In Wolfdietrich one verse runs:
“Die Augen in ihren (der Wölfe) Häuptern, die brannten wie ein Licht,
Der Knabe war noch thöricht und zagt vor Feinden nicht.
Es ging zu einem jeden und griff ihm mit der Hand,
Wo er die lichten Augen in ihren Köpfen fand.”[17]
Older children lose the habit of playful investigation quite as little as any of the other manifestations of experimentation, even when the sensations encountered are not particularly agreeable. Richard Wagner liked to handle satin, and Sacher Masoch delighted in soft fur. In later life as well, Perez continues, all the senses strive for satisfaction; when the adult is not forced by necessity to put all his faculties at the service of “attention utile” he becomes a child again. He easily falls back into the habit of gazing instead of looking, of listening instead of hearing, of handling instead of touching, of moving about merely for the sake of sensations agreeable or even indifferent which are produced by these automatic acts.[18] We all know how hard it is for school children to keep their hands still during recitation. “I knew a little girl,” says Compayré, “who would undertake to recite only on condition that she be allowed to use her fingers at the same time, and she would sew and thread her needle while she was spelling.”[19] The knitting of women while they listen is perhaps of the same nature. Wölfflin remarks: “We all know that many people, especially students, in order to think clearly need a sharp-pointed pencil, which they pass back and forth through the fingers, sharpening their wits by the sensation of contact.”[20] Then, too, there are the innumerable toying movements of adults, such as rolling bread crumbs and the like, all of which serves to introduce a short ethnological digression. “In the year 1881,” relates the brilliant W. Joest, “when I was travelling through Siberia, ... I noticed that many of the men, requiring some occupation for their nervous hands during leisure hours, played absently with walnuts, which had become highly polished from constant use.” He saw stones, brass and iron balls, and the Turkish tespi, whose original use is devotional, employed for the same purpose; indeed, Levantines, who are not Mohammedans, often regard these latter as special instruments of gaming and vice.[21]
Carrying a walking-stick is another playful satisfaction in which the hand’s sensation of contact has a part, while the lead pencil, small as it is, will sometimes satisfy the demand for “something in the hand.” This is a genuine craving, which betrays itself in all sorts of awkward movements if we try to deny its indulgence. Carrying a cane is a remarkably widespread custom, and some think that the very small stone hatchets so common in ethnological museums as relics of a prehistoric time were used as cane handles in the stone age. Joest says, in the article cited above, that walking-sticks are used in millions of forms, on every continent and island of our earth. The naked Kaffir uses a slender, fragile cane of unusual length, and, according to P. Reichard,[22] his ideal of peace and prosperity is embodied in “going to walk with a cane,” since this implies freedom from the necessity of bearing arms. I close this digression with an instance which borders on the pathological. Sheridan was waiting for the celebrated Samuel Johnson, well known to be eccentric, to dine with him, and saw the doctor approaching from a distance, “walking along with a peculiar solemnity of deportment and an awkward sort of measured step. At that time the broad flagging at each side of the streets was not universally adopted, and stone posts were in use to prevent the annoying of carriages. Upon every post, as he passed along, I could observe he deliberately laid his hand, but, missing one of them, when he had got at some distance he seemed suddenly to recollect himself, and, immediately returning back, carefully performed the accustomed ceremony and resumed his former course, not omitting one till he gained the crossing. This, Mr. Sheridan assured me, however odd it might appear, was his constant practice.”[23]
b. The mouth of an infant is, of course, very sensitive to touch stimuli, and the lips and tongue are especially so. When Preyer put the end of an ivory pencil into the mouth of a child whose head only was born as yet, it began to suck, opened its eyes and seemed, to judge from its countenance, “to be very agreeably affected.”[24] It happens very soon that automatic arm movements accidentally bring the fingers near the mouth, and such automatic sucking results. From it the familiar habit of thumb sucking is formed, as well as the practice of carrying every possible object to the mouth. “Your finger, a scrap of cloth, a bottle, fruit, flowers, insects, vases, objects large and small, attractive or repulsive, all seek the same goal.”[25] I think Compayré is right when he says that it is not merely a case of duped appetite which Preyer points out. “The child enjoys the mere contact; it gives him pleasure to test with his lips everything that offers an occasion for the use of his nerves and muscles.”[26] We find that in later life many persons like to play about the lips with fingers, penholder, etc. Many, too, who have outgrown the fascinations of thumb sucking, still lay a finger lightly on the lips when going to sleep or when half awake.[27] The pleasure derived from smoking is due perhaps more than we realize to this instinct, and the common habit of holding in the mouth a broken twig, a leaf, a stalk of grass or hay, so far as it is not practice in chewing, belongs here. In K. E. Edler’s romance, Die neue Herrin (Berlin, 1897, p. 137), portraits of the extinct species of young lady are described. “In this one the lips pressed a cigarette, while in other pictures a rose stalk, the head of a riding crop, or some other object, not excluding her own dainty finger, was held against them, showing that in those days the mouth must have something to do as well as the hands, feet, eyes, and all the rest of the body.”
Finally, it must be remembered that much of the enjoyment of delicate food is due to the sense of contact. When certain viands are consumed without hunger, because “they slip down so easily,” we have play with touch sensations. This has something to do with the popularity of oysters and of effervescing drinks. “It tastes like your foot’s asleep,” said a small maiden on being allowed to taste something of the kind—a proof of the close connection with touch stimuli.
A few words may suffice in regard to playful use of touch sensations in other parts of the body. We have seen that an infant enjoys being softly stroked, and we may assume that a soft bed is appreciated early in life. The question is, whether the child or the adult voluntarily produces such sensations for the sake of the pleasure they afford. Perhaps this is why we like to roll about on a soft bed, and more unmistakably playful is the fondness of children for throwing themselves repeatedly into a well-filled feather bed or on piles of hay, to feel themselves sink into the elastic mass. Violent contact is indulged in in many dances. In the Siederstanz, which I myself learned in the Gymnasium, the thighs were beaten with the hands. Somewhat similar, but decidedly more violent, is the Haxenschlagen of the Bavarian dances, and the ancients practised the ῥαθαπυγίζειν, an alternate striking of the foot soles on the back. A verse is preserved, written in praise of a Spartan maiden who succeeded in keeping this up longer than any one else—one thousand times.[28]