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}