any one smiled or spoke to her,” of “being exceedingly
jolly, smiling, kicking and sputtering,” and so forth. This growing
gleefulness seemed to be the outcome of new expansions of the
pleasurable consciousness, of a pure “Lebenslust”. No doubt it had its
obscure source in a pleasurable cœnaesthesis, the result of merrily
working digestive and other processes of organic life. Yet it had its
higher conditions, also, in the expansion of the life of the senses and
in the growing range of the muscular activities. Laughter and shouts of
joy would, we are told, accompany not merely the inrush of delightful
sights and sounds, but the new use of bodily powers in exploring and
experimenting. {196}
This gaiety in taking possession of her new world showed itself in the
greeting of friendly faces. The new appearance of her grandfather after
an absence excited her laughter on the 133rd day. By about the middle
of the year, the child had, like Preyer’s boy, developed a jubilant
greeting for her social belongings, nodding a friendly nod with all the
signs of huge delight.
These outbursts of laughing joy may sometimes be seen to have been
preceded by a distinctly disagreeable state of feeling. In the case
of Ruth, we are told that the fit of jollity broke out, on one or two
occasions, upon “instantaneous relief from great general discomfort”.
Again, on the 222nd day, having awoke and felt timid, she laughed with
joy and a sense of relief when her mother came into the room. I have
other evidence to show that this laughter of overflowing gladness is
often to some extent a relief from constraint. Thus, a boy of one and
a half years who had a new nurse, and for some days behaved with great
gravity when with her, was during the same period “extremely hilarious”
when alone with his parents.
The gladness of the world grew larger to this happy girl when, towards
the end of the seventh month, she was taken into the open air, and,
shortly after, allowed to lie on a quilt and roll on the ground. The
wooing of the passing freshness, the play of sun and shadow, the large
stir of life in moving and sounding things, all this possessed her and
made her “laugh and ejaculate with pleasure”. With this may be compared
a note on a boy nine months old, who, lying in a clothes-basket in
a garden one summer’s day, looked up at the leaves dancing in the
sunshine and laughed with “a hearty noisy laugh”.
The development of bodily power in this same half-year brought our
little maiden much gleeful laughter. {197} Any experience of movement,
passive as well as active, filled her with noisy hilarity. To ride
on anybody’s foot brought out, at the end of the fifth month, the
unmistakable signs of hilarious rapture. A month later, the gleeful
explosion was called out by the new frolicsome experience of being
jumped and tossed. Similar expressions of mirth occurred when new
active movements were accomplished. In the record of the middle of the
ninth month, we are told of a medley of movements, tumbling on the
floor or lawn, sitting up and lying down, raising herself on the feet
and hands, etc., which brought her “singular joy”.
A part of the gleefulness of this widening experience of movement
is due to its unexpected results. It seems probable that the first
successful experiments in crawling, climbing and the rest may give
rise to new complexes of muscular and other sensations which come as
a joyful surprise. Such delightful surprises grow more varied and
impressive when the arms and hands begin to experiment. For example,
a little girl, aged two and a quarter years, happened when throwing a
ball at random to jerk it over her head, and was seized with a spasm of
hilarity. The gleeful outburst is apt to occur, too, later on when a
child first achieves the feat—half-wonderful, half-amusing—of walking,
of running and of jumping.[127]
In these expanding processes of jollity or gleefulness we may detect
the beginnings of more specialised forms of laughing enjoyment. Thus,
in the outburst of merriment which winds up a successful attempt to
climb, we recognise the germ of that mode of reaction which is apt to
follow at the moment of sudden relaxation of tension on the attainment
of an end. We may be sure that a child {198} of nine months finds the
effort to stand a very serious and exhausting strain; and may infer
that the laughter which occurs in this case is largely due to momentary
relaxations of this strain.
But again, these experiences clearly supply conditions favourable to
the emergence of that “sudden glory” which enters into successful
effort. The “shouting and laughing” of little Ruth (forty-five weeks)
on completing the magnificent exploit of climbing the staircase
had, as her aunt’s epithet “exultant” recognises, something of the
free-breathing jubilation of the successful mountain-climber. We are
told further that, in the tenth month, Ruth would break into the same
exultant laugh after some successful mental effort, such as pointing
out the right picture when this was asked for.
