This subject offers a difficult problem. The fact that all mankind, adult and child, the refined, cultured person as well as the primitive savage, the latest representative of centuries of civilization and his remotest ancestor, alike show a propensity to take pleasure in things relating to this subject, is one which we may deplore and yet can not characterize as entirely inexplicable. But we may ask why it is considered comical.
It frequently happens that the comic impression is heterogeneous, as in the ribaldry which perverts wit from its proper sphere and makes the offence against good manners take the form of a social blunder, while unintentioned indecency may raise a laugh at the expense of the perpetrator. Yet it can not be denied that the mere introduction of the sexual element is an independent source of amusement and one which requires some special explanation.
The common solution as set forth by Vischer and Zeising is to the effect that this stimulus is identical with that of any other impropriety, the laugh being at the outrage to conventionality.[523] But while this explains some cases there are others which it does not touch. Civilized man who is prohibited by strict rules of propriety any reference to such subjects may experience a feeling of triumph when he boldly bursts the bonds of custom, but with children and savages the case is quite different, and they exhibit a peculiar enjoyment of such things which is not identical with their relish of forbidden fruit. Von den Steinen tells us that the Bakaïri consider it a shameful thing to be seen eating, but do not regard the broadest reference to things sexual as the least breach of good manners.[524] Yet they too find them comic. “It is true,” says the famous and learned traveller, “that things which would seem indecent to us afforded the Bakaïri, both men and women, evident enjoyment, and if any delving pedant who considers modesty in our sense an inborn inheritance of mankind could follow the rising tide of gaiety which would have offended a member of our degenerate race, he would be obliged to admit that their hearty laugh is not shameless in our sense, nor is it an effort to conceal embarrassment. Yet it is undeniably erotic in a mild way, and resembles as much as the difference in circumstances and conditions will allow the laughter over games with us in which the two sexes are thrown together.”[525]
What, then, is the true source of this? Possibly the following considerations may serve to throw some light on it: First, it may be premised that allusion to sexual subjects has some association with the idea of physical ticklishness. “The sexual parts have a ticklishness as unique as their function, and as keen as their importance. The faintest suggestion of them has great power over the risibilities of children.”[526] More important still are two other points which make the sexual comic a special case of offensive and defensive fighting play, such as we considered in the previous chapter. The former may be inferred from the fact that this passion throws men and animals into a state of ecstasy which robs them of self-control, and, like intoxication, temporarily “disables them in the struggle for life.”[527] As a result of this the man who by word or deed actually places himself in any relation to this side of life calls forth in us a feeling of superiority which pleases us and excites our laughter. This applies especially to the amusement which all displays of amorousness induce, whether they are modest or bold—the one so long as it does not move, and the other so long as it does not disgust us. In other cases the fighting play becomes defensive, and this side of the question seems to me to exhibit more delicate psychological distinctions, since it concerns the thrill of sexual emotion which is excited in the hearer or spectator, and which, while it is agreeable, yet, coming as it does from without and therefore not under his own control, he laughingly repels it. Kant notices that amusement is generally caused by what is momentarily deceptive. If we accept the purely intellectual conception of deception—namely, that it is a shock or a slight confusion—then we may regard its conquest as a genuine triumph. Such a triumph we experience when we repel the incipient stimulation, and the contrast of ideas thus called up gives the finishing touch to the comic effect.
III. Imitative Plays
The Tschwi negroes have a proverb to the effect that “no one teaches the smith’s son his trade; when he is ready to work God shows him how”; and I. G. Christaller obtained the following explanation from one of the aborigines: “If you have a trade, and a son who watches you at work, he easily learns it. God has implanted in children the faculty of observing and imitating, and when the son does what he has seen his father do so often it is as if he knew of himself. It is, indeed, God who teaches him!” And this childlike elucidation is not a bad one of the significance of playful imitation in life. The inborn impulse enables a child to learn alone what he either could not do at all or only after painful and wearisome teaching. Imitation is the connecting link between instinctive and intelligent conduct. Thanks to it we can add much to our accomplishments without other instruction, and in a manner agreeable to ourselves, for enjoyment of its exercise is natural, so that, to use the language of the African, it is indeed God who teaches us.
The earlier psychologists gave too little attention to imitation. The work of Tarde[528] and Baldwin[529] has first brought to many the knowledge that it is probably destined to win a prominent place in biological psychology, similar to that accorded to the idea of association in the older theories. At any rate these investigators have certainly expanded the common acceptation of the term. Tarde says of a man who unconsciously and involuntarily reflects the bearing of others or accepts outside suggestion, that he is imitating, and he regards such magnified imitation as a special case of the great cosmic law of repetition (ondulation, génération, and imitation are the three forms of “répétition universelle”). Baldwin calls stimulus-repeating repetition in general imitation (so far as it is produced by the organism itself), and so includes the alternate expansion and contraction in the lowest organic forms. According to him, the essence of imitation lies in the fact that when movement follows a stimulus, the stimulus is renewed, giving rise to what may be called “circular” reaction. Imitation of the acts of another individual, from the perception of which a duplicate act results, is a specialized form of this circular reaction. Baldwin has tried to prove that the accommodation of an organism to its environment is a phenomenon of “organic imitation,” and he grounds his new theory of “organic selection” on this principle. I can not here dwell longer on it than to say that it undertakes to mediate in the strife between neo-Darwinism and neo-Lamarckianism, since the survival of the individual with the necessary adaptibility gives selection time to produce hereditary adaptations with the same general trend (selection among coincident variations). Our purpose is best served by confining ourselves to the ordinary use of the term imitation, namely, “The repetition of the acts of one individual by another,”[530] as Lloyd Morgan has defined it.
