PART II
_THE PLAYFUL EXERCISE OF IMPULSES OF THE SECOND OR SOCIONOMIC[358] ORDER_
I. FIGHTING PLAY
Our conception of experimentation includes a large number of phenomena having the common tendency to bring into action the manifold inborn predispositions of the organism, but without reference to those instincts by means of which the relation of the individual to other living creatures is regulated. In experimentation only the more general needs, such as are indubitably grounded in the nature of the organism, are allowed expression, in such a manner as to bring into action the sensor and motor apparatus as well as the higher mental faculties. The individual would exhibit similar qualities in isolation; he plays with himself, not with his relations to others, and even when association exists, as, for instance, in ball-catching, he recognises at the same time that experimental play is involved. Now, however, we enter on the consideration of such play as is intentionally directed toward other beings, and first on our list is the inborn impulse to fight. Walther von der Vogelweide has shown the power of this instinct in the impressive lines:
“Des Stromes Wellen rauschten kühl; Ich sah darin der Fische Spiel. Ich sah, was ringsum in der Welt: Den Wald, das Laub, Rohr, Gras und Feld, Und was da alles kriecht und fliegt Und seine Bein’ zur Erde biegt. Dis sah ich, und ich sag’ Euch das Keins lebt von ihnen ohne Hass.”
“The stream’s waves murmured oolly; I saw the fishes playing there; I saw all that was in the whole round world; In wood, and bower, and marsh and mead, and field, All things which creep and fly, And put a foot to earth. All these I saw, and say to you, That nothing lives among them without hate.”
In our common speech, too, life is referred to as a battle, and is in reality too often a general struggle for money or power. It is but natural, then, to find the fighting impulse developed early in childhood and practised in play. Indeed, the demand for its exercise is so strong that there is scarcely any form of play which may not take on the character of a contest. Especially is this the case when there is any difficulty to overcome or danger to be encountered. “Both danger and difficulty,” says Lazarus, “appear as incarnated opponents over whom it is possible to gain a victory.”[359] In the same way play with lifeless objects is easily converted into a contest by the force of æsthetic illusion. As numerous examples of such intensive stimulation of the fighting impulse have already been given, I shall here mention only the mountain climber’s struggle with lofty peaks. In this chapter such collateral themes must be avoided, as we shall find our immediate problem very wide. In order to discriminate as to the relative importance of the various fighting plays the following division of the subject will prove convenient: First, there are direct fighting plays in which the contestants immediately measure their strength, whether mental or physical. The second group is composed of indirect fighting plays where the victory is sought through means of conducting the contest. Among the mental phases of this we find betting and gambling. In the third group we place merely offensive sports in which no defence is possible or availing, such as playful destructiveness, teasing, and the enjoyment of the comic (so far as it is connected with fighting at all). After disposing of all these, two subdivisions yet remain: first, playful chasing, fleeing, and hiding (hunting plays); and, second, the enjoyment of witnessing a contest.
1. _Direct Physical Fighting Play_
Any one who takes the hand of a two-year-old child and strikes himself with it, pretending to be much hurt, can not doubt after seeing the delight displayed by the little creature, the pleasurable effect of the discharge of this impulse so deeply seated in human nature. Yet the fighting instinct seems to be comparatively late in assuming the form of regular independent playful contests. Unprovoked tussling merely for the fun of the thing seldom appears earlier than the third year, while young bears, dogs, and other animals begin such play almost at once. In this youthful tussling the chief aim is to throw one’s opponent to the ground and to hold him in this helpless position. So far as my observation goes in this little-investigated sphere, very small boys seldom stand for their combats. Usually one already seated seizes his comrade, who may be standing near, by the foot, pulls him down, and they fight, rolling over on the floor, and each seeking to keep the upper hand. The effort is constantly made to keep the enemy’s head down, a position so distasteful to the party concerned that the scene threatens to end in noisy and serious strife. As the children grow older they gradually formulate rules for their contests partly through imitation of their elders and partly as the result of their own experience. As with adults, the proper grip of the opponent’s body is an important point. “He caught him by the waist, where he was weakest” is quoted as far back as the Hildebrandslied. For throwing, it is often necessary to slip the hand through the other’s arms and give him a sudden twist, or to place one arm on his neck and push him backward. The legs, too, have their part to do. Sometimes a boy is thrown across a projected knee, or a leg is thrust outward to check the fall when the attempt is made to throw sideways by lifting. Or the method adopted by Odysseus in an extremity may be employed—a sudden blow dealt at the bend of his opponent’s knee being the cause of his overthrow. Usually the fight ends at this point,[360] but sometimes the tussling is continued on the ground, as described above, and the playful character is very apt to be lost. Sometimes it happens, on the contrary, that the fight is over before either contestant is thrown. I saw two boys wrestling, when one of them was lucky enough to get a good grip on his opponent’s body, but the latter could bend his head back, whereupon they desisted and called it a tie. There is often an effort to take the enemy unawares, as when a boy leaps unexpectedly on his opponent’s back, gives him a violent push, or runs against him forcibly. Suddenly dousing one another with water is another favourite if not very pleasant youthful sport.
Prize fighting by adults seems to have been generally practised in Europe as well as in other parts of the world from remote antiquity. The ancient Egyptians were zealous wrestlers. Among the Greeks, where the art was extraordinarily developed, it often became brutal; breaking the fingers and throttling were allowed, and a familiar sculptured group shows a cruel twisting of the arms to hold down the thrown wrestler. Ring fighting was practised by both boys and men among early Germans, as numerous ethnological remains demonstrate. In Japan, prize fighting is as much a national sport as is bull baiting in Spain. Bastian saw it in Burma, Ratzel among the Eskimos, Indians, Hawaiians, etc., and other observers in remote parts of the earth. Among the Brazilian Bororó friendly contests are governed by the following rules: “To seize a man by his right wrist is a challenge. The two contestants face one another, and each places his hands on the other’s shoulders or on the small of the back. In this position they must stand with bodies perfectly erect,[361] their feet wide apart, and each looking toward the other’s back. They maintain a good-humoured silence for some time, and then suddenly become very much in earnest, and make desperate efforts to throw one another by tripping. One usually opens the attack by thrusting one of his heels into the knee hollow of his opponent and trying to bend it, but the other is prepared, and sets his sturdy leg so far back that the effort is fruitless. Attack and resistance on both sides follow in rapid succession until one of the contestants falls.”[362]
Here, too, is opportunity for the application of the wiles practised by Odysseus when the mighty Ajax lifted him off his feet.
“... Still his craft not deserted Odysseus: He dealt a blow from the back and loosened the joint of his knee So that backward he fell and Odysseus sank down above him Right on his broad chest. And the people around were amazed.”
In von den Steinen’s description of the Brazilian customs, the effort to pull down the head, mentioned above in connection with childish wrestling, is dwelt upon as the chief aim instead of the grip on the waist. “The contestants, representatives of different tribes, come forward in pairs, their bodies smeared with yellowish red _uruku_, and with black. They stoop, catch up a handful of sand, and in a crouching position, with hands hanging down, they rapidly circle round each other, casting angry glances at their opponents, and calling out threateningly, ‘Húuha! húuha!’ Then one touches his right hand to his adversary’s left, and at this signal they all leap to the attack, springing up and down as fast as possible on the same spot, not unlike angry apes, each seeking to seize and bend down the other’s head. This violent exercise goes on for some time without any direct attempt to throw one another. They are very friendly after it is over, and may be seen walking about with their arms around each other’s shoulders.”
As a last example I quote Berlepsch’s graphic description of the Schwingen as practised in the Swiss Alps. Shirt and trunks are the only articles of clothing allowed, and the latter expose half the thigh, and must be made of stout, strong drilling. Every man grasps with his right hand the waistband of his opponent, and with his left the rolled-up trouser leg, and now begin, either standing or kneeling, violent efforts to overthrow one another. For a complete conquest this must be accomplished twice.[363] The struggle is especially exciting when the contestants represent different valleys, and on them rests the responsibility of maintaining the honour of their native place. “As soon as the two athletes have taken the proper grip they sink on their right knees and withdraw the lower part of the body as far as a good hold will permit. If one has reason to fear that he is about to be lifted, he lies flat down on his stomach and the other must follow suit. In this unnatural position they torment one another for half an hour at a time, writhing on the ground like snakes, and stretching sinews and muscles until their faces grow dark with the strain. If neither can manage to overcome his opponent by endurance, superior strength, or strategy, they at last voluntarily abandon the conflict, utterly exhausted, and shake hands on their prowess, but neither can claim a victory.”[364] So-called tests of strength are similar to this.[365] In pulling contests the attempt is made to draw the opponent toward one, sometimes by the hands—in the Bavarian mountains it is done by hooking the middle fingers together—sometimes by seizing a stick at its ends or across, sometimes with a rope, as the Greek boys did, sometimes by a band around the neck, which serves to strengthen the muscles of the back,[366] and sometimes by hooking one knee of each together, so that the contestants can only hop about on one foot until the contest is decided. Another test of strength is the pushing which children usually take up of themselves, as many schoolroom benches could testify. In Japanese contests pushing across a line seems to be a leading feature. Zettler gives the following description of it: “Japanese prize fighters are trained to their profession through centuries of inheritance from father to son, and by every conceivable means calculated to produce perfect specimens of their kind. In stature they are veritable giants, not only in height but in the development of all the limbs and masses of fat, which would not lead one to expect special adroitness or muscular force. In their ring contests the effort is made either to throw or to push one another off the arena, which is an elevated circular platform thickly strewn with sand and surrounded with a double ring of straw. Whoever makes one step over the edge is lost. Weight is of great use in this contest.” Children frequently make use of a combination of pulling and pushing, which is really imitative play. One child, for instance, takes his position on a sand heap and defends himself against another who represents the enemy storming his castle. From the well-nigh innumerable tests of strength we may select the following as typical: The players stand with outstretched arms opposite one another, seize hands and pull, or one stands firm with stiffened arms while the other tries to stir him, or they sit in such a way that the knees of one are caught between those of the other, and the effort is made to force the legs apart; or sometimes it is to open the rolled-up fist, etc.[367]
Fighting with fists leads the way to fighting with weapons, though the rolled-up fist is used by the angry child as a weapon earlier than the open hand. In playful fighting, however, the blow with the fist is not much used. Sometimes a little playful boxing is indulged in, but it is difficult to keep within the bounds of play in a fisticuff. Gymnastic exercises of this kind as practised by the Greeks and English are more important. Among the former blows were aimed at the head, and, “to strengthen the blow,” says Fedde, “the fist and forearm were wrapped with thongs of oxhide, which left the fingers free to double up the fist. Later a strip or ring of hard leather was added, which, as it was held around the ball of the fist, inflicted severe wounds, being sometimes studded with nails or lead knobs. The soft leather thongs of earlier times were called friends (μείλιγαι), while the dangerous knobs in later use received the name of bullets (σφαῖραι), and a specially cruel kind of gloves were ants (μύρμηκες).”[368] That not only practised athletes used these, and that they were donned in the playful contests of mere boys, is proved by the speech of Lucien’s Scythian, Anacharsis. “And those standing so straight there,” he says as he is observing the youthful sports, “beat one another and kick with the feet. There is one who has been hit on the chin, and his mouth is full of blood and sand, and his teeth almost knocked out, poor fellow, and yet the archon does not separate them and end the strife. On the contrary, he urges them on and praises the one who gives the blow.”[369] Raydt says of English boxing: “An English specialty in physical exercise is boxing, practised methodically and with all possible skill. The fists are incased in thickly wadded gloves, which render the blows harmless, and a distinction is made between extreme severity and lighter strokes, the tactics admitting of felling an opponent by the former or exhausting him with the latter. The boxing which I have seen was carried on in an orderly and decorous manner, and still I was convinced that it is a very severe exercise, and should not be introduced into the schools.”[370] Regular boxing matches, requiring seconds and an umpire, as they are given by the students, are fought either to settle some dispute—“Fighting with fists is the natural and English way for English boys to settle their quarrels,” is said in Tom Brown’s School Days—or as a spectacle for a large audience to witness. In both cases it is fighting play only when the belligerent instinct as such forms the chief motive, and when, too, the quarrel in one case, or the prize offered and desire for self-display in the other, gives occasion for the exercise of the fighting instinct. There can be no doubt that this is often the case. Like our own students, English youths often fight, not because they have any quarrel, but because they seek one, because they want to fight, and the struggle thus becomes not the means but actually the end. The case is frequently the same with prize fighting. Professional boxers at the beginning of the nineteenth century were to a great extent rough fellows, who were only after money, or at best notoriety. But Conan Doyle has recently given us in his Rodney Stone a masterly description of a blacksmith who was a good husband and a skilful workman, yet even in his old age could not resist an invitation to take part in a public prize fight. What primarily influenced this man was a deep-rooted manly enjoyment of fighting for the fight’s sake, and many Greek and English athletes have felt as he did.
Another primitive method of fighting is by throwing missiles; even monkeys throw stones, dry branches, and fruit. Miss Romanes’s ape was very sensitive to ridicule. One day the tailoress came into the room, and a nut was given to the monkey to open with his hammer, as he knew how to do. The nut proved to be empty, and the woman could not help laughing at the monkey’s blank expression. “He then became very angry, and threw at her everything he could lay his hands on—first the nut, then the hammer, then a coffee-pot, which he seized out of the grate, and lastly all his own shawls. He threw things with great force and precision by holding them in both hands and extending his long arms well back over his head before projecting the missile, standing erect the while.”[371]
The child begins very early to throw things to the ground, as we have seen, and seems to delight in watching their motion as well as in the noise. Later the child turns the skill thus acquired to the account of his fighting instinct, and in this way genuine offensive throwing begins as soon as he is able to tumble about alone. The enjoyment is doubled when it becomes not only a question of hitting the enemy, but of dodging his missiles as well. The prettiest and most harmless form of such sport is snowballing; but also fruit, cherry stones, clods of earth, pebbles, hay in the meadows, pillows from the beds, etc., all serve the same purpose. Some games of ball, too, are of a similar character. K. Weinhold tells us how he as a boy played against his comrades with a six-pound cannon ball. The wonder is that no bones were broken. “Less fortunate,” he continues, “were the islanders who indulged in this mad folly, for in their case it was punished. On a holiday the contest between boatmen and landsmen was begun, and after several days the latter retired as victors. The boatmen, stung by the taunts of their conquerors, took counsel with their friend Hard Grimkelssohn, who advised them to make balls of horn and challenge the shore people to another game. That evening six of the latter lay dead, while the boatmen lost not a single man.”[372] In many ball games, however, the players do not themselves catch the ball, which is sent to a base or home, as in the English game of football. Behind each party is a base consisting of two upright posts and a connecting rod, and each side endeavours to get the ball over the other’s base or to prevent such a result when it threatens their own. This is a specialized form of reciprocal mass contest, since the enemy is not attacked in person, but the effort is made to wrest from him a symbolic stronghold, as is common in mental contests. There are many similar ball games—for instance, baseball—where the ball is thrown by hand and its analogue found among the North American Indians; and cricket, where a single player, armed with a bat, defends the easily approached wicket. The idea is carried further when the ball which is thrown becomes the goal as well, so that the same instrument is at once weapon and symbol of the enemy. Playful pelting is indulged in in carnival times, when berries and confetti are thrown about promiscuously; in former times there were many occasions for this lively sort of play. Travellers experience the primitive impulse which makes it hard for them to resist the temptation to throw when in midsummer they stand in a little snow field, and students are universally given to throwing beer mugs, in spite of its being occasionally dangerous. The principle of returning offensive missiles is not much applied in play, and yet I remember that as a boy I enjoyed shooting with bow and arrow at another boy similarly armed. We stood about fifteen feet apart and tried to hit each other with light and harmless cane arrows. A still more innocent battle was fought with popgun and berries.
It is doubtful whether children really play with thrusting weapons; they rather exercise than fight with their wooden swords and spears, but when it comes to an offensive use of the weapons play turns to earnest, and, as with the young Goethe, ends disastrously in quarrelling and blows. Boys who are much older engage in actual fighting plays with such weapons, but it is left to the students’ duels to exhibit its highly developed form. Some years ago the half-grown sons of a professor in a university town went to a fencing hall and fought out a regular contest in a perfectly friendly spirit, although it was by no means bloodless. Many readers will no doubt recall such incidents. Such contests between boys and young men are very interesting, and in Germany we distinguish between them and real duels in that they are playful, while the latter are brought about by some serious offence. That serious wounds sometimes result from these fencing matches is no argument against their playful character, for many games are dangerous, and these contests certainly come within our definition of a play, the satisfaction afforded by them being not in conquest but in fighting as such. When, indeed, one student provokes another intentionally from dislike or anger, the fighting which results is not a play; but the elaborately arranged appointments and the fencing matches which result from some remarks made, perhaps, in all courtesy, though it may end in injury to one or both parties, undoubtedly is of this character.[373] In the same way must have been managed the jousts and tourneys of the middle ages, the knightly combats of ancient Teutons, and youthful trials at arms and many similar contests as practised by various peoples[374] where, so long as there is no evidence of a quarrel, but only a natural demand to satisfy an inborn impulse to fight, it is all playful. We must not forget, however, that the desire for self-exhibition, to display one’s skill and courage, is also conspicuous.
This subject brings us to a question which I touched upon in The Play of Animals. In reviewing the fighting plays of animals we found that many mammals and birds fight hotly in youth who seldom beard an enemy in later life, habitually taking to flight when attacked. The supposition in such cases must be that fighting play serves as practice for the mating contest, since even the peaceful ruminants engage in bitter combat with rivals. This supposition granted, we may further assume that the fighting plays of the fiercer animals are also connected with the sexual life, and may it not be true with men as well? It is indisputable, of course, that human combat with wild beasts and other enemies is often a struggle for food and ownership, and accordingly, in considering play as preparatory for serious fighting, its aim must be considered as only partially sexual. Still, the connection is sufficiently close to deserve a few words of mention.[375] A great difference is observable in the tussling of boys as they approach maturity. While the games of six-year-olds are uniformly harmless, and proceed amid laughter and fun, as the age of puberty approaches fighting play assumes a much more serious character, and even when only play is intended the whole bearing of the participants is greatly modified. Genuine make-believe, the innocent measuring of strength, is no longer practised; the youth desires to prove that he can play with danger, too; he assumes an offensive and boastful air, and regards each of his contemporaries as a rival. The inward restlessness which characterizes this time of life is directed by instinct toward belligerence, and every opportunity to fight is welcomed. It is at this time that the weapons, properly blunted or otherwise rendered less effective, may still be dangerous, for youths of all vigorous peoples will engage in some kind of spirited combat. Take, for example, the description of London boys, by Fitz Stephen, who lived in the time of Henry II. We find not only the nobility, but the merchant class as well, exercising themselves at all times of the year in armed contests, which, in spite of their playful character, often had serious results. In the dead of winter, often on ice, they assembled for this purpose, with staves for lances, held jousts “from which they did not always escape uninjured, for many were the legs and arms broken in the fray. But the youths, in their desire for glory, delighted in such practice, which served as a preparation for the time when they should go to war.”[376]
While we are obliged to attribute a very general significance to such dangerous indulgence of daring warlike spirit, still we can not fail to trace its connection with sexual life. Without the youth’s necessarily knowing it, there is something similar to the bellicose tendency exhibited by animals in their pairing season, in the feeling of rivalry which possesses him at this time. The same thing is shown in the spirit of adventure, which at first is only a general desire for change, and delight in struggle and risk, but in its manifestations that are most closely connected with play appears in many mediæval knights in close conjunction with courtship. “The heroic deeds of adventurous knights,” says Alwin Schultz, “should be included in the category of fighting plays. Thus Ulrich von Lichtenstein, in his open letter to all knights, promised to every knight who would break a lance with him on his homeward journey from Venice to Bohemia a gold ring for his sweetheart, and to any one who should unhorse him the steed on which he rode; while in case he himself came out conqueror all he required was that the vanquished knight should pay homage to his lady.” Another knight, Waltman von Lättelstedt, took with him on a ride from Merseberg to Eisenach a damsel on a palfrey, having with her a sparrowhawk and a hunting dog. “Waltman proclaimed that on his arrival at Eisenach he would be ready to fight all comers, and that whoever should overcome him could have the girl, the palfrey, the sparrowhawk, and even the dog and harness, but must permit the girl to ransom herself if she chose with a guilder and a gold ring. Whomsoever he should overthrow must give to him, as well as to the maiden, a ring of equal value. When she came back from Eisenach this young girl had gold rings enough to bestow one on every maid of high degree in all the town of Merseberg.”[377] Such contests were more formidable with the North Germans. Among these warriors it was common for a hero to travel to a distant land, and when a woman there pleased him, to demand her surrender from husband or father or brother in two weeks’ time, the demand to be supported in the lists.[378]
And finally it may be mentioned that the tourney, which was at first practised chiefly as preparatory for war, became later as often a contest for a woman. In one English tilt the king promised the kiss of an eight-year-old girl as the reward of success, and Eastern tourneys were often instituted to win the hand of a princess.[379] What was there done with intention may often unconsciously ground the various contests of young men.
2. _Direct Mental Contests_
The impulse to opposition is a quality which is usually regarded as a very unpleasant disposition of mind, but which is in reality, when kept within proper bounds, the very leaven of human life. We shall see later that rivalry taken in connection with the imitative impulse is one of the mainsprings of advance of culture, and the oppositional force connected with the fighting instinct is also necessary for the mental development of mankind. The great newcomers in the various departments of learning are almost invariably either friendly or bitter opponents of long standing authorities, and any project which meets with no opposition sinks to sleep. For the individual, too, it is quite as important, since a man without it would be entirely too hospitable to suggestion; indeed, abnormal suggestibility rests finally on the suspension of this instinct. Children early show a playful as well as an earnest resistance to authority. While Sully is right when he says that an attitude of absolute hostility to law on the part of the child would make education impossible, still he admits that the best children—from a biological standpoint—have “most of the rebel” in them.[380] The sweetness of forbidden fruit is imparted largely by the combative instinct. Such a spirit is manifested playfully, not when disobedience is attended with cries and struggles or sulky behaviour, but when it is enjoyed for its own sake, as a source of triumphant satisfaction. When a two-year-old child who has been told not to throw his spoon under the table repeats the action, not in anger but with twinkling eyes, he is acting playfully. Some of their speeches, however, exhibit this spirit most clearly. For instance, a small boy who had been rather rough with his younger brother and was remonstrated with by his mother, asked, “Is he not my own brother?” and then cried triumphantly, when his mother admitted the undeniable fact, “Well, then, you said I could do what I please with my own things!”[381] Another child of three years and nine months answered his nurse who called him: “I can’t come; I have to look for a flea!” and pretended to be doing so while he broke out in a roguish laugh.[382] A three-year-old Italian girl said to her grandmother under similar circumstances, “Non posso venire, la piccolina [her doll] mi succhia!”[383]
With children of school age, playful resistance to authority is naturally directed chiefly against the teacher. As an example I regretfully recall a piece of mischief of which I myself was guilty. I had looked back during a recitation to speak to the boy behind me, when the teacher called out to me to turn around. At that I turned around so completely as to be able to continue my conversation from the other side. The indulgent teacher was so amused at my impudence that he did not punish me as I deserved. Hans Hoffman has shown in his Ivan the Terrible how ill-mannered schoolboys can take advantage of a teacher who does not possess the secret of command; and Carl Vogt says of his school days at the gymnasium: “Study and work were for the majority secondary considerations. Most of the boys stayed there for the purpose of tormenting their fellow-students and enraging their teachers. By studying the peculiarities of character possessed by our tyrants we soon found a weak side to each of them and tried such experiments with these weaknesses as their owners could not avenge by punishment. Thus the whole school was leagued against the professoriat, and now single combat or skirmishing, now slyly preconcerted mass operations were for the time in favour, and there were occasional truces, but no lasting peace.”[384] E. Eckstein’s humorous sketches, too, are especially popular because of their celebration of this warfare against the teachers.
We have yet to notice adult opposition to political, scientific, artistic, social, and religious authority. It is of course usually serious, and yet it seems to me that in spite of its practical side there is often something playful in it, something of enjoyment of the conflict for its own sake. The obstructionist in legislation, the opponents of time-honoured regulations, customs, doctrines, rules of art and dogmas, all take, if they are born fighters, a peculiar pleasure in the excitement of resistance to authority. They like to blend their voices in the war cries of spiritual combat. It is one of the pleasures of life.
Contradiction is another form of opposition. I once snapped the fingers of my four-year-old nephew, Heinrich K., for some misbehaviour. After he had been quiet for a while, as was his habit, this dialogue passed between us, evidently soon becoming playful to the child: “Uncle, I’ll shut you up in a room so you can never get out.” “Oh, I’ll climb out of a window.” “Then I will shut the blinds.” “But I will open them.” “But I’ll nail them shut.” “Then I’ll saw a hole in the door.” “But I’ll have an iron door, very strong.” “Then I’ll make a hole in the floor.” “But I will go underneath and make iron walls to the whole house.” And so it went on until I gave up the struggle with childish inventiveness. Enjoyment of such playful dispute often lasts a lifetime. As a fourteen-year-old boy I once argued for hours with a friend as to whether the beauty of colour was relative or absolute. One of us contended that a blue embroidered chair might be positively ugly, however attractive the colour, while the other maintained that the beauty of the blue would make the chair admirable. I mention this trivial example only because it shows so plainly the playful character of such talk, for without any personal interest in the matter we waxed warm over our respective views and presented them with great energy. The heated discussion gave us quite as much satisfaction as solving the problem could have done; in fact, the charm of conversation is largely to be attributed to the enjoyment of disputation. On examining closely into what constitutes the attraction of such entertainment for us we find that besides relating and listening to anecdotes and gossip about acquaintances (this is also play) our chief pleasure is in more or less playful combating of opposite opinion. People who have no interest or talent for these three things are at a loss in society.
We now take up such intellectual contests as are commonly included in the lists of fighting plays, including the solution of riddles, to which we alluded under experimentation. The measuring of mental readiness between individuals when the problem is given orally by a third person, and this is the original and natural method, is a genuine intellectual duel. It was a favourite entertainment of the ancient Germans which Rückert has celebrated in his beautiful poem. Another form is the putting of difficult questions alternately to opposed parties, as in our modern spelling bee. There are examples of this in the Eddas, such as the intellectual duels between Odin and a giant, and between Thor and the dwarf Alvis. Romantic troubadour songs belong here too. Uhland and Rückert once engaged in a metrical debate as to whether it is worse to find one’s lover dead or faithless. Uhland preferred death, while Rückert attempted to sustain the thesis “better false than dead.”[385] Rivalry is conspicuous in such contests, as we shall have occasion to note later.
In our common forfeit games, too, mental contest often forms the basis of the fun. For instance, it is a distinct attack and parry when a handkerchief is thrown to a player and a word pronounced to which he must find a rhyme. In English, where the spoken and written words are so unlike, the spelling of unfamiliar words is turned into a game; and another idea is to introduce into a story some object or incident suggesting the name of one of the players, whereupon he must continue the recital, passing it on to another in the same way. Or a passage from some great author may be cited and his name guessed, and many similar devices. Finally, we mention the important group of plays for which the stimulus is partly intellectual experimentation, but is primarily attributable to the combative instinct, such as board and card games, both of which are symbolic of physical contests in which the players appear as leaders of opposing forces and originators of strategic operations. A genuine battle ground is afforded by the board, and the great object is to have the right man in the right place at the right time. In cards strategy is exhausted in the choice of the right champion at the right moment, but is rendered much more difficult by the fact that the former contestants have disappeared from view, while the reserve is concealed. Thus it results that board games afford opportunity for the display of skill in arrangement and card games especially cultivate memory, while both are important promoters of the logical faculty and of imaginative foresight.[386] An important distinction between them is that in board games the strength of the contestants is exactly equal at the start, and the material chances are identical, while in cards inequality is the rule.
Board plays (the name is not very fortunate, for the battlefield is by no means always a board) are older and more generally distributed than the others. When Lazarus points out reasoning games in distinction from games of chance as indicative of a higher state of culture[387] he can not be referring to board games in general, since some of the lowest and most savage tribes indulge in them. There are three distinct varieties of these plays. In the first kind one, or possibly two, stand opposed to a large party, but the conditions are equalized by the rule that all the party must act together while the smaller side is rendered more formidable by various advantages, such as greater freedom of motion and capacity for lying in wait and taking prisoners. The object is to dislodge the single fighter from his stronghold and cut off his retreat, or to surround him in the open field and take him captive. The prototype of the former is the beleaguered fortress, and of the latter combats with dangerous beasts of prey. The Malay Rîman-Riman, or Tiger-play, is a good example of the latter. The arena is somewhat of this form and appearance, the figure being simply traced on the sand, or stamped with red and white on boards or cloth. The single player has twenty-four stones, the men, ôrang-ôrang. The other players have a single large one or sometimes two, the tiger, _rîman_. The tiger is governed by fixed rules, and the men seek to pen him up so that he can not move.[388]
In the second kind the parties, being numerically equal, stand opposed as in checkers, where a hot struggle goes on to get three men in a row—at least this is one of the simplest forms of the game as described by Ovid. Among German antiquities there is a representation of two men with a board set with stones. Schuster at least considers this a game similar to checkers.[389] And besides, there are groups engaged in the Damen-Spiele, which was probably known to the ancient Egyptians as well as the Greeks and Romans, although we can not be certain as to the rules of these ancient games, πόλις, _ludus latrunculorum_. In mediæval times elaborately ornamented boards were used for this game. “Especially noteworthy,” says Weinhold, “is one that is used as a reliquary on the altar at Asschaffenburg. It is set with jasper and beryl crystals, beneath which various figures are inlaid in the Roman manner on a gold ground.”[390] Büttikofer brought with him from Liberia a very interesting ethnological specimen, almost unique in character. The game played in that region does not require a board or other flat surface, but wooden cases into which rods are inserted like arrows in a quiver. This represents the placing of the men on a board. Each player has ten rods, of which only four are placed at the beginning of the game. The dots in the cut show their position. The object is to get into the enemy’s country by judicious jumping, the reserve ammunition being placed as occasion requires until the supply is exhausted.[391] Another form of this kind of game is the Oriental Mangale, which is now becoming quite general.[392] In Damascus, where, according to Petermann, it is constantly played in all the coffee houses, a board two feet by six inches is used. It is over an inch thick and has in its upper side two parallel rows of holes, seven in number in Damascus; other places have six, eight, or nine. In these holes tiny pebbles, gathered in a particular valley by pilgrims to Mecca, are laid; usually seven in each. The player removes the stones from the first depression on his right, and throws them one by one toward the left and into the holes on his opponent’s side. This play is kept up under certain rules and conditions, of course, and with the aid of much counting[393] of winnings, and whoever gets the most stones has the game.[394] In concluding we must not fail to notice the noblest of all board games, chess, which, on account of the great variety of men employed and their complicated moves, is the most difficult of games, as well as the most entertaining. Many are of the opinion that some ancient games are of the same character, but it is probable that real chess is of Indian origin, whence it spread to the Persians and Arabians, and through them into northern Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. In the last-named country we hear of it as early as the ninth century, and it appeared in Italy and Germany certainly not later than the eleventh, soon becoming the favourite game of the educated classes. This is proved by the fact that in a book of sermons published in the latter half of the thirteenth century one Jacobus de Cessoles, a Dominican, attempts to set forth a system of rules for right living founded on the rules of the _ludus scaccorum_.[395] The game has naturally undergone many changes in the course of time; for instance, the Arabians originally had elephants in the place of our bishops; but it has always preserved the character of a battle, and is so represented in old Arabian manuscripts.[396]
Our third group of board plays is comprised of those which add the attraction of chance to intellectual enjoyment of the contest. It is true that to a certain degree chance is an element in the purest games of reason, since the most skilful player can not foresee all the consequences of a move, and various uncontrollable influences[397] may interfere with the best-laid plans; but in the games which we are now considering there is a blending of risk with calculation, which has a peculiar charm. Perhaps the most familiar game of this kind is backgammon, which was certainly known to the Greeks and Romans, and possibly to the Egyptians and Phœnicians. In this game and kindred ones the object is to throw away men whose value is determined chiefly by chance, while the advance to advantageous points is a matter of calculation, thus affording a combination of direct and indirect fighting. Backgammon is of peculiar ethnologic interest because of the prominent part it plays in the controversy as to whether Asiatic influence is traceable in primitive American civilization. E. B. Tylor has stated in several passages[398] that a kind of backgammon played on a cruciform board is a favourite amusement of the East Indians, and is called by them Patschisi (in Burmah: Patschit), and a very similar form of the game was known to the pre-Columbian Mexicans under the name of Patolli. Tylor considers the complicated nature of the game as a sufficient disproof of its independent origin, and from this, and a certain kinship to chess which is apparent in it, he concludes that the whole group of games furnishes an important argument in favour of Asiatic influence on American life before the time of Columbus.
Dominoes may serve as the connecting link between such games as we have been considering and card games, since the lack of a prescribed field, the concealed store of each player, and the chance distribution at the beginning, as well as the acquisition of new ammunition during the game are common features. Playing cards are supposed to be a comparatively recent invention of the Chinese, which, like chess, was carried into Spain by the Saracens, and thence spread all over Europe in the fourteenth century. Many are of the opinion that they are a modification of chess, and in fact the oldest game known to be played with them is one of the most complicated that we have—namely, Taroc, which requires seventy-eight cards. It was played in Bologna in the beginning of the fifteenth century.
Since the victory in card games is not won by virtue of the position of the cards, but by their succession and value, the faculty of memory is largely concerned, as victor and vanquished at once disappear and the men yet unengaged are concealed. This and the inequality of the players’ forces at the beginning constitute the distinguishing feature of cards. Lazarus’s penetrating glance has descried the point which differentiates the various games, placing them in the varying relation of accident and calculation. “Not all games,” he says, “are alike in this. There are some in which chance is predominant—as poker, for example, or the new game of bluff, so popular in America, where so much depends on the dealing, and the play is not so much a calculation as an attempt to exhaust one’s opponent.... The stronger games, however, such as whist, Boston, l’hombre, solitaire, piquet, Skat, euchre, etc., depend on the sustained influence of both chance and calculation. After the cards are once distributed calculation begins, but chance continues to be powerful,[399] for at every play a new card enters into the combination and must be given its due weight, whether from the hand of friend or enemy. This is more obvious in the cases where the original force is recruited by drawing from the pack; yet even here attentive following of the progress of the game will furnish data for determining the probable situation of a third card, and thus, after all, skill has as much to do with it as chance. And in such a game as whist _en deux_ in which all the cards are dealt, and each player knows exactly the strength of his opponent, the whole thing depends on calculation, and consequently is not so attractive. It would be a game of chess with cards but for its inferiority in variety and combination.”[400] Lazarus goes on to say why chance is indispensable in card games—namely, because, as there is no such thing as space combination, the monotony would be wearisome, and continued playing well-nigh impossible. Without Fortune’s reverses, too, the games would necessarily be begun with equal forces, and it is easy to see how little enthusiasm such games would excite. Only in connection with chance, then, can Reason find in cards a task worthy of her powers, and, indeed, a small prize is a stimulus sometimes needed to keep up our interest. This may be a suitable place to mention that it was formerly the custom to play for money or some stake with all games of chance and even with chess.