Here, then, we have the laughter of a joyous feeling-tone complicated
by new elements. These include, not merely the delightful feeling
of relief after prolonged effort, but some dim form of an agreeable
consciousness of growing power and of an expanding self. In the glee
on mastering a new movement, _e.g._, riding on somebody’s foot, we see
traces of a more distinctly playful mood. We may now follow out the
development of this large variety of gamesome mirth.
The overflow of the health-filled reservoirs of muscular activity
begins at an early stage to wear an unmistakable aspect of playfulness.
The first exercises in crawling, accompanied by various sounds of
contentment and gladness, are indeed recognisable by all as a kind
of play. As the forces of the organism establish themselves a more
manifest bent to a romping kind of game appears. This, as a game
in which co-operation enters, involves a development of the social
consciousness, and its gleefulness comes {199} in part from the
reverberations of mutual sympathy. A good example of the hilarity of
a romping game is Ruth’s uproarious delight, in the seventh month,
when dragged about on a carpet, an experience which involved, of
course, much loss of equilibrium and some amount of awkward bumping.
That the bumps were of the essence of the enjoyment is confirmed by
the fact that, in the tenth month, she would like to stand, holding
on to a chair, and then deliberately to let herself go so as to “come
down sitting with a thud,” winding up the performance by “looking up
laughing and triumphant”. Another game involving exciting jolts was
liked in the middle of the twelfth month. The child was shot in her
carriage, now from the aunt to the mother, and now back, each little
ride ending up with a jolt, over which she grew very merry. Later on,
(at the end of the twentieth month) she laughed heartily on being
knocked down by her dog in a too pushful bit of play; and she enjoyed
in like manner some pretty rough play at the hands of a nine-year-old
boy companion.
This mirthful treatment of romps, which must have involved a palpable
amount of discomfort, is interesting as showing how laughter plays
about the confines of the serious. This little girl seems, up to the
age of three, at least, to have been curiously indifferent to pain.
Yet she was not wanting in the common childish timidity. It looks,
then, as if the fun of these rather rough games turned on dissolutions
of nascent attitudes of apprehension, and, consequently, the laughter
expressed something of a joyous contempt of fear. Indeed, it seems
likely that an element of this joyous rebound from a half-developed
state of fear entered into much of this child’s laughter, already
illustrated, on succeeding in a rather risky experiment, such as
climbing the staircase. We read that, like other vigorous {200}
children, she was a keen pursuer of new experiences, even in cases in
which she knew that some pain was involved. The passion for trying new
experiments seems to have urged her on, in spite of nascent fear; and
the final shouting and laughing may well have announced, along with
the joy of successful effort, a sense of triumph over the weaker timid
self. The ability, illustrated in these hardy experiments, to turn
situations suggestive of danger into “larkish” play, was a singular
proof of the firm foundation on which this child’s prevalent mode of
gaiety reposed.
In some cases Ruth’s play would take on a form which clearly involved
a triumphing over fear. Thus, we are told that when, on the 429th day,
she was asked to find “auntie” in the dark she at first stood still
and silent. Then, when her head was touched by somebody’s hands, she
broke into laughter and started off by herself to explore in the dark.
Later on, with the growth of a bolder spirit, this laughing triumph
over fear extended itself, so that in the twenty-ninth month she played
at bear with her uncle, going into a dark room, with her hand in her
aunt’s, and enjoying “the exhilaration of unreal alarm”; and when the
uncle sprang out from his dark hiding-place, growling fearfully, she
“laughed, shrieked and fled all in one”. If the uncle went a little too
far in the use of the alarming she would check him by saying, “Don’t do
that again”.
In these cases, it is evident, we have a complex psychosis with
alternating phases. The awful delight which vents itself at once
in a laugh and in a shriek and a flight is certainly of a mixed
feeling-tone. The laughter is the note of a triumphant spirit, and yet
of one in which, in the moment of triumph, the nascent fear leaves its
trace.
In these laughing games we have clearly an element of {201}
make-believe. A firm persuasion, low down in consciousness, of the
harmlessness of the coming bump and of the human bear in the blackness
keeps the little girl’s heart steady and turns the adventure into fun.
At the same time, the play as “pretending” would seem to involve at
least a half-formed expectation of something, and probably, too, a
final taste of delicious surprise at the fully realised nothingness of
the half-expected. In some forms of play-pretence this element of final
annihilation of expectation becomes more conspicuous and the distinct
source of the hilarious exultation. When, for example, in the eleventh
month, Ruth sitting on the floor held out her arms to be taken up, and
the mother, instead of doing this, stooped and kissed the child, there
was a perfect peal of laughter again and again.
