In children, curiosity is useful as an antidote to instinctive shyness in the presence of what is new and strange, and as an introduction to the general desire for knowledge. It is stimulated by surprise, but can be called true curiosity only when the perception of what is unusual has a directly pleasurable effect, as, for example, when an infant six months old regards a veiled face with close attention and signs of delight. Tiedemann reports as early as the end of the second month: “He makes more and more unmistakable efforts to add to his store of ideas, for new objects never seen before are followed longer with the eye.”[330] “All little children,” says Preyer, “make ineffective sympathetic movements of various kinds when they hear new sounds, music or songs. They like to move their arms up and down. The child, on hearing, seeing, or tasting something new, directs his attention toward it, and experiences a pleasant sensation of gratified curiosity which induces motor discharge.”[331] Sully regards curiosity as the best offset to fear in children, and considers it a fortunate circumstance that the commonest causes of fear—namely, new and strange phenomena—are also the originators of a feeling such as curiosity, with its attendant impulses to follow and to examine. It would indeed be detrimental to intellectual development if new things roused feelings of fear exclusively. Yet in spite of these differences, fear and curiosity are probably closely related, since the caution and suspicion which characterize fear may be the point of departure for curiosity. Caution impels the animal to examine with careful attention every unusual object which makes its way into his environment, with an eye to its possible injurious or useful character. Assuming that this impulse is emancipated gradually from its double practical aim, we see it converted into curiosity before our eyes, while ontogenetically it is the antecedent of the thirst for knowledge, just as the practical aim precedes it phylogenetically. Perez has described this evolution beautifully. Playful exercise of the sensor and motor apparatus, which is at first mere obscure impulse toward sensation and movement, achieves more and more the clearness of intellectual activity as it becomes associated with curiosity. Yet all this results “not so much from the necessity for knowing what things are and what they can do, as from the demand for new and fresh impressions.”[332] Veritable thirst for knowledge, with its unappeasable questioning, gradually develops from this, making without difficulty the transition from the realm of play to that of genuine scientific investigation.
This demand for novelty plays a conspicuous rôle in the life of an adult as well. The masculine half of the race exhibits a praiseworthy self-denial in ascribing this quality to the other sex exclusively, but the women are about right when they say that men are quite as curious as themselves. Without going into the merits of this controversy, we will confine our discussion to the province of curiosity in æsthetic enjoyment. It is no doubt true that the highest and most complete æsthetic pleasure is independent of the stimulus of novelty, as is proved by the fact that our appreciation of a work of art is undiminished by repeated examination, and it remains “herrlich wie am ersten Tag.” Yet there is a peculiar charm attaching to a first view of even the most perfect work of genius, which E. von Hartmann has likened to that of the first kiss, and which must be at least in part due to novelty. This advantage depends not entirely on the diminishing of the satisfaction by use, but also on a positive, independent pleasure in the apperception of a new thing, and new, original, in the sense of being a revelation, are the productions of genius. In the development of art, too, a disinclination to get into ruts, together with positive enjoyment of original work, is a decidedly progressive force, as opposed to the multiplication of reproductions and imitations. Before the revolution caused by a new thing has become an accomplished fact, behold! it is no longer new, and the danger is of achieving only the pre-classical, as it were, and not the classical. Of following the prophets, perhaps, but not the Messiah.
4. Reason
We need no chain of reasoning to prove that the logical faculty is involved in very many plays, even those of simple movement; but now, as heretofore, we will strictly exclude all uses of it except those in which it is the very object of the play, those in which it is playfully experimented with. Two bearings of the subject will engage our attention: first, causality; and, second, inherence. Both are prominent in the playful use of reason, while some special forms involve the use of judgment as well, as in the play of wit, for instance.
