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.