I close this review of contests which are purely intellectual with two brief remarks, the first of which concerns the invention of board games. It is difficult to find a perfectly satisfactory answer to the question of their origin. However, their complication points to adults rather than children as their probable inventors, and to me the following consideration seems important: The primitive races, who find it difficult to convey their thoughts in speech, naturally take to marking on the sand, and hence the figures might arise.[401] If the leader of one of the more intelligent peoples wished to instruct them concerning some past or future combat, it would be a simple method of illustrating his meaning to draw an outline on the ground and represent the position of the hostile forces by small stones or similar objects whose movements would symbolize the manœuvres of the forces or the advances of knights for single combat. This would, no doubt, be exceedingly interesting to those conducting it, and also to the spectators, and might easily be repeated for the sake of the amusement afforded until some inventive genius turned it into a veritable play with board and men. To show that there is nothing improbable in this supposition we may point to the fact that such play is actually carried on by our own officers (Italian, _manovra sulla carta_).
The second remark relates to the pleasurable quality of games involving use of the reasoning faculty. We have already shown that play with reason takes the form of experimentation with imagination and the other intellectual faculties in their capacity of illusion workers as well as in their more constructive activity; now we find further that its recreative effect is much greater than is realized during the progress of the game, and that the consciousness of standing voluntarily in a world of our own creation may be a feature in the interest excited by the game.[402] The chief source of satisfaction, however, is enjoyment of the fight, in the playful intellectual duel, where bold attack and skilful parry, systematic advance and stubborn resistance, crafty manœuvring and direct assault, single combat and the general skirmish, as well as pursuit and demolition, succeed one another in ever-renewed combinations. In those games which add the charm of uncertainty to the mental contest the effect is of course still more complicated. As I shall have occasion later to speak exhaustively of games of chance, I confine myself here to Lazarus’s significant conclusion from the union of these contrasted forces. “That men, and, indeed, the same man can take pleasure in such opposite and absolutely contradictory principles of play seems wonderful, and yet it is most natural, for both are elements of human nature grounded in the very essence of his being and the normal manner of using his powers. In his serious, moral life, directed by the mandates of duty, he is also controlled by two contrary forces, freedom and necessity. He must bow to Fate and yet strive and struggle for what is his own. He expends his energies according to his own behests, and must then await success and reward till the turn of Fortune’s wheel. Both disappointment and struggle, receiving and expending, suffering and toiling, are woven into the texture of his life and character, and become the sources of his volition as well as the arbiters of his fortune. He obeys both forces; to pursue and hold to what is good is his dual impulse, both in life and in play.”[403]
3. _Physical Rivalry_
In playful competition indirect conquest of an opponent is aimed at, since the effort is to show that one can perform the task better than another. In it the fighting instinct assumes the form of rivalry. “No entreaties or commands,” says Lazarus, “nor even tips, could arouse our coachman to such a display of skill and speed as could another coachman who showed a disposition to race with him. Apart from the fighting instinct itself, jealousy is the prime cause of rivalry”. Spinoza defines it as “the desire for a thing aroused in us by the belief that others want it.” One of the first manifestations of jealousy in children is with regard to the love and caresses of its parents; we all know at what an early age the infant expresses his disapproval when his mother pets another child—sometimes as early as the second quarter. If he shows it simply as anger he is plainly jealous, as older children are; but if (as a dog often does when the hand he loves strokes another) he tries to win to himself by all sorts of cajoleries the maternal tenderness, then he enters upon a sort of rivalry. True emulation, however, is first developed when the aim is to win approbation and admiration when praise rather than love is the alluring reward—in short, when the child becomes ambitious. Say to a three- or four-year-old boy, “Your friend Otto can draw beautifully,” and it is ten to one that he will answer, “But I can draw better.” This desire to surpass others is what leads to the indirect contest which we call rivalry.
Imitation, too, plays the part of a first cause here, as Spinoza points out in pursuance of his definition of emulation. As, however, this subject will come up for discussion later, let it suffice to say here that imitation is exceedingly important for all mental and physical development, and is accordingly especially conspicuous in the play of children. The effort to say “I can, too,” easily takes on a certain hostile character when there is difficulty in attainment, and so imitation becomes actual rivalry as soon as the effort is for “I can do better,” and the struggle becomes sharper in proportion to the consciousness of a desire to surpass. Thus we are justified in regarding the impulse of jealousy which is related to the fighting instinct as the foundation of rivalry as well.
Before going on to investigate this playful rivalry it may be useful to inquire into its social significance. G. Tarde, in his interesting sociological study, Les lois de l’imitation,[404] attempts to prove that imitation is the mainspring of social evolution. But along with the peaceful operations of imitation, the fighting instinct, too, makes itself felt in manifold ways, as a principle of progress (as I remarked above in discussing combativeness), in conjunction it is true with imitation and usually under the form of rivalry. It is evident that social progress would be slow indeed if men only imitated and never opposed what is done in their presence. Rivalry in ownership, power, and authority is the force which urges each to do his utmost in the struggle for life, and which has produced the most advanced civilizations. A people without ambition is lost; not merely stationary, but actually decadent. As in art bald imitation of even the best models results in weakness, so in society. Men must will to do better in order to do as well.
In spite of their variety we can very quickly review the physical imitative games, since under movement-plays we have already noticed a considerable number belonging to this class, and since it is their psychological side alone that chiefly appeals to us. The following examples, then, are merely chosen to show by means of their variety the great importance of imitation in human play.[405] Children learn most of their bodily movements by such play in a way which clearly illustrates the mingled effects of imitation and emulation. When one child jumps off the second step, another child who sees him immediately tries to cover three; and when boys are practising their leaps each makes a mark in the sand beyond the others as his goal. To lift a heavier weight, to throw farther, to run faster, to jump higher, to make a top spin longer, to stay longer under water, to shoot higher, farther, and with better aim than his comrades can, is the burning wish of every childish heart. In order to see the same enthusiastic rivalry in physical prowess exhibited by adults, we must turn to the half-civilized peoples to whom such acquirements are of surpassing value in the struggle for life. Among the ancient Germans, for example, such contests were carried to the highest degree of perfection, and, in spite of their avowedly playful character, conducted with such seriousness that they often became matters of life and death. Skill, prowess, and endurance in leaping, running, lifting and throwing huge stones, the use of bow and arrow, diving and swimming, riding and rowing, were all the subjects of contest, and each victor sought to surpass the achievements of the former one. All warlike peoples of whom ethnology is cognizant show much the same picture, and highly civilized nations, too, accord an important position to athletic contests, as the Greek and Roman games bear witness, as well as the championships and records of our own day. Rivalry enters, too, into such games as tenpins, billiards, croquet, golf, etc., all of which are favourite amusements. The pleasure they afford is complicated, including display of one’s own strength and skill, the pleasure of watching others, the stimulus of rivalry and the satisfaction of overcoming an opponent. Sometimes, and especially in croquet and billiards, the contest closely approaches fighting play, since the participants not only try to attain the object of the game, but are apt to engage in direct hostilities.
We now turn to some examples that are better calculated to exhibit the many-sidedness of rivalry, which is, of course, an element in all the games of skill which we have mentioned. We are not so well prepared to find it in games requiring patient effort, yet even the Eskimos, in their Fadenfiguren, indulge in fierce emulation,[406] and a play as peaceful as kite-flying is not exempt. “The Hervey Islanders believe that once the god Tane challenged the god Rongo to a kite-flying contest, in which the latter won because his cord was longer.”[407] In drinking there is rivalry in the effort to withstand the power of alcohol, and students have a time-honoured tradition that the man is a fine fellow and worthy of all respect who can drink the rest of the company under the table. It is more charitable to attribute this practice to rivalry rather than to love of drunkenness.[408] The instance of the two boys holding burning matches illustrates how readily the ability to suppress any manifestation of pain lends itself to rivalry. The old Germans tested their endurance by sitting at feasts after their battles, and when they were covered with wounds. In a grotesquely exaggerated saga it is related of the wounded sons of Thorbrand: “Thorodd got such a blow in the neck that his head hung sideways; his hose were all bloody and would not meet. Snorri could see and feel that a sword was sticking in his thigh, but Thorodd said nothing. Among the gayest of the gay is Snorri, son of Thorbrand, who sits with the others at table, but eats little and looks white. When asked what ails him he says, ‘When the vulture has won the fight he is not in haste to eat.’ Then Gode looks at his neck and finds an arrow head at the root of his tongue.”[409] The jeering of Walthar and Hagen, who vie with one another in mocking at their wounds, is another case in point. Finally, the passion for making collections, which is so strong in both children and adults, may be considered as a form of competitive rivalry which reaches its climax in the miser.
4. _Mental Rivalry_
The space devoted to the more general kinds of emulation has purposely been curtailed in order to devote more to the special case of gaming, as much of the ground has been covered already.
Children are fond of displaying their mental acquirements even before they are old enough to go to school, but it is there, of course, that the best opportunity is afforded them. Colozza tells us how the Italian children use their recess time for contests over the multiplication table.[410] During school hours recitation is easily transformed to emulation which can be turned to account by the judicious teacher with better results than are attained by one who tries to draw the line too rigidly between work and play.
The intellectual rivalries of adults are exceedingly varied. Music offers unlimited opportunities when people are far enough advanced to have any sort of society, and even primitive tribes indulge in this sort of entertainment. Among the Eskimos the contestants compete in public for the prize for singing, and then fall into actual combat, thus combining the two forms of rivalry. Grosse quotes from Rink the following musical dialogue between two East Greenlanders. “Savdlat: ‘The south, the south, oh, the south over there! As I stood on the headland I saw Pulangitsissok, who had grown fat upon halibut. The people of this land know not how to speak. Therefore they are ashamed of their language. They are dumb over there; their speech is not like ours. In the north we speak in one way, different from those in the south. Therefore we can not understand their talk.’” To this challenge Pulangitsissok responds: “‘There was a time, as Savdlat knows, when I was a good sledger, when I could take a heavy load on my kajak. Four years ago he found this out. That was the time when Savdlat bound his kajak to mine for fear he might capsize. Then he could carry a good load on his kajak, too. As I was tugging along you cried out pitifully, and were afraid and almost overturned. I had to hold on to my ropes to keep us up.’”[411] Such sarcastic dialogue often leads to direct contests, in which the singers try to rout one another by means of their witty improvisations. A later form is the contest in oratory and song on an assigned theme, opening with a direct challenge between the contestants. The poem of Wartburg-Krieg is especially famed, while Plata’s symposium may be instanced as a fine example of competitive oratory on a given theme.
Other kinds of rivalry frequently arise in social gatherings, such as recounting experiences in love, hunting, and battle, as was pre-eminently the custom among the ancient Germans. “One after another,” says Weinhold,[412] “boasted of his prowess and sought to prove it by tales of his wonderful deeds. To heighten the effect, each chose an opponent worthy of his mettle. Thus it happened that Eystein and Sigurd, the crusader, both Norwegian kings, once had a controversy in court. Eystein advanced the proposition that it was impossible to live aright in society, and called on his brother to sustain the contrary. Then the travelled warrior Sigurd, who had filled all lands with the fame of his deeds, and the peace-loving, home-staying Eystein, each related what he had done and could do: the one his battles, his fame in the East; the other that he had built huts for poor fishers, made roads over rugged mountains, opened harbours, widened Christendom, and strengthened the Church—in short, extended his kingdom by every peaceable method. The talk became warm, and the silence which followed was ominous, but as they were both noble-hearted no harm came of it.” Very characteristic, too, is the Harbardhslied in the Edda, where the gods Wotan (under the name Harbardh) and Donar emulously recount their achievements:
_Donar_: “Do you ask what I did to Rungner, The giant with sturdy heart and head of stone? I felled him then, he lies at my feet. And what did you, Harbardh, the while?”
_Harbardh_: “For more than five full winters Was I on an island that is called Allgrün; There I found men to fight and enemies to fell, Many things to prove, and many maids to free,” etc.
Singing the praise of one’s future deeds is another form of such boasting. A company of carousing men have need of a wild boar or some other sin offering to go through their midst as they perjure themselves with oaths concerning the hazardous and difficult deeds which they mean to perform.
Before taking up games of chance again I mention once more the fact that many reasoning games are also rivalries—dominoes, for example, and backgammon[413]—since the chief effort is to reach a certain goal first and direct efforts are made to embarrass and retard the adversary, so that genuine fighting play results.
In chance games proper, however, the contestants do not attack one another directly, but seek to conquer by the better solution of some problem, the point of departure from other rivalries being that the reward of solution, at least in games of pure chance, is entirely accidental, and not dependent on the player’s strength or skill. We will now attempt to review the more important phenomena connected with such games, and later study the question in its psychological bearings.
The wager is akin to play with chance and arises from the holding of opposite opinions, which can only be settled by future events. Even if the bet concerns something which is past or present, still the decision must be in the future, and the fighting element comes in in the striving of each to prove his superiority, the interest being much enhanced by pooling the stakes. The bettor’s conviction as to the correctness of his opinion may be strong or weak[414]—absolute certainty destroys the validity of the bet, while absolute uncertainty makes it a mere game of chance, whereas it should depend, like the best card games, on a union of reasoning and hazard. For this reason future events are the proper subjects of the wager, and we will confine ourselves for brevity’s sake to such bets. Schaller says rightly: “The future is pre-eminently the object of conjecture, of the reckoning of probabilities. Even when present circumstances seem to tend inevitably to a certain result, there are still infinite possibilities that other results may transpire. Therefore the wager should concern something yet to come.”[415]
One of the earliest forms of betting was on physical or mental superiority, and the stakes formerly so common in reasoning games may be regarded in the same light. There was much betting on the victor in the old German riddle contests and life itself was sometimes staked, if we may depend on the ancient accounts. More often, though, physical prowess was the subject of the wager. “Indeed, Tacitus may be right,” says Schuster, “when he records that the Germans disdained to be praised for ordinary physical vigour, yet they gave prizes to the victors in their contests and liked to claim the glory when it set them above others. Reputation with them must not be mere empty words; one must work for it to the full extent of his powers. Many examples illustrate this spirit; for instance, Welent and Amilias, the smiths, each boasted that he could not be surpassed in his art. The latter offered to bet on it, and Welent replied, ‘I have not much property, but I will stake it all.’ Then said Amilias, ‘If you have nothing else, stake your head, and I will stake mine, and whichever of us is the better man shall cut the other’s head off.’ Two of Olaf Trygvason’s retainers boasted of being superior mountain climbers, one wagering his ring on it, and the other his head.”[416] Schuster cites, too, the famous contest in the Nibelungenlied, to which Brunhild thus challenges King Gunther:
“She said: If he is your lord and you are in his hire, Tell him that I have sworn that whoever can resist my play, And prove himself my master there, him will I wed, While if I win you must go alone from hence.”
Fable makes animals wager in the same way; the old tale of the hare and the hedgehog is found even in Africa, although there the hedgehog has become a tortoise.[417]
The stakes are not always, however, on one’s own ability, but quite as often on the performances of others, or on the speed and endurance of animals. This is indeed the most popular form of the sport, doubtless because the agreeable tension of expectation is thus prolonged until the very moment of the _dénouement_, as it is not likely to be in the more personal contests. In riding, rowing, sailing, and running contests spectators, as well as participants, bet on the result.[418] “Betting on races,” says E. v. Hartmann, “is the most dangerous and exciting form of gambling, being dependent purely on chance, and yet offering a false appearance of being essentially influenced by intelligence and judgment. The custom is fostered of raising the stakes at the last moment under the influence of artificial stimulation to interest during the race itself. Immature boys, sons of respectable labourers, are thus initiated in the fascinations of the passion for gaming who would otherwise have little inclination for it.”[419] In various parts of the world wagers are laid on the result of fights between animals. In ancient Greece gamecocks were bred with special care, and Tanagra, Rhodes, Chalcis, and Delos were famous for the achievements of their respective breeds. The birds were fed with garlic before the fight to augment their excitement, and were armed with artificial spurs. The stakes were often enormous.[420] Cock-fights in which betting seemed to be the principal feature were held during the middle ages in most European cities, and in some localities have survived to the present day. Malays are especially devoted to this sport. It only remains to add in conclusion that lifeless things, too, may be the subject of bets. The Gilbert Islanders set two sailboats, about four feet long, afloat, and bet as to which will sail fastest.[421] This is very near to being play with pure chance, and the wager of Canning with an English duke is even more so. They staked a hundred pounds on the question of who should meet most cats on a certain road.
There is but one opinion as to the origin of games of pure chance—namely, that they grew out of the serious questioning of Fate in the form of oracles, and colour is given to the theory by the custom of jesting with the oracle. The Greek custom of pouring wine into a metal cup and from the sound it made reading one’s prospects in love, drawing straws—a practice which Walther von der Vogelweide has made famous—the various flower oracles, counting the cuckoo calls, observing the flight of birds—as, for example, how many times the kite circles—and many other such customs[422] were originally conducted seriously, with a view to gaining some knowledge of the future, and even when playfully practised smack of superstition. Tylor says, in his admirable study of this subject: “Soothsaying and games of chance are so closely allied that the instruments of each are used interchangeably, as among the clever Polynesian magicians cocoanuts are skilfully rolled about in a circle. In the Tonga Islands the chief use made of a holiday is to inquire whether the sick will be cured. They offered loud prayers to the family deity that he would place the nuts aright, then spun them, and from their position judged of the god’s will. Under other circumstances, when the cocoanuts are rolled simply for amusement, no prayer is offered and no significance attached to the result. The Rev. G. Turner found the same custom in the Samoan Islands in another stage of development. There a company sits in a circle, the nuts are rolled about among them, and the oracle’s answer depends on whether the monkey face of the nut is turned toward the questioner when it stops rolling. The Samoans formerly used this method to detect a thief, but now it is a forfeit game.”[423] In this sort of play with chance there is nothing special at stake, yet it is no doubt closely connected with those forms which have this feature.
Another of the earliest of the manifold forms of chance games is the casting of lots. New Zealand wizards decide the fortunes of war by throwing staffs. If the stick which represents their own tribe falls on that of another, then a favourable outcome may be confidently expected to the battle. The Zulus have a similar ceremony, and the Hindus cast lots before the temple and supplicate the gods for victory. In the Iliad the crowd prayed with outstretched hands while the dice in Agamemnon’s helmet decided who should be the first to fight Hector. Tacitus tells us that the German priests tossed three dice on a white cloth before they attempted to reveal the future.[424] The origin, then, of the use of dice in games of chance is indubitable. The ancient form of backgammon common in India and Mexico was played with lots instead of dice, as was also the case with the Arabian Tâb. Some Indian tribes use the simple casting of lots for gambling purposes. The Arabian does not throw, but draws lots as a substitute for the Meisir forbidden in the Koran.[425] The complicated Chinese game lotto is well known, and Bastian found a similar one used in Siam.[426] E. von Hartmann refers repeatedly in his Tagesfragen to our European lottery, combating the popular idea that it is reprehensible, and should not be fostered by the state. He sees in a well-conducted state lottery the best means of directing the ineradicable tendency to play games of chance into harmless channels. Money speculation is, as a rule, little different from a lottery, since the great majority of speculators have no more intimation of the outcome than is furnished by the law of probabilities which governs pure games of chance. Returning now to simpler manifestations, we find many which are closely related to the use of lots. North American Indians, who are zealous gamblers, use marked or coloured stones, seeds, and teeth, and stake their clothing, furniture, weapons, and, in fact, all that they possess. In Burmah a favourite game is played with beans, and in many of the villages a thrashing floor is erected for the express purpose of supplying the demand.[427] In Siam the children play with shells, and everything depends on whether the opening falls up or down.[428] A similar game was known to the Greeks, and in Rome a coin was tossed with the cry, “Caput aut navis!” equal to our “Heads or tails!” We must suppose that such play by children is derived from adult games of chance.
Astragalus and dice were the implements used in many such games. The former are peculiarly shaped bones from the ankles of sheep, goats, or calves, and their use for such purposes is very ancient. They are capable of resting on any one of four sides which may vary in value, as the six sides of dice. The Schliemann collection in the Berlin Museum contains some of them which were found in the “second city.” In ancient Greece four astragali were used in the games of adults, and were thrown either from the free hand or from a cup. Special names were given to the various throws, such as Aphrodite, Midas, Solon, Euripides, etc., and the worst throw was called, there as in Rome, the dog. The children of antiquity also played with these bones a game partly of chance and partly of skill, and Hellenic children use them to this day. Ulrichs saw them at Arachola on Parnassus. “The children there,” he says, “play with the astragalus, which is a small four-sided bone rounded at the end and so shaped as to be capable of resting on any of its sides. In the game the uppermost side is read, the commonest throw being that which brings the round end up and is called the baker or the donkey. Then follow the thief, the vizier, and, rarest of all, the king, the side which looks like an ear and is opposite the vizier.”[429]
The name vizier seems to point to Mohammedan influence, and indeed the children of Damascus have a special game of chance with astragalus in which the terms vizier and thief are both used.[430] Some think that ordinary dice are derived from the astragalus, but it would be difficult to prove, though their imitation in other materials seems to suggest it, as in the case of the oblong dice used by the Romans with cubical ones, and several hundred prehistoric dice found in Bohemia are of similar form. The Berlin Museum, too, has oblong dice from India and China, showing that they were widely used in the Orient, and Hyde points out in his history of games of chance that the Greek word κύβος is related to the Arabic _Kab_, which meant simply made of lamb’s bones. On the other hand, cubical dice with spots like ours are found in Theban graves, so that we can not be positive as to the priority of the astragalus.
Possibly cocoanut rolling was the primitive form of roulette as we have seen it used in half-religious, half-playful manner by the South Sea Islanders. The Berlin Museum has Chinese rolling dice through which a peg passes, projecting on each side or with the peg on one side only, and the ball tapering to a point on the other. According to Egede, Greenlanders have a sort of roulette, an oblong ball about which the players sit with the stake before them.[431] Another form of chance game is the morra, which was probably known to the ancient Egyptians, and was in all likelihood at first a clever method of calculating.[432] As a play the hands of all the players are thrown simultaneously into the air, and each must guess at the number of outstretched fingers without taking time to count. This amusement, still very popular among Italian peasants, was called by the Achæans “micare digitis.” In China, where it is zealously cultivated, it bears the name of “tsoey-moey.”[433] The North American Indians have a modification of it in their cane guessing—namely, the effort to locate a small object passed quickly about in a company. It is used for gambling purposes, the Indians staking all that they have, even to their wives sometimes.[434] The “Kyohzvay” play is taken quite as seriously in Burmah. For this a stick is fixed among the folds of a tightly wrapped cord, and the game is won or lost[435] according as it is or is not successfully concealed.[436] The various games of cards afford by far the most important instances of play with chance, and their name is legion. We have not time even to glance at such games as faro, lansquenet, rouge et noir, trente et quarante, etc., except to say that they all depend on a combination of reason with chance, and so more speedily put an end to suspense as to who is the victor than do purely chance plays. We are now confronted by the difficult question of what it is that constitutes the demoniacal charm of gaming, whose power is demonstrated by the value of the stakes with which a man will tempt Fate. Every one is familiar with Tacitus’s description of the ancient Germans who, when they had lost everything else, staked their freedom and their life on the last throw. H. M. Schuster gives a long list of examples of Germans staking freedom, wife, and children, the clothes on their backs, life itself, yes, even their souls’ salvation when their passion for play was at its height. That this is a universal Aryan trait is shown by the Indian poem of Nala and Damayanti. The former, under the power of a hostile demon, loses at play with Pushkara his ornaments, jewelry, horses, wagons, and clothes. In vain his wife and followers seek to restrain his madness; for many months the ruinous play goes on until Nala has lost all his property and even his kingdom. Then as Pushkara, with loud laughing at the unlucky fellow, cried out that now he must put up his wife Damayanti, Nala rose from the table and walked away with his faithful wife, stripped as he was of all else. The Chinese, Siamese, and Burmese, too, are all passionate gamblers, and the Malays are famous for their wagers on animal fights. This is sufficient to show that the wonderfully strong attractive power of gaming, “le jeu-passion, dont le rôle tragique est vieux comme l’humanité,”[437] is the result of numerous causes whose aggregate, according to Fechner’s principle, is far greater than their numerical sum. Taking account of the essentials only, we still have a threefold phenomenon; these are, desire to win the stake, the stimulus of strong effects, and the impulse given by the fighting instinct.
Winning the stake is so important that without it games of chance become very flat and most unimpressive, as forms of entertainment. How is this to be explained? Sometimes it appears as veritable cupidity, the “fascination d’acquérir d’un bloc, sans peine, en un instant.”[438] The seductive chink of gold pieces is heard and visions of new names of wealth open before us, promising to deliver us from all burdens and dangers which in spite of their distance and vagueness we strive to get possession of by a single turn of Fortune’s wheel; the gold fever is at home in gambling dens. Yet—and I think this is important—as a rule, it is not mere greed for gain as such, but a feeling more refined. It is boundless delight in sudden good fortune that makes the unearned winnings so enticing. That inward striving after the absolute, which is so deeply rooted in the human breast, is concerned in the longing to experience at least one moment of exhilarating joy with which a single stroke of Fortune’s wand sets our hearts aflame:
“From the clouds it must fall, Such is the gift of the gods; And the strongest power of all Is that which belongs to the moment.”
It would be misleading to suppose that all wagers in a game of chance are attributable to a desire to win, even in this refined sense. In so far as it is the chief motive, there is no real play at all, for it constitutes a serious aim wholly outside the sphere of play. There must be some other meaning to the intense delight in winning, and Lazarus, as usual, puts his finger on it. “Even for an onlooker, not pecuniarily interested, the charm increases with the value of the stake.”[439] The stake serves not only to enhance the thought of winning the game, but intensifies the decisive moment.[440] A gambler must have excitement at any price, and he also wants to risk something; betting satisfies both demands.
The need for intense stimuli which we are so constantly encountering in the course of this inquiry appears as the second motive in our classification, and it is met by a storm of effects which betting excites. Consequently gambling is pre-eminently suited to supply this demand. I have already pointed out that betting on the performances of others is an especially popular form of gambling, since in this way alone can the excitement be enjoyed unimpaired by personal considerations. So, too, in games of pure chance, which relegate the player to comparative inactivity and impart a feeling of externality among its other effects. By far the most important of these effects is the contrast of the emotions of hope and fear, and often this simultaneous action of opposing passions is sufficient to stir the soul to its depths, since, as Lazarus penetratingly remarks, the result is in either case positive; the question is not, winning or not winning, it is winning or losing. This is another point which renders games of chance peculiarly fit for the production of exciting effects. Also besides fear and hope there is the tension of expectation and the shock of surprise to render the mental agitation more intense and varied. This explains why gambling is the last resort of the dissipated, worn-out man who needs sharp stimuli to arouse his exhausted powers.[441]
Gambling is, moreover, a fighting play, and this is doubtless one of its most important phases. There is no other form of play which displays in so many-sided a fashion the combativeness of human nature and with so slight expenditure of time and strength. There is the charm of danger as such, enjoyment of bold betting which in the changing course of the game is constantly renewed, and further indirect as well as direct battle with an opponent, for he who makes the best throw gets the best card. Besides all this there is the desire to win his wager, and by means of the steady augmenting of stakes it differs from all other fighting plays in affording at the last moment, when all seems lost, an opportunity of retrieving everything by a sudden overwhelming victory. And finally there is the defiance of the power of chance, or rather, if a religious rearing makes one scruple to put it in this form, we may call it a struggle with the powers of darkness.
The question now arises whether this is properly called a fight when the player can not influence the outcome, but must submit absolutely to the incalculable hazards of fortune. What right has he to congratulate himself on a victory for which he is in no way responsible? To this it may be answered that in addition to this subjective, psychological condition there is an active contest; for an illusion exists in connection with every game of chance that in some way the outcome is dependent on the capacity of the player, and a little reflection will show that this is characteristic of human nature. How else arises our naïve sense of worth or of shame? Are we not vain of physical beauty, of inherited advantages, and of riches which we have not earned? Does not the consciousness of deformity, stupidity, weakness, awkwardness, or even a lowly origin impart a feeling of shame and a sense of responsibility for our own shortcomings? We feel as if we had had a voice in the fashioning of our bodies and souls and a choice of our position in life—in short, as the vulgar saying has it, as if we had not been careful enough in the choice of our parents. Just in the same way we are proud of our luck in play. Luck is genius, and he whom it smiles upon is a hero.[442] This failure to discriminate between fortunate circumstance and personal merit is shown in a striking manner in popular poetry. Its heroes are often armed with magic weapons or directly assisted by higher powers who lend them supernatural strength or work ruin to their enemies. Such advantage is thus given them that the reflecting person has some difficulty in regarding their exploits as especially praiseworthy, yet the average hearer is undisturbed by such considerations. For instance, consider the invulnerability of Achilles and Siegfried’s Tarnkappe, which gave him in the fight with Brunhild “the strength of twelve men.”
In the case which we are considering, however, this habit of mind has a twofold significance: First, there is the personification of chance as fate, with whom the player struggles. Lazarus says: “Instead of blind chance, he pictures before him a reasoning intelligence whose laws he tries to fathom, and in the face of many failures and mistaken conclusions he persists in attempting to calculate his chances and to count on them, forgetting that the reckoning of probabilities is useful only in generalities and is practically worthless when applied to a single case. By and bye he endows luck with moral qualities as well. He will risk everything on a single card, and either can not believe that Fate will be inexorable, that his faith and perseverance must at last be rewarded, or else assumes an attitude of defiance to a hostile being.”[443] In the second place, the gambler regards the implements of his trade as does the magician among primitive peoples the means of performing his incantations. It is actual fetich worship in which personification assumes proportions quite different from those it bears in the general idea of fate. Demons who sometimes obey the player’s will, and sometimes mockingly defy him, seem to dwell in the dice and cards, transforming play into a contest in magic arts. This is perhaps not so strongly felt by cultivated people of the present day as I have represented it, yet it is present in a more or less rudimentary form in all devotees of the game. While some scoff at it, even they avoid those things which are traditionally supposed to bring ill luck. Thus, when I was a student, in our games with dice which were very popular, the following rules were rigidly observed: In order to throw double sixes, the player took the dice cup in his right hand, placed the left over it and shook it solemnly three times up and down before making the final throw. If low numbers were desired, the inverted cup was held slantingly and drawn carefully back on the table so that the dice glided out rather than rolled. For medium throws there was a choice between two methods over whose comparative efficacy there was serious controversy: either to rise from the table and empty the cup from a height, or to propel the dice suddenly by a sidelong movement from the cup, held at a slant. Was all this mere joking? To a certain extent certainly it was, yet the boys half believed in it and had a poor opinion of beginners who did not know how to handle the dice. Among the lower classes, however, and among peoples of less advanced civilization this fetichism is much stronger. Konrad von Haslan, says Schuster, testifies to having seen and heard “how on the one hand dice are honoured, greeted, and kissed, and have offerings of booty made to them, while on the other they were beaten and abused as if they possessed life. Often the player who has lost by them takes revenge by picking out the spots or smashing the dice with a stone or biting them in two to make them suffer.”[444] All these circumstances combine to make gaming a fighting play not alone with men, but also with supernatural powers whose inscrutable decisions possess a peculiar power and whose favour lends to the fortunate player a special nimbus, while the vanquished does not suffer in his own esteem as if he had been conquered by a human foe.
Finally, we should note that gaming has various mental connections with experimentation, since enjoyment of the excitation of hope and fear and the feeling of suspense as well as the shock of surprise is experimental in every case. With this is combined great activity of attention and imagination to whose agency the personification of which we have spoken must be ascribed; reason’s part in the process is displayed in the complex calculation of probabilities, and that of the will most conspicuously in the effort to appear outwardly calm while the wildest excitement reigns within, and hope and despair surge in alternate waves across the soul.
It is difficult to say which of these stimuli ought to be placed at the head of the list, but two appear to me to be rather more important than the others. First, the combative impulse, whose influence is particularly strong here; and, second, pleasure in intense effects, as when the “gold fever” takes the form of longing for a supreme moment which shall fill the soul to the brim, something which will transcend all other transporting agents. Both find their satisfaction at the gaming table, owing to the suddenness and importance of its revelations. In concluding, it may be remarked that the extraordinary persistence of gamblers, who sometimes sit all night at the table, as if hypnotized, may be at least partly explained by the law of repetition taken in conjunction with the independent attractions of the game. The performance of the last part of a mechanically repeated action tends to lead to the production of the first part again.
5. _The Destructive Impulse_
Turning our attention now to the third of our principal groups of fighting plays, the first subject—namely, the destructive impulse—will not occupy us long, as we have already given some consideration to it in the section on analytic movement-play. There we were chiefly concerned with the experimental element as manifested in the desire to take things to pieces. Here we shall emphasize the fighting instinct which is so easily aroused even toward a lifeless object, and frequently becomes a sort of delirium which is only appeased by the entire destruction of the object, as if it were a vanquished foe. And here, too, belongs the inquiry under what circumstances the discharge of this impulse, whether directed against a living or a lifeless object, may be considered as playful. As soon as rage ceases to be the chief influence, and the destruction is continued simply for the sake of its intoxicating effects, it takes on more or less of a playful character, though it is inexpedient to attempt to set clearly defined limits to what is earnest and what is play.[445] When children tear paper or overturn structures laboriously erected by themselves, how often the interest is cumulative, developing finally into passionate eagerness from action which was at first indifferent! The paper is seized in the teeth, the building kicked to bits, objects which are breakable entirely destroyed, flowers pulled to pieces, etc. Education should interfere at this point and direct the play, imposing proper checks. Madame Necker de Saussure relates of a previously gentle and tractable girl of eighteen months that “one day when she was alone with her mother, who was confined to her bed from illness, the child, without the least provocation, broke into open rebellion. Clothes, hats, fans, and every movable object that she could lay her hands on were piled in the middle of the floor, and she danced around the pile and sang with the greatest delight. Her mother’s serious displeasure had no restraining effect.”[446] “A girl three years old,” says Paolo Lombroso, “was left alone for a few moments, and proved her ability to improve the time. She at once began most energetically, and with full consciousness of what she was doing, to pull to pieces a basket of vegetables. She reduced all these to fragments, and then emptied an inkstand in her lap, amusing herself by smearing it on the wall and floor with her fingers. When that palled she took a corkscrew and punched her apron as full of holes as a sieve.”[447] A little later in life the impulse leads to more violent misdemeanours. The destruction of garden borders, smashing of furniture in public parks, and many other acts of vandalism which we prosecute, are practised by half-grown lads, and sometimes even by students.[448] Some may object to calling such roughness play, but play it surely is if there is no malicious intention, as is usually the case. Such mischief is often reprehensible, and deserves to be checked, yet such antics as those of the subalterns as described by Eugen Thossan can not be taken seriously. He says: “Suddenly a beer mug flew across the table and hit Sergeant Putz square in the face. This was the signal for a general free fight. Steins flew through the air like cannon balls. Four lamps borrowed from the officers’ rooms were on the table; one was struck and the chimney fell off. Somebody called out ‘When the chimney is gone the lamp may as well follow,’ and a blow from a fist shattered the lamp. A mad rage for destruction was kindled, and with anything that came to hand all the lamps were beaten to pieces. In the general hullabaloo no one noticed the wounds that he received from the splinters and blows. When every vestige was demolished, a frightful war whoop rose to the hall above.” It is more than probable that such orgies as this often have a certain connection with the sexual life. We find among animals—deer, buffalo, etc.—a similar rage for destruction during their breeding season.