The increase of muscular activity shown in the laughing romps leads
to the extension of mirthful enjoyment in another way. A vigorous
child, even when a girl, grows aggressive and attempts various forms
of playful attack. As we have seen, to tickle another is merely one
variety of a large class of teasing operations, in which the teased as
well as the teasing party is supposed to find his merriment. Regarding
now the child as teaser, we see that he very early begins to exercise
at once his own powers and others’ endurance. The pulling of whiskers
is one of the earliest forms of practical jokes. Ruth took to this
pastime in the first week of the fifth month. By the end of the sixth
month the little tormentor had grown aware of her power, and “became
most eager to pull, with laughter and exultant clamour, at the nose,
ear, and especially the hair, of any one that held her”. The boy C.,
at the same age, delighted in pulling his sister’s hair, and was moved
by her cries only to outbursts of laughter. As intelligence develops,
these practical jokes grow more cunning. Another little {202} girl,
of whom I have written elsewhere under the initial M., when seventeen
months old, asked for her father’s “tick-tick,” looking very saucy;
and as he stooped to give it, she tugged at his moustache, “and almost
choked with laughter”.
With this teasing of human companions we have that of animals. When
sixteen months old, Ruth would chase the cat with shouts of laughter.
Another child, a boy, about the same age, went considerably further,
and taking the toilet puff from its proper place went deliberately
to “Moses,” the cat, who was sitting unsuspectingly before the fire,
and proceeded to powder him, each new application of the puff being
accompanied by a short chuckle.
There is no need of reading into this laughter the note of cruel
exultation over suffering.[128] Ruth’s mischievous doings would take
forms which had not even the semblance of cruelty. There was merely
impish playfulness in the act of snatching off her grandmother’s
spectacles and even her cap, with full accompaniment of laughter, in
the twenty-second month when lifted to say good-night. In much the same
spirit the other little girl, M., delighted, when two years old, in
untying the maid’s apron strings and in other jocose forms of mischief.
The laughing mood in these cases is understandable as a rioting in
newly realised powers, a growing exultation as the consciousness
of ability to produce striking effects grows clearer. Ruth, in her
eleventh month, blew a whistle violently and looked round laughing to
her aunt and the others present. Here, surely, the laughter was that of
{203} rejoicing in a new power. This sense of power implies a clearer
form of “self-feeling”. A child may grow keenly conscious of the self
in such moments of newly tried powers, as he grows in “the moments of
intense pain”. This laughter, then, furnishes a good illustration of
the sudden glory on which Hobbes lays emphasis.
I have assumed that in this laughing mischief we have to do with a form
of (playful) teasing. The little assailant enjoys the fun of the attack
and counts on your enjoying it also. The indulgence of others, even
if they do not show an equal readiness for the pastime, removes all
thought of disobedience, of lawlessness.
Yet things do not commonly remain at this point of perfectly innocent
fun. The gathering energies of the child, encouraged by indulgence
in games of romp, are pretty certain to develop distinctly rowdyish
proceedings. Ruth, for example, when about twenty-one months old,
scrambled defiantly on to the table at the close of a meal, seized on
the salts, and scampered about laughing. About the same time this new
spirit of rowdyism showed itself in flinging a plate across the room
and other mutinous acts. Little boys, I suspect, are much given to
experiments in a violent kind of fun which they know to be disorderly.
One of them, aged two years eight and a half months, was fond of
“trying it on” by pulling hair-pins out of his mother’s hair, splashing
in the puddles in the road, and so forth, to her great perplexity and
his plainly pronounced enjoyment.
In these outbursts of laughing rowdyism we see more than an escape of
pent-up energies, more than a mere overflow of “high spirits”; they are
complicated by a new factor, something of the defiant temper of the
rebel. A child of two has had some experience of real disobedience,
and may be said to have developed simple ideas of order {204} and
law. We may reasonably infer, then, that in this turbulent fun there
is some consciousness of setting law at defiance. The presence of this
new psychical factor is seen in the alteration of the laughing sounds
themselves. In Ruth’s case, we are told, they were “rough” and unlike
the natural and joyous utterance. It is further seen in the method of
the fun, for, as Miss Shinn observes, Ruth “tried repeatedly to see how
far she could go safely in roguish naughtiness”.
I think we find in this behaviour a clear instance of laughter becoming
an ingredient in the attitude of throwing off a customary restraint.