How far the gratification afforded by play is dependent on causality is strikingly shown by the fact that there is not a single form of it which does not exhibit in one shape or another the joy of being a cause as the germ of its attractiveness. It is true that this universal fact directs the attention more to the feeling of being a cause than to the logical idea of causal connection, yet we find enjoyment of logical activity prominent in the categories which we have designated as “hustling things about,” and as destructive and constructive movement play. The tendency toward such play was chosen for our point of departure, and the indications are that it is of the first importance to the child, and that only through frequent repetitions of the post hoc does independent interest in the propter hoc gradually arise. Still, it can not be denied that the true characteristics of play are in inverse ratio to the intensity of the desire for knowledge, and it should be clearly stated that we are now on the frontier territory of play and earnest. The steps by which we have reached this point can be clearly traced by every reader of what goes before; therefore, without stopping to recapitulate, I cite this striking remark of Preyer’s as a fitting climax. He says in reference to the evolution of a feeling of individuality: “Another important factor is the perception of change brought about by his own activity, in the familiar objects by which he is surrounded, and, psychologically speaking, or, indeed, from any standpoint, a red-letter day in the infant’s life is the one on which he first grasps the connection between his own movements and the sense-perceptions caused by them. The sound produced by tearing and crumpling paper was still unrecognised by this child till in his fifth month he discovered that it gave him a new sensation, and he repeated the experiment day after day most energetically until the stimulus of novelty wore away. Still, there was no clear apprehension of causality, but the child had now had the experience of being an originator, and of combined sight and sound perceptions, regular in so far that when he tore paper it became smaller for one thing, and sound resulted for another. Other such amusements were shaking keys on a ring, opening and shutting a box or purse (thirteen months), repeatedly filling and emptying a table drawer, piling up and scattering sand and gravel, rustling the pages of a book (thirteenth to nineteenth month), digging in sand, pulling footstools back and forth, laying stones, shells, and buttons in rows (twenty-one months), pouring water in and out of bottles, cups, and cans (thirty-first to thirty-third month) and throwing stones in water.”[333] Miss Shinn also gives a pretty example in the case of her little niece: “In the twentieth month (five hundred and ninetieth day) I saw her outdoors, especially when driving, cover her eyes several times with her hands. I thought the sunlight might be too brilliant, but it is more likely that she was experimenting, for in the following weeks she would often cover her eyes with her hands, and take them away, hide her face in a cushion or on her own arms, often saying ‘Dark,’ then look up, ‘Light now.’”[334] Tormenting animals is another direction in which the quest for a causal connection is evident. When André Theuriet was a four-year-old boy he threw a newborn puppy in the water just “pour voir,” and then wept bitterly because he could not rescue it.[335] As these demands of reason become prominent we can clearly see that we are approaching the limits of play.
There are other cases, however, where the search for a causal connection can more assuredly be called playful. An essential feature of the enjoyment derived from mental contests is the calculation of the result. Several possibilities are before the player, and he enjoys the intellectual effort of testing each and using the most advantageous. In the solution of whist and chess problems and such like, rivalry becomes an insignificant feature, and logical experimentation forms the central interest. Just so with the common and often ancient mechanical and mathematical puzzles. Pleasure in conquering their logical difficulties is derived from the gratification of a “general impulse or general instinct to exercise the intelligence as such.”[336] Causality plays a prominent part in poetry, too, since we require it to reveal to us the inner relations of the events set forth and to exhibit cause and effect in clearer and more orderly sequence than the complexities of reality admit of.[337] Especially is this the case with tragedy. In my Einleitung in die Aesthetik I expressed the opinion that the treatment of tragical climaxes as logical necessities is an important means of bracing us for the increasingly painful inner imitation which is so essential, without weakening or modifying its effect. “When the course of the tragic tale is so far developed as to suggest that a catastrophe is imminent, it should also appear inevitable. Stern necessity must urge the hero toward the fearful goal so persistently that escape shall be unthinkable, a logical impossibility. This feeling of necessity is calculated to fix the æsthetic illusion, and consequently help on the effect by rendering more strenuous the mental tension and directing it so forcibly toward the climax that consciousness is a captive to inner imitation until the tragedy has culminated. In other words, fear of the catastrophe is so absorbing as to create the illusion that the apprehended event is just at hand, and consequently all sense of the painfulness of the situation is merged in the stress of this illusion, since it alone is competent to relieve the tension.”[338] I might have continued to the effect that such manifestations of the law of cause afford us a positive logical satisfaction, and in spite of the impression forced upon us by the crushing blows of Fate, weave some threads into the intricate texture of æsthetic enjoyment, because in them we recognise a proof of the existence of a universal causal nexus.
A glance over the sphere of inherence, too, will help us to a proper orientation for this inquiry. By the word inherence we signify the relation of a thing to its qualities, or, abstractly speaking, the relation of a concept to its characteristics. A common and well-nigh universal form of play depends on this principle—namely, the making and solving of riddles. The large majority of them involve an effort to find the concept whose characteristics are given, and the task is intentionally rendered difficult, with the result that the solution is attended with a proud sense of success. The exercise easily leads to a contest, but it is grounded in experimentation with the logical faculty, and many persons enjoy the amusement for this reason alone.[339]
Children as young as four years sometimes indulge in a sort of preliminary exercise in riddle solving, such as the simple game in which one child, noticing the peculiar colour of some object in the room, says, “I see something you don’t see, and it’s yellow,” and his comrade must guess it. The play here is connected with sense perception by the relations of things to their qualities, and there are many games for large companies much like it. In a genuine riddle the enumeration of characteristics must be imperfect or in some way misleading to render the solution troublesome, and still sufficiently complete to make it possible; many are made sufficiently puzzling by the lack of logical ὁριδκός without the introduction of other means of mystification; such, for example, as—
“Drufg’schloh,
Ufg’ deckt,