My last example refers to mature men. It is the vigorous description in Vischer’s Auch Einer of the argument of two friends in an inn about the china displayed around them. “At last Auch Einer called out: ‘That is enough; they are condemned.’ He bought the whole collection from the innkeeper and then let himself loose. He handed me the pitcher with the remark that I should have the honour of opening the ball. I was not slow to obey, and as a massive granite block stood opposite the window I sent the pitcher crashing against it. Auch Einer was delighted, and, seizing a vinegar cruet, followed suit. Then we took turns with plates, dishes, glasses, and whatever came to hand. A crowd of villagers soon collected outside and cheered the rare sport; loud laughter and cries of ‘Go it, there!’ greeted each act of justice.”
Injurious treatment of living creatures, too, is often due to the same instinct. In the desire to investigate, the principle of the golden rule is forgotten. It would be too optimistic, however, to assume that such things are never done from cruelty. Fischart says that even well-disposed children reveal the demon of fighting and destruction when there is a beetle or a broken-winged bird or a wounded cat to torment. Most readers will recall some reminiscence of their own youth when they really enjoyed inflicting injury on some living thing. It may assume a dangerous form when directed against other persons. Some years ago a number of children at play intentionally drowned a comrade; and Fr. Scholz tells us, “An eight-year-old girl with an angelic face secretly put some pins in her little brother’s food, and calmly awaited the catastrophe, which fortunately was averted.” “A girl twelve years old pushed a child of three, with whom she was playing, into a pile of paving stones for no other reason than that she might have the opportunity to tickle him cruelly.”[449] Among criminals murders may sometimes result from following this impulse. Some time ago three peasants were tried for the murder, with incredible cruelty, of a servant. They were father, son, and mother. After the old man had throttled his victim he said to his accomplices, “Now he is dead enough.” But the woman, to make sure, dealt a hard blow on the poor fellow’s head. “Now I think he has had enough, this fine rabbit that we have caught.”[450] Here the bounds between play and earnest are hard to place, but probably belong at the point where the prearranged plan is no longer the leading thought, it having given place to mad delight in inflicting injury. These matters are, after all, only on the threshold of play, and we will now turn our attention to subjects more important to our inquiry.
6. _Teasing_[451]
The fighting instinct of mankind is so intense that all the playful duels, mass conflicts, single combats, and contests which we have described, do not satisfy it. When there is no occasion for an actual testing of their powers, children and adults turn their belligerent tendencies into a means of amusement, and so arise those playful attacks, provocations, and challenges which we class together under the general name of teasing. The roughest if not the earliest form of such play is that of bodily attack, such as is often observed among animals. A female ape which Brehm brought to Germany loved to annoy the sullen house dog. “When he had stretched himself as usual on the greensward, the roguish monkey would appear and, seeing with satisfaction that he was fast asleep, seize him softly by the tail and wake him by a sudden jerk of that member. The enraged dog would fly at his tormentor, barking and growling, while the monkey took a defensive position, striking repeatedly on the ground with her large hand and awaiting the enemy’s attack. The dog could never reach her, though, for, to his unbounded rage, as he made a rush for her, she sprang at one bound far over his head, and the next moment had him again by the tail.”[452] We all know how children delight in just such teasing. To throw an unsuspecting comrade suddenly on his back, to box him or tickle and pinch him, to knock off his cap, pull his hair, take his biscuit from his hand, and if he is small hold it so high that the victim leaps after it in vain—all this gives the aggressor an agreeable feeling of superiority, and he enjoys the anger or alarm of his victim. When I was in one of the lower gymnasium classes our singing on one occasion was suddenly broken into by a shrill scream. One of the pupils had found a pin which he energetically pushed into an inviting spot in the anatomy of the boy in front of him. The culprit could only say in palliation of his offence that he did it “without thinking,” which excuse was received rather incredulously. Schoolboys often pull out small handfuls of one another’s hair, and it is a point of honour not to display any feeling during the process. Becq de Fouquières records an ancient trick of this kind, consisting of a blow on the ear in conjunction with a simultaneous fillip of the nose. Cold water is a time-honoured instrument of torture. To duck the timid bather who is cautiously stepping into the pond, to empty a pitcher on a heedless passer-by, to place a vessel full of water so that the inmate of a room will overturn it on opening the door—these are jokes familiar wherever merry young people are found. The lover of teasing naturally seeks such victims as are defenceless against him, especially those who are physically weak or so situated as to be incapable of revenge. Yet there are ways of annoying the strong and capable. A good-natured teacher is apt to be the subject of his pupils’ pranks, though in this case they seldom take the form of physical assaults. It is not an unheard-of thing, however, for a paper ball to hit his head or for his seat to be smeared with ink or perhaps with glue as in Messerschmidt’s Sapiens Stultitia.[453]
Youths and grown men are little behind the children in such jests. There is, for instance, the christening on board ship in honour of crossing the line which Leopold Wagner thinks is derived from the ancient religious ceremony celebrated on passing the pillars of Hercules.[454] Tossing in a blanket, which made such a lasting impression on Sancho Panza, was known to the Romans by the name of _sagatio_. Such rough sports were practised in the time of the Roman emperors by noble youths. Suetonius relates of Otho that the future emperor as a young man often seized, with his companions, upon weak or drunken fellows at night, and tossed them on a soldier’s mantle (distento sago impositum in sublime jactare).[455] In popular festivities fighting with pigs’ bladders is a fruitful source of amusements to which tickling with a peacock’s feather is a modern addition, and lassoing with curled strips of paper which cling about the neck. Students make a specialty of such pranks. A favourite one was crowding, when the streets had only a narrow pavement for pedestrians, while in bad weather the rest of the road was a mass of unfathomable mud; another was to deal a hard blow on the high hat of some worthy Philistine, plunging him suddenly into hopeless darkness, or tracing a circle on the bald head of a toper asleep over his wine, etc. In an inn in Giessen there is still in existence a bench through whose seat a nail projects when a hidden cord is pulled—a pleasant surprise for the unsuspecting guest who reclines upon it. On entering the gymnasium I was initiated in an æsthetic little practice which is of ancient date and serves as an instance of the coarse jesting that is so common there. One of the company secretly fills his mouth with beer and reclines on two chairs. With a handkerchief spread over his face he plays the part of The Innkeeper’s Daughter. They all sing the familiar song, and two accomplices play the rôle of two of the peasants while the novice is asked to be the third. The veil is thus twice withdrawn from the daughter’s face, and twice replaced without any suspicious revelations, but when the innocent third lover arrives he is greeted with the stream of stale beer full in the face. A suitable companion-piece to this decidedly disgusting trick is this incident related by Joest as occurring among the Bush negroes of Guayana: “As I was tending the wound of a young negress whose breast was badly cut, she wearied of the operation, and suddenly seizing it in both hands she sent a stream of warm milk into my face and fled laughing away.”[456]
The most harmless teasing is the obvious kind which forms the basis of much social play, such as games for a company like “Blind-Man’s Buff,” “Fox Chase,” “Copenhagen,” and similar diversions. A striking instance occurs in The Sorrows of Werther. During a violent storm Lotta attempts to cheer the frightened company; she places chairs in a circle and seats everybody in them—many acceding in the hope of being rewarded with a sweet forfeit or two, and getting their lips all ready. “We are going to play counting,” said Lotta. “Now, attention! I am going round the circle from right to left, and you must count, each taking the number that comes to him; and we are going like lightning, and whoever hesitates or blunders gets a box on the ear, and we are going on to thousands.” She then stretched out her arms and flew around the circle, faster and faster. If any one missed, bang! came a box on his ear, and in the laugh that followed, bang! came another, and always faster and faster. Werther, however, noticed with inward satisfaction that the two blows which he received were somewhat harder than Lotta gave the others. When the company is still less refined than this, joking sometimes becomes so rough as to lose its playful character. The ancient Thracians were celebrated for this sort of thing. Gutsmuth says truly that from this circumstance much could be inferred concerning the state of civilization among them, if we had no other sources of information. “A man stands on a round stone holding a sickle in his hand and having his head through a noose suspended from above. When he is not expecting it a bystander pushes the stone away and there hangs the poor wretch who has been chosen by lot for this fate. If he has not sufficient skill and presence of mind to cut the knot at once with the sickle he flounders there until he dies, amid the laughter of the spectators.”[457]
Turning now to other forms of teasing than direct bodily annoyance, we find again that children very early understand it. When the pretence is made of great alarm at his beating with a spoon or banging a book or at a sudden cry, a child as young as two years old shows great delight, and will repeat the performance with a roguish expression. From this time on, to cause sudden fright is a favourite method of gratifying the taste for teasing. The ghostly manifestations which terrify each generation in turn can often be traced to some mischievous urchins.
I remember a joke played on a geographical professor at the gymnasium who, as he carelessly opened a closet door, was confronted by a skeleton which had been used in the previous lecture. Students could hardly subsist without the ancient trick of stuffing the clothes of a “suicide,” and placing the figure on the floor of their victim’s room with a pistol lying near, or hanging it by a rope to the window frame, to give the late home-comer a genuine scare. In Athenäus we find a beautiful instance of readiness to meet such a trick. King Lysimachus, who took delight in teasing his guests, one day at a banquet threw a skilfully made artificial scorpion on to the dress of one Bithys, who recoiled; but, quickly recovering himself, said to the rather penurious king: “My lord, it is now my turn to frighten you; I beseech you give me a talent.”[458] Such sport with fear, though harmless in these instances, becomes a passion with all narrowminded, tyrannous natures, and leads to cruelty which is anything but playful. Slatin’s dramatic work, Fire and Sword in the Soudan, gives an instance of such traits in the character of the Caliph Abdullah. Indeed, Abdullah had a part in, or rather was the occasion of, Slatin’s first experience during the life of the Mahdi. Slatin was taken prisoner by the Mahdi’s army before the gates of Khartoum. The morning after the city was taken, alarming rumours reached him; half incredulous, he looked out of his tent. “A mob had collected before the quarters of the Mahdi and his caliphs; it seemed to be getting into motion and making toward me, and I soon saw clearly that they were coming in the direction of my tent. I could now distinguish single persons. First walked the negro soldiers, one of whom, whose name was Shetta, carried a bloody burden on his head. Behind him howled the mob. The slaves entered my tent and stood glowering before me, and Shetta opened the roll of cloth and showed me—Gordon’s head! I grew faint and dizzy at the sight, my breath stopped, and it was only by the greatest effort that I commanded myself sufficiently to gaze upon that pallid face.” The Mahdi and his caliphs had ordered this hideous cruelty.[459]
A common and early developed form of teasing is the deception which imparts to the perpetrator a feeling of intellectual superiority. Children display this in their tender years principally by pretending that they are going to do forbidden or improper things, as revolt against authority. When the little girl observed by Pollock was twenty-three months old she often declined to kiss her father good-night. She turned from him as if annoyed or indifferent, to make a _fausse sortie_, and then called him back and gave the kiss.[460] Sigismund’s boy often exhibited a “kind of humorous defiance of authority,” such as grasping at a light standing near him, but not so that it could burn him, and looking slyly at his father.[461]
Older children have innumerable tricks of this kind. A sort of game is to strike on a table with a spoon or on the floor with a card and repeat the formula “He can do little who can’t do this, this,” and pass the stick or spoon to the next neighbour with the left hand. The uninitiated who attempt to do this usually pass it with the right hand and are much puzzled when told that they are wrong. There is much of this element, too, in the games of magic which children are so fond of. For examples of it among adults it is only necessary to turn again to the old jokes of students. In a university town a merchant, Karl Klingel, was roused in the middle of the night by a ring at the bell. The visitor was a student named Karl, who pretended to think that the name on the sign was a signal for him. “Mystification,” says Goethe in Wahrheit und Dichtung, “is and ever will be amusement for idle people who are more or less intelligent. Indolent mischievousness, selfish enjoyment of doing some damage is a resource to those who are without occupation or any wholesome external interests. No age is entirely free from such proclivities.” Moreover, one whole day in every year is given over to this jesting deception. The civilized world over the first of April is fool’s day. Wagner thinks that this custom arose from the change of the new year from the vernal equinox to January 1st, thus giving to the customary exchange of New Year’s gifts the character of jests, and to those who should forget the change of time the appearance of fools. So they are called Aprilnarren, poisson d’Avril, April fools, and in Scotland gowks.[462]
Memory forms another important division of our subject. The child’s natural impulse is easily aroused by new and striking peculiarities—for instance, he soon learns by example to stammer, to talk through his nose, or imitate any other defect without at first intending to tease. When his mimicry is laughed at he attempts intentional caricature, yet we are not to suppose from this that he would never do so alone. As a rule, though, it is the amusement of adults which stimulates him to improve on his former efforts. And as soon as he perceives that his victim is annoyed his mimicry becomes teasing.[463] At school this sort of teasing attacks unmercifully any little weakness or peculiarity, such as a halting or limping gait, stammering or lisping speech, a strange accent or foreign pronunciation. All these become the objects of ridiculous exaggeration even in the presence of older persons if they show no signs of disapproval.[464] In our club in the high school there was a boy who ran his words together in a comical fashion, and from imitating his manner of speech we constructed a formal language, some words of which still survive in the memories of his contemporaries. The most important sphere of this sort of imitation is that of pictorial art, where the caricaturist seeks to amuse by his exaggerated representations of familiar peculiarities. Children attempt this too. Their efforts are at first, of course, the grossest deformities with projecting ears, huge noses, etc., which they label with the name of some comrade whom they wish to annoy, but later when they have learned to draw they achieve some creditable caricaturing. I well remember our portrait of a French teacher who had two deep lines from the base of his nose to the corners of his mouth, forming with his long nose the letter M. Such pictures are, of course, not to be classed with methods of teasing unless the intention is to show them to the subject, which is by no means always the case, and unless their _raison d’être_ is something less than serious malice or hatred. There is always a charm in wielding, under the safe refuge of anonymity, these effective weapons against the mighty of the earth. What has not the nose of Napoleon III, for instance, suffered in this way!
Political caricatures were known to the early Egyptians;[465] and in Venezuela, besides pre-Columbian figures, a statuette with a gigantic nose has been found which is supposed to represent the Spanish invader.[466] Indirect satire forms a poetic analogue to these creations of the pictorial art, as it is an ironical form of teasing which imitates in an exaggerated manner, and makes the most of awkwardness and weakness, to raise a laugh against their possessor. Here play and earnest are frequently mingled, the poet usually setting out with the serious intention of annoying his victim, and yet taking such pleasure in the effort that the attack becomes genuine play. Indeed, we may say that the happiest and most effective satires are usually those which reveal such playfulness. The _epistolæ obscurorum virorum_ afford brilliant examples as well as many passages in Rabelais’s immortal work.
Finally, we must note the kind of teasing which is implied in provocative words and actions. Children often have the desire to use insulting and abusive language to their elders, but, not quite daring to utter it, they assume an impertinent air which sometimes seems partly playful. Thus Compayré tells of a child who said to his mother, “Vilaine!” but added immediately, “poupée vilaine”; and Marie G—— in her third year said to her father, “Papa, you are a—stove, you are a—tray,” while the expression of her face plainly showed that she had a more offensive epithet in mind.
There can be no doubt that the fighting instinct often finds expression in the direct effort to excite others to anger by provoking words. Such taunts are frequently thrown into rhythmical form, and so constitute a primitive lyric in which the musical element is not wanting. This is especially the case when there are several participants, who chant them in a sort of recitative, and usually adopt, as far as my observation goes, that fundamental stereotyped measure which forms the basis of all[467] primitive German child-song, and which in its simplest form is this:
In this measure the street urchins call mockingly after a teamster:
“’S hängt eener hinde dran, ’S hängt eener hinde dran,”
or when they wittily compare a tipsy man with an over-loaded and toppling wagon:
“Er hot, er hot, Er hot zu scheppe gelade,”
or taunt a young Englishman with
“Beefsteak, Wasserweck Auf dem Kopf e grosse Schneck?”
or scoff at a tale-bearing comrade:
“Angeber, geb mich an Kriegst ’n hohle Backezahn.”
This same motive is always used for such songs now as it was in the days of our pagan forefathers, who doubtless gave it a wider application.
Grosse points out that the derisive songs of savages have a strong similarity to such childish taunts. He cites one which Grey heard Australians sing in scorn of one of their own number:
“Oh, what a leg he has! Oh, what a leg he has! The old kangaroo jumper”—
and compares it to a scene before the door of a school in Berlin where a troop of children followed a little lame girl, calling out:
“Aetsch, ätsch, ätsch, Anna has a crooked leg, Aetsch, ätsch, ätsch.”[468]
Scornful speech among the common people is more than teasing. I must confine myself to only one or two examples of this important group. The above will suffice as an instance of the common jeering at physical infirmity.
Banter between the sexes begins even in childhood. In Alsace the little girls sing a rhyme which recalls the English
“Girls are made of sugar and spice And all that’s nice; Boys are made of rats and snails And puppy dogs’ tails.”
“Räge, Räge, Tropfe! D’Buäwe muess mä klopfe, D’Maidle kummen in Hommelbett, D’Buäwe kummen in Knotensäck!”
While in Bohemia the boys have it—
“Zeisig, Zeisig, Die Buben sind fleissig. Stieglitz, Stieglitz, Die Mädeln sind gar nichts nütz.”[469]
“Boys are the busy ones, Goldfinch, goldfinch. Girls are no use at all.”
At the festivals, and especially the weddings of mountain folk, the youths and maidens carry on a veritable poetic warfare, which sometimes becomes pretty severe.
Ten different German tribes too had champions who sang in scornful contests like that of the two Greenland poets.[470] In trade rivalry the tailor suffers most. Religious differences have given rise to such jargon as this:
“Franz Willwanz Willwippke Kadanz, Willwippke Kadippke Katholischer Franz!”[471]
As it is not expedient to dwell on the higher forms of satire here,[472] I will close this section with some remarks on the provocative manner and bearing. Like all other teasing, a scornful manner results from a feeling of superiority, and is always calculated to depreciate its object. When serious, such scornful behaviour constitutes a challenge to actual combat, but when playful it becomes the sort of teasing in which the perpetrator enjoys annoying others. The gesture which naturally accompanies it is pointing with the finger, and children usually add laughter. Even dogs understand this laughter, as their half-angry, half-depressed demeanour well proves. Sticking out the tongue, which with some children only means awkwardness and embarrassment, is sometimes employed in the same way. Sittl thinks that it was unknown to the Greeks and early Romans[473] (?); yet the Gauls made use of it as a means of expressing contempt, as did also the Jews. I have been unable to find a satisfactory explanation of this or for the “turned-up nose.” In Romeo and Juliet this passage occurs: “I will bite my thumb at them, which is a disgrace to them if they bear it”; and Persius refers to the same thing as expressing scornful depreciation of one’s opponent. Italians and Greeks place the thumb nail on the front teeth and snap it forward with like intent.[474] _Minimo digito provocare_, which may be freely interpreted as “I can manage you with my little finger,” serves the same purpose as does snapping the fingers also. Tylor remarks that in the language of deaf-mutes the rubbing together or snapping of small objects signifies contempt, depreciation, etc.[475] Many scornful gestures are obscene in character, and some such have been perpetuated in plastic art, especially during the middle ages (as, for instance, on the door of the Schwäbisch Hall). They all no doubt originated in the desire to express contempt in a forcible manner,[476] though the appropriateness of some of them is not apparent, as, for instance, jeering challenges to some degrading act, direct accusations, symbolic threats of defilement, where the idea seems to be that the assailant wishes to prove himself not only fearless in the presence of his foe, but shameless as well.
While on one side teasing is an expression of the fighting impulse, on the other it seems to be of considerable value as a promoter of sociability. The educational quality of school comradeships and students’ clubs depends in no small degree on the hardening of the super-sensitive by teasing, and thus preparing them for the future buffetings of fortune. It is useful, too, in stirring up heavy and phlegmatic natures. Bastian writes from Siam: “When a boy misses his aim and stands like a whipped poodle, his comrades mock him with ‘Kui, kui,’ which is very provoking. Some poor fellows are so sensitive to this blame and jeering, and so emulous of praise that they are quite beside themselves, and beat their heads against a wall. They are then said to be ‘Ba-Jo,’ or mad from shame. When, on the contrary, they meet such scorn with indifference, they are regarded as fearless.”[477]
7. _Enjoyment of the Comic_
There are two theories of the comic—that of the feeling of superiority and that of contradiction; the one being more subject to the will and the other to reasoning processes. That which Hobbes sets forth and which is perpetuated in modern psychology by Bain, Kirchmann, Neberhorst, and others, emphasizes the connection between laughter and ridicule. As the latter is a pleasure, “orta ex eo, quod aliquid, quod contemnimus in re quam odimus ei inesse imaginamu” (Spinoza), so too our appreciation of the comic is derived from our own powers of exaggeration over and above the contradictions inherent in the object of our depreciation. Erdmann says that we never think of Christ’s laughing, because we have an innate feeling that there is something malicious in unrestrained laughter.[478] The other theory, which also has many supporters, lays most stress on the intellectual side of the phenomenon, on the idea of contradiction, of inconsequence, of incongruity as displayed by the comic object. This startles us at first by its unexpectedness, and then appeals agreeably to our sense of the ridiculous. These two theories are by no means exclusive the one of the other, and are only opposed in that each accuses the other of failure to cover all the facts. Sully and Ribot[479] attempt to unite them by deriving the more refined sense of incongruity from the first exaggeration, progressively excluding the latter by mental play with contraries. We will be satisfied with the undeniable fact that pleasure derived from the comic is usually not only experimentation with attention, the shock of surprise, and a more or less logical enjoyment of the incongruities involved, but also an agreeable pharisaical feeling of being superior to the occasion. So far, then, as such pleasure can be referred at all to reason it does consist in this sense of superiority, and belongs in the category of fighting plays.
It is a familiar remark that we find something not altogether disagreeable in hearing of the misfortunes of even our best friends. From the standpoint of social science it is evident that humanity is not entirely dominated by the social and sympathetic instincts since even when these are most strongly manifested there is always a remnant of the fighting impulse in ambush, which greets with joy any damage to a friend as to a foe. This is the principle of competition. We know that untutored savages make violent demonstrations of joy over the misfortunes of an enemy, their fiendish laugh of triumph has been often described, and childhood recollections furnish most of us with striking data in the same line. “A ten-year-old boy who had daubed a comrade with filthy mud from the street danced around his victim and screamed with laughter.”[480] Sometimes scornful and contemptuous laughter serves as a weapon, for it is not always a mere expression of feeling, being frequently used to infuriate an opponent much as a provoking manner is employed. We find, too, that in numerous cases it originates in a triumphant feeling, as when the teasing we have been considering is successful, and also when spectators applaud such success. Then, too, there is laughter at the artistic representation of such scenes, pictorial, plastic, and poetic. Yet we are far from exhausting the list. As a result of the struggle for life, every inferiority calls forth a triumphant feeling in the observer, be it in physical or mental fitness or in opportunity or ability. Thence comes, too, the opposition among gregarious animals to anything which menaces the social norm or its usages, anything which is too small or too great to be reduced to the general average, provided the greatness is not sufficient to inspire awe or fear. And inferiority, too, in the courtship contest is often subject for ridicule. In all these cases, embracing as they do a large proportion of things comic, the instinct for fighting enjoys a triumph, and this enjoyment forms a large part of the general sense of satisfaction.
Yet we rightly hesitate to identify enjoyment of the comic with mere maliciousness. There is evidently something more. But what? Is Aristotle’s explanation, that the misfortune to another which excites our mirth is really a harmless thing, sufficient? By no means. While this may be quite true considered subjectively, it does not bear on our special question. It is at this point, I think, that the other theory becomes applicable, especially in a connection which has not been sufficiently brought forward. In all the relations of the comic with which we have so far had to do, only a small part of the stimulus of contrast has come from the object itself and from the relief of tension. By far the most significant feature of the process is the fact that the observer alternates between æsthetic feeling or inner imitation and the external sense of triumph. Hereby alone does the comic win the right to a place in the sphere of æsthetics. It is a psychological law that sufficient observation of any object stirs the imitative impulse to such a degree as to cause us inwardly to sympathize with the object, and the law holds good with regard to what we consider inferior if it impresses us as amusing as well. Our feeling, then, is so far from being pure malice that we actually spend an interval in inward participation in the inferiority, though at the next moment, it is true, exulting triumphantly in our own superiority. All this is a play grounded on the instinctive indulgence of our fighting impulse, aided and enlarged by the idea of contrast, the two together constituting appreciation of the comic. Mere mischief is not æsthetic, and the mere idea of contrast does not necessarily produce laughter; but, then, synthesis does call forth this characteristic effect of the comic.[481] The mischievous factor is sometimes of much less importance, and the laugh not at all like ridicule, yet in the vast majority of cases the idea of resistance mingles, if for nothing else, then to overcome the shock which is apt to stagger us at first, but is finally conquered. I proceed now to adduce some instances to which, in spite of their diversity, this explanation is applicable. We have seen that surprise is one of the first causes for laughter in children. They thoroughly enjoy the moment of recognition of a picture which has puzzled them, and adults have the same feeling when they have wrestled with almost illegible handwriting and at last decipher it. There is a slight shock of it, too, when we hear a child express precocious sentiments or see an animal act like a man. Then arises what Kries calls a state of false psychic disposition, from which we escape in the next instant. We may test this sensation by turning from a comic sheet to some serious reading. We are apt to conceive of the first sentences as if they were meant to be ironical, and find the recognition and correction of the misapprehension a pleasure in itself. Such a stimulus is also mildly operative in the amusement we derive from masquerades and other pretences. The charm of juggling and sleight-of-hand tricks is dependent on the unexpected performance of an apparently impossible task or the solution of an apparently insurmountable difficulty. As an instance of the surprise whose conquest forms a part of our amusement and which at first gives us a shock which has something of superstition in it, I will mention that which I felt on receiving “in the very nick of time,” as it were, the article of Hall and Allin’s, to which I have so often referred, just as I was about to begin my attempt to analyze the comic.
Punning, the introductory step to wit, is enjoyed by children too young to appreciate true wit. It consists in an incongruous association of ideas which at first amazes and then delights. Wit presents ideas in unexpected associations full of suggestion which prove either to be illusory or to conceal some jesting or serious meaning. Finally, we may include in his list some lying tales and extravagances which are too grotesque to represent any intention to deceive.
In all these instances we can trace the combination of fighting play with the contrast of ideas. The former, however, possesses here a deeper and more subjective significance, since it is no longer inspired by external inferiority, but by the necessity for overcoming the shock which at the first blush staggers and overwhelms us, but which it enables us to shake off immediately. We can thus speak of an offensive and a defensive triumph; in the former the laugh has something of the character of an attack, while in the latter we are warding off surprise. Yet the contrast of ideas coming in here makes it difficult to maintain this distinction clearly. Inner imitation falls in many cases into the background or entirely out of view, indicating that we are no longer dealing with æsthetic enjoyment. In the simpler cases contrast between stressed attention and its sudden unexpected release becomes the most prominent feature, while in others it is the contrast of opposing qualities which the object really possesses or has ascribed to it.
Summing up now the important data we find that enjoyment of the comic depends in the large majority of cases, though not in all, on the union of fighting play with the idea of contrast. This kind of fighting play naturally falls into two distinct groups, involving everything comic. The one is essentially composed of aggressive fighting plays, and makes prominent the contrast between inner imitation and the triumphant feeling of superiority. In the other group we find more defensive fighting play, and the idea of contrast takes the form primarily of sudden relaxation of the stressed attention and the impression of contradiction. That the first group represents an earlier stage of development from which the second is evolved, as Sully and Ribot intimate, is not easily proved. Children exhibit both very early.
Are there cases which do not exhibit fighting play in any form? I do not deny the possibility, though up to this time I have not been able to discover any such. The first difficulty to surmount in trying to establish this possibility would, it seems to me, be the laughter of children when they mimic anything (for example, the cries or movements of animals), which is not in itself amusing, nor is their intention mischievous. Can this be a case where the idea of contrast works alone and there is no fighting play? I think not, for I am convinced that the child’s first impression of the comic depends on his æsthetic sympathy with the model and on his conscious shaking off of this feeling; and, furthermore, the idea of contrast is in this instance connected with the conquest of difficulty, an association which always indicates an approach to fighting play, and is especially significant in this case, since mimicry singles out the salient and individual characteristics of the model.[482]
8. _Hunting Play_
Having learned to recognise the three principal groups of fighting plays we turn now to a special application of the fighting instinct. The name “hunting play” will include, for the sake of brevity, playful pursuit, flight, and hiding.
The chase is, in connection with the collecting of fruits, the oldest and most primitive method of obtaining a food supply known to us. It is not impossible that in some more primitive stage than that of modern savages human beings subsisted entirely (with the exception of some insects, young birds, and eggs) on vegetable food, as monkeys do. But we have no definite knowledge of this, and, however it may be, the facts justify the deduction that the impulse to pursue a fleeing creature, or, on the other hand, to flee and hide from approaching danger, is as much an inborn instinct in man as in the lower animals. It is true, indeed, that the arts of the chase are of vast service to evolution in other ways than in the pursuit of and escape from wild beasts, for it is often enough his fellow-man from whom the fugitive flees and must escape by speed or guile. In the case of animals the instinctiveness of the impulse is proved by their play. The kitten treats a ball of yarn exactly as an adult carnivorous animal does its prey, and that before she takes note of a living mouse; and young dogs show their wolfish nature in their chasing of one another when there is no real game to pursue. In the life of man, too, phenomena are not wanting which point to an instinctive basis for the hunting instinct, and they all belong to the sphere of play.
First, then, we must consider actual hunting of animals, which is not for the purpose of securing food. Small children display a disposition to chase animals. G. H. Schneider considers that this fact points directly to the inheritance of the habits of primitive man, but it is not necessary to call in the principle of inheritance of acquired characters, since simple succeeding to inborn instincts is sufficient to produce this result. “In the same way,” says Schneider, “the impulse for hunting, fishing, slaughtering animals and plundering birds’ nests in so cruel a manner is inherited, and is to-day quite common in young men accustomed to an outdoor life. The boy never eats the butterflies, beetles, flies, and other insects which he eagerly pursues and possibly dismembers, nor does he suck the eggs which he gets from nests in high trees, often at the risk of his life. But the sight of these creatures awakens in him a strong impulse to plunder, hunt, and kill, apparently because his savage ancestors obtained their food chiefly by such acts.”[483] Schneider goes too far, I think, in assuming that there is a special connection between the sight of a certain animal and the inherited impulse, yet it is quite probable that there is a general tendency to seek and pursue moving living creatures over and above what can be accounted for by fear. And perhaps the children of savages possess this tendency in a higher degree than do our own. Semon tells us of young Australians: “Any one who observes the children, and especially the boys, will see how in their play all the exercise is directed to the perfection of their skill in the chase. They are constantly occupied with throwing pieces of wood and little clubs at any possible target, killing squirrels and bringing down birds and small animals with these missiles. On the march, while the women and girls carry the baggage, the boys amuse themselves with various throwing plays.” The cylindrical nests of Australian birds are favourite hiding places of poisonous snakes, “and children who give promise of becoming zealous scientific investigators are often, as well as their elders, bitten in this way. My little friends in Coonambula were eager collectors of all sorts of insects and every creeping thing, and I have to thank them for many of my choicest specimens.”[484]
The chase as practised for sport by adults also argues for an instinctive basis of such play. Civilized man, who no longer makes hunting a direct means of replenishing his larder, still feels the force of this powerful impulse, and playfully reverts to the practices of his progenitors. The passion which this sport excites in its votaries is so strong as to leave little doubt that the impulse is an inherited one. “In our time,” says Johann von Salisbury in the twelfth century, “the chase is regarded by the nobility as the most honourable of employments, and its pursuit the highest virtue. They consider it the summit of earthly bliss to excel in this exercise, and consequently they ride to the chase with greater pomp and pageantry than to war. From pursuing habitually this manner of life they lose their humanity to a great degree, and become almost as savage as the beasts they hunt. Peasants peacefully tending their flocks are torn from their well-tilled fields, their meadows, and pastures, in order that wild beasts may take possession.”[485]
King Edward III had such a passion for hunting that he took a large pack of dogs with him when he was making war on France, and on French soil and every day he followed the chase in some form. The priestly Nimrods whose tastes belie their calling have been subjects of derision from the time of Chaucer to C. F. Meyer’s Shots from the Chancel, and the opposite extreme is found in Sebastian Brant’s Narrenschiff, where he accuses his contemporaries of disturbing the worship of God by bringing their dogs and falcons into the churches. In modern times the passion for hunting is strongest in mountaineers, whose free outdoor life affords every opportunity to indulge the taste. No one who has seen the face of an old mountaineer as he catches sight of a likely goat has any further doubt that inherited instinct is at the bottom of the hunting impulse. Bismarck well described the charm of field sports at the time (1878) when, his health being threatened, he left the business of his office to younger diplomats, and refused to be consulted except on the most vital questions. Rudolf Lindau has given, too, in a parliamentary speech of Bismarck a half-humorous and yet striking picture of a tired hunter: “When a man starts off on a hunt in the morning he is quite willing to tramp over miles of heavy ground to get a shot at birds. But after he has wandered about all day, has his game bag full, and is about ready to go home, being tired, hungry, and covered with mud, he shakes his head if the game-keeper says that there are partridges in the next field. ‘I have enough,’ he says. But if a messenger comes with the news that there is a wild boar in the woods below, this tired man with hunter’s blood in his veins forgets his fatigue, and hastens to the woods, not satisfied until he has found the game and captured it.”
The most rigidly conducted chase has something of the character of play, and there is a whole cycle of games in which flight and pursuit are the main features. To begin with the pursuit of our own kind: suppose one taking a two-year-old child in his arms and springing toward another person, who runs away in pretended fright. The child will manifest delight, which is much too strong to be attributed to mere pleasure in the movement, and must be connected with the hunting impulse. It is shown, too, quite as plainly by boys playing on the street. James is right when he says, “A boy can no more help running after another boy who runs provokingly near him than a kitten can help running after a rolling ball.”[486] In 1894 I had an opportunity to observe a scene which displayed the power of this instinct in a manner which was almost terrible; the boys irresistibly reminded me of dogs or wolves pursuing their prey in a hot chase. At that time a racer came to Giessen, and to attract attention ran through the streets at midday attired in rose-coloured tights, fantastically decorated, and carrying a large bell in his hand. He moved with incredible rapidity, now disappearing round some corner, and now emerging from a side street. When school was out a crowd of homeward-bound boys filled the streets, and, catching sight of the runner, chased after him, so that soon a mob of from fifty to one hundred children were on his heels, chasing him like a pack of hounds with the wildest excitement and loud cries. The man carried a whip which he laid about him well, otherwise the children would doubtless have tried to catch and beat him.