It is the early analogue of the laughter of the rowdies bent on
window-smashing, of the riotous enjoyment of the people at festal
seasons when the lord of misrule holds sway.
The degree of conscious defiance of order may, no doubt, vary greatly.
In much of what we view as the disorderly mirth of a child this
ingredient of the laughing mood may be small and sub-conscious; yet
at times it grows distinct and prominent. Thus, Ruth, in the eleventh
month, developed a special expression for the attitude of defiance
when disobeying, namely, a comical face with a wrinkling of the nose,
together with laughter. The boy C., early in the third year, would give
out a laugh of a short mocking ring on receiving a prohibition, _e.g._,
not to slap his dog companion. He would remain silent and laugh in a
half-contemptuous way. Sometimes in his moods of defiance he would go
so far as to strike a member of his family and then laugh. His laugh
was sometimes highly suggestive of the mood of derision.
In this note of warlike challenge we have a point of kinship with the
“crowing” laughter of the victor. Yet it is doubtful whether a child
at this early age reaches the {205} mental attitude of a mocking
contempt. Preyer tells us that he has never observed scornful laughter
within the first four years.[129]
When the consciousness of the unruly in these “high jinks” becomes
distinct and begins to be oppressive, the laughter will be less
boisterous and express more of playful pretence. The child learns to be
satisfied with making a feint to rebel, with a make-believe unruliness.
Ruth, on the 236th day, laughed when pretending to disobey by biting
off the petals of flowers, and on the 455th day, by stuffing buttons
into her mouth. The boy C., when about the same age, had his little way
of turning disobedience into a game. In the seventeenth month, when he
was bidden by his mother to give up a picture he had got possession
of, he walked up to her and made a show of handing over his unlawful
possession, and then drew his hands back with much laughing enjoyment.
A more complicated psychical attitude appears when such laughing
pretence at disobedience takes on a “roguish” aspect. Here we have, not
only an element of slight uneasiness, but one of self-consciousness,
which together give a distinct complexion to the whole mental attitude
and to its expression.
This ingredient of a timid self-consciousness or shyness under the
scrutiny of others appears, as we know, some time after the simpler
forms of fear. In Ruth’s case it seems to have showed itself on the
123rd day in a distinctly “roguish” attitude. When at dinner and spoken
to by her grandfather, she turned her head as far as she could. On the
141st day, too, when held in her nurse’s arms, she {206} smiled at her
grandfather and others and then ducked her head. This expression of
roguish self-consciousness had more of the look of a nervous explosion
in the eleventh month, when the girl laughed on being set on her feet
in a corner where she was much noticed; and again, in the thirteenth
month, as she tumbled about and showed herself off. This laughter,
with something of the _gêne_ of self-consciousness in it, was, we
are told, not to be confounded with the expression of a complacent
self-consciousness.
The element of an awkward shyness comes into much of the early playful
“trying it on”. In the case of the boy C., just mentioned, it was
seen in the sly, upward look of the eyes and the short, half-nervous
laugh, when he was face to face with authority and disposed to play at
disobedience. The fuller roguish laugh occurs frequently along with a
risky bit of play, as when a boy of one and a half year would point to
himself when asked for a finger-recognition of somebody else. In such
cases the laughter seems like an attempt to get rid of the element of
risk. When the masking of the impulse of fun by timidity is greater,
the expression reaching only to a tentative smile, the roguishness of a
child may easily wear a look of kinship with our grown-up humour.[130]
A full account of the development of laughter during these first years,
as an ingredient of the play-mood, would be of great value. It would,
in particular, help us to see how the reaction comes to be definitely
co-ordinated with the sense of make-believe, and the attitude of
throwing off the burdensome restrictions of reality. The vocal mirth
of children, as they give reins to their fancy, attests to {207} the
weight of this burden and to the intense delight which comes from its
momentary abandonment.
In seeking for the first traces of the laughter of play and of
defiance, we are not greatly troubled by the interfering influence of
others. No doubt this influence is at work even here. The nurse and
the parents are pretty certain to laugh at much of the roguish “trying
it on”; and this laughter will react upon the child’s own merriment.
In play, too, in which others usually take some part, there is this
action of older persons’ laughter. Still, in the main, the utterances
are spontaneous, and at most are reinforced by way of some sympathetic
rapport with another.
It is otherwise when we come to consider the first instances of
laughing amusement at the presentation of “funny” objects. The lead of
others now complicates the phenomenon to a much more serious extent.
