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.