The number of plays which employ such chasing is extraordinarily great, and I will confine myself to a few examples which display the characteristic points of difference. One of the simplest forms of it is the “Zeck,” which is described in a seventeenth century collection. Another is the Greek ὀστρακίνδα, for which the boys used bits of pottery or a shell, one side of which was smeared with pitch and called night, while the other side was day. The children were divided into parties of the day and night, and the token thrown up in the air. The side lying uppermost on its fall determined which party should flee and which pursue. Whoever was caught was called a donkey[487] and must sit on the ground to await the end of the game. This may have been the origin of our coin tossing. In most chasing plays there are special pre-arranged conditions which avert danger from the fugitive and facilitate bringing the play to a close, and most of these conditions can be traced to some ancient superstition. In one game the pursued is safe while standing on or touching iron, and in another sudden stooping makes him immune, while others again appoint bases as cities of refuge. These were used by the Greeks, and a great variety of designation indicates how general they are among the Germans. In the Greek σχοινοφιλίνδα the participants formed in a circle, around which one went with a stick which he secretly hid behind one of the players, who has the privilege of chasing the depositor; or, in case he fails to discover in time what an honour has been conferred upon him, he must run around the circle exposed to the blows of all its numbers.[488] It is like our “Drop the Handkerchief,” and also the game where the boy, whose cap the ball falls in, must throw it after the others. Finally, I will mention two games in which this element has developed into complex imitation of genuine combat. “Fox chasing” furnishes a perfect picture of battle. Two hostile parties stand opposed and attempt to conquer one another and to free their imprisoned allies, and yet, since each capture is made by pursuit and not by fighting, the principle of the chase is the controlling one. “Hare and Hounds” is another imitation of the chase. Adults usually play it on horseback, though there is a notice in Ueber Land und Meer (1880, No. 27) of such a chase on foot, in America. Two specially good runners are given fifteen minutes’ start, and the rest of the company take the part of hounds.
But it is not essential that the thing pursued shall be a living creature. Just as kittens and puppies chase lifeless objects, such as rolling balls, sticks, etc., so do human beings also find substitutes for the proper objects of their sportiveness. Catching a swiftly moving ball is sometimes of this nature; there is attending it a feeling of triumphant mastery much the same as that which excites the boy who seizes and holds a fleeing comrade or the clown who obstructs the course of a scorching wheelman. This is especially the case with professional ball players, who allow the ball to pass their hands and then seize it by a quick movement as it is about to touch the ground. There are other games in which the ball is not caught in the air, but is allowed to fall to the ground and roll away while the players must pursue and catch it. Football and cricket are examples of this, and consequently can be classed either with chase or fighting plays, though they have more of the characteristics of the latter. Another form of hunting play which should not be overlooked is the seeking for hidden persons or things. H. Lemming refers to a process belonging to the child’s first quarter as a kind of hiding play. “The child’s aunt had him on her lap, his little head resting on her right shoulder, while she played hide with him. ‘Where is he?’ she would cry while she hid his head between her arm and breast; then, as she suddenly drew the arm away, ‘There he is.’ She had not done it many times before the little fellow understood perfectly. As soon as his aunt made the motion he turned his head in the right direction and laughed softly. Several days passed, and the game had been repeated two or three times, when one morning early, as he was lying on my bed, I smiled at him and he laughed back; then his face took on a roguish expression, and he buried his head in the pillow for an instant and suddenly raised it with the same mischievous look. He repeated this several times.”[489] Becq de Fouquières restores a beautiful antique picture of a Greek hiding play. One little fellow presses his eyes shut while two others hurry to hide themselves. In Siam “Hide-and-Seek” is called “Looking for the Axe,” and is oftenest played in the twilight because dark, impenetrable corners are more abundant then.[490] There is added weirdness, too, in the half light, and the shock of surprise on suddenly coming upon the hidden object is stronger, bringing the players more in touch with the emotional life. The objects to be hidden are of various kinds. This is a use to which children love to put Easter eggs, and much interest is added to the search by the cries of “Cold,” “Freezing,” “Getting warm,” “Hot, hot, burning,” etc. Very common, too, are games like “Button, button, who’s got the button?” where a small object is passed from hand to hand and kept concealed. A curious forfeit game like this was very popular in former years, and is thus described by Amaranthes: “The whole company sit close together in a circle on the ground while a shoe belonging to one of them is slipped along and hidden beneath their legs, while one person tries to find it.”[491] Fleeing and hiding occur in all hunting plays, but are specially prominent in some forms—in games like “Going to Jerusalem,” for instance, where many attempt to make use of the same chair, “Stagecoach,” “Change Kitchen Furniture,” “Cats and Mice,” etc. In many the pursuers are restricted by certain conditions and prohibitions which are in favour of the fleeing ones, and furnish occasion for evasions and all sorts of byplay. For one thing the “catcher” may be hooded or blindfold. Bastian saw a game played in Siam in which the bandage over his eyes was so arranged that it hung down like an elephant’s trunk.[492] Another handicap is to require the pursuer to hop on one foot and hit those whom he overtakes with his knotted handkerchief. When in his excitement he changes to the other foot they all cry out and beat him with theirs. The Greek ἀσκωλιασμός was apparently much like this.
9. _Witnessing Fights and Fighting Plays. The Tragic_
Æsthetic observation belongs more properly to imitative play, but we have been compelled to notice it already in several connections and must not overlook its influence on fighting play. Thanks to inner imitation we can take part in fights without objective participation, and actually enjoy attacks and defence, strategy and risk, victory and defeat as if they were our veritable experience. As we found in games of rivalry, this internal sympathetic fighting has a great advantage over objective fighting in the more varied and lasting excitement which it effects (for example, the tension of expectation which in one’s own quarrels soon vanishes); yet, on the other hand, it lacks the element of pleasure peculiarly associated with one’s own achievements.
In considering the observation of actual fighting we must distinguish between combat with an enemy and the conquest of difficulty. Inner imitation is prominent in both. When we see a company of labourers trying to lift a heavy stone or beam with pulleys, or driving piles in the water, or a man pulling his boat up on the beach, or a smith beating the hot iron with heavy blows of his hammer, or a hunter scaling mountain crags to reach an eagle’s nest, we take part in the struggle with difficulty and enjoy success as if it were our own. The sympathetic interest is even greater in witnessing a fight between two combatants; indeed, it can be playful only when the onlooker can restrain his emotions and regard the struggle going on before him as a theatrical representation, as is often enough the case. When two boys are tussling, when adults quarrel with high words, when a rider attempts to control his vicious horse, when a man defends himself with a stick against a brutal dog, when the champions of opposing parties fight in the presence of their backers, the spectators may take such impersonal interest in the combat.
Much more to our purpose, however, is the witnessing of playful fights where the contestants engage merely for amusement or to test their prowess, whether or not they are in playful mood. In this case, overcoming difficulties is the leading feature. Then, too, there are myriad forms of juggling, contortionism, prestidigitating, etc., in which the spectator, at least in part, inwardly joins; and the wild excitement of animal and ring fights, bull baiting, fencing matches, racing on foot, wheel, and horse. Even for the fighting plays which are not intended as an exhibition, such as football and cricket games, there is usually collected a crowd of intensely sympathetic spectators, and the players themselves, when not in action, are entirely out of the game, yet they still take part through inner imitation which has frequent outward manifestations. Moreover, whoever sees a difficult piece of work accomplished feels a desire to test his own skill with a like task. The merest onlooker at a prize fight will assume belligerent postures, as Defregger says, and savages are often so wrought upon by witnessing a war dance that serious brawls ensue.
These facts lead us insensibly to the realm of art, of which I merely remark in passing that certain echoes of the fray may be detected in architecture and music, and that the representative arts and especially painting devote a wide field to combat, but that the real domain of internal fighting play is found in poetry. Fighting and love plays[493] contribute most largely to the enjoyable element in poetry, and the latter is less effective when divorced from combat. Even in lyrics, which would seem to afford the least opportunity for exploiting such themes, the tourney is a fruitful inspiration, and the triumphant note of victory is conspicuous. A verse of Heyse’s illustrates in mocking wise, and perhaps more forcibly than any other, how great is the importance to the poetic art of its connection with the fighting instinct. In dilating upon the literary status of the abode of bliss he says:
“Für Drame, Lustspiel und Novelle Ist leider hier Kein günst’ner Boden; Die kultivirt man in der Hölle. Hir giebt es Hymnen nur und Oden.”
“For drama, stage play, and novel There is, alas! no public here; These things are practised down in hell. Here hymns and odes are _de rigueur_.”
In studying epic poetry we are struck by the frequency with which the excitement of fighting furnishes the motive. This is the case with almost the whole cycle of primitive epics and folk stories, down to our modern romance; and when an epic is produced, like the Messias, for example, without such stimulus to interest, it falls irretrievably under the reproach of dulness. In the drama war is all-important. A short time ago an unnamed author published an article on dramatic conflict to which I fully subscribe.[494] Since the time of Aristotle the idea of acting has been prominent[495] in any conception of the drama, though there have been some writers like Lenz, Otto Ludwig, and lately Gartelmann, who have stressed the delineation of character. Both theories easily lead to a one-sided view. “Not character as such, but character in conflict it is which lays claim to our interest in the drama, and only such acting is dramatic as reveals the conflict.... The essence of the dramatic consists in the presence of an overwhelming catastrophe which forms the central point of the poem, and its culmination is the writer’s chief task.” It strikes me that this is incontestable, though it may be urged that the conflict is only a means of bringing out the essential features of the character. Thus Wetz strikingly says: “If a poet wishes to portray his hero realistically, then must his environment contrast with his character. He must be put in trying circumstances, and thus be brought out of himself and reveal his utmost depths. Comedy as well as tragedy furnishes such situations; where the amusing complications or fatal passion have once been intimated they must be pursued to their final consequences.”[496] For refined connoisseurs it may be true that in perfect drama[497] conflict is but a means of unveiling character, yet even their interest is deepened by psychological considerations. With naïve spectators, who are to me the more important, it is quite otherwise. The conflict itself is the important thing to them, and the fact that it may afford insight into character is only noteworthy as making the fight more interesting. In any case we are safe in averring that the pleasure afforded by the drama has one very essential feature in common with ring contests, animal fights, races, etc.—namely, that of observing a struggle in which we may inwardly participate.
Tragedy is the highest poetic representation of a contest which is pursued to the bitter end, usually violent defeat.[498] Here we again encounter the question of enjoyment in relation to what is tragic. Volkelt explains it as a result of (1) the exalted character of the excitement; (2) sympathy; (3) strong stimuli; and (4) appreciation of artistic form. The third point, which is also one of ours, he considers subordinate. His first point, however, is not universally applicable, and his second is limited to those cases in which the sufferer is regarded as worthy, and even then pain predominates and only serves to weigh the balance further down on that side. Thus only the last two points remain for universal application. While we grant that appreciation of artistic form is an element in the explanation, the third point, pleasure in intense stimuli, seems to me more important. Volkelt’s view is not a little influenced by Vischu’s contention that “a general disturbance of the emotions constitutes a satisfaction for barbaric crudeness and _ennui_.” We have already had occasion to show that the enjoyment of strong stimuli is of great significance in all departments of play, but I fail to see anything barbaric about it, and consider this word unworthy to be applied to æsthetic pleasure. Is it not a noble pleasure to stand on a mountain summit or a ship’s prow and watch an approaching storm? And how much more elevated still is the storm of effects which tragedy awakens in us!
In considering fighting play in this connection we must notice a further point which is a corollary to those which have gone before, and is illustrated by some of the examples already given. The man standing on a ship and contemplating the force of a storm (I do not refer to his struggle with it) enjoys more than mere excitement. His soul partakes of the raging of the elements, the seething waves which break on the vessel’s prow, the furious gusts of wind, all this outward strife is inwardly imitated by him, and he is filled with jubilant delight in exercising all his fighting instincts. So also with tragedy. Not only joy in the storm of emotions, but also joy in the contest, is an important means of subduing what is unavoidably painful. While this relation, too, has been appreciated in other spheres, its application to the tragic has not hitherto been made. Indeed, this instinct is usually referred to in a narrow sense as a sort of bloodthirstiness, an idea not always far wrong. Ribot has formulated the following progression: “Pleasure in manslaughter, pleasure in judicial execution, pleasure in witnessing death (murder, gladiatorial combat, and the like), pleasure in seeing the blood of animals gush out (bull and cock fights), pleasure in witnessing violent and gory melodrama [this is only imitation, since the illusion of reality is but momentary], and finally, pleasure in reading bloody romances and following imaginary murder trials.”[499] We can hardly deny that even the cultured spectator feels something of the murderous impulse when, for instance, Hamlet springs with the agility of a tiger toward the king to fix him with a dagger. Yet as a whole this exposition of the theory of tragedy is defective even if we make the murderous impulse cover every variety of injurious conduct. The impulse to inflict injury has nothing to do with the final overthrow of the hero of our sympathies (and we do sympathize often with the very criminals in tragedy), and in the instances cited by Ribot it is usually less the bloodiness of the episode than its character as a fight which attracts us. The feeling of power in combat, not the cruelty of destructiveness, is most prominent. The reason that spectators of an animal fight are not satisfied until one of the fighters is either killed or disabled is surely not because they delight in injury as such, but because the fight can not be decisive until some injury is done.
While, then, we can not adopt this theory of the destructive impulse, yet we can learn from it, especially on one point to which we have given too little attention. We do take a certain pleasure in the catastrophe involving the personages of a drama which differs from our satisfaction in a fighting play; we sympathize with the sufferer, and yet experience feelings of pleasure. So long as the crisis delays, the case is indistinguishable from all other fighting plays; but how can we take part by inner imitation in the general collapse and yet enjoy the spectacle? In answer to this I must say that I am extremely doubtful whether the moment of the catastrophe is always enjoyable; I am inclined to think that quite often the sources of pleasure are insufficient to outweigh genuine grief. In this case inner imitation persists because the spectator is hypnotized by the extraordinary tension, and is unable to desist. I think, for example, that no one experiences lively feelings of delight while Wallenstein is being murdered behind the scenes, in spite of the intense stimulus, importance of the interests involved, etc. It is not essential that every instant of æsthetic contemplation should be filled with unadulterated pleasure. On the other hand, there are undoubtedly instances in which the catastrophe is actually enjoyed; and since we are not prepared to accept the explanation of this given above, let us inquire whether we can find one more satisfactory from the standpoint which we have adopted—namely, that of fighting play strictly speaking. An example will make my view clear, and one which may be explained in two ways. Let us picture to ourselves a Roman amphitheatre with the spectators assembled to witness a fight between a “bestarius” and a lion, and suppose that the man, in spite of wonderful agility, receives more and more serious wounds and is finally slain by the maddened brute. Suppose, further, that inner imitation on the part of the spectators is engaged by the man, as is natural, so that their pleasure can not be referred to triumph in the lion’s victory. To us the most conspicuous feature of the whole thing is the cruelty and bloodthirstiness of the spectators, and reading modern descriptions of these old Roman customs only strengthens this idea. The barbarity was undoubtedly there, but was it the ground of their enjoyment? I think not, for thousands of the breathless spectators. On the contrary, that which moves these people is one of the strongest and most stirring stimuli known to us, sympathy with the courage and persistence of fighters to the death. For the best and probably the most of the spectators the satisfaction is not in mere witnessing cruel horrors, but first in the invincible courage which is undaunted in their presence, or in case of the hero’s defeat it consists in a victory over their own sympathetic terror. How clearly this passage from Cicero indicates this! “When you see the boys in Sparta, the lads in Olympia, or barbarians in the arena suffer the severest blows and bear them silently, will you wail like a woman when you feel pain? Boxers never lament when they are beaten from the ring, and what wounds they get! Can you not put up with a single hurt from the buffetings of life? What fighter, even an ordinary one, ever sighs or groans or goes about with a downcast face? Which of them has tamely submitted to death?”
In a similar way the sight of misfortune in tragedy may give pleasure because the outward undoing of the hero is calculated to awaken in us a feeling of triumph in which imitation gives us a part. As I have said, I do not believe that this is always the case, but rather that while the tragedy as a whole gives pleasure the supreme moment may be painful; and in still other circumstances the storm of emotion, one of all-conquering Fate, etc., may cause feelings of satisfaction when there is no inner victory. It is never so intense, however, as when this is present—a proof of the importance of fighting play. The utmost triumph for a fighter is the victory over his fear of defeat, and such victory is afforded by our playful sympathy with a tragic incident. Then fighting play becomes a source of such pleasure as is attributed ordinarily to exalted influences. Such side lights on a subject are seldom without important significance, and our problem is now thrown into somewhat this form. Tragedy most perfectly represents combat when it is pursued to a catastrophe. Since we habitually sympathize with the human element, the contradiction ensues of our experiencing pleasure in the suffering which we deplore and are involved in. We explain this apparent contradiction by assuming that the catastrophe becomes the foundation for an inner victory which converts it into a triumph. An examination of the various elevating effects which Volkelt’s analysis discloses reveals much that is irrelevant from our standpoint. The most salient of these points is his tragic opposition, whereas we have found that the catastrophe is in itself enjoyable only when exultation in the triumph of desolation is based on dread of that very thing. When the exhilaration depends merely on the overwhelming nature of Fate or when a moment of respite is snatched for the doomed hero, the poignancy of our sympathy with the final suffering is softened. Independent satisfaction in the catastrophe is present only where there is an element of fighting play, and herein lies the essence of our theory—that is, when inner imitation transforms defeat into victory. “Courage and self-possession in the presence of a powerful enemy, of threatened danger or calamity, or of difficult and anxious questions—this is what the tragic artist displays. All that is martial in us holds saturnalia in the presence of tragedy.”[500]
The study of fighting play has thus led us from its rough and cruel manifestations to the culminating point of tragedy. What Volkelt says in a general way of the supreme moment we may apply to our own position: “Even in suffering and grief, in fear and defeat, must the tragic personage, if he would not fall below the requirements of his art, always appear great. When a man quails in the hour of extreme suffering or wavers before the severest test, however superior he may have appeared previously, there is an end of tragic effect. But let him display greatness of soul at the crucial moment, he then makes an elevating impression which is subverting to pessimism and encouraging to the idea that the severest and most outrageous attacks of Fortune can not make a man small, that the human spirit bears within itself a principle of growth and of supremacy which is able to cope with the might of Fate itself.”[501]
I close with the remark that this study of the tragic is advanced with a full sense of its inadequacy. My main intention is to indicate the scope of my conception of fighting play. The general idea of play has been developed by others and applied advantageously in the treatment of contrast of ideas in the tragic. Tragedy, like all other sources of higher æsthetic pleasure, extends beyond the sphere of play because, to put it briefly in the words of Schiller, we can descry through the veil of beauty the majestic form of truth.
II. LOVE PLAY
Is there such a thing as playful application of the sexual impulse? Views of this subject differ widely, and the remarks on it of animal observers show that many hesitate to use the term “play” in this connection. Wundt says: “The distinction has been made between fighting play and love play, and such actions and expressions as, for instance, the cooing of doves, the calls of singing birds, etc., have been interpreted as wooings. But these wooings are quite seriously intended by the bird, and I do not think that we can regard them as in any sense playful.”[502] On the other hand, others can be cited who assure us that most observers agree in ascribing to singing birds, besides their regular courtship arts of song and flight, actions which have all the marks by which Wundt himself characterizes play—namely, enjoyment, repetition, and pretence. However, we shall find that it is in man that play with the function in question is most clearly exhibited, and, as its connection with art has already been referred to, it will be sufficient to dwell on one aspect of it here—namely, its relation to poetry. However derogatory it may be considered to condition poetic art on such stimuli, the fact is incontestable that, deprived of their influence, the tree of poetry would be stripped of its verdant living dress.
On the other hand, we must avoid the older and more common error of speaking about the “sweet sportiveness of love” without distinguishing between what is really playful and what is quite seriously meant. It is true that such popular usages of speech have not become general without some foundation in fact, and it may prove interesting to inquire how this one arose. We find the element of truth in the popular feeling by comparing the subject under discussion with eating and drinking, which are also sensuous pleasures. Why do we not hear so much of play in their exercise? Evidently there is a difference. While in eating and drinking, so far as directed by hunger, the real end, the preservation of life, is always in view, while the real end of lovers’ dalliance, namely, the preservation of the species, is far in the background. It is true that we sometimes eat and drink for the enjoyment it gives, as well as to satisfy hunger and renew our strength, yet the practical bearing of the act is so closely and inseparably connected with it that only under very special circumstances can we speak of it as playful. It is quite otherwise with the caresses and the traffic of love. Here the practical results are so far removed and the things in themselves are so enjoyable that such language is quite justified.
Still, while there is analogy there is not perfect identity with play, and we must carefully inspect various aspects of the subject to select those which are unmistakably of this character. The subjoined examples are therefore selected advisedly and with care, in view of possibly unexpected readers of this chapter. A glance over the field discloses the following suitable divisions: 1, Natural courtship play; 2, sex and art; 3, sex and the comic.
1. _Natural Courtship Play_
Birds have many familiar courtship arts which are hereditary (the isolated adult bird displays almost as much capacity in this direction as does one reared with his kind), but mammals exhibit much less of it. In relation to man there is a theory that sex grounds all art (of this we shall speak later), but a scientific system of comparative courtship of the various human races does not exist; nor, indeed, have we systematic observations of any one people. It is therefore impossible to affirm whether there are such things as instinctive gestures, expressions, caresses, etc., which all human beings recognise as sexual stimuli. From the little that is known it seems probable that the number of such tokens is not great—even the kiss is by no means general! We can only be sure of a universal tendency to approach and to touch one another, and of a disposition to self-exhibition and coquetry as probably instinctive and of the special forms which these tendencies take under the influence of imitation and tradition as secondary causes. Caressing contact may then be regarded as a play when it is an end in itself, which is possible under two conditions: First, when the pursuance of the instinctive movements to their legitimate end is prevented by incapacity or ignorance; and, second, when it is prevented by an act of will on the part of the participants. Children exhibit the first case, adults often enough the second.
It is generally known that children are frequently very early susceptible to sexual excitement, and show a desire for contact with others as well as enjoyment of it, without having the least suspicion of its meaning. Keller gives a beautiful and touching example of this in his Romeo und Julia auf dem Dorfe: “On a tiny plot of ground all covered with green herbs the little lass lay down upon her back, for she was tired, and began to croon some words in a monotonous way, while the boy sat near her and joined in the song, almost wishing to follow her example, so weary and languid he felt. The sun shone into the open mouth of the singing girl, gleaming on her teeth so dazzlingly white and shining through the full red lips. The boy noticed this, and taking her head in his hands he examined the little teeth curiously and cried, ‘Guess how many teeth you have?’ She reflected for a moment, as though making a careful calculation, and then said with conviction, ‘A hundred.’ ‘No; thirty-two,’ he answered; ‘but wait till I count again.’ Then he counted aloud, but as he did not make thirty-two he had to begin over several times. The little girl kept still for some time, but as the zealous enumerator seemed never to get any nearer the end of his task she shook him off at last and cried, ‘I will count yours.’ So the boy stretched himself on the grass with the girl above him, throwing his head back while she counted 1, 2, 7, 5, 2; but the task was too hard for the little beauty, and the boy had to teach and correct her, so she too had to begin over and over again. This play seemed to please them better than any they had had that day. But at last the little girl slid down by the side of her small instructor, and the children slept together in the bright sunshine.” From such tender, unconscious premonitions we pass to more strongly marked love plays, for which the services of a special instructor are usually necessary, as in the somewhat peculiar relation of the boy Rousseau to the little Goton who played the part of teacher in their private interviews: “Elle se permettait avec moi les plus grandes privautés, sans jamais m’en permettre aucune avec elle; elle me traitait exactement en enfant: ce qui me fait croire, ou qu’elle avait déjà cessé de l’être ou qu’au contraire elle l’était encore assez elle-même pour ne voir qu’un jeu dans le péril auquel elle s’exposait.”
Often, too, children show the same sort of preference, all unconscious of its import, toward particular favourites among their grown-up friends, enjoying the pleasure of contact for its own sake. “The pretty girl,” says Mantegazza, “whom Nature has endowed with the power to awaken longings and sighs at her every step, often does not realize that in the swarm of her admirers there are boys scarcely yet past their childhood, who secretly kiss any flower on which she may chance to look, who are happy if they may steal like a thief into the room where the beauty has slept and may kiss the carpet that her foot has pressed; ... and how seldom does she suspect, as her fingers play with the locks of the little fellow whose head rests on her knee, that his heart is beating audibly under her caressing touch!”[503] Perez cites Valle’s account of a ten-year-old boy who was in love with his older cousin. “Elle vient quelquefois m’agacer le cou, me menacer les côtes de ses doigts longs. Elle rit, me caresse, m’embrasse; je la serre en me défendant et je l’ai mordue une fois. Elle m’a crié: Petit méchant! en me donnant une tape sur la joue un peu fort, etc.”[504]
This feeling may be involved in some of the positions and movements of tussling boys. Schaeffer has remarked in a short paper that in the belligerent plays of boys, especially ring fighting,[505] “the fundamental impulse of sexual life for the utmost extensive and intensive contact, with a more or less clearly defined idea of conquest underlying it,” plays a most conspicuous part. I do not believe that this is the rule, yet I am convinced that Schaeffer’s view is more often correct than would appear at a first glance, and especially so when the contestants are on the ground and laughingly struggle together.
Lastly, we must notice the absorbing friendships between children of the same sex. Here, too, the instinct, robbed of its proper aim, may assume a sportive, playful air. Even among students, friendships are not rare in which the unsatisfied impulse plays its part all unknown to the subjects. I content myself in this connection with the citation of a little-known passage of the highest poetic beauty, and evidently inspired by personal reminiscence. In it a light touch of sexuality is imparted with a delicacy equal to that of Keller. Wilhelm Meister writes to Natalie of his suddenly formed and tragically ended friendship with a village lad. The two boys, who had just become acquainted, were fishing together on the river bank. “As we sat there leaning together he seemed to grow tired, and called my attention to a flat rock which projected into the water from one side of the stream. It made the loveliest place to bathe. Pretty soon he sprang up, declaring that he could no longer withstand it, and before I knew it he was down there undressed and in the water. As he was a good swimmer he soon left the shallows, yielding his form to the water and coming toward me. I too began to be interested. Grasshoppers danced around me, ants swarmed about, bright-coloured insects hung from the boughs overhead, and gold gleaming sunbeams floated and glanced fantastically at my feet, and just then a huge crab pushed up between the roots to his old stand whence he had been driven by the necessity of hiding from the fishers. It was so warm and damp that one longed to get out of the sun into the shade, and then from the cool shade to the cooler water. So it was easy for my companion to lure me in with him. I found a mild invitation irresistible and, notwithstanding some fear of parental displeasure, and a vague terror of the unknown element, I was soon making active preparations. Quickly undressing on the rock I cautiously stepped into the water, but did not go far from the gently sloping bank. Here my friend let me linger, going off by himself in the buoyant waves. When he came back he stood upright to dry his body in the warm sunshine. I thought the glory of the sun was eclipsed by the noble manly figure which I had never seen nude before. He too seemed to regard me with equal attention. Though quickly dressed again, we now stood forever revealed to one another, and with the warmest kisses we swore eternal friendship.”
I suppose the general playfulness of the foregoing instances might be called in question on the ground that there is no consciousness that it is all a play, no sham activity. Yet we refer complacently enough to other things which display quite as little of such subconsciousness as play. Indeed, the rule is that it is absent from mental play, and, moreover, this is a case that more closely concerns the emotions. The plays which involve subjective sham activity overlap to a great extent the sphere of the objective ones where the man or animal takes pleasure in action which has no necessary actual aim, yet without being conscious of having turned aside from the life of cause and effect. If we admit that the boy careering aimlessly about is playing because he enjoys the movement for its own sake, or that gourmands who eat without hunger, and merely to tickle their palates, are playing, then we must also call it play when the child takes pleasure in the sexual sensations arising from touch stimuli without knowing that his activity, on account of the exclusion of their proper end, is all a sham. From a purely biological standpoint the conception of play goes much deeper, as we shall see later on. I have purposely selected such examples as (with the exception of the last citation) exhibit the sexual impulse in conjunction with other activity that is unmistakably playful, believing that this conjunction would strengthen the probability of its being playful in those cases which if given alone might appear doubtful.
With adults the subjective side of play is more prominent, especially when the proper end of the instinctive impulse for contact is held in abeyance by the will of the participants. Here belongs the dalliance of engaged couples. It is no play, of course, when the lovers, on the first revelation of their common feeling or after a long separation, indulge in a passionate embrace. But when in their daily intercourse that manifold trifling begins which is too familiar to need description, I see no reason why it should not be called play with touch stimuli. The more naïve the period or social class the more common this is. In the free intercourse of the sexes in mediæval baths the jesting caresses must often have been quite rough. While many of the pictorial representations of such bathing scenes are doubtless exaggerated, still they could not have been pure inventions. The description by the Florentine Poggio (1417) of Swiss bathing customs bears them out. He expressly says: “It is remarkable to see how innocent they are; how unsuspiciously men will look on while their wives are handled by strangers,... while they gambol and romp with each other and sometimes without other company; yet the husbands are not disturbed nor surprised at anything because they know that it is all done in an innocent, harmless way.” In feudal times it was the custom for noble gentlemen to be served in the bath by young women, to be washed by them, and afterward rubbed. At the spinning _fêtes_ the young couples “played,” as a Christmas piece has it, with all sorts of hand clasping and stroking. But the most remarkable proceeding of this kind was the “lovers’ night of continence,” observed in various countries, including France, Italy, and Germany, by knightly devotees whose lady permitted them to pass one night at her side, trusting to their oath and honour not to take advantage of her kindness. This strange custom, so shocking to our ideas of propriety, was doubtless derived from similar practices of very ancient origin among the peasantry, the chastity of whose girls was rarely violated in spite of the utmost intimacies. It is interesting to find an ethnological analogue to this among the Zulus. According to Fritsch, the custom of _Uku-hlobonga_ obtains there, “in which the young bachelors join the maidens of the neighbourhood, and these latter choose their mates, each according to her pleasure. The rejected swains have to bear the scorn of the whole company, while the chosen ones recline with their sweethearts, and an imitation of the sexual function is gone through with. Yet, as a rule, the girl by force and threats prevents anything more serious!”[506]
Self-exhibition will occupy us only so far as it does not relate to art. Every lover desires to present himself in the most favourable light to the object of his affections, and to this end he plays a part, to a certain extent; he “does as though” he were braver, stronger, more skilful, handsomer, of finer feeling, and more intelligence than he actually and habitually is. Fliegende Blatter said once, “A lover always tries to be as lovable as he can, and is therefore always ridiculous.” Such self-display is not necessarily playful, but it becomes so as soon as the lover’s vanity is involved, and he aims not only at the desired effect on his mistress, but also enjoys for its own sake the exploitation of his charms. Here, as in so many psychic phenomena, the complexity of the field is important. We are able to see ourselves over our own shoulders, and behind the wooing I stands a higher consciousness which looks on with satisfaction at the display of its own attractions. Hence arise the frequent cases where a sort of tacit understanding between a man and woman prohibits all serious intercourse, so that they can have only such relations as depend on the sexual stimulus (flirting).
As the first form of courtship by self-exhibition I mention those fighting plays in which the combatants engage in the ladies’ presence. I have noticed incidentally that human combat, as well as that between animals, is often connected with the sexual life, but now we will consider the subject from its proper standpoint. That a martial bearing is a means not only of terrifying enemies, but also of delighting females, all experience goes to show, and war paint and feathers become adornments as well. Here as with animals, says Colin A. Scott, the terrible approaches the beautiful, and as modesty in women has a peculiar charm to the other sex, so does a warlike spirit appeal to the feminine nature. “In some tribes a man dare not marry, and indeed no woman would have him, until he has slain a certain number of foes.”[507] The conquest of rivals then becomes a means of self-exhibition before the loved one. Westermarck, in his history of human marriage, gives numerous instances of such courtship contests, from which I shall borrow. Heame states that “it is a universal custom among the North American Indians for the men who are wooing a woman to fight for her, and naturally the strongest among them gets the prize. This practice prevails among all their tribes, and is the occasion of passionate rivalry among their youths, who from childhood, and on every possible occasion, make a point of displaying their strength and skill in fighting.” Lumholtz writes from North Queensland: “If a woman is beautiful all the men want her, and the strongest and most influential is usually the lucky man. Consequently, the younger men must wait a long time to get a wife, especially if they are not brave enough to risk a fight with one stronger than themselves. Among the West Victorian tribes described by Dawson a young chief who can not find a wife for himself and is inclined to another man’s, may, if the latter has more than two wives, challenge the husband to combat, and if victorious make the lady of his choice his lawful spouse. In New Zealand when a girl has two suitors of equal merit a contest is arranged in which the damsel is dragged by the arms in different directions by the wooers, and the stronger carries off the bride.” Arthur Young tells of a strange custom which was at one time general in the Arran Islands. “A number of the poorer village folk confer together respecting some young girl who according to their opinion ought to be married, and select an eligible peasant. This settled, they send a message to the fair one that next Sunday she will be ‘beritten gemacht’—that is, carried on the men’s shoulders. She then prepares burned wine and cider for the feast, and after mass all pay her a visit to watch the sling contest. After she is ‘beritten gemacht’ the rivalry begins, and general attention is skilfully directed toward the chosen swain. If he is victor he surely marries the maiden; but if another overcomes him he loses her, for she is the prize of the champion.”[508] There is surely something playful about such contests, at least in the preparation and in the awards, if not in the struggle itself. But it is not always by combat with other suitors that the lover displays his courage, strength, and dexterity. By boldly taking risks and engaging in tests of strength and trials of skill which have so strong an attraction for the young, he claims the attention and admiration which women bestow on such acts. I do not assert that such exhibitions would never take place without feminine spectators, but as a rule they would be pursued with much less enthusiasm if the only onlookers were to be men. Most herdsmen would be indifferent to the Edelweiss growing on the almost inaccessible rocks did not a sprig of it in their hats advertise them to the village beauties as men fearless of danger. We have seen that the adventurous knight’s readiness for the fray and hearty welcome to danger in any form were usually prompted by his wish to lay the trophies of his victories at his lady’s feet. Nowhere is this sort of courtship more naïvely expressed than in Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, where Richard Cœur de Lion sings beneath his lady’s window:
“Joy to the fair! My name unknown, Each deed and all its praise thine own; Then, oh, unbar this churlish gate! The night dew falls, the hour is late. Inured to Syria’s glowing breath, I feel the north breeze chill as death; Let grateful love quell maiden shame, And grant him bliss who brings thee fame.”
We should further note the display of physical charms so far as it can be separated from art, which, indeed, is no easy task, as the boundary line is sometimes almost indistinguishable. Yet it does exist, and we may be able to detect it most readily in the conduct of our budding youths. As a rule, when the other sex begins to interest them they are impelled to make the most of every outward advantage. The boy begins to be neat, to care for his teeth and nails, arrange his hair more carefully, to consider the fit of his clothes, and to indulge in boots and gloves which are too small for him; he puts on high collars and makes a great display of his cuffs, and impatiently awaits the premonitions of a mustache. It is altogether unlikely that he is clear as to the meaning of all this, and in that case he is playing with his personal charms. Such special attention is given to the hair by youths of all classes as to suggest a particular significance for that form of adornment, and the care of the beard naturally goes with it.