The recognition of an object as “funny” implies some detection of a
quality which acts on others as well as on the self;[131] consequently,
it presupposes a certain development of the social consciousness.
Hence, some cautiousness is needed in noting the first clear examples
of a perception of the quality. Before language comes and supplies
a means of self-interpretation, we cannot safely say that because
a child laughs in presence of an object there is a recognition of
something objectively “funny”. As we have seen, such laughter may be
fully accounted for by supposing that the object has an exhilarating
or gladdening effect on the child’s feeling. On the other hand, when
language is added we have to cope with the difficulty, already touched
on, that a child’s pronouncements are apt to be controlled by what
others laugh at and call funny. Nevertheless, here, too, the child’s
spontaneity and his way of discovering his own {208} sources of
amusement may enable us to overcome the difficulties.
Our study of the conditions of the perception suggests that a true
enjoyment of presentations as oddities is not to be expected at a
very early date. And this, first of all, for the reason that the
new, especially if it is strange, even though fitted to draw forth a
joyous laugh, may easily excite other and inhibitory attitudes. An
infant, during the first year of life, if not later also, is apt to
be disturbed and apparently alarmed at the approach of new objects,
so as to be unaffected by its rejoicing aspect; or, if he feels this,
the laughter may be accompanied by signs of fear. Ruth, on her 254th
day, greeted a kitten which her father brought to show her with “all
gradations from laughter and joy to fear”. In the second place—and this
is of more importance—the recognition of an object as funny presupposes
the work of experience in organising a rudimentary feeling for what
is customary. This, again, involves a development of the social
consciousness and of an idea of a common order of things.
Now all this requires a certain amount of time. It hardly seems
reasonable to look for a true apprehension of the laughable till some
time after the appearance of an imitation of others’ laughter and
play-gestures, which was first observed, in the case of the boy C.,
in the ninth month. Nor could it well be expected until after a child
had acquired some understanding of others’ language, so as to note how
they agree in naming and describing certain objects as funny, which
understanding only begins to be reached in the second half of the
year. Hence, I should hesitate to speak of a clear recognition of a
laughable object as such before the last quarter of the year. It seems
to me, for example, a little rash to say that a boy of five months, who
always laughed inordinately when a very jolly-looking physician, {209}
the image of Santa Claus, paid him a visit, displayed a “sense of
humour”.[132]
When once the idea of objects of common laughter begins to grow clear a
child is, of course, able to develop perceptions of the funny along his
own lines. This he certainly seems to do pretty briskly. The freshness
of his world, the absence of the dulling effect of custom which is seen
in the perceptions of older folk, renders him an excellent pioneer in
the largely unknown territory of King Laughter.
Among the sense-presentations which awaken the infantile laugh are new
and queer sounds of various sorts; and they may well be selected for a
study of the transitions from mere joyous exclamation to a hilarious
greeting of what is “funny”. Early in the second half of the first
year, a child in good health will begin to surmount the alarms of the
ear, and to turn what is new and strange into fun. About the 222nd day
brave little Ruth was able to laugh, not only at such an odd sound as
that produced when her aunt rattled a tin cup on her teeth, but at that
of a piano. Preyer’s boy, later in the year, was given to laughing at
various new and out-of-the-way sounds, such as that of the piano, of
gurgling or clearing the throat, and even of thunder.
Odd sounding articulations appear to be especially provocative of
laughter about this time. As early as the 149th day, Ruth laughed at
new sounds invented by the aunt, such as “Pah! Pah!” Queer guttural
sounds seem to have a specially tickling effect.
After words and their commoner forms have begun to grow familiar,
new and odd-sounding words, especially names, are apt to be greeted
with laughter. The child M., when one year nine months old, was much
impressed by the {210} exclamation “good gracious!” made by her mother
on discovering that the water was coming through the ceiling of a room;
and the child would sometimes repeat it in pure fun “shaking with
laughter”. When she was two years seven months old she laughed on first
hearing the name “Periwinkle”.
In these and similar cases of the hilarious response to sounds we
seem to have, well within the first nine months, a germ of a feeling
for the odd or droll. The early development of this sense of the
funny in sounds is aided by their aggressive force for the infant’s
consciousness, and by the circumstance that for the young ear they
have pronounced characteristics which are probably lost as development
advances, and they are attended to, not for their own sake, but merely
as signs of things which interest us.
The psychical process involved in the transition may be described as
follows. Sounds, while by reason of their suddenness and unexpectedness
they are apt to take the consciousness off its guard and to produce a
kind of nervous shock, are of all sense-stimuli the most exhilarating.