Even this is of the greatest biological and psychological import, since it is responsible for what Baldwin calls “social heredity”; the psychic heritage or “tradition,” independent of physical heredity,[531] which hands down acquired habits from generation to generation. In using the word tradition, indeed, one naturally thinks more of habits acquired by their owner, who by precept and example imparts them to others, so that emphasis is laid first on the acts of the originator, though the inclination to impart would be fruitless without imitation on the part of the pupil. On close examination we find this literal use of the term far from satisfactory; as a rule, the acquisition of the habits of others depends entirely on the imitator, without intentional assistance from the model, a distinction which finds expression in the common proverb that example is better than precept. The operation of this principle is apparent among the higher animals. Wallace lays great stress on it, though in a somewhat partial way. Weismann employs the word in its wider sense when he says: “A young finch which grows up alone sings untaught the song of its kind, though never so beautifully nor so perfectly as when an older bird which is a fine singer is given him as a teacher” (teacher is here not to be understood literally). “He is largely influenced by tradition, though the fundamental principle of the finch’s song is already implanted in his organization.”[532] Indeed, the data of animal psychology give us a sort of experimental proof of the importance of the imitative impulse, since animals reared away from their own kind but with some other species are often strongly influenced by the alien models, in spite of their inborn instincts. An attempt to formulate satisfactorily the biological significance of imitation results somewhat as follows: To the higher animals imitation of their own species is an important adjunct to instinct. The young finch has, indeed, an inborn instinctive capacity for producing the note characteristic of his kind, but even with the assistance of experimentation this instinct is not adequate to his needs until imitation of practised singers rounds out, so to speak, the inherited capacity by means of acquired adaptations. It is evident that there are two ways of regarding this conception of imitation. The one which Baldwin develops is implied in Weismann’s “already” when he says that the fundamental principle of the finch’s song is “already” implanted in his organism, thus implying that imitation is an essential factor in the growth of his instinctive equipment. When the more intelligent individuals of a species have by means of independent accommodations made new life conditions for themselves they can manage to keep afloat by the aid of imitation until “natural selection, by favoring and furthering” coincident variations (those tending in the same direction), can substitute the lifeboat heredity for the life-preserver tradition.
The other view, as I have presented it in The Play of Animals, takes just the opposite ground—namely, that imitation enables the animal to dispense with instinct to a much greater degree than would otherwise be possible, and so gives free play to the evolution of intelligent control. Here we find imitation tending to relegate instinct to the category of things rudimentary, while, according to the hypothesis analyzed above, it favours the growth of instinct. “It is through instinct,” says Baldwin in a notice of my earlier work, “that instincts both rise and decay.” For our purpose the second view is evidently the more serviceable, since it is undeniable that in man at least, the transition from fixed instincts to more plastic tendencies, with their partial supplanting by acquired adaptations, has been the general course of phylogenetic evolution, and to this process imitation is of extraordinary value.[533]
Finally, in pursuance of the same line of thought, it seems that imitation, at least in man, goes far beyond instinct; for by his untrammelled relations to the external world man has been enabled to climb beyond the ground floor of Nature to a higher plane of culture. Yet of all his means of improvement none to speak of are physically inherited. Thus we see the idea of imitation expanded not only to supply the deficiencies of instinct “not yet” or “no longer” adequate, but to such an extent that on it depends the “social” heritage of culture from generation to generation. This powerful impulse, without which there could be no teaching, no handing down of anything to posterity, thus becomes the indispensable medium of continuity, and therefore the necessary postulate of a cumulative human culture, as opposed to one constantly recommencing ab ovo. But the further question arises, May we not be justified in calling the imitative impulse itself an instinct? Once granted the fact of instinct at all, and an affirmative answer seems imperative to one who is familiar with the workings of this impulse in men and animals. On these grounds I have committed myself in my former work to the designation of imitation as an inborn instinct, and yet I must admit the logical inconsistency of this, since the very conception of instinct dispenses with the use of imitation. As commonly understood, instinct may be defined as a hereditary and clearly defined motor reaction to a given stimulus. In imitation, on the contrary, we have a thousand varying reactions, for as the stimulus (the model) varies the whole character of the reaction follows suit. What becomes of the fixed hereditary orbit if at each repetition entirely new movements, sounds unconnected with the foregoing ones, etc., are produced? “To assert that imitation is instinctive,” says Bain, “is to maintain the existence of an infinity of pre-existing associations between sensations and actions.”[534] This appears to me to be the one insurmountable objection among the many which he and others have brought against the conception of imitative instinct, and it is serious enough to cause me to modify my former position.