There are, however, less innocent modes of self-exhibition and some which more unmistakably point to the end which they are intended to serve. The girdle decorations of savages, for instance, are now considered to have a significance quite different from that formerly attributed to them. Their original intention was in all probability to attract attention, not to conceal. Of their ornamental use we are not now speaking, but I confess that I have my doubts of the universal applicability of the explanation just indicated, in spite of the opinion of many competent investigators. Forster speaks of the leaves of a certain species of ginger plant which the male inhabitants of some of the New Hebrides bind to their breech cloths, as outraging in their appearance every law of decency, and Barrow makes the same remark about the Hottentots.[509] Many scholars, too, are disposed to attribute the origin of circumcision to some such beginnings, as there is much against its explanation on religious or sanitary grounds. It is rather surprising that no one has adduced, in support of the modern view of the purposes of courtship served by the articles suspended from the girdle, the strange fashion of projecting front flaps introduced in the fifteenth century. Rabelais’s famous chapter on this subject is merely an exaggeration, not an invention. The reality was certainly bad enough,[510] and as little calculated as are the savage decorations to serve the purposes of modesty. Yet in neither case am I prepared to assert that they belong exclusively to the category of sexual stimuli.
The higher the culture of a people the more prominent becomes the display of mental qualities in conjunction with physical advantages. We have seen that the opportunity to speak in public is often the leading stimulus in the mental fighting play of argument, and in the intercourse of the sexes the decorous display of one’s intellectual advantages appears as a further play, be it whether the man simply wishes to show his powers to their best advantage in the presence of beautiful women, or whether he intends his gallantry as a direct attack on the feminine heart. Every one knows how common this is as a mere play, apart from any serious intention, and, indeed, that it is the habit of man to play the gallant even when he is not especially “laying himself out” to be attractive. The much-decried unseemly haste of men in society to seek refuge in the smoking room after dinner is due certainly in part to their fatigue after keeping up the play so long and trying to appear superior to their ordinary selves.
But earnest courtship, too, easily assumes a playful character, because the pleasure in self-exhibition and the satisfaction of vanity easily become ends in themselves. The stilted and flowery epistolary style common a few generations ago doubtless grew up in this way, and the old letters published as models for lovers are good instances of this sort of extravagance.
Coquetry in the other sex is allied to self-exhibition in the male, but it is of so complicated a character that a special section is devoted to its treatment. Usually the word conveys the idea of a heartless use and enjoyment of a woman’s power over men, but it really has a much wider meaning which is of great biological importance.
Not only among human beings, but in the animal world as well, peculiar behaviour is noticeable on the part of females, which is based on the antagonism of two instincts—namely, the sexual impulse and inborn coyness. Hence arises that alternate seeking and fleeing for which I know no better name than coquetry, which is thus seen to be often quite different from mere heartless play. A simple illustration is that of the doe followed by an ardent buck; she flees, but it is always in a circle.
If we find the cause of such coquetry in inborn modesty which is directly opposed to the sexual impulse the question is at once asked, Of what use is this modesty? The answer which is attempted in The Play of Animals involves an essential modification of the theory of natural selection. Darwin has referred animal arts of courtship to æsthetic taste on the part of the female, who is said always to choose the handsomest and best equipped of her wooers. But it is by no means certain that such choice from a number is always the case; indeed, some observers directly contradict the theory of courtship arts at all. The Müller brothers have definitely established the fact that birds pair long before the breeding season, so that such arts can only be for the purpose of “overcoming feminine reluctance to sexual union.” And H. E. Ziegler remarks, in a notice of my book, that courtship plays are indulged in repeatedly by monogamous birds long after their permanent choice has been made. With these facts then as premises, I have reached the following conclusion: Since the sex impulse must necessarily have extraordinary strength, the interests of the preservation of species are best served by a long preliminary condition of excitement and by some checks to its discharge. The instinctive coyness of the female serves this purpose. The question is not, in my opinion, which of many males she will choose, but rather which male possesses the qualities necessary for overcoming the reluctance of the female whom he selects and besieges, and for maintaining at the same time the proper state of excitation. “The female is not then the awarder of a prize, but is rather a hunted creature; and just as the beast of prey must possess special instincts for securing his victim, so must the ardent male be equipped with special instincts for subduing the coyness of his mate.” Thus the phenomena of courtship are directly referable to a biological end, and the great importance of coyness is explained.[511]
But this peculiarly feminine instinct has a salient psychological significance as well, as I have hinted in the preface to my former work: “Just as in the beast of prey instincts of ravenous pursuit are refined into the various arts of the chase, so from such crude efforts at wooing that courtship has finally developed in which sexual passion is psychologically sublimated into love.” We must suppose that the evident refinement and depth of the marriage relation among birds is largely to be ascribed to the fact that the male does not simply excite and control his mate, but seeks to win her in a less abrupt manner by the display of his charms and capabilities; and the same is true with ourselves. Without the modesty of women, which as a rule only yields to the power of love, the sexual relation would hardly be a poet’s theme, while now love is regarded as the highest flight of the human soul. “La pudeur,” says Guyau, “a civilisé l’amour.”
This coyness, of course, can only constitute a love play when it is manifested in the struggle with sexual instinct—that is, when it becomes coquetry or flirting. As in the female spider, this impulse is converted into rage which endangers the life of the wooing male, so there are among women Brunhild natures for whom the process of courtship can never be playful. But the effect is different when repulsion is so balanced by attraction that there is alternate motion to and from, approach and then flight; though this alone does not constitute it a play, as the conflict of opposed instincts may be very serious. When, however, women enjoy the varying moods for their own sake, playful exercise of instinct easily ensues, and is somewhat akin to the fighting and hunting play, yet clearly differentiated from them. “In Paraguay,” says Mantegazza, “where intercourse between the sexes is very free, an impatient youth who has good grounds to believe that he is regarded favourably repeats in all possible variations of tone, now tender, now passionate, now beseeching, now wrathful, the one word, ‘To-day!’ and the lovely creole who has never heard of Darwin answers laughingly: ‘No, indeed; not to-day! You have only known me ten days! Perhaps in two months.’”[512] Here the natural shyness has so little of fear or anger that the young girl actually enjoys controlling her lover and putting him off, and yet such coquetry as this is far from being the heartless behaviour so commonly designated by that word. Even this latter I regard as a love play, however, for we must suppose the genuine coquette to be heart whole. She finds her chief pleasure in her relations with the other sex, even the satisfaction of her vanity being of another quality from that which has no such connection. If we inquire what are some of the special forms of this playful coquetry we find them parallel with self-exhibition in men, except that the display is constantly held in check and veiled by modesty. While man makes much of his courage and strength in the presence of women, women are apt to take occasion to parade their weakness and helplessness. Genuine love involves, as I have occasion to remark, a combination of the sexual and fostering instincts; therefore woman’s need of his help is a strong attraction to a man, which is quickly recognised and turned to account by the female. A young girl is usually very much alive to the fact when one of her rivals makes a display of her timidity or delicacy to make herself interesting. On the other hand, women too like to show where their capabilities lie, and they exploit their housewifely qualities. This is amusingly shown among the company collected in one of the mountain clubhouses where all must go to strengthen and refresh the inner man. Great zeal is displayed by the women, aforetime so weary, in getting out the dishes, laying the table, cooking and serving the meal, and then in clearing away and tidying up. It is all done with laughter and jest, for the very novelty makes it a delight, but would their interest be so great if there were no masculine spectators in the hut?
Of all the modes of self-exhibition, there is none so important to a woman as the display of her physical charms, and the difference between the sexes is plainly shown here as elsewhere. Man in his wooing makes straight for the goal; woman’s efforts are veiled, but not hidden, under a show of modesty. The man says, “Look, I am thus and so”; the woman, “I, too, am thus and so, but don’t look.” The alluring glance which turns away if it is noticed, but not unless it is, is a purely feminine love play, and so is the smile which is not visibly directed toward the man for whom it is intended; with them, too, attention to the hair is conspicuous. It is amazing to see what importance even a three-year-old girl will attach to it, and with what jealous interest the hair of other children is observed. A doll with real hair is their chief desire. But an enumeration of woman’s peculiarities in this respect is summed up in their toilet for full dress; the _décolleté_ gown tells the whole story. Klopstock has the idea when he speaks in his ode (Die Brant) “of the quickening breast which so softly swells, not wishing to be seen, but sure of being seen.” It would be impossible for men to carry off such an exhibition as women do. They would either not do it at all, or else openly recognise the object of it. Women, on the contrary, would, if asked, indignantly protest against such an implication. As a rule, however, they show little disposition to exhibit their charms for one another’s benefit.
This principle extends, too, to the display of their mental graces. When the talk between a man and a woman becomes a love play, she usually tries to conceal her discovery of their congeniality with defensive trifling. She leads him on with mocking words, makes a direct attack, then pretends to discourage him, or intrenches herself in incredulity.
2. _Love Play in Art_
Before going on to consider this branch of the subject a few remarks are in order in regard to the Darwinian theory, which has been so often referred to. According to it the arts are considered as directly derived from the relations of the sexes in much the same manner as the well-known phenomena in the bird world are known as courtship arts. Far be it from me to deny the sexual instinct its part in the beginnings of art, yet I certainly consider this view entirely too one-sided. The attempt has been made, too, to refer the conception of beauty to this instinct. Grant Allen, in particular, is a latter-day exponent of this view; proceeding from sexual selection he reasons that for man mankind is the first of æsthetic objects. All misshapen, abnormal, feeble, unnatural, and incapable creatures are repugnant to us, while those are beautiful which can boast of health, vigour, perfect development, and parental soundness. Consequently our first ideas of beauty are purely “anthropinistic,” having their origin and centre in man and what immediately concerns him, his weapons, garments, and dwellings.[513] The value placed on bright-coloured shells, stones, feathers, etc., comes from their use as personal adornments. While this view certainly has much in its favour, yet its first premise is doubtful. Can we assert with assurance that the perfect human form was the first object of æsthetic admiration? If there ever were primitive men who knew no sort of personal adornment, was the well-built, vigorous, and youthful body beautiful to them? Did they first derive their intense delight in coloured stones, feathers, shells, etc., from the fact that these things could be used as bodily adornments? Such an affirmation is by no means self-evident. We find pleasure in gay or shining objects a much earlier feeling in children than is admiration of the human form, and, moreover, it must be borne in mind that the attraction instinctively felt for the normal and vigorous youthful form is not ordinarily due to æsthetic appreciation. May it not be possible that the shining stones and gay feathers were the earliest objects of æsthetic observation, and that from them the eye first received its education and learned to admire the human figure. Or if this is too radical, is it not more prudent to assume that sensuous pleasure as such has its place in conjunction with sexual stimuli in the development of æsthetic appreciation? The personal adornments of primitive peoples seem to me to indicate clearly that men at first had very little regard for perfect physical beauty; therefore, proceeding cautiously, we are led to the conclusion that the original use of cosmetics is on the whole a detraction from racial beauty, though some painted or tattooed designs do emphasize even for our eyes the symmetry and eurythmy of the nude figure, and whitened teeth do bring out the colour effects of a dark skin. Yet there are so many forms of would-be decoration which have a contrary effect by reason of their lack of harmony with the racial norm, so to speak, that we are forced to doubt whether the natural man has much feeling for simple physical beauty in itself. Take this brief description of Scott’s: “Teeth were extracted or filed to points, the head shaved, beard and eyebrows pulled out, skull compressed, feet bandaged and lengthened or deformed by turning the four smaller toes under, nose and lips weighted with rings and sticks, ear lobes dragged down until they touch the shoulders, the breasts cut off or made unnaturally prominent, the skin scarred, seamed, or bruised as well as painted, stained, and tattooed.”[514] Is it not natural to infer from this that to the savage the body is beautiful only when what we think its most beautiful and characteristic features are marred or destroyed?
It proves to be very questionable, then, how far the idea of beauty is connected with the sexual instinct, though none can doubt that the use of ornaments plays an important rôle in self-exhibition before the opposite sex. It would be hazardous to state, however, that courtship is their only end, since there are terrifying decorations which would not be useful in that capacity unless, indeed, as a means of frightening away rivals, which is hardly probable. There is the social aim to be considered, and the simple pleasure in possessing beautiful, unusual, or valuable things (we put such things in our pockets, but the savage has to attach them externally).[515] Hardly any primitive method of decoration can be adduced as directly strengthening Darwin’s theory; the imitative principle controls the beginnings of plastic art, courtship is not the exclusive aim in savage dancing, and as for the music and poetry which go with the dancing, they rarely deal with such subjects.
It may be demurred that such arts have gradually been divorced from their original intention, but the facts do not point to it. Though some scholars regard other ornamentation as of later origin than the use of cosmetics, there is nothing to prove that this is a fact.[516] Moreover, in the development of the special arts a noteworthy fact becomes prominent—namely, that the sexual element appears stronger in the later stages, while at first other elements are quite as important or even far more so. Thus love is a conspicuous theme in the lyrics of civilized peoples, but of primitive races Grosse declares: “It can not be ascertained that the Australian tribes ... have produced a single love song; and Rink, their most faithful student, says that the Eskimos hardly show any appreciation of the sentiment of love.”[517] In our dancing the two sexes unite in a movement-play, and Orientals have beautiful girls to dance before them. Among savages, on the contrary, imitative dances are much more common, which have no connection with sex relations. Indeed, we often find rules which confine dancing to certain places of resort where women are excluded. We can say of personal adornment too that civilized peoples apply them much more to the uses of courtship than do savages.
These things being true, it is well to use caution in applying the Darwinian theory to the origin of art; while uses of courtship very often accompany the appearance and development of art, we must still cling to our conception of play as its principal source. Delight in sensuous pleasure and in regularity, the charm of rhythm, enjoyment of imitation and of illusion, the demand for intense stimuli, the attraction of attempting what is difficult—all are elements in the principle which we have repeatedly found and shall find more and more, connecting the spheres of play and art without necessarily touching at all on the question of sex. Even self-exhibition itself may depend as much on the social as on the sexual instinct. I am convinced, then, that Schiller was in the main right in deriving art from play, while Darwin’s theory must be relegated to the position of a secondary or partial explanation.
Having made this critical review of the subject, I may give my undivided attention to the effort to prove that art, in its last analysis, does include the sexual element along with all else that appeals to the feelings, and so is often converted into a love play. But we must distinguish such play as it is manifested in artistic production and that which appears in æsthetic enjoyment. We often find courtship carried on by means of the former, while the latter is concerned only with the playful enjoyment of sexual excitement, unconnected with any serious aim. Courtship by means of artistic production is a subject which has been pretty thoroughly canvassed and will have but brief mention here. It exhibits a playful character, such as the above-mentioned forms of self-display when the wooer enjoys the mere act of unfolding his charms. Among savages it is usually confined to the use of pigments and dancing. Westermarck and Grosse have recently enumerated the principal uses of the former. But, as I have said, such decoration is not exclusively for courtship purposes; the desire to outshine other tribes is often a powerful motive. The psychological aspect of this sort of thing is interesting. The later development of fashion teaches us that mere delight in finery and ornament is a very small part of it; there is a complication of relations. When we see an elegant old gentleman at a watering place with a flower in his buttonhole, we attribute his state of mind to a belated feeling of youthfulness; and so the adornments of savages and the coquette’s toilet owe their effect less to a direct appeal to the senses than to their symbolic meaning. They betray the demand for ornament, and this demand again discloses the adaptability of ornamentation to sexual purposes. Our peasant youths at the fairs put labels in their hats announcing to the interested public that they are in the matrimonial market, and all decoration for courtship purposes says the same thing in effect. Their suggestiveness is not so much in the external appearance as in their symbolism,[518] and this may explain the fact that what is merely striking is as effective in primitive and sometimes in modern decoration as what is really beautiful.
Savage dances sometimes serve the purposes of courtship, and, of course, the wild intoxication of movement which they lead to is itself calculated to produce sexual excitement. Notes on obscene dances may be found in the works of Waitz-Gerland (Australian), Turner (Samoan), Ehrenreich (Brazilian), Powers (Californian), Fritsch (Zulu), and others. When such dances serve the purposes of courtship they are not uninteresting. When they consist of a wild _mêlée_ in which participators and spectators are thrown into a condition of ecstasy, the idea of discriminating choice on the part of the women is difficult to apply. There is, however, no such difficulty in the way of my theory that violent excitement is a necessary preliminary. I give two examples from the bird world: “The black-headed ibis of Patagonia, which is almost as large as a turkey, carries on a strange wild game in the evening. A whole flock seems to be suddenly crazed; sometimes they fly up in the air with startling suddenness, move about in a most erratic way, and as they near the ground start up again and so repeat the game, while the air for kilometres around vibrates with their harsh, metallic cries. Most ducks confine their play to mock battles on the water, but the beautiful whistling duck of the La Plata conducts them on the wing as well. From ten to twenty of them rise in the air until they appear like a tiny speck, or entirely disappear. At this great height they often remain for hours in one place, slowly separating and coming together again while the high, clear whistle of the male blends admirably with the female’s deeper, measured note, and when they approach they strike one another so powerfully with their wings that the sound, which is like hand-clapping, remains audible when the birds are out of sight.”[519] In cases where this sort of orgy, indulged in by flocks of birds, serves sexual purposes, as it probably often does, my theory proves to be more explanatory than Darwin’s, and the same may be said of our general dance with its direct appeal to such stimuli. It is much less likely that some of the dancers will single out special partners than that participant and spectators alike will be thrown into an ecstatic state in which all restraints are cast off.
In considering such dances the question must be met whether they, like the courtship arts of birds, are referable to instinctive tendencies. It may be inferred from the introductory part of this section that I am somewhat sceptical as to that. I do, indeed, doubt whether human dancing should be attributed exclusively to courtship, and I think we can hardly emphasize too much the fact that while man possesses the full complement of instincts, they are subordinated in his case in favour of intellectual adaptations. Of birds we know with comparative certainty that they must learn and practise their courtship arts practically without teachers; but no one will affirm that individual man without tradition or example would turn to ornament and dancing on the awakening of sexual impulse. Only a general disposition toward self-display is instinctive, the how and when being left to invention and tradition. Perhaps some particularly significant movements are specializations of this disposition, as, for instance, the hip movement, which is accentuated in the waltz and which has influenced plastic art since the time of Praxiteles. There must be much more thorough investigation of the subject before we can affirm even the possibilities respecting it.
Of the other arts, that of lyric poetry is about the only one which we need to consider in relation to courtship, and this more especially in its connection with music. Among primitive races dancing invariably accompanies the recital of such poetry. The troubadour is the product of a higher social condition. The lyric, too, played an important part as an instrument of courtship in Mohammedan civilization during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as is apparent from the Thousand and One Nights Tales. “The ear often loves before the eye,” to quote from one of them which deals with the winning power of beautiful verse. In the story of Hajat Alnufus and Ardschir the amorous prince, who is disguised as a merchant, seeks to awaken the love of the proud princess by means of passionate verse, and the description is fine of how a tender interest is aroused in the coy and high-spirited beauty toward the persistent wooer, though it develops, it is true, into genuine love only under his gaze. “O Hajat Alnufus,” runs one of these love poems, “make happy with thy presence a lover whom absence is undoing. My life was surrounded with joy and bliss, but now the nights find me raving and mad with love. Must I always sigh and moan, always be cast down and hopeless? All night long sleep shuns me, and I gaze wearily at the stars. Oh, have pity on a dismayed and suffering lover whose heart is sad and his eyes weary with watching!” In the story of Hasan of Bassrah we have a feminine counterpart of this which deserves to be numbered among the finest pearls of Oriental lyrical poetry. Hasan’s lady is so rejoiced to see him after a long separation that she breaks forth in the following rhapsody: “I breathe in the air which wafts from your land and refreshes you in the morning. I ask the wind about you whenever it blows from that way; I think of no one but you.”
More common are the instances which, while not directed toward a special wooing, yet have the character of play with the sexual emotions which is pleasurable in itself, and involve the question of the connection of such stimuli with æsthetic enjoyment. I maintain that this element is much more conspicuous in the use of cosmetics and in dancing than is actual courtship, and even in the ornamentation which seems far from the sphere of sex, and in architecture itself love play is not entirely lacking at any stage of its development. Von den Steinen has told us what pleasure the Brazilian tribes take in decorating their tools with conventionalized _ulúri_, which are triangular pieces of bark such as the women are fond of wearing. It is very conspicuous in all the adornments of these people, who make no secret of their fondness for it. This feeling, too, is at the foundation of the employment of nude female figures for decorative purposes in renaissance art. Obscene exaggerations of the masculine figure are not uncommon in plastic representation, and are no doubt due as much to sexuality as to any religious significance (such as the exaltation of the idea of productiveness, etc.). Nor is love play lacking in the art of cultured peoples, though here we are not confronted with the crude sensuality, which is of comparatively little psychological interest, but with that more subtile effect of the instinct, that tender, moving, melting sensation which must be felt to be understood, for it can not be described. In my Einleitung in die Aesthetik[520] I have set forth the grounds on which the philosopher Stöckl objects to representations of the nude. “As a result of original sin,” he says, “mankind is susceptible to evil passions which are aroused at the sight of nakedness, and the will is incited to connivance in the sinful lust. Of original sin and its consequences, it is true, most advocates of the nude in art are quite ignorant theoretically, and yet it is a truth testified to by the experience of every man, even though he be a student of æsthetics, that there is in us a law which is at variance with spiritual law, and that we ought to avoid everything that tends to bring us under its power, to which things nakedness in art belongs.”[521] Whatever protest can be made against this in the name of art, and however it may be insisted that there is such a thing as chaste nudity, still I am convinced that in the extraordinary attractiveness of the work of Praxiteles and Canova, for example, subtile emotions connected with the sexual life are involved. I have noticed that for the uneducated person Canova’s Cupid and Psyche is regarded as embodying the acme of sculptured beauty without the observer having the remotest suspicion of the source of much of his intensity of admiration. The higher the æsthetic culture, however, the less as a rule (not always) is this force operative, and therefore directly in the interests of chastity the answer may be made to Stöckl’s challenge, that an artist may experience a purely æsthetic enjoyment of form in the nude figure which is hardly possible to the uncultivated person.
It is hardly necessary to dilate on the influence of the instinct in question in the sphere of painting. Here, too, it is more evident to the average man, with his naïve enjoyment of materiality, than to the connoisseur. Andrée tells us that many tribes of men cherish indecent pictures and statues which have no religious symbolism, and we all know how common is the habit of drawing such things on fences and walls. But more significant than such grossness is the popular preference for sentimentally suggestive pictures. The passionate admiration of some neuropathic persons for the flat illustrations of a fashion paper is but a pathological exaggeration and distortion of the amazing popularity of some insipid, wide-eyed, simpering feminine figure, and the almost worse blond hero of many so-called artists. It is not necessary to call names, but a student of psychological æsthetics should not shrink from stating _sine ira_ the true (though often unconscious) grounds for the admiration bestowed on such things, nor ignore its significance.
While music comes in the province of our inquiry only when the accompanying words, situation, and explanations, or the subjective temper of the hearer lends to the tone movements a sexual meaning,[522] poetry, on the contrary, as has been said, plays a very large part in the business of love, and even more so among civilized than among primitive people. Besides love lyrics, which have been sufficiently illustrated, there are narrative descriptions of love scenes and processes—not only the numerous poetic lucubrations which deserve to be designated as erotic, which means in plain English indecent, but the whole immeasurable sea of novels and romances whose leading interest depends on this theme. Many can read such tales only in their youth (boys are especially liable to this passion for romance immediately after the subsidence to their attack of Indian tales), but the majority retain their capacity for inward sympathy with the trials of lovers; and here, too, the taste of the general public is as opposed to that of connoisseurs as in the case of pictures. The ability to cater to this taste is possessed pre-eminently by women, because the false idealism which abounds in such works accompanies a certain ignorance of the facts of life which women retain oftener and longer than men. The study of some of the better class of these romances—notably those of E. Marlitt—is not without psychological interest. One of our comic papers not long since quoted this passage, ostensibly from a novel: “In an adjoining room sounded a bearded masculine voice”; and the sentence might serve as a motto for the title page of a treatise on the yellow-covered romance of the type which is so highly prized by hundreds of thousands of readers of both sexes. A favourite theme is to follow the fortunes of a young married couple who are estranged at first, as in Marlitt’s Zweiter Frau, Werner’s Glück auf, and Ohnett’s Hüttenbesitzer. It is, of course, psychologically and æsthetically interesting to follow the conversion from real or pretended aversion to attachment, a process from which, Spinoza tells us, deeper love results “quam si odium non præcessisset.” But the extraordinary attractive power of this novel specific for bringing about the desired result arises from a special stimulus not difficult to identify from our point of view, and inherent in the situation.
3. _The Comic of Sex_
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.
As a point of departure, suppose we take the assumption that, with certain limitations, a psychophysical adjustment, not in the ordinary sense instinctive, accounts for the genesis of imitation. This adjustment depends on the fact that in conscious activity a necessary connection exists between the movement produced and the antecedent concept of the movement. On the one hand, then, a movement is said to be voluntary only when the motor act is accompanied with such an idea of movement, while the other view implies that the idea itself is the thing which urges its own fulfilment.[535] If this is so, the mere concept of the movement performed by another impels us to perform it as well, and hence arises imitation. Although the difficulty is to establish the correctness of this assumption,[536] yet we may be pretty sure that the concept of a possible movement, if not crippled by antagonistic motives, does induce a certain readiness for fulfilment.[537]
This analysis, it is true, acquaints us with a necessary condition of imitation, but as little accounts for the amazing force of the impulse as the mere conception of movement accounts for voluntary activity. While every concept may impel to the corresponding motor act, we know from experience that such tendencies to form habits are checked and aborted by all sorts of hindrances, mere inertia being sufficient in many cases to counteract the motive power of such concepts. There must be special reasons, then, which lend to the perception of a movement performed by another such extraordinary motive power. We have still to meet the question whether there may not be an inherited relation developed on the foundation and presupposition of the “readiness” described above. The thousand sensory motor paths involved in it can not be determined by heredity, since they presuppose acquired experience (as in learning to speak, first crude experimentation, then imitation). But the strength of the pleasurable quality in the reproduction of a movement accomplished first by another, the strenuousness of the effort which presses for expression, as well as the seriousness of the disappointment in cases of failure, are direct results of selection and the developmental factors connected with it. In support of this proposition we may refer to the social instincts, the simplest of which is the associativeness of members of the same race, tribe, or faction. Its demands lead to a kind of imitation, at least in movement impulses (Hudson assures us that the young pampas sheep runs the instant it is born after its rapidly running mother), and the impulse to answer a warning or alluring call. Pleasure in satisfying this genuine instinct is especially evident where one of the participants (they being usually of the same species) accompanies the signal with appropriate movements.
I permit myself no judgment of the value of this hypothesis, but I believe its adequacy to meet the case is incontrovertible. Bain, too, in the fourth edition of his work cited above, has made a suggestion looking in the same direction, by which the use of the word instinct gains a certain justification. Nor should it be forgotten that to strengthen this “readiness” a whole series of other requirements may be present, which for convenience in this analysis I may call instinctive. Perhaps an illustration of a movement concept which is not imitative in the ordinary sense will make this clear. If we think intentionally and definitely of the movements involved in whistling, we are likely to feel a mild inclination to whistle, which, however, is commonly easy enough to overcome. Therefore we call it a certain “readiness” in preference to a stronger term, such as “impulse.” But let this mental process take place in church during service; the corresponding action, it is true, is not performed, because of the influence of contrary motives, but the impulse may nevertheless be so strong that their subject suffers great annoyance. Why is this? Probably because the idea of not whistling excites the instinctive impulse toward activity of the movement apparatus (experimentation) as well as the fighting instinct,[538] which resents such constraint and lends itself as a powerful auxiliary to the movement impulse. It is just in this way that the perception of movement made by another arouses special instinctive emotions, and illustrates the power of the imitative impulse. This, then, is a brief explanation of the grounds of the theory developed above, according to which imitation serves as a complement to instincts which have been weakened in favour of intellectual development or are, for whatever reason, inadequate to the individual’s life tasks.
Thus we know that a child has the impulse to make use of his motor apparatus, but this impulse is strengthened when another person makes a movement which attracts the child’s attention. The concept as such produces a mild inclination and the natural impulse to move weighs down the scale. The little girl inherits an instinct for nursing; alone, it would probably not be strong enough to originate nursing play, and quite as little would the idea of the movements involved which the child acquires from watching her mother have that result (as witness, the boy). The two together produce the familiar result. In the same way the boy’s fighting instinct impels him to imitate all warlike demonstrations. We may say that the “what” of the subject is answered by the movement idea and the “that” predominantly by the corresponding instinct, though acquired necessity of course may do the same thing. Moreover, imitation has a special affinity for curiosity and the fighting instinct. The former asks concerning an unusual movement by another, “How does he do it?” and an effort to experiment at once ensues, while the fighting instinct is on the alert at the perception of a difficulty, and loses no time in overcoming it in order to enjoy the “I can, too,” of success. This success may be a triumph over the model, since if no superiority is proved we arrogate to ourselves a capacity which up to this time has been the property of another.[539] It may, however, be mere pleasure in overcoming the difficulty, as when we try to imitate qualities which we admire in another, adding to the combative impulse the desire to make one’s self agreeable or to subordinate others. But so far as conscious playful imitation is directly concerned, the struggle with difficulties is still in the foreground. We must remember, too, that with many of the higher kinds of imitation—pre-eminently so with that which may be called constructive, since its material is invariably appropriated from foreign sources—the pleasure which is derived from recognition and from illusion adds to its play the powerful charm of imagination.
Although I have presented here only a few of the leading features which an analysis of the imitative processes reveals, enough has been said to show how complicated and difficult the problem is, and to render advisable a general summing up in more compact form of the results of these somewhat rambling observations. It will not do to call imitation instinct and leave it at that, since it is not a specific but quite an involved reaction. Moreover, the condition of imitation, namely, the tendency of movement ideas to produce corresponding movements, is not itself instinctive; but we have seen that this tendency alone does not explain all that we include under the name of imitation. This tendency of the movement ideas must have special grounds furnished by organic needs, and especially those which are instinctive; when the general idea of movement is coincident with one of these the impulse toward discharge becomes very strong. We cited in illustration of this the general movement-impulse, nursing, curiosity (how is it done?), belligerence (not only as regards distinctly hostile movements, but sensation as well), recognition, and illusion. If there is nothing else, then imitation taken alone is no instinct; it is only in very close connection to instinct, as our biological point of view has shown. It is, however, probable that these limits are not reached by the simplest imitation, such as coughing, gaping, etc., and use may be made of the hypothesis of transference (_loi de transfert_) from specific social instincts, which are themselves the result of a certain degree of imitativeness of the movement idea (agreement, answering, and the like) to movement itself in cases involving the movements belonging to a species. By this means natural selection of whatever developmental factor is employed acquires an essential impetus. Whoever regards such collaboration as probable will consider imitation as a phenomenon at least similar to instinct.
Thirdly—and this point will be quickly disposed of—when is imitation to be regarded as play? Evidently we must apply the psychological criterion; imitation is a play when it is enjoyed for its own sake.[540] Imitation transcends play at its highest and lowest limits. Simple reflex reactions, such as gaping when another gapes, fleeing because another has fled, etc., can not be called play in a psychological sense, nor is the child’s first reproduction of sounds playful. Only when he repeats the performance from enjoyment of his success can we be sure of the thing from a psychological standpoint.[541] The limit is passed in the other direction by rendering the movements mechanical, so that the imitation is performed involuntarily, no longer affording enjoyment of the act itself, as it is now directed toward the external aim. Here belong imitative teaching (so far as it is not in itself enjoyable) and the imitation of an exemplary personality or ideal which is so important to ethics. In the latter, however, a suggestion of playfulness is sometimes present, though it would seem that nothing could be further from the proper sphere of ethics; when poetic figures serve as models, however, it is sometimes hard to mark the limit between the serious and the playful.[542]
In conclusion, I would remark that imitation is almost never merely that; it is creation as well, production as well as reproduction. Close on the heels of imitation comes imagination, and that in the double meaning of the word which we have learned to know. Imagination expands the copy into a full likeness of the original, and then creates the illusion that it is the original. However, imitation may actually be new creation. As Baldwin lucidly puts it, the child’s persistent imitation calls into the arena with the satisfactory copy a host of new combinations which may be non-essential to this special aim, but which claim the child’s attention and interest as discoveries of his own. He is often so interested in these unexpected combinations as to lose sight of his original purpose, and runs to his parents or comrades to show what he can do.[543]
In turning to the consideration of imitative plays I prefer to divide them into the following groups for the sake of convenience. First, I shall speak of playful imitation of simple movements, which are preparatory to more complicated processes, distinguishing between optical and acoustic percepts. Then follow two important specialized groups, namely, the dramatic and plastic or constructive imitation; and finally I shall treat inner imitation as a fourth kind of play.
1. _Playful Imitation of Simple Movements_
(_a_) Optical Percepts
According to Tracy[544] there are few points so generally accepted without question by child psychologists in general as that of the beginning of imitation in the second half year. Yet this agreement is not so universal as might be wished. Thus Baldwin says that experiment with his own children has left him utterly unable to confirm the results reported by Preyer, who thought that he could establish the presence of imitation in the third or fourth month. Baldwin, like Egger, could not be sure of it before the ninth month.[545] Strümpell, on the other hand, thought he recognised the beginnings of it in the twelfth week. “Careful observation assured me that the child was sympathetically excited by the movements of adults in speaking. When any one was talking to him he watched the mouth instead of the eyes, as formerly; and as he watched, his own mouth moved softly, the lips assuming different positions, which undoubtedly resulted from movements in the inner part of the mouth.”[546] Baldwin may be right in regarding such very early observations as frequently misleading, since the correspondence with a model is apt to be accidental, though I do not think that this supposition explains away all cases. However, enjoyment of imitation and consequently play with it is undoubtedly of later origin. This observation of Preyer may be called playful. “In the tenth month correct copies of various movements are constantly produced, and that with full consciousness. In the often repeated hand and arm movement of ‘shaking ta-ta’ the child gazes earnestly at the person showing him the signal, and suddenly repeats it correctly.”[547] This is not the unconscious or involuntary copying of strange models which is so common with young and old. The question no doubt arises in the child’s mind, “How is that done?” and when followed by the successful accomplishment of the task, is further succeeded by the joyful feeling of “I can, too,” and playful use of the imitative faculty. The same is the case with the following instances: “As I, with the intention of amusing the child, waved my right hand to and fro before him, he suddenly began to move his own right hand in the same way, and from that time imitation slowly but surely progressed. On the day following, he was much quicker in repeating the attempt, and evidently wondering at the novelty of his experience, watched attentively now my hand and now his own.... At fifteen months the child learned to put out a candle flame. He blew six or seven times in vain, and kept grasping at the flame, laughing when it eluded him, and straining after it, while puffing and blowing with distended cheeks and lips unnecessarily protruded.... A large ring which I slowly laid on his head and took off again the child seized and unhesitatingly set it on his own head (sixteen months).”[548] Sigismund says: “The child learns all his little arts from his nurse: shaking good-bye, patting, kissing his hand, bowing, dancing, etc. But he copies of his own accord movements and attitudes which strike and please him. He walks with his father’s stick, tries to smoke a pipe, puts wood on the fire, scribbles with a pencil, and, in short, imitates whatever he sees done about him.”[549]
From a psychological standpoint there are various distinctions to be made in these instances. Sometimes it is the movement itself which forms the centre of interest, while again the result of the movement is the thing aimed at, making the muscular exertion only a means to the end (as in blowing out the light).[550] It is significant that the pleasure derived from imitation is more conspicuous in the first case; and another important question is, whether more of curiosity or more of pleasure in competition is involved, since the one likens imitative activity to intellectual experimentation, and the other assimilates it to rivalry. In the one case the child’s attention is fixed on the question, “How is that done?” He is interested in the _modus operandi_ as in the solution of a riddle. In the latter case the movement made in his presence arouses him like a challenge: “You can’t do that!” And his whole effort is directed to the proof that he can. The two factors do not necessarily exclude one another; they may work together. The exhilarating effect is heightened by strong emphasis of the fighting element; the stronger the consciousness that the task was difficult, though now achieved, the more will both child and adult enjoy the imitation—another support to our theory of the comic.