The sudden rousing of the consciousness to a large joyous commotion
is the fundamental fact. Nor will the jar of the shock, when the
sense-organ develops and becomes hardier, interfere with this. On
the contrary, it will add something in the shape of an agreeable
rebound from a nascent attitude of uneasiness.[133] The laughter of
the child at the first sounds of the piano, which have frightened
many a child and other young animal, is, in part, a shout of victory.
There is here, too, an element of “sudden glory” in the rejoicing, as
the new expanding self is dimly conscious of its superiority to the
half-alarmed and shrinking self of the moment before. {211}
In this case, it is evident, we have to do with a greeting of the
laughable which will vary greatly according to the psycho-physical
condition of the child. The same child that laughs at a new sound
to-day will to-morrow, when in another mood, be disturbed by a quite
similar surprise of the ear.
But more is involved in this laughter. The sudden and slightly
disturbing attack of the ear by new sounds is apt to wear for the
child’s consciousness a game-like aspect. We have only to think of
the nursery rhymes, alluded to by Miss Shinn, in which the excitement
of fun is secured by an explosive shock at the end, games closely
analogous to the rides which terminated in a good bump. In these rhymes
the fun lies in the shock, though only half-unexpected—a shock which
has in it the very soul of frivolous play, since it comes at the end of
a series of quiet orderly sounds. May not the new sounds, the guttural
utterances and the rest, affect a child in a like manner as a kind of
disorderly play? For a child’s ear, pitched for the intrinsic character
of a sound, they may hold much which is expressive of the play-mood.
This will apply not only to utterances like the “Pah! Pah!” which are
clearly recognised as play, but to many others produced by a nurse or a
mother who is given to entertaining. Perhaps the gurgling sounds which
moved the mirth of Preyer’s boy appeared laughter-like.
This tendency to look on certain sounds as a kind of play seems to
supply a psychical link in the development of a feeling for the odd
and out-of-the-way as such. We have seen how the play-impulse “tries
it on” when the restraints of rule grow too irksome. I suspect that
the mirthful appreciation of the queer and out-of-the-way grows out of
this inclination to a playful disorderliness or law-breaking. A child
is apt to feel oppressed with the rules of propriety {212} imposed on
him. By these rules quite a terrible multiplicity of noises is branded
as “naughty,” and the prohibition tends to fix the playful impulse
precisely in the direction of the forbidden sounds. Children have a
way, moreover, of projecting their experiences and their inclinations
into things which we call lifeless. What more natural, then, that they
should feel these incursions of violent and quite improper-sounding
noises to be a kind of playful throwing aside of order and rule?
In the domain of the visible world, suddenness of presentation rarely
reaches, perhaps, the point of shock or joltiness. Yet there is ample
scope, here, too, for the working of the unexpected on the child’s
sensibilities. The first visual excitants of laughter, the sudden
uncovering of the face in bo-peep, the unexpected return of the
familiar face after an interval of absence, the instant transformation
of the accustomed features when the mother “makes a face,” show how
directly the surprisingly new may act on the young muscles of laughter.
Here, too, we may see how the hilarious enjoyment of the new and
out-of-the-way emerges out of play-mirth. The distorted face of the
mother produces a laugh when it has ceased to alarm and is taken as
fun.[134] According to one observer, this making of faces grows into
a standing pastime towards the end of the second year.[135] Is not
the greeting of the baby-face in the mirror, which in Ruth’s case
occurred on the 221st day (eighth month), and in that of Preyer’s boy
at the end of the ninth month, a kind of accost of a newly discovered
playmate? Perhaps the laughter of a little boy, of one and a half
year, already referred to, at the jumping of a ping-pong ball and at
a {213} spring-blind going up or coming down with a run, expressed a
recognition of something play-like.
This co-operation of the play-inclination in the perception of the
laughable in visual presentations is still more plainly illustrated
in the effect of actions and postures. The quickness of the eye of
mirth for expressions of the mood of romping play is seen in a child’s
laughter, already referred to, at the gambols of a horse or other
animal. Ruth was much entertained on her 441st day by the antics of
a dog. Especially enlivening is the appearance of quick, play-like
movements in grave elders addicted to decorous deportment. The girl
M., at the age of eighteen months, broke into boisterous laughter on
seeing her father as he ran to catch a train, with his handkerchief
hanging out of his pocket. This sudden revelation of the playful temper
may come to the child by way of postures and expressions. The awful
laws of propriety soon tend to give the look of playful licence to
certain bodily postures, especially that of lying down. The boy C.,
when twenty months old, laughed heartily on seeing his sister lying
on the ground out of doors. Making faces, pouting lips and the rest
become playful just because they are felt to be improper, the sort of
thing one only does in a disorderly moment, playful or other. May not
the drolleries—to the child’s consciousness—of animal form, for example
the long neck of the giraffe, owe something to suggestions of improper
jocose actions, such as trying to stretch oneself into Alice-like
dimensions?
