In these deviations from the typical laugh of the joyous mood we see the beginning of the intrusion of a new factor, the will. There is more of intention to be heard in, say, the ironical laughter of one side of the House of Commons than in the laughter of an unsophisticated child.
This intrusion of will serves both to restrain the natural process, reducing it to a degraded and rudimentary form, and to originate various affected counterfeits of the spontaneous outburst. This double action supports the idea that the conventions of polite society aim not merely at suppressing the “vulgar” kind of explosion, but at evoking the signs of amusement when an effort is being made to amuse. Hence the multiplicity of weird utterances which cultivated humanity has adopted. The giggle, the titter, the snicker and the rest appear to be not merely reduced or half-suppressed laughter, but substitutes which can readily {49} be produced when the occasion asks for them.[28] Those who confine themselves to this debased laughter are naturally despised by the much-laughing soul. Carlyle—himself a voluminous laugher at times—when writing of Teufelsdröckh’s great laugh hurls contempt on these triflers with the big things of mirth in this wise: they “only sniff and titter and sniggle from the throat outwards; or at best produce some whiffling, husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool”.[29] An accurate scientific record of these strange perversions of laughter, even though it were less picturesque than Carlyle’s description, would be of considerable value. The laughter-lover may at least console himself for the injury done him by this kind of imitation with the reflection that it is empty of joy, and even of the refreshing sensations which issue from the genuine laugh. Nay, more, as a forced performance, it presumably has a disagreeable feeling of irksomeness as its accompaniment.
It is sad to reflect that these spurious varieties of laughter are apt to appear early in the life of the individual. Preyer tells us he was able to distinguish, in the third year of his boy’s utterances, the genuine laugh of hilarity from that of imitation, which was probably rather more forced. Possibly they all appear among that wondrous gathering of queer sounds for which infancy is famous, and may be permanently selected by a certain number of “highly proper” children in preference to the fuller sounds.
CHAPTER III. OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER.
It seemed desirable to examine the process of laughter itself before taking up the much-discussed question of its causes. In considering this side of our subject, we shall, as already hinted, take a comprehensive view of the occasions and modes of production of the mirthful outburst, and approach the narrower problem of the nature and mode of action of the ludicrous by way of this larger inquiry.
According to the common assumption, laughter, in ordinary cases, is excited by some provocative, to speak more precisely, by some sense-presentation, or its representative idea, such as a “funny” sensation, the sight of a droll human figure, or a quaint fancy. Yet we must not assume that such an initial presentation occurs in all cases. As is implied in what has been said above about the laughter of “good spirits,” and as we shall see more clearly presently, there are cases where laughter takes on the appearance of a spontaneous or “automatic” group of movements.
1. It may be well, however, to begin our inquiry by touching on those varieties of laughter in which the action of a sense-stimulus is apparent. And it will be convenient to select a form of distinctly provoked laughter in which the intellectual processes play only a subordinate part. The effect of tickling is clearly of this kind, and as one of the {51} simplest modes of exciting laughter it seems to claim our first attention here. Since, moreover, it is the mode of exciting laughter of which our knowledge has been rendered in a measure precise by means of experiment, I propose to deal with it at some length.
The experience of being tickled is best described in its entirety as a sensational reflex; that is to say, a motor reaction on a process of sensory stimulation which produces a well-marked variety of sensation. To speak of titillation as if it were merely the production of a certain kind of sensation is unscientific. It involves the excitation of certain movements, and where these are not forthcoming we must infer, either that the sensory part of the process is defective, or that the motor impulse is inhibited in some way.
The stimulation in this case is, as we all know, a light tactile one. The agent commonly applied is the finger or a still softer body, such as a feather. The mode of contact is light, or at least does not commonly rise to the point of heavy pressure. The manner of contact is usually intermittent, the finger or fingers giving a series of short and staccato impacts. Movements of the fingers from point to point commonly accompany the series of contacts. In some cases, however, a single light touch, or even a continuous touch with movement from point to point, may suffice to induce the proper effect.