In later life, at least among civilized people, the impulse to playful imitation of the movements of others is not so strong,[551] except in the case of teasing mimicry. Most adult imitation is either of the character of involuntary adaptation, or for some specific end, and is thus partly within and partly without the sphere of play. When, for instance, the southerner who goes north to live, gradually controls his lively gesticulation, it is done unconsciously and involuntarily, unless he assists in the process because he does not wish to appear ridiculous. There may be some imitative play in the indulgence of air-castle building, founded on external models, though careful discrimination would be needed to detect it always. Then there is the callow youth who copies a leader of fashion in his manner of walking, talking, and acting, and finds sufficient satisfaction in the success of his efforts without any further aim. Sometimes, too, that imitation founded on serious effort is manifested in trifling ways. I do not know whether such amusement is now dispensed with in teaching writing; my experience was that the higher classes at school as well as the children tried to model their hand after that of some admired student, teacher, or friend. Sully’s remark that imitation is sometimes “the highest form of flattery” is applicable here.
(_b_) Playful Imitation of Acoustic Percepts
A group occupying a position midway between the foregoing and that which is now to be treated of consists of such imitations as find their antecedent in movement which appeals to the eye and yet whose real effect is in the repetition of acoustic impressions. Preyer records the following unsuccessful effort at the end of the first year: “At this period, if any one struck with a salt spoon on a glass, making it sound, my child would take up the spoon and attempt to hit the glass in the same way, but he could not get the tone.”[552] Quite similar is Baldwin’s observation: “H——’s first clear imitation was on May 24th (beginning of ninth month) in knocking a bunch of keys against a vase as she saw me do it, in order to produce the bell-like sound. This she repeated over and over again, and tried to reproduce it a week later when, from lapse of time, she had partly forgotten how to use the keys.”[553] This sort of imitation, where, as in putting out the light, the result is more important than the movement itself, is more enduring than simple movement imitation, because the end attained is itself a source of pleasure.
The most important phase of acoustic imitation is that which aids in the child’s acquirement of speech. In studying experimentation we found that voice practice is an indispensable antecedent of learning to talk. Add to this the imitative impulse and the equipment is complete for acquiring a mother tongue. The child imitates all the kinds of sound that he hears—the howling of the wind, animal calls, coughing and sneezing—but of course he hears most constantly the sounds of his native language, and so it naturally follows that he gives it particular attention, which constantly increases as he becomes aware of his parents’ delight in his acquirements and as he perceives their practical use.
Sigismund has asked whether imitation of singing may not serve as an introduction to language lessons. He says: “The first real imitation which I observed in my boy was not repetition of articulate speech, but of a musical tone. When he was fourteen months old and had as yet imitated nothing (?), I occasionally sang to him a popular song whose melody began with a downward quarter (F-C), which interval recurred frequently and forcibly in the song. I was greatly surprised when the child, though very drowsy, sang this measure correctly, an octave higher. The following day the same thing happened, and this time without any example.... Is it the rule or the exception that the infant sings imitatively before he speaks so? Many mothers whom I have questioned were uncertain whether such singing had occurred at all, but they had probably simply failed to notice it. The result of my own investigations and observation points to the probability that children, like birds, more easily comprehend and repeat singing tones than speech.”[554] Ufer justly replies to this that while children do indeed often sing before they can talk, we have no reason to affirm that this is the rule. The child observed by Miss Shinn, for example, first made feeble efforts to imitate singing in its fortieth month.[555] It is always unsafe to attach too much importance to isolated cases. It is characteristic of man that many of his inherited capacities are left afloat, as it were, and must be anchored by individual experience, thus affording opportunity for the development of varied individuality. Consequently, it is hardly possible to be too cautious in drawing conclusions for phylogenetic evolution from ontogenetic development.
It is self-evident that not all the sound imitations which underlie the acquirement of speech are playful in a psychological sense. Words are often babbled mechanically without any special enjoyment. Moreover, as soon as the child has overcome the difficulties of the first stage of his language study and knows how to express his wants, he often makes use of expressions whose model exists only in his memory, without any playful intention. Still, a considerable part of the effort to learn to speak is properly imitative play. Preyer’s description shows us how the child put his whole soul in the attempt to understand the lip movements, and in another place (fifteen months) he says, “If he hears a new word, ‘cold,’ for example, which he can not repeat he is angry or turns his head away and cries.”[556] This demonstrates the presence of fighting play; when the effort to be able to say “I can, too,” fails in its aim, consciousness of defeat is betrayed by ill humour. Older children, too, often obtain new acquisitions in speech in a playful fashion. I kept a series of notes on Marie G—— in this connection, extending from the third to the seventh year, and they show this unmistakably. While she lived in Giessen she mimicked the dialect of the servants and many of the peculiarities of Hessian speech, and enjoyed copying the expressions of her playmates in talking to her dolls. In one note, which records the observations of a single day, I find four distinct efforts of this kind, and for many months she adopted the rather forward manner of speaking, practised by a boy of whom she was thrown with for a while. Hardly had we become settled in Basel before she made a rhyme illustrating the local accent here.
The child’s effort, on the whole, is directed toward attaining likeness to his model, whatever may be the difficulty, otherwise he would remain satisfied with his first effort when he found it understood. “Persistent imitation” constantly urges him on to improvement by repetition, constantly striving for betterment. Thus the power is gained to acquire new territory. The child’s enjoyment, too, of recognition constantly furnishes him with alluring models. This progressive method is directly opposed to natural inertia and indolence, which are so strong in some children that we occasionally find them not only satisfied with slipshod methods, but actually going back, after learning better, to the faulty pronunciation. This retrogression, too, is often playful.
We have space but for one illustration from the many which this subject affords; it relates to inventiveness in language imitation. We have already seen that the experimental play of infants (especially in reduplication) furnishes material for a science of language. The easily articulated syllables papa, mamma, baba, fafa, dada, etc., are sufficiently explained in the case of parents, who take them into their own vocabulary and thus confirm the child in their use. Many expressive words have originated in this way.[557] Darwin’s child said “mum” to signify eating or wanting to eat, and Strümpell’s daughter at ten months called all the birds that she saw from the window “tibu.”[558] Older children, too, often indulge in such playful experimental coining of words,[559] as we shall see later. At present we are more concerned with the word building founded on acoustic imitation. Preyer thinks that the only kind of word creation practised by children is the imitation of sounds which they have heard and their repetition in the form of interjections. I quote from him: “When the listener first imitates a word and then makes independent use of it depends with normal children principally on whether much effort is made to instruct them. More important psychogenetically ... are observations on the creation of words with a special sense before the beginning of genuine speech. These are not to be regarded as mistaken, imperfect, or onomatopœic imitations,... but rather as original interjections. In all my observations and studies directed especially to their investigation, I have been able to discover nothing tending to establish a connection of the hearer’s concepts with articulate sounds and syllables.... S. S. Haldemann has in his notes on the invention of words, which include a small boy’s discoveries in that line, citations from Taine, Holden, myself, and others. This boy called a cow “m,” a bell “tin-tin” (Holden’s boy said “ling-dong-mang” for a church bell), a locomotive “tschu-tschu,” the splash of something falling in water “boom,” and applied the same word to throwing, striking, falling, shooting, etc., without regard to the quality of the sound, though always with reference to some sound. In weighing the fact that a sound repeated to him, such as a trumpet call, was fitted with a word suggestive of the sound seems to show that an intelligent child attempts to imitate and repeat what he hears, despite the objection of a Max Müller, and until a better hypothesis is offered affords an object lesson in the study of the origin of language.”
Yet this theory is decidedly partial, for among primitive people, besides mamma, papa, adda, etc., other sounds depending on neither interjections nor imitation, but purely the result of experimentation, get a meaning from the simple relation of mother and child, and so attain at least a place in their vocabulary and surely form one of the grounds for the explanation of the growth of language. It is not maintained that the child first learns the art of imitating sound from his elders, for without doubt he is often the originator, as in the case of mamma and papa, which he has taught them. For us the interesting question here is that of recognition which we find again the object of playful activity. The “Bow-wow” theory sounds perhaps improbable, or even ridiculous when we think of its being used by adults,[560] but when confined to children all this is changed. It works somewhat in this way: The child learns through imitation to produce all sorts of sounds—the crash of falling objects, the rumble of rolling ones, cries of animals, the gurgling of water. His mother’s play with him adds to the value of such imitations, since in their play the imitative sound comes to stand for its object just as symbolism arises from the effort to express qualities. Imitation makes this intelligible, since every copy is a symbol of the thing copied. Even the interjection and the experimental sound can only be elements of speech by imitation or repetition. Thus Jodl rightly says (following Marty) of the imitation of sound, “As soon as their power of adjustment, their reason, is sufficiently developed, they derive from free play the means consciously employed for the acquisition of varied experience.”[561] Therefore I maintain that imitation is an indispensable condition in the explanation of the origin of language, its objects being threefold: (1) All the acoustic models afforded by the environment; (2) interjectional sounds; (3) experimental sounds. It is as assured a fact that children practise the first as that they playfully repeat their own experiments. Playful imitation of interjection is not to my knowledge indulged in by very young children, but using the sound to signify the thing from which it proceeds is natural enough. On the whole, then, it seems that while imitation plays an important part in the origin of language, as many investigators testify, to make it the only factor would be an act of presumption.
As this impulse for acoustic repetition is weaker in adults than in children, I need only mention the playful use of it in poetry where it is agreeable to all. I have already had occasion to remark that poetry written for children is especially rich in such imitation. Animal cries and bird notes figure largely. Rückert’s poem Aus der Iugendheit makes use of a very common metre to imitate the whirring call of the swallow, thus:
“Wenn ich weggeh’,:,: Hab ich Kisten und Kasten voll; Wenn ich wiederkomm’,:,: Hab ich kein Fädchen Zwir-r-n.”[562]
“When I go away I have trunks and boxes full; When I come back again I haven’t a rag to my name.”
This interpretative imitation which lends to unintelligible sounds a special meaning is applied to other things than animal cries, such as the clatter of arms, the ringing of bells, the splashing of water, the roaring of wind, etc. For adults it is expressed in the refrain, which, however, does not as a rule convey any special meaning. A rather crude form of it is found in Bürger’s Leonore. A more subtile use of it is illustrated in efforts to make the sound of the words convey a faint resemblance to the acoustic effect which is being described. A familiar and celebrated instance of this is found in this passage from Faust:
“Und wenn der Sturm im Walde braust und knarrt, Die Riesenfichte stürzend Nachbaräste Und Nachbarstämme quetschend niederstreift, Und ihrem Fall dumpf hohl der Hügel donnert....”[563]
Music, too, is notably richer in imitation of the latter sort than in the much less valuable tone-painting. As we have, however, touched on its analogy with and relation to speech movements, which is its most important feature, the subject will not be opened further here.
2. _Dramatic Imitation in Play_
In the playful imitation which we have considered up to this point, illusion was as a rule not involved, of the kind which seems to convert the copy into the original. In dramatic or imitative play involving the reproduction of actions it is almost invariably present, and essentially differentiates such play. Imitation is still the foundation and also the source of pleasure not only in the feeling of emulation, but in putting one’s self in the place of another, in the play of imagination and in the enjoyment of æsthetic effect. There can be no doubt that this refinement of the process by which the external act of imitation becomes at the same time inward sympathy is of great importance to human progress. Konrad Lange has shown in his stimulating article[564] that with the higher animals at least, play without the contributory zest of illusion or conscious self-deception would probably be much less attractive and consequently fail of its biological purpose, since this feature of it contributes essentially to the advance of intelligence. Even when the child merely copies for the sake of copying he learns an astonishing amount, and acquires a host of psychic adaptations. But mental elasticity, adaptability, and mobility are first acquired when the migratory instincts of the soul, so to speak, are awakened, and the child enters into the life of his model. Veritable participation in the mental states of another individual, objective appraisal of what he feels and strives for, would scarcely be possible without such practice.
In the dramatic imitative play of children important distinctions are apparent which are not noticeable in the dramatic art of adults. The play may be so conducted that the player’s own body appears as the exclusive object of the mimic production, or in such a manner that the pretended object serves, either on the ground of an actual resemblance or by sheer force of imagination, as a substitute for the thing represented, or, lastly, in a way that includes both. We have an instance of the first when the boy pretends to be a soldier, of the second when he marches his tin soldiers to battle, and of the third when he himself takes part in the combat, or when a little girl plays that her doll is a real baby and she herself the mother. Since we have reason to believe that dramatic art has developed from the play of children by way of the mimic dance we may be sure that its progress has been selective, and that there is good reason for the perfection of the first of these forms. The second, indeed, appears in the marionette farces which are still much enjoyed by the uneducated classes among ourselves and are in great favour in the East. The third kind, in which the player places himself in direct dramatic relation with the puppet (taking the word in its widest sense), has no analogy in our art, but is most prominent in the fetich cult. And the reason why is easily traced. A fundamental distinction between mimic play and mimic art consists in the fact that the player imitates simply for his own amusement, the artist for the pleasure of others. His is not real play, but exhibition. Bearing this distinction in mind, we see that the third form of play is not applicable to art.
In our short review of dramatic imitative play we will not adhere too closely to the three distinctions, but simply inquire what it is that the child imitates. And first we glance at the strange fact that his impersonating impulse extends even to inanimate objects; the child acts without any feeling of limitation, like the labourers in Midsummer-Night’s Dream, who were ready to take the part of the Wall or the Moon indifferently. During a long and complicated play some child will be a door post, a tree, a seat, a wagon, and a locomotive, and endeavour by his motions and carriage to support these bold illusions. This exhibition of versatility on the part of the child is interesting in its analogy to the expansion of the imitative impulse in æsthetic perception. Such external personification of lifeless objects corresponds to inner imitation which is itself a kind of personifying. A higher object of dramatic imitation is found in the actions of animals which, as we have seen, are apt to lead to strongly marked comic effects. They are a source of the liveliest amusement to children, who will crawl like a snake, grunt like a pig, fly like a bird, swim like a fish, seize and devour prey, make grimaces, wear animal masks, make shadow pictures, notice and laugh at animals, and perhaps even mimic their movements.[565] This last propensity has given name and character to many complicated traditional games, such as “Cat and Mouse,” “Wolf im Garten,” “Fox Chase,” “Hen and Hawk,” “Fox and Chickens,” etc. This manifestation of the child’s deep interest in the animal world is analogous to animal imitation in primitive art and animal veneration in primitive religion. In the former connection the animal dance is most conspicuous, being extremely widespread. Masks representing the different animals are commonly worn, and the movements of domestic animals, especially the dog, as well as of wild beasts, are reproduced in rhythmic order,[566] nor are the dancers daunted by swimming and flying. Probably the masking in Greek and Japanese dances is attributable to such an origin, as also the unnaturally placed tails on ancient figures of fauns, for in these dances animal tails were hung in the belt.[567]
Hall and Allin, in their valuable treatise so frequently cited, attempt to assign a reason for the very special interest which children take in animals. They find my practice and preparation theory in this case “obviously wrong.” As a partial explanation they develop the view that use of a rudiment produces to a certain degree its atrophy, and that consequently childish imitation of animals “marks the harmless development of rudimentary animal instincts as they pass to their needed maximal growth, till the next higher powers that control and subordinate them are unfolded, thus recapitulating with immense rapidity a very long stage in the evolution of the human out of the animal psyche.”[568] It strikes me that this is one of the numerous cases of the too bold application of the seductive but dangerous phylogenetic theory. Entirely apart from the fact that the idea of weakening as a result of practice seems improbable in regard to the imitation of animals as well as in the catharsis theory on which the author seems to base his, it is noteworthy that the child has to make an effort to reproduce the movements, actions, and calls of animals, and this at a time when it has already progressed very far in the acquirement of human capabilities. Therefore, I am unable to subscribe to the theory advanced by these gentlemen. None will deny that the imitative impulse is of great biological importance as practice, and I do not see that any special explanation is needed for its extension to animal actions. If, however, such explanation is required, my theory readily supplies it, for few things are more useful to primitive man than a thorough knowledge of animal life, and playful imitation afforded a much surer means of acquiring this than did mere receptive observation.
We now pass to human activities which are chosen as models by children still more than are the activities of animals. It may be stated in general that there is scarcely anything which engages the energy of man which is not made the object of childish imitation. Children of savages naturally have a much smaller _répertoire_ than those of civilized people, but as far as the fact of imitation is concerned, and as it appears in child’s play, it usually strikes travellers most forcibly, since they are not as a rule alive to the less salient phenomena of experimentation. Livingstone says that in central Africa it is remarkable how few playthings the children have; their life seems to be already a serious one, and their only amusement consists in imitating their elders while they build huts, lay out gardens, or make bows, arrows, shields, and spears. In other places, he says, giving a beautiful instance of childish invention and illusion, many bright children are found who have plenty of attractive toys. They shoot birds with their little bows, and teach captive ones to sing. They are very skilful in setting traps and snares for small birds, as in the preparation and spreading of birdlime. The boys make toy guns out of reeds and shoot grasshoppers.[569] Many other witnesses confirm all this, though their reports are usually less full and lucid, and we may conclude that the games and sports of adults are also early acquired by the children by means of imitation. Among the “wild men” exhibited in Europe, quite small children are often found who perform the dances of their elders with astonishing accuracy, and travellers tell us that they do the same thing in their homes. Captain Jacobsen once attended a regular Indian child’s party, for which the little people painted their faces and stuck feathers in their hair in regulation style. “It was really comical to see little tots of three and four gotten up in this fashion and dancing about with leaps and bounds while older ones beat the wooden drum.”[570] Children of civilized peoples still retain among their plays many heathenish customs which have not been practised by adults within the memory of man. An interesting example will accomplish the transition from savagery, dealing as it does with the powerful influence of the imitation of the uncultured on European children. Signe Rink tells of her childhood spent in Greenland: “Like all European children in the country my brothers and sisters and I had a genuine passion for everything pertaining to Greenland; and accordingly, as soon as the door was shut on our elders we tried in every possible way and by all sorts of mimicry to identify ourselves with our playmates. My brother got himself up as a seal hunter from head to foot, and I became an Eskimo woman with waddling gait, who was sternly forbidden to leave the house.” And of her play in an Eskimo hut and with a Greenlandic girl she gives the following delightful description: “We took off our shoes and sat on the warm, comfortable, half-dark part of the couch behind the backs of the grown people. Wherever I was there was Anna, my best friend among the Greenland children.... We made quite free with pincushions, dishes, and timepieces! We brought mussel shells and bleached seal bones and made a playhouse in the corner. We took cushions from the great pile and made beds for the puppies. We made mural decorations from coloured chips. Over our heads hung boots, hose, skins, trousers, and _timiaks_ (under-jackets) to dry in the warmth of the lamp or to be out of the way. All these surroundings formed elements in our play. In imagination we had sent our husbands off on a seal hunt, and with thimbles on our first fingers, the Greenland custom, we sewed round flaps for the boot soles of the absent ones.”[571] One can not read such a description as this without being impressed with the incalculable influence of imitation on the whole psychic life of the child, not only in relation to externals, but also as affecting their deeply rooted sympathies and antipathies, habits and convictions, all of which are deeply influential on the developing character. Baldwin says: “It is not only likely—it is inevitable—that he makes up his personality, under limitation of heredity by imitation, out of the ‘copy’ set in the actions, temper, emotions of the people who build around him the social inclosure of his childhood. It is only necessary to watch a two-year-old closely to see what members of the family are giving him his personal ‘copy’—to find out whether he sees his mother constantly and his father seldom; whether he plays much with other children, and what their dispositions are to a degree; whether he is growing to be a person of subjection, equality, or tyranny; whether he is assimilating the elements of some low, unorganized social content from his foreign nurse. For, in Leibnitz’s phrase, the boy or girl is a social monad, a little world, which reflects the whole system of influences coming to stir its sensibilities. And just as far as his sensibilities are stirred he imitates, and forms habits of imitating. And habits?—they are character.”[572]
There is hardly any limit to the rôle playing of civilized children. Under normal conditions they naturally take their own parents as models, and even in societies not governed by caste considerations this must have a conservative influence. But the occupations of others, too, appeal strongly to the imitative impulse, and it is altogether probable that such tests of various possibilities often exert an influence on the later choice of a life’s calling, for play develops predispositions and antipathies. When Schiller was eight or nine years old he was taken to see the magnificent ducal opera house in Ludwigsburg, and was forthwith inspired to produce a similar work; so he built a little theatre of books, and had paper figures to act in it. Soon afterward he got up private theatricals among his sisters and schoolmates. His enjoyment of preaching, too, was shown in his being able, like young Fichte, to repeat, when a child, whole sermons verbatim whose lofty spiritual pathos confirmed his natural inclination toward the priestly calling.
Before proceeding to the consideration of special forms of the imitative impulse, I will make a limited selection from a series of observations calculated to illustrate the variety of childish imitation. The carrier’s wagon, the street car, the railroad are as well represented by his own body as by external objects, though the silver knife-rests on our table seems especially adapted for the last, being hitched together and pushed about the table, passing through tunnels, stopping at stations, etc. An old servant who comes to our house daily to see if anything is wanted from the library or post office, regularly gets letters which the child has placed in old envelopes. Another play is for the child to knock at the front door and say to the maid who opens it, “I am an old letter carrier.” When asked if she has any letters she answers, “Here is some money for you,” and spits in the girl’s hand. She comes with a pile of old papers, and asks if we want to buy one. She travels to Coburg between the house and garden, and visits a friend, saying, when she comes back, “I have told Emmy that she must come here soon.” For months after a visit to a swimming pool she practises swimming in the garden; standing on a chair holding her nose she jumps in the grass, where she tries to copy the movements of swimmers. She said, when five years old, to her doll: “Lisa, in an hour you go to Frau Schneider, and when she asks you, ‘What is, the sky is blue?’ you must say, ‘Le ciel est bleu’; and when she asks, ‘What is, the tree is green?’ you must say, ‘L’arbre est vert.’” At six and a half she gave her doll writing and piano lessons. In the latter she grasped the doll so that by means of pressure on the hidden mechanism she elicited from it accompanying wails, at regular intervals and in good time.
The capacity for illusion is always the most interesting feature of such play. The same child varies greatly in this respect: sometimes he seems entirely given up to self-deception; he will offer you a meal of candy in which one bit represents the meat, another the vegetables, etc., and is quite hurt if you are guilty of confusing these dishes. Sometimes, too, when he has concocted various dainties out of mud, he can not resist the temptation to bite into the brown mass, although in his calmer moments he well knows that mud is not edible. On the other hand, the waking consciousness seems to be unshaken through it all. If you warn the playing child not to hurt his rocking horse, he will answer that it is only a wooden horse, without, however, abating his zeal in the play. Then, again, the whole thing is laid out beforehand, as in this case. Marie: “Then let’s play that I am a thief, and there is a whole roomful of cakes, and the door is shut, and I cut a hole in it and take all the cakes away, and you are the policeman and run after me and get all the cakes back again.” Frieda: “And I will take them to my child. Or shall we play birthday?” When choice is thus offered between various possibilities there is, of course, much variation in the strength of the illusion, and the sudden transitions of the imagination are often very striking. For instance, one small dramatist called two combs which he held together a biscuit, and said it had an excellent taste, and the next moment was rocking them to sleep with tender solicitude. We have already noticed the child’s extraordinary capacity for supplying any deficiencies in the object of his fantasy; he has no difficulty in accepting two upright pencils as towers, an umbrella for a baby, with grass stalks attached to it for flowing locks.
At the risk of giving too much space to this phase of the subject I will describe a baptismal festival in 1896, which was participated in by half a dozen children from five to fourteen years old, at our house. For the adults chairs were provided and placed in regular rows, and they were required to bring tickets of admission which a duly accredited doorkeeper received. All the children were deeply affected during the official parts of the ceremony, especially the young mother, who showed as she brought the doll infant forward a really pallid face, and the fourteen-year-old minister was so moved by his solemn office that he lost his place after the first sentence. On the certificate of baptism was the proverb:
“Ihm ruhen noch im Zeitenschoose Die schwarzen und die heitern Loose”;[573]
and the programme, whose second part seems to throw some doubt on the lofty idealism of the children, was as follows:
PROGRAMME
FOR THE CHRISTENING OF ILSE, ELIZABETH, AND ERIKA BÖHME
I. BAPTISM. 1. Sermon.
II. LUNCH. First course, pastry. Second course, ham and asparagus. Third course, fish and potatoes. Fourth course, tongue and cabbage. Fifth course, beefsteak with sauce. Sixth course, poultry and salad. Seventh course, roast pork and chestnuts. Eighth course, venison and compote. Ninth course, pies. Tenth course, ices. Eleventh course, cheese and pumpernickel.
III. CONCLUSION. 1. Conversation. 2. Games. 3. Domino party. 4. Dancing.
Amid the bewildering variety of childish dramatic play two specialized groups seem to be particularly prominent. As stated in the general introduction the imitative impulse is often aroused by an intensive stimulus calculated to call into play other stimuli as well, one of the most prominent being the fighting instinct—playful imitations of all sorts of contests—as vigorously practised by boys, for, however much education may be said to foster it, their inborn nature sets the pace. The old story of Achilles’s choice of a sword, though he had been brought up like a girl, is well founded. Among savages the chase and manly contests are the constant models for playing boys, while among ourselves, besides playing soldier, many such sports are kept alive solely through tradition. This is the case, too, with less cultured peoples, the bow and arrow being used as toys long after they are abandoned for serious warfare.[574] Since so many of these plays have been enumerated with the other fighting plays, I will not here single them out, but rather confine myself to a notable example from ethnology. Just as our children chase each other, take prisoners and execute them, so do the little ones of the Seram Islands play at decapitation. “A favourite game of young and old,” says Joest, “is that of cutting off heads, for which the children are armed with light wooden swords. A cocoanut is hidden in the shrubbery, and their naked bodies wind like snakes through the grass and thicket in search of it. An arrow or lance is hurled into the air when the nut is found, and a couple of well-directed blows with the sword sends it bounding away, severed from its stem. The victor, holding his booty in his left hand and exulting in his triumph, runs off at a gallop, pursued by the entire crowd, shouting and brandishing their weapons.”[575]
The nursing or fostering instinct which is so prominent in the imitative play of little girls deserves more attention. A special section is devoted to such play among animals in my former work, but I admit that I am myself somewhat sceptical in regard to some of the examples quoted there, though I was most careful to get the testimony of trustworthy investigators. Among animals, moreover, some sorts of nursing play are wanting, such, for instance, as that in which a lifeless object is treated as a veritable infant.[576] The feeding of young birds of a second brood by their older brothers and sisters seems to me entitled to be called a nursing play, and Naumann observed this in the case of water wagtails. Altum reports the same behaviour by canary birds, and vouches for having seen young water wagtails who were still wearing their first feathers feed young cuckoos.[577] That this is a play can scarcely be questioned, and it must be imitative since the parent birds are taken as models, but whether it is dramatic illusion play is another question and a doubtful one, for there is always actual feeding with actual food; not, as with children, a mere pretence. Yet I am very doubtful whether there would be any nursing plays among children without parental models, and for that reason it has been included among imitative plays in this book instead of being given a separate section. We then conclude that the maternal instinct is present in little girls, but first attains expression in play on the rise of the imitative impulse.
We have a direct analogue to the bird examples when an older child assumes the rôle of mother to a younger with purely playful and imitative motives. Dramatic illusion first comes in when sham activity is involved, as may be the case with dolls, other children, or even adults as the subjects. We must conclude, then, that the imitative impulse is fully developed only when imagination supplements the copy. Baldwin gives a particularly pretty instance of dramatic nursing play where the older sister takes the part of mother to the younger.[578]
As regards the use of dolls it would be interesting to know whether the child would of its own accord so treat any beloved object if it had never seen a real doll made by adults, but the artificial doll is always provided so early that there is no opportunity to make the experiment. In the slums of a great city a proper subject might perhaps be found. However, we know that the child’s powers of illusion are amazing. A cushion, a stick, a building block, an umbrella, a dust brush, or a footstool, a table cover, a slipper, a fork, in short, anything portable, is liable to become a beloved and zealously nurtured baby, and every detail is quickly arranged to suit the picture.[579] Finally, a few words as to the origin of this toy. Its use is well-nigh universal, and one of the sights most worth seeing in an ethnological museum is a collection of dolls from all over the world. They are made of clay, of edible earth, of wax, of wood, of bark, of cloth, of porcelain, etc., and imitations of the human figure blend with those of animals, of household furniture and utensils, of arms and implements of different sorts in motley variety.[580] They serve to illustrate human progress. In mediæval Europe, in ancient Rome, in Greece—everywhere the doll was at home. The old museum in Berlin, for example, possesses a wooden doll from the Egyptian excavations, which has movable legs, and a crocodile whose jaws can open and shut. Since these images of men and animals were probably the earliest form of toys, the conclusion is natural that they probably originated with idols which from religious feeling may have lain in the cradles and thus appealed to the children as playthings. Other customs and the testimony of travellers give colour to this idea, though it is difficult to draw the line between the idol and the doll.[581] Through the kindness of my former colleague, Sticker, at Giessen, I myself own an old Indian wooden doll, which appears suited to be both a protection from evil spirits and a toy for children. Still, we must not allow to pass unchallenged any manifestation of the disposition which used to be so common, to refer everything to a religious origin. It is quite possible that simple pleasure in plastic representation for its own sake is responsible for the manufacture of these toys. Von den Steinen tells us, “Dolls a span long, made of straw, served as children’s toys, and were also stuck in a pole on the roof of their places of festivity as a sign that some frolic was in progress, and everybody spread the news.”[582] There is nothing here to hint at a religious significance.
Of dramatic imitation play by adults we find only a few remnants among civilized people, aside from mimicry on the one hand and the borders of art on the other, where imitation is not exhibited as an end in itself, but rather in relation to its effect on the spectators, and therefore is no longer a genuine play. Professional actors “play” only in particularly happy hours. The case is quite otherwise, however, with savages, whose imitative dances, while conducted in the presence of spectators, it is true, are unmistakably for the enjoyment of the participants first, somewhat as are our amateur theatricals. We have already described animal and erotic dances, which are also imitative, of course, and all interesting, comic, and exciting elements of their life are repeated in various dramatic dances, fighting scenes being favourite subjects. I choose an example whose details most strongly recall the capacity for illusion possessed by children. It is a woman’s dance which K. Semper saw in the Palau Islands: “We could already hear the rustling of their leafy garments, which swung in time with the dancers’ movements as they stood in a long row. Their aprons were of the briefest, their naked bodies were fantastically painted in gay colours. In one hand they carried short wooden instruments which seemed to be weapons, and in the other a staff covered with a skilfully made tuft of white shavings, tipped with red. They marched in a row on to the raised platform whose roof sheltered them from the sun, and now the dance began. The beginner sang a verse without moving, then all repeated it as a chorus with accompanying rustling of the leafy gowns and beckoning movements of the arms. Soon they became more active, and apparently wished to express joy and greeting. Each seized her wooden instrument—a neighbour told me that they represented weapons—and made light swinging movements before her. During this war dance they gradually removed from the starting point. A sudden loud cry, wild movements of the arms and whole body, excited singing and blazing eyes betokened the expectation of approaching battle.... The dancers’ movements became wilder, they stamped their feet, their hands dealt blows in time with the song—here to strike a fallen foe, there to sever a head. At last victory is won. They grasp the wands bearing the gay tufts and raise them aloft, then lower them diagonally to the ground. ‘What does that mean, Frau Ebadul?’ I ask. ‘That is the battle of the Inglises against Aibukit, whom they are besieging; now they are firing the villages—the yellow tufts are flames to light the huts with.’” Aside from the rhythmical movement which is needed to complete the power of illusion for adults, this is very like the dramatic imitative play of children.
3. _Plastic or Constructive Imitative Play_
Under this heading are grouped external representations of two or three dimensions, thus including drawing as well as the moulding commonly understood as plastic. Here it is more difficult to distinguish between play and art than in dramatic imitation, since, while the child nursing her doll, or putting his tin soldiers through a drill, thinks not at all of spectators, and how they will be affected; even an infant artist is always eager to show what he can do. It can, however, be generally prevised that pictorial imitation is a play only when pure joy in the act of production fills the soul of the copyist.
I begin with imitative drawing, which seems to be widely practised, not only by children but by primitive people as well, and will therefore claim most of our attention. Its origin is not clearly determined, though von den Steinen’s observations make out the case pretty clearly for their connection with language of gesture. “The simplest drawings,” he says, “are those connected with gesture. When a savage repeats the cry of an animal in one of his spirited dramatic tales and wishes to make the effect more forcible, he also imitates the creature’s bearing, gait, and movements, and pictures special peculiarities, such as long ears, trunk, horns, etc., in the air with his hand. Such actions for the eye form a parallel to the voice imitation for the ear, but when they still do not suffice, drawings are made on the sand. In the absence of word equivalents for communicating with them I myself have often taken refuge in such sand writing.”[583] He goes on to say that he thinks, although his observation has been confined to Indian tribes, the further development of drawing followed for the purposes of communication after the idea of making pictures was once grasped; and that finally they were made without such practical aim, efforts were made to improve the technique, and all sorts of natural objects were represented in interesting and novel aspects.[584]
I know of nothing that should hinder us from accepting this luminous explanation and applying it to the origin of all drawing but for one point, which does offer some difficulty. That a primitive hunter should imitate animal bearing, gait, and movement is easily accounted for by the instinct for dramatic imitation, but it takes us no nearer to our goal; and, moreover, how does it happen that he adds the outline of ears, trunk, or horns in the air to complete the picture? On this point the whole question depends. Would this mode of suggesting contour ever occur to a man who had never seen drawing? Does not the former presuppose the latter, instead of accounting for it? I do not presume to judge of the force of this objection, but feel that we can not afford to ignore it. If it is a just one, von den Steinen’s explanation of course falls to the ground, and there is apparently nothing left but to refer the whole subject to playful experimentation. In this case we would best proceed from the sand drawing, since it is probable that the child or adult playfully marking on the sand accidentally produces some semblance to a natural object and adopts it as his own. Thus the child observed by Miss Shinn accidentally produced (110th week) a triangle in the midst of aimless scribbling, and repeated it afterward with conscious intent.[585] While absolute certainty is unattainable in such instances, it would still be valuable to make observations on a child who had never seen a pencil used for drawing or writing. Should such a one go on from scribbling to drawing, our play idea would receive valuable confirmation.