In this blithe recognition of the irregular in others’ behaviour we
have the rudiment of an appreciation of the laughable, not only as
a violation of rule but as a loss of dignity. This is apparent in
such cases as the boy’s laughter at the prostrate form of his sister,
illumined as {214} it was by the observation that, at the age of
twenty-six months, he expressed great contempt at the spectacle of a
Japanese gentleman stretched on the grass in the suburban Heath, which
was the child’s daily resort, and which he seemed strongly disposed to
subject to his own code of manners. Possibly, too, there was a touch of
this appreciation of lowered dignity when the same boy, at the age of
twenty-eight months, laughed greatly on seeing his father batter in an
old hat. The laughter, complicated now by a new element of conscious
superiority, probably took on a crowing note, though our dull ears may
not be equal to a clear detection of the change. Not only so, it is
possible that the laughter of children, common in the second year, at
signs of disorderliness in the hair or dress of others, and especially
superiors, implies a perception of something like lowered rank.
In this effect of the new in the visible world different tones of
mirth are no doubt distinguishable. As the higher forms of perception
begin to develop the primitive laughter of joy may persist and combine
with later and more specialised kinds. Ruth’s voicing of merriment,
in the thirteenth month, on having a new pair of mittens put on her,
was largely an outburst of joy, though some dim sense of the oddity of
the thing probably combined with this. On the other hand, the laughter
called forth in the little girl M., at the age of twenty-one months, by
the spectacle of a doll that had lost its arms presumably had in it,
along with a sense of something weirdly absurd in the mutilated form, a
pretty keen sub-consciousness of dollish proprieties set at defiance.
Other directions in the development of this early laughter at
entertaining spectacles may be said to have their origin in the fun of
play with its pretence or make-believe. Mrs. {215} Hogan’s boy, at the
age of two years and two months, would laugh at his nurse’s pretended
efforts to put on his shoes, which, instead of getting on, flew away
wildly into freedom. This laughter was evoked at the fun of the thing,
and probably involved an interpretation of the nurse’s action as play.
Yet it had in it also, I think, the trace of an appreciation of the
absurdity of the farcical collapse of effort. This is borne out by
the fact that the boy, about the same time, would also laugh when the
nurse, not in play, tried by jumping to hang a garment on a nail just
too high for her. He may, of course, have regarded this, too, as but
a continuation of the play. Yet it seems reasonable to suppose that
the merry current had one of its sources in the perception of the
amusing aspect of failure, of effort missing its mark and lapsing into
nothingness.
I confess to have been surprised at what looks like the precocity of
some children in the matter of honouring the proprieties of conduct.
The little girl M., when only fourteen months old, is said to have
laughed in an “absurdly conscious way” at a small boy who stood by
her perambulator asking for a kiss. That kiss, we are told, was not
forthcoming. Was the laugh merely an incident in a mood of nervous
shyness, or did it signify a dim perception of “bad form” on the part
of the proposer? Much care is needed in the interpretation of such
expressive reactions. A small boy of eighteen months laughed when
his pants slipped down. But this may only have resulted from a sense
of the fun of the irregularity of the proceeding, aided perhaps by
others’ amusement. A true feeling of shame is, of course, not developed
at this age; yet a child may have caught from instruction a feeling
of the shocking impropriety of an ill-timed casting aside of the
clothes-trammels. {216}
We may find in the laughter of the child, within the period of the
first three years, pretty clear indications of the development of
a rude perception of amusing incongruities in dress and behaviour.
The young eye has a keen outlook for the proprieties in the matter
of clothes. Ruth, who was in the thirteenth month amused at seeing
her new mittens put on, showed amusement about the same date when
her pink bonnet was put on her aunt’s head. In this case, the
play-significance of the action for the child’s consciousness is
apparent. It seems fairly certain, indeed, that this higher form of a
recognition of the laughable grows out of the play-interpretation. When
at play children not only throw off rules of decorum and do improper
things, they put aside ideas of appropriateness and launch out into
bizarre discontinuities and contrarieties of action and speech. The
play-attitude, as lawless and free, tends to inconsequence. Hence the
readiness with which a child interprets such inconsequences as play.
