Along with this rudiment of merry appreciation of the spectacle of the incongruous, we have the first crude manifestation of the closely related feeling of amusement at the absurd. Children are said to have no measure of the probable and possible, and to accept the wildest fancies in {217} unquestioning faith. Yet experience begins her educative work during these first three years, and one may detect sporadic traces of a feeling for what is gloriously incredible. A boy, already alluded to, aged about one and a half year, laughed as his aunt asked him what the waves, which he was gravely observing, were saying. The boy C., when twenty-two months old, grew quite hilarious over the idea of flying up into the air. Some one had suggested his flying like a bird, and he proceeded to cap the suggestion, adding, “Tit (sister) fy air,” “gee-gee (horse) fy air”. The last idea of a flying horse especially delighted one innocent, as yet, of Greek mythology.
Lastly, a bare allusion may be made to the early development of an appreciation of word-play and the lighter kind of wit. That this grows out of the play-element, the love of pretence, is at once evident. Verbal fun, “trying it on” with an incorrect use of words and so forth, is a common outlet of the rollicking spirits of childhood. Mrs. Hogan’s boy, at the age of one year eight months, developed a fancy for calling things by their wrong names, a knife a “fork,” for example. Ruth did the same towards the end of the third year. The fun derived from punning seems to be immense in the case of many children at the close of our period, as when a boy on hearing his mother say she had just called on Mrs. Fawkes asked, “Did you call on Mrs. knives too?” This easy childish mode of satisfying a jocose bent is seen also in the use of false statements, not seriously, but “in fun,” as the child has it. Ruth had a fit of such merry fibbing at the end of the third year. A child will often “try on” this kind of verbal game, when called up for a moral lesson.[136]
This same roguish impulse to “try it on” with the {218} authorities leads to something like a play of wit in repartee. The merry interchange of intellectual attack and defence, which relieves so many serious relations of adult life, grows naturally enough in the case of children out of their relation of subjection to the grown-ups. The playful experiment in the direction of disobedience is frequently accompanied by pretty exercises in verbal fencing, the joke of which the perpetrator himself, at any rate, greatly enjoys. Such sportive dialectic may arise, too, by way of meeting serious correction. A girl of two and a quarter years was told by a foolish nurse that if she put out her tongue she would get spots on her face. After listening gravely she turned on her instructress and, putting her finger on a little pimple on the latter’s chin, asked with “a most mirthful smile,” “How Lizzie (the nurse) det dat ’pot dere den?”
Enough has been said, perhaps, even in this slight examination of children’s laughter, to show that within the first three years all the main directions of the mirth of adults are foreshadowed. Humour itself, which is supposed only to come with maturity of feeling and reflection, begins to announce itself in a modest way during this period. The boy C., in his twenty-first month, had managed to twist his india-rubber horse, so that the head was caught between the tail and the legs. He laughed out loudly at first, then waxed tender, saying in a pitiful tone, “Poor Gee-gee,” and so swung from the one emotional attitude to the other.[137]
This appearance of the two feelings, distinct though contiguous, is, of course, a very different thing from the highly organised sentiment which we call humour. Miss Shinn {219} tells us that, in the case of Ruth, the period of infantile gaiety has been followed by one of serious practicality, into which humour does not enter. Perhaps it will come later. In any case we have to recognise in this laughter of the first years something far removed from the humour of the adult. It is a pure primitive gaiety, uncomplicated by reflection and sadness. It is enough for my purpose if it can be seen to disclose faint embryonic tracings of the main lines of differentiation in the development of human laughter.
CHAPTER VIII. THE LAUGHTER OF SAVAGES.
In the last chapter we took a glance at the primitive forms of human laughter as illustrated in children. We may now supplement this by a brief inquiry into the merriment of the childhood of the race, so far as this is reflected in the laughter of those savage tribes which have come under the direct observation of the civilised man.
We shall expect the two domains to disclose similar features, spontaneity, absence of reflection, whole-hearted simplicity. At the same time we shall expect the study of the laughter of savages to bring us more directly in touch with the social conditions which help to determine the directions of mirth. The study of the savage mind is the study of a collective mind, that is to say, of a typical form of ideas, sentiments, and psychical tendencies generally, running through a community. Its modes of merriment, like its more serious emotional manifestations, have been observed as common traits of members of a tribal society.
A word may be said at the outset with respect to the sources of our information. It is a commonplace that civilised man finds all his powers taxed when he tries to get into touch with the mind of a savage. The difficulties of this access will naturally be greater when the trait to be observed is an emotion which, while it is wont to display itself with an instinctive directness so long as the {221} surroundings secure freedom, tends to hide itself as soon as anything strange appears which induces a feeling of gêne. The presence of strangers, so far removed from the plane of life of savages as the missionaries or officials of a civilised nation, would, one supposes, act as such a check to their risible impulses. It is possible, too, that the stranger who visits a savage tribe may supply, quite unknowingly perhaps, in his look, dress, and manner of behaviour, a number of provocatives of laughter which are resisted from a feeling of what is due to a guest.