Another question is how far drawing, however acquired, may be regarded as a play. The finished production of the artist’s pencil is not always so, by any means, for in modern times his art requires all a man’s energies, and becomes his life calling and his means of support. Productions of dilettantes belong more to our sphere. But how is it with primitive folk? Here, too, the play idea is often excluded, for the reason that their drawings serve religious purposes, or are used as picture writing; yet, according to the views of recent ethnologists, it would be misleading to refer such drawing exclusively to these ends. “We are convinced,” says Grosse, “that in the drawings of savage people, with comparatively few exceptions, neither a religious nor any other serious purpose is involved. We are perfectly right in trusting the numerous witnesses who assure us that such drawings are made simply for the pleasure of making them.”[586] This establishes the pre-eminently playful character of primitive drawing and sculpture, and the efforts of children are still more obviously so. Imitative and imaginative play here join hands, the former making the point of departure while the expanding and illuminating power of the latter is needed to complete the satisfaction in the finished product.
As I am unfortunately unable to go into details,[587] I close the subject with some general remarks on the character of such drawing. For the child and for the savage the chief object of representation is one of the most difficult of all, namely, living animals. Miss Shinn’s niece, who began with mathematical figures, is an exception accounted for by the fact that she was intentionally directed toward abstract form. Even the geometrical patterns in primitive ornamentation may often be traced to the imitation of animals, and a distinction between the work of these people and that of children lies in the fact that they prefer such figures while children incline to the human figure, which is rarely represented by savages. The explanation of this is that for the hunter the animals which he pursues form the chief objects of his imagination, as any sportsman among ourselves who begins to draw will illustrate. A third view is presented when we ask what is the psychological antecedent of imitation. In civilized art it is as a rule conscious perception of the actual object, as genuine artists rarely paint from memory. But it is quite otherwise with children; they object to drawing from Nature, as H. T. Lukens points out.[588] They prefer to make the absent present by their art, and their passion for drawing is considerably dampened by the practice in observation which school discipline requires. The child’s model is commonly a mental image, a fact which explains many of his particularities. The savage, too, from what we know of his art, seems to produce it not directly from the object, but from his impression of it, and thus it happens that he represents effects of things which are not visible to the beholder now, though they may have been elements of the scene which he recollects, and explains, too, in part his almost incredible errors in proportion and in the relative position of things, such as placing the mustache of a European above the eyes, or even on top of the head.[589] This suggests the distinction which Grosse makes between childish and primitive art. He thinks it strange that the two are even considered to be on a par, since children seldom show a trace of the hunter’s close observation. The art of savages is, as a rule, naturalistic, that of children symbolic; the only actual resemblance being the lack of perspective in both. This view certainly contains an important germ of truth, but the statement is extreme. It is true that many drawings of primitive man display a remarkable truth to Nature, impossible to a child, and, as Grosse rightly says, resulting from trained powers of observation joined to the dexterity acquired in the manipulation of weapons and tools. But this wider knowledge and greater skill seem to me to be the sole grounds of difference, and the sharp distinction of naturalistic and symbolic unwarranted. Of course, drawing is in itself to a great degree symbolic, but the symbolism displayed by children, surprising as it often is, does not betoken any special preference for symbolism, but often results partly from incapacity and partly from the exigencies of the subject being represented. When full representation is unattainable they are satisfied to make their meaning intelligible, and savages, too, often resort to similar expedients. Grosse himself gives us some Australian drawings on wood where the human face is represented without a mouth, just as often happens in childish efforts. In these figures the fingers are symbolized by mere lines. In his valuable chapter on drawing among the Bakaïri, von den Steinen points out still closer analogy with children’s work. He says, for example, that, as a rule, only three fingers and toes are indicated, to serve as a suggestion for the rest. It seems to me that it is then rather a question of more or less than any real difference.
Our next topic is the question of beauty, and here, too, the child and the savage are close parallels. Both have a certain interest in the introduction of colour which appeals to them, both object to carrying out the full type, both probably draw from memory, and both lack almost totally the appreciation of beautiful form. The savage, indeed, does introduce the simpler elements of beautiful form in his ornamentation, but in his representations of human and animal figures there is little effort to preserve such outlines. This bears out our former conclusion that savages have little appreciation for physical beauty as such, and with children it is much the same. Some children, it is true, make a general distinction between people who are beautiful and those who are ugly, but in drawing not only the ability but often the intention as well is wanting, to produce beautiful faces. When they do attempt something definite in the way of expression it is much more likely to be caricature of homeliness than beauty. It is known also that this tendency is especially displayed in periods of highly developed art, and more particularly by the Germans.
A final observation refers to children alone. I have already noted that imitative play, in which the player appears in dramatic relation to the puppet, while common enough with children, is not found in adult art unless at the most a partial analogy is traceable in some religious connections; these same principles apply to drawing. The child plays with the figures he has drawn as with dolls, and gives us a most attractive picture of his capacity for illusion. Marie G——, when four and a half years old, wanted to draw a holy family. First came a kneeling figure, whose position was most precarious—his knees would not bend properly, and for reverently folded hands there was a confusion of crossing lines. The little artist cried with annoyance: “The naughty child doesn’t want to kneel. Joseph will be angry with him because he won’t kneel down and say his prayers; he is stamping and scolding.—You naughty child, won’t you kneel down now and pray?” In the meantime she made Joseph (asking if he wore trousers), with his foot raised to stamp on the ground, and then came the kneeling figure—a good child now, at last. A little of this capacity for illusion is sometimes found among full-grown artists, and especially among the naïve religious painters who are conscious of the divine indwelling as they make their representations of religious subjects.
The consideration of plastic imitative play in its narrower sense will occupy us but a short time. Von den Steinen’s explanation of drawing, given above, will hardly apply here. The probable starting point for such figures was the accidental resemblance of some outline to weapons, implements, or ornaments. The child’s ready capacity for illusion which is as likely to call a circular outline an umbrella as a human head is not wanting in adults as well, and especially so among primitive people. When he makes a dagger handle out of a reindeer horn, or a necklace of various small objects, or adorns a clay vessel with impressions, and enjoys doing these things, his hands thus rendered skilful need but little help to make other images. Another possible origin is in experimentation with plastic material, such as clay or wax, which would naturally lead to moulding.
The first hypothesis is well illustrated by von den Steinen’s description of the chain figures of the Bakaïri. He says, “As the rhyme often suggests the thought, so an outline already familiar may suggest a motive”; the meagre suggestions which satisfy savages in such cases “is evident in most of the figures which adorn their necklaces, strung between seeds, shells, and nuts. It matters not what is the material—a bit of the spiral of a rose-coloured snail shell with an irregular outline does duty as a crab; from the shell of the _Caramujo branco_ (_Orthalicus melanostornus_) they cut birds and fishes;... bits of green and black mottled stone are fishes when flat and birds when rounded, and sometimes Nature is assisted in carrying out these resemblances. Fruit, too, was used which bore an accidental resemblance to some sort of bird.”[590]
But Brazilian plastic art includes the other type as well; they mould figures in wax and in the edible clay which furnished their forefathers with food. As a man held a lump of clay in his hand the impulse may have been aroused by some accidental resemblance, and thus give rise in a purely playful manner to the custom which von den Steinen has called “only a skilful method of storing the material.... Black wax was most beautifully moulded by the Mehinakú into excellent animal forms and suspended around the neck or laid away in a basket until wanted.”[591] That this was a playful habit is proved by the maize figures of the same tribe. These were usually bird forms almost as large as turkeys, and hung from the roof on long ropes, “A strange spectacle to the traveller who thinks at once of idols or fetiches, but these fine birds are in reality nothing but well-filled ears of corn in the natural husks.”[592] We can not here go into the higher forms of primitive sculpture, but it may be mentioned in passing that even such aboriginal tribes as the Indians of central Brazil often make use of their plastic skill for symbolic decoration. Thus the Mehinakú adorn the upper end of their wooden spades with the carved head of a mud wasp, because they too dig in the ground and throw up the dirt as the Indian does with his tool.[593]
We must pass still more hurriedly over the plastic efforts of children, which are of much less importance than their drawings, though among the children of savages the disposition to attempt a rude sort of sculpture is much more common than with us. Nachtigal relates that the negro children of Runga formed rhinoceroses and elephants out of the beautiful red clay which abounds there.[594] There are individual instances of a similar kind among civilized children. Ricci has taken some trouble to make a collection of such work by Italian children, and finds it differs less from the efforts of savages than their drawing does.[595] On the whole, however, this branch of art seems to be comparatively little prized or pursued with the exception of making snow men and some caricatures in wax, dough fruits, and the fashioning in sand of gardens, streets, cities, tunnels, and forts which are all about as much imitative play as production.
In conclusion I offer a few general remarks on imitation in connection with representative art, where three forms of it can be distinguished—objective, artistic, and subjective imitation. The first consists, as we have seen, in repetition founded on sense-perception and simple memory, while the last permits considerable deviation from reality. The child and probably the savage prefers to produce from memory.
Artistic imitation may be defined as the influence of copies produced by other artists. It plays in art the same rôle as that which falls to tradition in general culture, for without it the artistic genius would have little advantage over the gifted savage; indeed, even with him artistic imitation is of great importance. It is not alone the wish to do what others have attained; it is also the _via regia_ to the higher evolution of art. A stimulating task is to trace in history how originality was won by copying. Baldwin’s little girl began to build a church from blocks after a picture. When she has laid the foundation, suddenly her face lights up and she begins to depart from the model. On being reminded by her father that churches are not built in that way she answers, “Oh, no; I am making an animal with a head and a tail and four legs,” and, full of pride in her new discovery, she returns to her work of art, which is no longer a church, but has been turned into an animal.[596] We see here, as in a magnifying glass, the law of progress. Not in random discharges but from real action comes the new; and the action that leads to the new is not original, but must be imitative.[597]
This imitative action must not only always have another artist’s work as its model; here may enter our principle of subjective or self-imitation, which, indeed, is more a physiological than a psychological principle since it is no other than all-powerful habit in its spontaneous form, the impulse to repeat.
Children best illustrate it, but the familiar saying that genius consists in an infinite capacity for taking pains is a popular expression of the fact that progress depends on indefatigable perseverance. It is Baldwin’s persistent imitation again. And self-imitation is as indispensable to progress as is the imitation of others, acting in conjunction with the law of habit, according to which the frequent use of an act tends to make it easy. The conservative principle of imitation furnishes a basis for higher development by supplying an incentive for the mechanical effort required by the first laborious accomplishment of the task, as well as for the introduction of new details and the application of effective variations. Here, too, an example from child psychology clearly shows the coupling of new with old habits. A child observed by Perez had learned to draw a locomotive, and was so charmed with the accomplishment that he did not want to draw anything else. One day his grandmother wanted him to make a portrait of her, and what did the boy do but draw a locomotive with a first-class carriage attached, and his grandmother’s head protruding from one of the windows![598] In similar way the painting of landscape began in history with little pieces of background piping out of figure pictures.
4. _Inner Imitation_
The conviction has long prevailed[599] among German students of æsthetics that one of the weightiest problems of their science is offered by that familiar process by which we put ourselves into the object observed, and thus attain a sort of inward sympathy with it. In France the same problem has been treated in a notable manner by Jouffroy, who says, “Imiter en soi l’état extérieurement manifeste de la nature vivante, c’est ressentir l’effet esthétique fondamental.”[600] In this very complicated process we can distinguish these leading characteristics: 1_a_. The mind conceives of the experience of the other individual as if it were its own. 1_b_. We live through the psychic states which a lifeless object would experience if it possessed a mental life like our own. 2_a_. We inwardly participate in the movements of an external object. 2_b_. We also conceive of the motions which a body at rest might make if the powers which we attribute to it were actual (the fluidity of form). 3. We transfer the temper, which is the result of our own inward sympathy, to the object and speak of the solemnity of the sublime, the gaiety of beauty, etc.
By including all these under the rather inadequate name of æsthetic sympathy, and bearing in mind what we learned in the review of æsthetic pleasure, we can not fall into the error of supposing that they include the whole field; yet at the same time we must see that their explanation involves not only its most difficult but also its most important problem. Why is this?
The attempt might be made to answer this question entirely in terms of the psychology of association, only we should then be forced to designate processes as associational which do not at all come under the original definition of the word—namely, processes of fusing or blending, which is not the bringing of a succession of disparate ideas into special relations, but rather a unifying process, in which the after-effect of past experience and the present perception blends to an inseparable synthesis.
I select, then, as an example, the latest utterance of Lipps on the impression produced by a Doric column, citing only those points which seem to meet our purpose. He speaks first of the mechanical method of regarding the column and then continues: “But another element follows this naturally. Mechanical events external to us are not the only things in the world. There are events lying nearer to us in every sense of the word since they take place within us; and these are similar or analogous to the external events. Moreover, we have the disposition to regard similar things from the same point of view, and this point of view is determined preferably by the nearest object. Therefore we compare what happens externally with what happens in or to ourselves and judge of it according to the analogy of our own experience.” After remarking that such a method of observation is implied in such expressions as “strength,” “aspiration,” etc., as applied to a column, Lipps goes on: “Our satisfaction is not of the general kind which applies to the universal idea of strength, effort, activity. Every mechanical event has its special character or its special manner of fulfilment. This may be easier, more untrammelled, or more difficult, and requiring the overcoming of more serious obstacles; it may require greater or less expenditure of ‘force.’ All this reminds us of our own inner processes and evokes those, not indeed identical in character, but analogous. It presents to us an image of similar effort on our own part, and with it the peculiar personal sensations which accompany the act. The mechanical event which seems to fulfil itself ‘with ease’ incites us to an equally simple and expeditious act; the violent expenditure of vigorous mechanical energy, to an exertion of our own will power, to which is added the feeling of lightness and freedom proper to a self-originated act, and in other cases the not less agreeable feeling of our own strength.” Omitting what intervenes I add the conclusion of the treatise: “From the conditions indicated there results not, indeed, the entire æsthetic impression produced by a Doric column, but a considerable part of it. The vigorous curves and spring of such a pillar afford me joy by reminding me of those qualities in myself and of the pleasure I derive from seeing them in another. I sympathize with the column’s manner of holding itself and attribute to it qualities of life because I recognise in it proportions and other relations agreeable to me. Thus all enjoyment of form, and indeed all æsthetic enjoyment whatsoever, resolves itself into an agreeable feeling of sympathy.”[601]
Here we encounter the difficulty mentioned above. It is evident from these extracts that this is a case of successive associations. We are “reminded” of similar subjective processes, and the “idea” of similar acts of our own is “evoked,” be they facile or strenuous. But successive associations are not available as an element in æsthetic enjoyment, as Lipps[602] goes on to say: “Moreover, all this takes place without reflection. Just as we do not first see the pillar and subsequently work out its mechanical interpretation, so the second, personal interpretation, can not be said to follow the other. The being of the column, as I perceive it, is necessitated by mechanical causes which themselves appear to me to be from the standpoint of human action.”[603] Then we have not a true image of our own deeds before us; we are not actually “reminded,” for the process is one of simultaneous fusion, in which the consequences of earlier experience unite with sense-perception to effect a direct harmony. From this direct blending at the instant of perception we see why, to the observer, the pillar seems to hold itself “as I do when I brace myself and stand up straight.”
Assuming that this simple presentation of the psychology of inner sympathy furnishes the elements of an explanation, still, in my opinion, the state of æsthetic enjoyment is not yet sufficiently accounted for. The fusion processes described form part of a general psychological fact, and it is impossible to complete an act of apperception without such synthesis. The question must be answered as to how æsthetic perception is differentiated as a particular satisfaction from general apperception; and the answer brings us directly to the idea of play. Take thunder, for example. On the ground of the synthetic process, its roar makes, universally and naturally, the impression of a mighty voice raised in anger. The child has that impression when it frightens him; so has the savage man when he regards it with religious awe. But neither feeling is on that account æsthetic; that comes only when the hearer enjoys the emotional effect of the phenomenon as such, rendered possible by the process of fusion; when he has an independent, self-centred pleasure in this result—that is to say, when he plays. The same remarks apply to the column. It is self-evident that we can not think of its upward spring without calling in our earlier experiences, but it seems to me to be just as apparent that in æsthetic perception the impression is intentionally lingered over only for the sake of its pleasure-giving qualities, i. e., playfully.
Further, I think it is certain that there is in the play of æsthetic enjoyment a condition of consciousness analogous to that underlying a special class of plays—namely, the experimental. The force of this analogy has impelled various students of various lands, independently of one another, to this common goal. It is, of course, only a relationship of conditions of consciousness, not genuine identity; but we may affirm this much—namely, that inner sympathy is at least as closely connected with dramatic imitation as the latter is with plastic imitation. If the dramatic begins with a mere motor reaction, which tends more and more to identify itself with self-transference into the condition of another being, then inner imitation appears as but a further step toward spiritualizing the imitative impulse. When, therefore, I designate æsthetic sympathy as a play of inner imitation I believe I have correctly characterized the psychic attitude of æsthetic enjoyment as far as it is based on the fusion processes.
But I must go a step further. So far we have had in mind only past acts and their effects as the psychological precedent of such sympathy, and herein lies, in my opinion, the inadequacy of the whole associative method. The sympathy of an æsthetic nature possesses such warmth and intimacy, and such progressive force, that the effects of former experience, however indispensable, are not sufficient, as Volkelt, Dilthey, Th. Ziegler, and A. Biese have justly remarked. Mere echoes of the past can not bring about what I understand as the play of inner imitation. On the strength of my experience I hold fast to inner imitation as an actuality, and one connected with motor processes, which bring it into much closer touch with external imitation than the foregoing dissertation would indicate. I have intentionally made use of the qualifications “in my opinion,” “in my experience,” etc. For, theoretically at least, I must admit the possibility that persons may exist for whom æsthetic enjoyment does not get beyond the stage here indicated. All that follows relates to those only in whose æsthetic pleasures motor accompaniments are apparent, whether subjects of consciousness or inaccessible to the self-examiner.
In attempting to develop the main points of this fuller conception of inner imitation, I first take up the analogy between the child’s dramatic imitation and æsthetic sympathy.[604] The child playing with a doll raises the lifeless thing temporarily to the place of a symbol of life. He lends the doll his own-soul whenever he answers a question for it; he lends to it his feelings, conceptions, and aspirations; he gives to it the pretence of mobility by posing it in a manner that implies movement, or by his simple fiat when he asserts that it has nodded, or beckoned, or opened its mouth. Here the resemblance to æsthetic sympathy is already strong, and is still further augmented by the use of the child’s own body as the instrument of his mimic play. His attitudes and positions are then symbolic. The boy who with the paltry aid of a paper helmet and a stick to stride can identify himself with the cavalry officer whom he imitates has the soul of a fighter. And he can extend this power of symbolic imitation to inanimate things as well; kneeling with his hands on the floor, he is a bench which easily turns into a locomotive as soon as forward motion and the puffing sound suggest it. We have here illustrated the power of illusion to convert a mere symbol into the thing symbolized, entering fully into the pretence and yet not confusing itself with reality, just as in æsthetic sympathy. Thus imitation proves itself to be the author of the symbol.
This external imitation proclaims the inner. What, then, constitutes the difference between the two, and how are we to define inner imitation in the fuller sense in which it is used here? We have seen that external imitation is at the same time inner sympathy, and the external bodily movements are chiefly directed toward furtherance of this and of the transference of self which accompanies it. But how is it when external visible imitative movements are wanting? Is inner sympathy to be conceived of as merely a brain process in which only the recollection of past movements, attitudes, etc., is blended with sense perception? By no means. There is still activity, and that in the common sense of the word as it relates to motor processes. It is manifested in various movements whose imitative character may not be perceptible to others. In this instantaneous perception of the movements actually in progress I find the central fact with which blend, on the one hand, imitation of past experiences, and on the other the perceptions of sense.
Inquiry concerning the complex movements of inner imitation is not yet past its opening stages, but so much seems to be established—namely, that by it are called forth movement and postural sensations (especially those of equilibrium), light muscular innervation, together with visual and respiratory movement, all of which are of great importance. Movements of the eyes have been given special attention by R. Vischer,[605] sensations of rest by Couturat.[606] Wundt has made eye movements of general psychological interest, and S. Stricker[607] has attempted to do the same for the muscular sensations called forth by the central impulses (at the present stage, including principally tactile sensations of the skin, as well as muscular and joint sensations). Intensely interesting is the article by Vernon Lee and Anstruther-Thomson on beauty and its contrary,[608] which quotes a number of observers who, as much from practice as from the possession of exceptional gifts, far transcend the limits attained by the average man in self-observation. Couturat and Stricker advance the idea that such movement processes, so far as they depend on mild muscular contraction, are due to the imitative impulse.
Before adducing some examples, I must venture on one more observation. It is not, of course, to be assumed that such external movements are necessarily genuine copies of sense-perceptions. In the psychological treatment of eye movements, for example, sufficient caution has not been exercised, and consequently a false standard has arisen, transcending the facts. Here we shall find a comparison with external dramatic imitation play of great value, bearing in mind that the result of the latter is a symbol, not a counterpart. When a boy has to cut off his comrade’s head in dramatic play, a very soft blow with a stick is sufficient to indicate execution with the sword of justice, and in the same way and degree the movement of which we are speaking may be symbolic. Suppose a man fancying a huge spiral imprinted on the wall in front of him. If he remembers the motor processes he can reproduce them at will; little movements of the eyes, little tensions of the neck muscles and in the throat, together with breathing movements, are useful and (at least in my own case) even indispensable, and yet there is no really spiral motion—the symbol is sufficient.[609]
I now present a few examples. First, as regards the optical perception of movement. “When I am in good physical condition,” says Stricker, “and take my stand at some distance from an exercise ground so that I can watch the company with ease but not catch the word of command, I feel certain muscular sensations quite as strongly as if I stood under the command and attempted to follow it. When the troop marches, I keep time with them in the sensations of my lower limbs; when they go through the arm exercise, I have quite intense muscular feelings in my upper arm; when they turn, I feel the same in my back.” (B) The following passage shows that the same individual can experience also other symbolic sensations of movement: “From the exercise ground I went to the theatre to see the gymnasts, and first watched one using a springboard. At the moment when he leaped from it I had a distinct sensation in my chest, and the feeling, too, of motion in the muscles of my eyes.”[610] In poetic art inner imitation of movements must also be given due weight.[611] Lessing’s requirements for a poet depend largely on this, for on its subjective side poetic enjoyment is connected with memory pictures, and movement is conspicuous in these.[612]
All this is true in a higher degree of the enjoyment of musical movement. Herder said once: “The passionate part of our nature (τὸ θυμικόν) rises and falls, it throbs or glides softly. Now it sweeps us along, now holds us back; it is now weak, now strong; its own movement, its step, as it were, varies with every modulation, with every strong accent and vanishes as the tone varies. Music strikes a chord in our innermost nature.”[613] In all this we find not only the effect of association, but actual motor processes in our own bodies, which extend from the rhythmical movements, visible for others, to the most delicate (and invisible) associations in the inner part of our body. The process which I tried to characterize in the section on hearing-play is with me connected with breathing movements and tensions of the throat and mouth muscles, and is thus symbolic in both directions. Those who play much on some instrument commonly find that with them the tension is of those muscles which they most use—this is apt to be especially the case in recalling a remembered melody. We must avoid a too free assumption of “internal song,” as well as of throat movements. Baldwin says,[614] “I am able with the greatest ease to hold aloud an ā sound at ć, say, and at the same time cause a whole tune—say Yankee Doodle—to run its course ‘in my ear.’” I, too, can do this, though not with ease; the remembered tune is literally “in the head”—that is to say, I have the sensations of movement which represent this melody clearly in my mind, where they are difficult to locate, but are actual sensations, not mere memories. I can observe this process to better advantage by holding my breath and drumming on the table, hearing a melody in the rhythmic movement. These instances, however, do not clear up the undeniable contrast between an acoustic and a motor melody, particularly as in the first, motor accompaniments are entirely wanting. This is probably the case in a much higher degree for æsthetic enjoyment than for mere recollection.
I pass finally to the consideration of the æsthetic impression of objects at rest, giving first two examples from the article already cited, by Vernon Lee and Anstruther-Thomson, who seem to stand aside altogether from the conflict raging among our own students of æsthetics and psychology at present devoting themselves to this subject. They are more under the influence of the Lange-James sensation theory, in the pursuance of which they have little in common with the theory of symbolism as advanced here, and do not even make use of the term inner imitation. Yet the fact of it leads them to the expression “to mime” in attempting to characterize æsthetic perception. Their observations undoubtedly transcend the normal (particularly in motor types), and in some instances practice comes to the aid of natural endowment, while auto-suggestion occasionally plays a part. These extreme cases, however, may serve to call the reader’s attention to the normal conditions, which are not so obvious.
The first example relates to the inspection of a jar. “Here is a jar equally common in antiquity and in modern peasant ware. Looking at this jar one has a specific sense of a whole. One’s bodily sensations are extraordinarily composed, balanced, correlated in their diversity. To begin with, the feet press on the ground, while the eyes fix the base of the jar. Then one accompanies the _lift up_, so to speak, of the body of the jar by a _lift up_ of one’s own body; and one accompanies by a slight sense of downward pressure of the head the downward pressure of the widened rim on the jar’s top. Meanwhile, the jar’s equal sides bring both lungs into equal play; the curve outward of the jar’s two sides is simultaneously followed by an inspiration as the eyes move up to the jar’s widest point. Then expiration begins, and the lungs seem closely to collapse as the curve inward is followed by the eyes, till, the narrow part of the neck being reached, the ocular following of the widened-out top provokes a short inspiration. Moreover, the shape of the jar provokes movement of balance, the left curve a shifting on to the left foot, and _vice versa_. A complete and equally distributed set of bodily adjustments has accompanied the ocular side of the jar; this totality of movements and harmony of movements in ourselves answers to the intellectual fact, of finding that the jar is a harmonious whole.”[615]
Now an example of the influence of attention in the observation of plastic form: “We can not satisfactorily focus a stooping figure like the Medicean Venus if we stand before it bolt upright and with tense muscles, nor a very erect and braced figure like the Apoxyomenos if we stand before it humped up and with slackened muscles. In such cases the statue seems to evade our eye, and it is impossible to realize its form thoroughly; whereas, when we adjust our muscles in imitation of the tenseness or slackness of the statue’s attitude, the statue immediately becomes a reality to us.”[616]
It is easy to turn such passages into ridicule (and there are some much stranger in the article), but the fact is that they are only extreme expressions of actual elements in all the motor forms of æsthetic enjoyment. But the authors have not grasped the fact of symbolism, and they stress too much the sensations of movement, just as Sergi, for example, has done in his Dolera e Piacere. When the scholar in Riehl’s Burg Neideck, on his first sight of an extended plain, had the feeling of being himself widened out, this effect was in all probability due to sensations produced by breathing movements. Yet this is not in itself the whole satisfaction, but rather a mere motor symbol which satisfies the imitative impulse, just as the external suggestion is responded to by dramatic imitation, or the little motions of the body in the phantastic visions of the dream.
To answer the question of how this play of inner imitation originates, it must be borne in mind that voluntary external imitation must always be preceded by a stadium of adjustment (or “Einstellung”). So it is especially in childhood, where this prodromal stage is often of long duration. And what are here the objects of the child’s imitation?—sounds, gestures, attitudes. Now sounds, gestures, and attitudes are also the very objects of _inner_ imitation in æsthetic pleasure.
In concluding, we are confronted by the question whether this faculty of inner imitation belongs exclusively to a special group of individuals—namely, the distinctly motor type. If this is so, then a very important part of the æsthetic satisfaction is confined to a fraction of the human race. One hesitates to affirm that we of the motor type labour under the disadvantage of taking intense pleasure in a state which is lacking in physical resonance, so to speak; and yet, if this is the case, we still can boast that fusion with past processes which after all leaves the plus sign in our favour. I am convinced, however, that no such sharp distinction of types is warranted by the facts, the difference being as a rule one of quantity or degree of individual endowment. Ability to observe such movements in one’s self is no criterion. There may be individuals with very strong inner imitative movements who are unable to separate the motor element from the _tout ensemble_. To illustrate the difficulty: A man who glances suddenly to the right imparts to surrounding objects an apparent motion to the left (this may help to account for the “fluidity of form”), yet to many it is impossible to get a clear perception of this, even under the most favourable conditions. In the same way there are probably many who deserve to be reckoned with the motors in æsthetic enjoyment who are yet unable to make their own movements a matter of observation.
IV. SOCIAL PLAYS
Much discrimination is required in the attempt to single out a special group of social plays proper to our subject. I am, however, well aware that it is an essential feature in any system of play, and that Baldwin is quite right when he says in his valuable preface to The Play of Animals, “Finally, I should like to suggest that a possible category of ‘Social Plays’ might be added to Groos’s classification.” The great difficulty is that it is well-nigh impossible to make separate observations on them as a distinct class, for as a rule the social impulse furnishes the incentive to the special games which we have considered. To take a familiar example: Society chat is a social play _par excellence_, and yet the indulgence in this element of it appeals to consciousness as but a vague and undefined satisfaction compared with the influence of the impulses to combat and to courtship. For this reason the present section must be of a somewhat different character from the foregoing ones. It must be theoretic, and thus form a connecting link with the second part of the book.
In the sphere of social play we still find ourselves in close touch with imitation. Though Tarde’s formula, “La société c’est l’imitation,” has the one-sidedness characteristic of an epigram, it is an unquestionable fact that this impulse is of fundamental significance in the origination and preservation of social conditions. Uniformity of conduct and sentiment, without which social co-operation would be impossible, is preserved mainly by imitation, and, what is more, by its involuntary form, as illustrated in the infectiousness of such simple acts as coughing and gaping. But, before going into this, I must emphasize some phases of the social impulse which are not identical with imitation, and whose value to play is easily demonstrated.
It may be recalled that in our inquiry into the origin of the imitative impulse the question was raised whether its resemblance to instinct might not be explained by its relation to the genuine instincts of race affinity and the production of calls and warning cries. The physical and mental association common to men and gregarious animals seems to me to depend largely on these two relatively simple instincts, those of physical association and communication. Both are extremely important for the establishment of the family, and the view that the social factor has nothing to do with the family is, in my opinion, far too extreme. Ants and bees may serve them for illustrations, but in the life of herds and tribes the primal relation between mother and child seems to me the starting point from which the need of _association_ and _communication_ has extended.[617]
Our inquiry then will proceed from need of bodily association or the herding instinct as a starting point. However this impulse may have developed phylogenetically, ontogenetically the child’s associative needs are at first satisfied by the family, and almost entirely by the mother; he is, as a rule, relatively late in turning his attention to a social sphere. “Before the third or fourth year,” says Madame Necker de Saussure, with some exaggeration, “the child is happy only with his elders. His needs, his pleasures, and the certainty with which he counts on our protection are all in our keeping. Other children interest him for a time, but soon tire him, and their little tempers excite his own. In his inability to cope with such situations he turns again to the grown people.”[618] Although this is put too strongly,[619] its essential truth is well known; indeed, Curtmann and Flashar for that very reason deprecate the extension of the child’s social circle at too early an age, and Franz Kübel says, in Süddeutschen Schulboten (1875): “Because the life of an eremite, be he scholar, æsthetic, or what not, is a mistake, why should all of life necessarily be social? Why should the bud be forced to open too early? Why should the sphere of individual life be so soon widened to take in love for all? It seems to me indisputable that the early education of a child should be carried on in the family circle, and also that there is a dangerous tendency to arouse social impulses too early.”[620] Indeed, we must admit that experimentation can not have its due effect if the child is introduced too early to a wider circle, and that the strong stimulus of social life tends to overshadow and interfere with the development of family life when allowed to exert its full force on the very young. Just as with children who are kept too much at home, overweening family feeling interferes with their progress in society and hampers them through life, so, on the other hand, too much society weakens the parental relation. There should be a certain equilibrium of influence, as in all other departments of culture, to supply the most favourable conditions in the struggle for existence.
Returning from this digression, we remark first that there can be no doubt of the value of social games in preparing incipient men and women for later life. “Le società infantile,” says Colozza, “sono società di guoco.”[621] The demand for identification with some social group finds its satisfaction in this way, and this satisfaction rests, as we have seen, on the broad foundation underlying other instincts, especially those relating to combativeness. I merely mention the direct effect of the impulse for association, the agreeable consciousness of being “in the swim.” Among animals this feeling is manifested rather as a reaction from the annoyance of separation from the herd, yet the gregarious animal pasturing with its kind or carrying food to them may be filled with a cheering sense of security such as we experience when established in a cosy corner at the club. Be that as it may, the child at any rate, as soon as it is old enough to make the acquaintance of other children, is filled with eager desire to be wherever his comrades are assembled for whatever purpose. I need only hint at his rage and despair when he sees through a window that the “other fellows” are collecting, while he for some reason can not go out.
These early manifestations of the social instinct are too simple to require much illustration. We all recognise them, and they are frequently displayed by adults as well. Holidays spent in simple playful indulgence of the gregarious instinct are of the greatest value for the collective social life of mankind. Here as elsewhere the practice theory is applicable to adults, as two extremely diverse instances will illustrate most satisfactorily. One is the difficulty of keeping up religious community life when the festival character is allowed to lapse; even when there remains enough association of the votaries themselves to constitute a gratification of the associative impulse, yet the abandonment of holiday festivities undoubtedly has a marked effect. The tamer a religious observance becomes the larger the proportions of lukewarm adherents. Many sects have a clear perception of this, and it accounts for the fact that some of them employ methods not far removed from the practices of savages. This brings us to the second instance—namely, the importance of festive gatherings to savage peoples. If our owners, our own peasantry, scattered in families through the rural districts, are in danger of losing their social feelings when deprived of religious or secular festivals, the necessity is yet much greater with primitive men. Apart from warfare, this is about their only means of association as tribes or clans. It is valuable, too, in connection with and preparatory to their fights. Among the Weddas of Ceylon, who “have not yet acquired the art of war,” and are very undeveloped socially, we find only feeble suggestions of the festival. From our noble cathedrals, our concert halls and theatres, and other places of amusement, converging lines lead directly back to the festal huts of savages. From these, however, women are as a rule strictly excluded.
Finally, I remark that a playful motive is often discernible in the formation of the multifarious clubs for the advancement of some worthy object in this age of abounding culture. We all know persons for whom an absorbing interest in the ostensible object of the club would be out of the question but for the good company. The mere fact of being one of a group is satisfaction enough to the gregarious instinct, and the playfulness of this condition can scarcely be questioned.