It is the same when a child laughs at droll stories of the doings of
animals and persons. He may take fables and other fancies seriously
enough at times, but if his mind is pitched for merriment, he will
greatly appreciate the extravagant unsuitabilities of behaviour of the
heroes of his nursery books. The little girl M., when two years seven
months old, laughed gaily at a passage in a story about kittens, in
which they are made to say, “Waiter, this cat’s meat is tough;” asking
in the midst of her merriment, “Did you ever saw such funny tits?”
Along with this rudiment of merry appreciation of the spectacle of
the incongruous, we have the first crude manifestation of the closely
related feeling of amusement at the absurd. Children are said to have
no measure of the probable and possible, and to accept the wildest
fancies in {217} unquestioning faith. Yet experience begins her
educative work during these first three years, and one may detect
sporadic traces of a feeling for what is gloriously incredible. A boy,
already alluded to, aged about one and a half year, laughed as his aunt
asked him what the waves, which he was gravely observing, were saying.
The boy C., when twenty-two months old, grew quite hilarious over the
idea of flying up into the air. Some one had suggested his flying like
a bird, and he proceeded to cap the suggestion, adding, “Tit (sister)
fy air,” “gee-gee (horse) fy air”. The last idea of a flying horse
especially delighted one innocent, as yet, of Greek mythology.
Lastly, a bare allusion may be made to the early development of an
appreciation of word-play and the lighter kind of wit. That this grows
out of the play-element, the love of pretence, is at once evident.
Verbal fun, “trying it on” with an incorrect use of words and so forth,
is a common outlet of the rollicking spirits of childhood. Mrs. Hogan’s
boy, at the age of one year eight months, developed a fancy for calling
things by their wrong names, a knife a “fork,” for example. Ruth did
the same towards the end of the third year. The fun derived from
punning seems to be immense in the case of many children at the close
of our period, as when a boy on hearing his mother say she had just
called on Mrs. Fawkes asked, “Did you call on Mrs. knives too?” This
easy childish mode of satisfying a jocose bent is seen also in the use
of false statements, not seriously, but “in fun,” as the child has it.
Ruth had a fit of such merry fibbing at the end of the third year. A
child will often “try on” this kind of verbal game, when called up for
a moral lesson.[136]
This same roguish impulse to “try it on” with the {218} authorities
leads to something like a play of wit in repartee. The merry
interchange of intellectual attack and defence, which relieves so many
serious relations of adult life, grows naturally enough in the case
of children out of their relation of subjection to the grown-ups. The
playful experiment in the direction of disobedience is frequently
accompanied by pretty exercises in verbal fencing, the joke of which
the perpetrator himself, at any rate, greatly enjoys. Such sportive
dialectic may arise, too, by way of meeting serious correction. A girl
of two and a quarter years was told by a foolish nurse that if she put
out her tongue she would get spots on her face. After listening gravely
she turned on her instructress and, putting her finger on a little
pimple on the latter’s chin, asked with “a most mirthful smile,” “How
Lizzie (the nurse) det dat ’pot dere den?”
Enough has been said, perhaps, even in this slight examination of
children’s laughter, to show that within the first three years all the
main directions of the mirth of adults are foreshadowed. Humour itself,
which is supposed only to come with maturity of feeling and reflection,
begins to announce itself in a modest way during this period. The boy
C., in his twenty-first month, had managed to twist his india-rubber
horse, so that the head was caught between the tail and the legs. He
laughed out loudly at first, then waxed tender, saying in a pitiful
tone, “Poor Gee-gee,” and so swung from the one emotional attitude to
the other.[137]
This appearance of the two feelings, distinct though contiguous, is,
of course, a very different thing from the highly organised sentiment
which we call humour. Miss Shinn {219} tells us that, in the case
of Ruth, the period of infantile gaiety has been followed by one of
serious practicality, into which humour does not enter. Perhaps it will
come later. In any case we have to recognise in this laughter of the
first years something far removed from the humour of the adult. It is
a pure primitive gaiety, uncomplicated by reflection and sadness. It
is enough for my purpose if it can be seen to disclose faint embryonic
tracings of the main lines of differentiation in the development of
human laughter.
{220}