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.