Turning now to the wider social impulses to which these simple manifestations are related, we must first notice the voluntary subordination of the individual which is so essential a feature. In the relation of parent and child there could hardly be any training, and certainly no such thing as education, without this element. After dwelling on the child’s spirit of opposition, Sully gives in his Studies in Childhood the contrary picture in a series of incidents designed to show that there is yet in the childish soul something “on the side of law,” and goes on to remark that “it is worth while asking whether, if the child were naturally disposed to look on authority as something wholly hostile, he would get morally trained at all.”[622] While this is true, still the contrary, rebellious spirit is developed by the parental relation, and we may see voluntary subordination much better illustrated by going on the street with the child and noticing his behaviour with his playmates. The blind obedience accorded the leader of a little band is calculated to fill parents and teachers with envy. Here the social impulse is supreme in the demand for association and classification which governs and directs society. The same relation exists among animals between the herd and its leader, and no orderly association of men could exist without it. As simple compulsion is not enough with children, so with adults discipline is insufficient. The leader’s command must be met by an inward disposition to obey in the interests of the whole. The heads of political parties who thunder invectives against the “slaves” and “dumb cattle” in other parties are yet considerably disconcerted when their own followers display too little of the disposition for subordination.
The common fighting plays of children markedly exhibit this voluntary submission to a leader, less known, I think, in regulation games than in the many contests which a crowd of children will naturally fall into when a few belligerent spirits are present; when there is a trick to be played on schoolmates or janitor, an orchard to plunder, some unpopular person to annoy by breaking his windows or otherwise damaging his property—in these escapades the leader’s word has absolute authority, and the most docile children will commit deeds in blind obedience which fill their parents with amazement and horror. The influence of example is a factor not to be overlooked, but it is not by any means all; more influential still is the _esprit de corps_ after the plot is once hatched. Formerly, when children were given more freedom in this direction, schoolboy leagues were of great importance, but even now their associations for contest play a weighty part in youthful life; there they learn to see how common peril strengthens the bond of union and enjoins submission to the leader. It is an illustration in miniature of the influence of war on the evolution of society.
This leads to the observation that play is instrumental in teaching children submission to law as well as to a leader. Thus H. Schiller says very truly of gymnastic exercises: “They promote not only presence of mind, dexterity, skill, and readiness, but furnish as well valuable training for society. Law and limitation are here self-imposed by the players, and he finds them again in the bounds which he strives to transcend.”[623] Since gymnastic and belligerent games afford exercise chiefly to males, we trace here an interesting distinction between the sexes. It seems that those manifestations of the social impulse relating to subordination are not pursued by women so energetically nor in the same way as with men. Woman is the guardian of good form, but as a rule she will not subordinate herself to rigorous law. I think any customs agent will bear me out in this statement from his observation of the behaviour of travellers. This probably results from a difference in the instinctive equipment of the sexes; fighting impulses, which are strongly developed in the males, further the social ones by reason of their imperative requirement of association. This is apparent in the exercises referred to by Schiller, and is materially advanced by the practice which play affords. The success of American women in their movement for emancipation is largely furthered by their participation with men in various sports and the consequent better development of their social capacities.
I conclude these remarks on voluntary subordination with some reference to the origin of punishment. It is commonly referred to the principle of vengeance, but, though feelings of personal grievance and revenge may be closely involved in its origin and development, they can not entirely account for the institution of punishment. Even the play of children clearly distinguishes between personal revenge and social chastisement. The infraction of the unwritten laws of our familiar games arouses a spontaneous and general sentiment against the offender which does indeed resemble the demand for vengeance, but stresses more the idea of social injury. What urges to the chastisement of the liar, the coward, and the betrayer is a righteous indignation which results from outraged social feelings, and the desire to expel the offender from the group. This was apparent in the early tribes from which all civilized peoples have developed. Justice is as old as social humanity, and if it can be derived at all from personal revenge this could have been possible only as far as offences between man and man were regarded as offences against the community as a whole.
Social sympathy next demands our attention as connected with the demand for association, and for the sake of brevity I include in the term not merely the inward sentiment, but also the _émotion tendre_ and the readiness to lend a helping hand to other members of the same group. It is perhaps best defined by the expression “good fellowship,” which is everywhere current. Play has a significant part in it as well with children as with adults. I introduced a passage in The Play of Animals on the actions of some young foxes who amused themselves playing together until some occasion arose for strife. Then, one of them being bitten so that blood flowed, the others fell upon and devoured him; and I then remarked that “the good comradeship of young animals is first of all a play comradeship. It exists in play when aside from the conditions of the play there is little sympathetic feeling.” This is to a great degree applicable to humanity as well. Apart from relations of actual friendship which are deeper than simple comradeship, we find among individuals very little genuine interest and kindliness. It is only when people are members of the same social group that they learn to regard one another with the friendly feeling which is necessary for effective association. Social sympathy is apt to be but a wider egoism, and the identification of the individual I with the social whole a slightly more circuitous route to self-advancement. When party lines are obliterated the interest subsides, as many have discovered who counted on personal friendship as a result of social sympathy. Further consideration of the value of this comradeship, however, shows it to be indispensable to the formation and maintenance of society, and that the school in which it is developed is furnished by play. Children scarcely manifest it in any other connection; as they grow older they may form friendships independently of their common play, but as a rule their comradeship is that of play. With adults the case is not very different, for even when they associate for a serious purpose banquets and other playful features are considered indispensable for strengthening the bond. These festivities, it is true, have their root in the common need for amusement, but their practical value consists in the impetus they give to social sympathy, and their indirect furtherance of effective association.
As the associative impulse which we have made our starting point primarily promotes external connections, but is attended with various far-reaching consequences, and finally results in the demand for communication, so this last, from serving first the narrow unit of the family, brings about the inner spiritual union of the social group. The chief means which serves this impulse of humanity is language.[624] Although this communication does serve a practical purpose from its very inception, there are still many playful manifestations of it. Compayré offers an observation which may be regarded as a prelingual illustration of this. It records a sort of dialogue between a child, still unable to speak, and his elder brother. “Pendant quelques minutes c’est une alternance ininterrompue, là de mots et de phrases nettement articulés, ici de petits cris confus.”[625] Older children, too, often show the same thing in their play with dolls and other toys as well as toward persons and animals. We sometimes sigh for a limit to the unmeaning gabble which the child apparently enjoys for its own sake.
Similar observations have been made on adults, though here as with children it is difficult to draw the line between play and earnest. So far as the object is to instruct others or make a good impression and thus improve one’s own social standing, the act is serious, but it oftener wears the aspect of merely playful self-exhibition. And, finally, when an unimportant piece of news is passed about and talked over “just for something to say,” we have an instance of pure playfulness, since a satisfaction of the social impulse is sought without serious aim and purely for its own sake. The teas and Kaffeeklätzchen so affected by women are of a similar character. Without attempting to analyze too closely the style of conversation prevailing on such occasions, we venture to say that a universal desire for expression is conspicuous. This is certainly the fact in the social gatherings of men and of society in general. Ordinary society chat is a social play.
There are other phases of conversational intercourse, however, which are more germane to our present purpose, such, for example, as the invention of special forms of speech which are selections from tentative efforts by the process of exclusion. The great social importance of a common language thus finds expression in play. Reference has already been made to the fact that children coin words—that is, they make use of sounds independently discovered by experimentation. Sometimes several children will construct a sort of secret language in this way. The remarkable case referred to by H. Hale of a pair of devoted twins who did not learn first the language spoken around them, but one all their own, in which they conversed with ease and fluency, is not, however, an instance in point, since there was evidently no play about it. Yet children do form such a secret system sometimes in play. Colonel Higginson mentions two girls about thirteen years old who made a language for their own amusement. They wrote about two hundred words of it in a book. Thus “Bojiwassis” denoted the half-anxious, half-resolute feeling that precedes taking a leap, and “Spygri” the pride in having accomplished it. “Pippadolify” expressed the stiff manner of walking of the young officers in Washington.[626] This well illustrates childish versatility in word coinage. Von Martius, Peschel, and others attribute the rapid transformations in the language of savages to the influence of children, whose faulty reproduction of words learned from their parents is adopted by the latter.[627] Also original creations arise in the intercourse of parent and child. We have already spoken of the imitative sounds that come into a language in this way, and childish experimentation may be equally influential. “Papa” and “mamma” are evidences that this is sometimes true, and many other words may have had a similar origin.
But, turning again to our subject proper, we find that the tendency of a social group to distinguish itself by its manner of speaking is widespread among adults.[628] It can not always be called playful, however, as some serious aim is often had in view, as in the code of criminals and the passwords of secret societies, but the technicalities of special callings and professions are often clearly playful, and are especially affected by the newcomer who is impressed with the advantages of belonging to the set. With what zeal does the newly initiated sportsman set himself to learn the vocabulary of the chase! With what unction does the freshman repeat the latest student’s slang! Conan Doyle, in his Rodney Stone, has given us an admirable picture of the affected speech of the English dandy at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and the euphuism of Shakespeare’s time is another instance. Pleasure and pride in belonging to a certain class or set are often manifested in such peculiarities.
But impulse for communication may assume other forms, as in the cases when we found it of so great value in courtship under the form of self-exhibition. And it has also, as Baldwin[629] points out, a more general social significance. While our personal peculiarities are first brought out in our intercourse with others, we at once become conscious, on the other hand, of an impulse to display them in order to gain influence. Satisfaction with one’s own achievements is attained only when these have gained social recognition. Self-exhibition plays an important part, too, in the pleasure we derive from collective games. The rivalry which we have studied from the standpoint of the fighting instinct takes a more pacific form, as the pleasure of finding one’s importance testified to by imitation on the part of others. This is not mere exultation in victory over others, but takes higher ground, since the sense of superiority which it engenders is dependent on their support.
When the display of one’s excellences thus transcends verbal expression it results from the highest forms of social intercourse, from that devotion of time and energy to society which constitutes the vocation of the social leader. It is the very opposite to that voluntary subordination to a leader of which we have spoken, and yet true social leadership also is founded on just such subordination. The aspirant for its honours must so merge himself in the society that its aggrandizement shall mean his own—a signal proof of the force of the social impulse. Whether the task is great or small, the ruling of an empire or the leadership of a club, the principle is the same, and consequently the social plays of children are enlightening. Even here, forceful, active, inventive natures quickly attain the mastery and the difference is apparent between the merely violent, who think only of their own advancement, and the born leader who makes the interests of society his own, who is ready to answer for the crowd, and is found in the front line in times of danger and will suffer no injustice to any of his following. Such leadership is possible only where there is the capacity for identifying his own will and conviction with those of the rest, thus effectuating the groups’ subordination. The “magnetism” of those who succeed as leaders depends on the presence and force of this faculty; they must have not mere strength of will, but the kind of will adapted for fusion with the common will for the attainment of its social ends.
In concluding these observations on the associative principle, I must notice the social side of artistic activity. It may be said in general that artistic production fulfils an important function in giving universal pleasure. H. Rutgers Marshall tries to establish the existence of “the blind instinct to produce art works.”[630] The attempt, however, to analyze the social tendencies operative in the creative artist will disclose the two last-mentioned forms of the communication impulse. The artist longs to set forth with all his power that which fills his soul, and to make objective representation of it for his own benefit and that of others, and at the same time win, by this unfolding of his nature, influence over the souls of others—giving that he may gain. This motive is not equally strong in all art, yet to a certain degree Richepin’s passionate words apply to any such work: “C’est tout moi qui ruissela dans ce livre.... Voici mon sang et ma chair, bois et mange!” and every great artist strives for mastery over the emotions of others. The genius may, it is true, create only for himself or a choice few, or when his work is finished he may conceive a distaste for it or not concern himself at all about it, yet on the whole it can not be denied that the controlling motive (half conscious, it may be) is the desire to gain mastery by means of his art. Gildemeister rightly says: “Publicity is the breath of art. Dilettantism may be confined to the studio or the salon, art must speak to the people.”[631] Since it is directly through these social aims, however, that æsthetic production diverges from play, we need not linger on the subject.
We now take up the last of the social influences which we had to consider, the powerful agency of imitation, and more especially such involuntary imitation as is manifested in the infectiousness of coughing, gaping, etc. Its influence is universal. Espinas, Souriau, Tarde, Sighele, Le Bon, and others have treated the problem of such mass suggestion, and Baldwin contributes a valuable chapter full of critical acumen on the Theory of Mob Action, in his Social and Ethical Interpretations. To introduce the subject I give two examples, one from animal psychology, the other from anthropology, illustrating the extreme phenomena of mass suggestion. Hudson gives us the following: “This was on the southern pampas at a place called Gualicho, where I had ridden for an hour before sunset over a marshy plain where there was still much standing water in rushy pools, though it was at the height of the dry season. This whole plain was covered with an endless flock of chakars, not in close order, but scattered about in pairs and small groups. In this desolate spot I found a small rancho, inhabited by a gaucho and his family, and I spent the night with them. About nine o’clock we were eating our supper in the rancho when suddenly the entire multitude of birds covering the marsh for miles around burst forth into a tremendous evening song. It is impossible to describe the effect of this mighty rush of sound.... One peculiarity was that in this mighty noise, which sounded louder than the sea thundering on a rocky coast, I seemed to be able to distinguish hundreds, even thousands, of individual voices. Forgetting my supper, I sat motionless and overcome with astonishment while the air and even the frail rancho seemed to be trembling in that tempest of sound. When it ceased, my host remarked with a smile: ‘We are accustomed to this, señor; every evening we have this concert.’ It is well worth the ride of a hundred miles to hear this demonstration.”[632] Mediæval dancing may furnish an example from human life. At Freiburg in Switzerland, in 1346, before the castle of Graf Greyerz, a dance was practised which began with simple movements. They gathered strength, however, like an avalanche, and spread through the entire country. Uhland has made this dance the subject of a poem, which may be paraphrased as follows:
“The youngest maiden, slender as a stalk of maize, Seized the count’s hand and drew him in the ring. They danced through the village, where file succeeded file, They danced across the meadows, they danced through the wood, To where, far across the mountains, the silvery sounds rang out.”
_Marrentanz._
These, as I have said, are extreme manifestations of mass suggestion, and should not be given too much weight in explaining social development. “The loss of identity and social continence,” says Baldwin, “on the part of the individual, when he is carried away by a popular movement, is well struck off by the common saying that he has ‘lost his head.’ This is true; but then he regains his head and is ashamed that he lost it. His normal place in society is determined by the events of that part of his life in which he keeps his head. And the same is true of the events in the life of the social group as a whole.”[633] Yet these forms of suggestion which border on the pathological are but exaggerations of social qualities indispensable to the race. Had we not the inborn impulse to imitate movements which sweep through a mob, great occasions would never find us ready with great actions. The magic power of mass suggestion is the indispensable complement of the social leader’s talents, and consequently is closely related to our familiar voluntary subordination. Tarde even regards obedience as a special case of imitation, and to strengthen his position reminds us that command begins with example. With monkeys, horses, dogs, etc., the leader sets the example by performing the particular act, and the others imitate him.[634] Yet I am quite confident that voluntary subordination is not identical with imitation. Even with animals the leader is the strongest, most skilful, and generally the most intelligent of the herd, and obedience appears as imitation perhaps, but not of the ordinary kind; rather of one who by means of the force of his individuality compels subjection through fear, respect, and love, or the compounding of these. The need of the weak to lean on the strong does indeed lead to imitation, but is not identical with it.
Moreover, it seems to me that an explanation of mass suggestion can not be arrived at by means of the imitative impulse without the assumption that voluntary subordination works with it; that blending of fear, respect, and attraction is not necessarily confined to a single leader, but may be directed to the whole group, and, indeed, without such a sentiment the leader’s influence would be much crippled. Those whose minds are made up not to go with the herd (the partisans of another faction, for instance) will display little imitative inclination so long, at least, as this determination is clearly defined. But when the personality of the leader and the imposing and alluring aspects of the mass combine their effects, the imitative impulse assumes its full force. The result is quite similar to that obtained in hypnosis, with which it is often compared, and in the manifestations of which, in spite of the important rôle played by imitation, voluntary subordination is indispensable for the operation of suggestion.
If now we inquire as to how these processes take effect in play, we find the practice theory applicable to adults in a greater degree even than to children; for we are at once confronted by the importance of festivals as mentioned above and again impressing itself upon us here. For the further division of our subject I distinguish between general acts and general inner imitation, in the former of which motor and in the latter emotional suggestion is conspicuous.
The desire to act in conjunction with the social group finds manifold expression in the play of children. “Any one who watches the games of a set of boys in the school yard or in the streets,” says Baldwin, “will see that it is only a small part of the moves of the game which are provided for with any consistent or well-planned plot or scheme. The game is begun, and then becomes, in great measure, the carrying out of a series of _coups et contre-coups_ on the part of the leaders among the players; the remainder following the dictation and example of the few. When the leader whoops, the crowd also whoop; when he fights, they fight. All this social practice is most valuable as discipline in serious social business.”[635] Such effects of general imitation are prominent in most social fighting plays, but we shall confine ourselves to some children’s games in which acting in common seems to be itself the principal aim. Here we are met by the fact that in its last analysis such play is referable to adult imitation—that is to say, they are handed down to the children. A simple kind of play, which clearly reveals a social character, is that in which the children imitate all sorts of movements made by the leader. For example, take the familiar one in which the children dance around, hand in hand, singing:
“Adam had seven sons, seven sons had Adam, They ate not, they drank not, they looked in his face And did just so”;[636]
whereupon they all stop, the leader stepping to the centre of the circle and making all sorts of motions—clapping hands, bowing, bending, lifting his arms, sawing, scrubbing, fiddling, sneezing, coughing, laughing, crying, etc.—all of which are repeated by the other children. This same song was probably sung by adults in the Easter processions which were derived from the mediæval pest dances, but even so their origin is not yet reached. The following description by Svoboda strongly recalls the play of children: “Dancing is the greatest pleasure of the Nikobars; it is very solemn and slow. A place is cleared for it among the huts; the leader steps out, and first of all marks a great circle, while each man lays his hand on his neighbour’s shoulder. The leader raises the tune, making a step, now left, now right, swinging his free leg. All keep their eyes fixed on him and mimic what he does, sinking on their knees, sitting on their heels, and then making a grotesque leap, or stepping backward and forward. All this is repeated stiffly, mechanically, and without any spirit, but constantly accompanied by a nasal song, until late in the night.”[637]
Further we may notice dancing games of children accompanied by song. In looking through a collection of them like that of Böhme, one is astonished at their variety as well as the remarkable and often apparently meaningless songs that accompany them. Many are of the opinion that they date from the middle ages, while others trace them back to the old German religious dances along with a cycle of songs in celebration of the goddess Freija. As a rule, proofs are wanting in both directions, and there is a choice of opinions between them. If, for example, the common stooping at the end of a stanza appears to be a survival of some religious ceremony, it may just as probably be the duck, duck, duck of animal dances of prehistoric times. Rochholz has actually derived a Swiss form of the song from such mimicry of animals. The obscurity of many verses is caused by the frequent introduction of new subjects. In one case the ceremony of taking the veil is dramatically gone through with, and J. Bolle states that this originated in a thoroughly frivolous dance of adults. Indeed, the intermeddling of adults is constantly to be reckoned with, as in the case of a shepherd’s song, where “Adam” is substituted for “Amor” with evident ironical intent.
In regard to such games of children the following question is a pertinent one: How does it happen that the social plays whose models are formed in the dancing of men or of both sexes are practised chiefly by girls? If we think back to our own childhood we shall find that while little fellows do take part in such games, older boys regard them as unmanly and unworthy of them. I suspect that in earlier times, when the men indulged in them, the boys gladly followed suit, as is quite generally the case among savages now.
A final word on children’s festivals, in which the social significance of play is most clearly displayed. Take the most familiar example, the school picnic: if only a handful of children go for an outing with a teacher they are not particularly delighted, but when the whole school goes their pleasure is increased more than proportionately to their numbers. They are excited and joyous, and every expression of pleasure seems multiplied by a many-voiced echo, and, until they grow tired, all show a readiness to obey the spirit of good comradeship. Such an occasion bears all the essential marks of a genuine festa, with its feeling of belonging to the social group, subordination to the good of the whole and to the leader who represents it, sympathetic participation, and satisfaction of the associative impulse in its various forms, the attraction which belongs to actions and enjoyments in common with others, and finally the festal board which makes a play of eating and drinking. Some of the festivals of children, too, have been handed down from the sports of adults. A Swabian dance that was formerly performed by the salt refiners now belongs to the children, who dress for it in the costume of the craft. But most such holidays have a much earlier origin in pagan feasts, as in the case of Easter, Mayday, Whitsuntide, midsummer, etc. I take as my solitary example the Heidelberg Sommertagsfest, in which a portable pyramid of straw represents conquered winter, and one bedecked with fresh green is triumphant summer. The attendant children carry wands trimmed with eggs, pretzels, and gay streamers, and sing as they go:
“Strieh, Strah, Stroh, Der Sommerdag is do. Der Sommer un der Winder, Des sinn Geschwisterkinder.
“Summerdag Stab aus, Blost dem Winter die Auge aus. Strieh, Strah, Stroh, Der Sommerdag is do.”
This ancient mythological festival, which survives with wonderful vitality among children in the Palatinate and some other localities, threatened to become extinct in Heidelberg until some one seriously undertook its restoration. It is an inspiriting sight when the fine old streets are the scenes of the processions of numerous summer and winter pyramids, and thousands of children in holiday attire, carrying the gay wands and merrily singing the old song. It can not be questioned that feelings of fellowship and attachment to home are heightened and deepened by the practice of such customs.
Turning now to adults, whose festivals furnish the models for these childish ones, I can not better illustrate the importance of imitation on such occasions than by repeating the striking passage quoted from James in the Play of Animals. In concluding a passage on play he says: “There is another sort of human play, into which higher æsthetic feelings enter. I refer to the love of festivities, ceremonies, and ordeals, etc., which seems to be universal in our species. The lowest savages have their dances, more or less formally conducted. The various religions have their solemn rites and exercises, and civic and military powers symbolize their grandeur by processions and celebrations of divers sorts. We have our operas and parties and masquerades. An element common to all these ceremonial games, as they are called, is the excitement of concerted action, as one of an organized crowd. The same acts, performed with a crowd, seem to mean vastly more than when performed alone. A walk with the people on a holiday afternoon, an excursion to drink beer or coffee at a popular ‘resort,’ or an ordinary ballroom, are examples of this. Not only are we amused at seeing so many strangers, but there is a distinct stimulation at feeling our share in their collective life. The perception of them is the stimulus, and our reaction upon it is our tendency to join them and do what they are doing, and our unwillingness to be the first to leave off or go home alone.”[638]
As we can not possibly review the whole field of society, a few general remarks must suffice to supplement what has already been said. While there was at one time a tendency to relegate this, like so many other sociological problems, to a religious origin, such a proceeding is now regarded with some degree of skepticism. The Australians celebrate all important events by dances—the harvest, the opening of the fishing season, the coming of age of youths, a meeting with friendly tribes, setting out to battle or the chase, and success in these. “Among the pacific Bakaïri on the Rio Novo,” says von den Steinen, “the principal festival is in April. I, with my civilized ideas, clung to the supposition of a thanksgiving celebration, and wondered what friendly power was the recipient of all this praise and gratitude. I tried to get something definite out of Antonio, but he was unresponsive to my suggestion. ‘We have the feast at harvest time,’ he said, ‘because we have something to feast on then; in the dry season we have to scrimp, and in the wet season everything is afloat.’ Materialistic, if you will, but eminently practical.”[639]
It seems then that the origin at least of the festival is referable to general social needs whose important stimuli arouse a general excitation, and thus attain their most effective expression. The essentials to primitive festivals were the feast and the dance, both being conducted with the intemperance characteristic of mass suggestion. Here we find again that playful satisfaction of the sense of taste which claimed our attention in the beginning of this discussion, and this is its clearest manifestation, since here the play is a social one. As the child may be led to perform incredible feats in the consumption of cakes, candy, and other dainties at a party, so the adult, when not hampered by anxiety about his digestion or compunctions as to such impositions on hospitality (and these considerations are usually as far from the mind of a savage as that of a child), can accomplish quite as much on festive occasions. This effect is furthered by the free use of alcohol, which, in spite of its many bad qualities, is not to be despised as a promoter of sociability. We hear so much of the fights and brawls to which the unlicensed indulgence in spirituous drinks gives rise that we forget that mild intoxication puts the majority of men in a cheerful and friendly humour, and is calculated to promote the good fellowship of the company. Without the least intention of denying the danger incurred in the use of alcohol as a beverage, I still think it only fair to show the other side of the picture—namely, the damper it puts on anxiety and care, and its promotion of social sympathy, of the associative impulses and the capacity for enthusiasm in all directions.
Dancing, which next to feasting is the most primitive form of festivity, is kept up to an incredible duration, the expenditure of strength being constantly renewed. In the sagas of the Bakaïri, it is said of Keri, the founder of the tribe: “Keri called all his followers together, and in the evening they danced on the village green. Keri stopped to drink while the dance costumes floated in the air about him. He called to Kame [the ancestor of another tribe]. Many of the people came, and Keri was lord of the dance. They danced the whole day, and only rested toward evening; after dark they began again and danced the whole night. Early in the morning they went to the river and bathed; then they came back to the house and began again and danced all that day and night. Then the holiday was over.”[640] The intoxication of motion, which, as we have before seen, is probably the chief stimulus in dancing, is universally enjoyed on such occasions, and enhances the social impulses. It is a sort of ecstatic state apart from the narrow individual sphere, and favourable to social affiliation. Indeed, among primitive people it is often the indispensable condition of an alliance, as there is a widespread custom for several neighbouring tribes to collect for some high feast. No one has given a better description of the importance of the dance for the promotion of sociability than has Grosse. “The warmth of the dance,” he says, “fuses the distinct individualities to a unified essence moved and governed by a single emotion. During its progress the participants find themselves in a condition of social completeness, the different groups feeling and acting like members of a unified organism. This is the most important effect of primitive dancing. It takes a number of men who, in their detached, unsettled condition of varying individual needs and desires, are living unregulated lives, and teaches them to act with one impulse, one meaning, and to one end. It makes for order and cohesion in the hunting tribes whose way of life tends to separate them. After war it is perhaps the one factor which makes the interdependence of individuals of savage tribes apparent to themselves, and incidentally it is one of the best means of preparing for war, for gymnastic exercises prefigure military tactics in more ways than one.”[641]
In studying the festal and social customs of highly civilized peoples, while we find much that is new, many things are reminiscent of savage life. Eating is still the principal feature, but the common impulse to activity is no longer expressed in forms so specialized as the savage dance, for the modern social dance is of comparatively little importance in this connection. Entertainment by means of vocal and instrumental music and rhythmic elocution, displays of physical prowess and singing contests almost complete the list of plays applicable here, being concerned as they all are with collective life. I may mention one other phenomenon, however, which illustrates the analogy with primitive customs—namely, the societies formed for social enjoyment. They prove the need felt by civilized men to form within the limits of their more extended social sphere smaller circles which by their exclusiveness enhance the feeling of sympathy. Formerly, when special well-organized groups arose in the burgher guilds, they were partly of a social character, as J. Schaller points out,[642] and we yet have labour unions, merchants’ clubs, and artists’ leagues, though in many of them the trade or calling is no longer stressed; on the contrary, versatility is the chief desideratum in the membership, and no strict exclusiveness prevails. Such details are commonly determined by the general degree of cultivation prevalent. Moreover, there is apt to be a certain ritual belonging to such organizations, with written statutes and unwritten traditions, all more or less playful, and quickly developed among savages into a sort of cultus. I am not aware whether a monograph exists treating this subject in detail, though one would certainly be of interest.
Secret societies recall the usages of savages, especially in one particular—namely, in excluding females. The implication in the use of the word savage, usually unjust, is quite fair here, since the men are pledged to inflict instant death on the woman whose curiosity should penetrate to the secrets of their club. And while among civilized men the protest is less vigorously applied, still the exclusion is enforced. Von den Steinen thinks that among the Bakaïri the regulation is due to their objection to having their women seen by strangers, and representatives of several tribes usually take part in the dance. Their other festivities are special hunting feasts, which are regarded as altogether unsuitable for the participation of women.[643] Quite as influential, if not more so, seems to me the natural feeling that the presence of women destroys the company’s sense of unity. Savages especially, who regard women with open contempt, would feel ill at ease if their festivities were invaded by the other sex. When we see how little boys, as soon as they are out of their infancy, spontaneously refuse to take little girls for their playmates,[644] we must ascribe some serious meaning to this essential distinction between the sexes. It is this, I think, which forms the chief ground for the exclusion of women from the sports of civilized men, and perhaps the same desire to be left to themselves is a considerable factor in masculine opposition to the woman’s movement.
In any remarks on general inner imitation we must be particularly careful to keep well within its proper definition, or we are sure to find ourselves launching out into the vast domain of æsthetics. How inner sympathy is conditioned on the effects of past experience; how it is raised to the level of æsthetic emotion only through the fact that the beholder or hearer enjoys the fusion process for its own sake; and how, finally, this inner imitation consists, at least with motor individuals, and perhaps with all who are capable of æsthetic perception, in actual movement on their own part in conjunction with this fusion—all this has been set forth in a former section. Here we are considering merely the social aspects of such play, and we find its manifestations well marked. As a rule, the child, like the adult, when in the presence of any soul-stirring spectacle, longs for a companion to feel it with him, and when a whole social group unite in a common imitation, the emotional effect is vastly augmented. The social effect of such collective enjoyment is usually marked by an increased sense of fellowship, but beyond this there is an appreciable difference of quality which under favourable conditions directly furthers the social feeling. Let us begin by observing the dancing of savages again, where we find besides the pleasure of participation the equally strong effect of seeing and hearing the other dancers—a fact that is reiterated again and again in the descriptions of such occasions. The facile transition from real imitation to inner sympathy is one indication of their close kinship. The spectator is impelled to accompany the rhythmic movement of the dance music by all sorts of motions on his own part. Millendorf gives us the following description: “Soon the dance became heated, the movements turned to hops and leaps, the whole body being involved and the face inflamed; the cries grew constantly more ecstatic, the clapping wilder, and the few garments were finally thrown off. All present seemed seized with a frenzy; a few attempted to withstand it for a while, but soon began to move the head involuntarily, now left, now right, keeping time, and then suddenly, as if bursting some invisible bonds, they leaped among the dancers, widening the circle.”[645] As soon as external imitation begins, æsthetic enjoyment accompanies it, but there is no doubt that to bring this about there must be intense inner imitation before the overt act becomes irresistibly attractive.
As has already been pointed out, the general social importance of inner imitation depends on its enhancing effect on the feeling of fellowship, as is illustrated even in the dancing of savages. As to the part played by self-exhibition in this effect, we may mention that gymnastics and war dances, which are performed before spectators, afford opportunities for the display of physical advantages and martial prowess. Among the lowest tribes known to us, however, the accompanying song seems to have hardly any other than a musical significance, consisting as it does in the mere repetition of meaningless sounds, and can not, therefore, be considered as influential in the sense that the dramatic poetry of higher standing peoples is so. But the war dance which pictures forth the enemy’s defeat may be said to have something of the effect of our patriotic drama. Some tribes, indeed, give the dramatic representation without rhythmic dance music, more after the manner of civilized acting. Lange describes an Australian play in the last scene of which a fight between white men and natives is introduced. “The third scene opened with the sound of horses tramping through the woods—horses are indispensable to the representation of whites. The men’s faces were stained a brownish white, their bodies blue or red to represent the bright-coloured uniforms. In lieu of gaiters their calves were bound with rice straw. These white men galloped straight for the blacks, firing among them and driving them back. The latter quickly rallied, however, and now began a mock battle in which the natives overcame their foes and drove them away. The whites bit off their cartridges, set the trigger, and, in short, correctly went through all the motions of loading and firing. As often as a black man fell the spectators groaned, but when a white man bit the dust they cheered loudly. When, finally, all the whites took to ignominious flight, the delight of the audience was unbounded; they were so wrought up that a feather’s weight would have turned the sham fight into a real one.”
The drama, of course, at once suggests itself as the civilized man’s substitute for such scenes as this, since its social significance is incontestable, yet with limitations such as we found operative in the dance. As among savages the inspiriting war dance and those whose effects are comic or sexual occupy a large place, so in our theatre the effort to transform the drama into an exclusively social and moral agent is impracticable. The complaint that our stage, instead of being the exponent of lofty ethical standards, caters too much to frivolous tastes, and tickles too much the popular palate for comic effects, is just as applicable to the savage and his dance, if it were intelligible to him. The dual purpose of dramatic art—setting before the eyes a complete ethical and social standard, and at the same time not scorning to supply amusement pure and simple—will be better understood as time goes by, and is not likely to alter, despite all cavils. Yet there is truth in the warning, and the ideal side of the drama does need to be fostered and emphasized at present, since in much of the material now offered it can not be said to assert itself (omnia præclara tam difficilia, quam rara sunt). But civilized people have besides the drama a number of other displays, whose social effect is by no means to be despised. I need only suggest the universal testimony of historians to the enormous influence exerted by the Greek games on their national sentiment, to the effect on the populace of public processions culminating in the Roman triumphs, and the patriotic significance of our own gymnastic and song festivals and competitive contests.
The study of epic poetry reveals a somewhat different picture. While with us, for adults at least, enjoyment of an epic is conditioned on its perusal, inferior peoples have access to it only through the medium of a recounter, whose words and gestures are followed by the crowd with the greatest interest. Renowned deeds of hunters and warriors, tales and sagas celebrating the strength and skill of ancestors, relating animal adventures, and dwelling on the triumph of strategy over brute force, form for a large percentage of the human race the essence of the recounter’s art. And without pedagogic aids a clear ideal of the social excellence proper to his tribe is brought before the hearer’s imagination, and exerts an incalculable influence on his thoughts and volitions. This powerful effect of epic poetry grows with culture and with the consolidation of the treasury of tribal tradition into such forms, as witness the Homeric poems in their influence on the Hellenes. Among moderns, however, the recital of poetry has ceased almost entirely to be a form of social play since the introduction of printing, yet its social effect is decidedly augmented, for under present conditions a hundred thousand readers at once experience the same feelings and respond to the same ideals. Yet the enjoyment is not simultaneous and _en masse_, so to speak, and therefore transcends our subject.
Finally, we must touch cursorily on the contribution of the other arts to the social order, so far as they make use of inner imitation. Music was mentioned in connection with dancing, and earlier still with the intoxicating effect of rhythmic succession of tones. It is not a matter of surprise, then, to find that a festive gathering of social groups is almost unthinkable without the inspiration of music in some form, or that even on serious occasions, yes, even on the battlefield itself, the inspiriting exuberant charm of this art is appropriated for every sort of social purpose. Of the other arts, architecture is most applicable to our subject. It is true that from a social point of view the influence of sculpture and painting is well worthy of consideration, but both these arts are most effective when subservient to architecture. The massive arch is so familiar as an impressive symbol of social unity that a mere mention of it is sufficient—the more as in it the playful character of æsthetic observation is to a great degree subordinate.