With regard to the laughter of delight and jollity, we find, to judge from the careful record of Ruth’s emotional utterances, that there is a rapid development during and after the fourth month.[126] In this month, we read, the child was thrown into a state of vivacious delight—which expressed itself in smiles, in movements, in cooing and crowing—by the faces and voices which may be said to have “played” to her as she sat at table. The advent of the meal was that of a new joyous world, and, if the child could have spoken, she would probably have exclaimed, “Oh, what fun!” The large change effected by the return of a familiar face and voice after an absence was only another way of transforming her world into a merry one. Towards the end of the fifth month, the note-book speaks over and over again of “jollity” and “high spirits,” of the child’s “laughing with glee when any one smiled or spoke to her,” of “being exceedingly jolly, smiling, kicking and sputtering,” and so forth. This growing gleefulness seemed to be the outcome of new expansions of the pleasurable consciousness, of a pure “Lebenslust”. No doubt it had its obscure source in a pleasurable cœnaesthesis, the result of merrily working digestive and other processes of organic life. Yet it had its higher conditions, also, in the expansion of the life of the senses and in the growing range of the muscular activities. Laughter and shouts of joy would, we are told, accompany not merely the inrush of delightful sights and sounds, but the new use of bodily powers in exploring and experimenting. {196} This gaiety in taking possession of her new world showed itself in the greeting of friendly faces. The new appearance of her grandfather after an absence excited her laughter on the 133rd day. By about the middle of the year, the child had, like Preyer’s boy, developed a jubilant greeting for her social belongings, nodding a friendly nod with all the signs of huge delight. These outbursts of laughing joy may sometimes be seen to have been preceded by a distinctly disagreeable state of feeling. In the case of Ruth, we are told that the fit of jollity broke out, on one or two occasions, upon “instantaneous relief from great general discomfort”. Again, on the 222nd day, having awoke and felt timid, she laughed with joy and a sense of relief when her mother came into the room. I have other evidence to show that this laughter of overflowing gladness is often to some extent a relief from constraint. Thus, a boy of one and a half years who had a new nurse, and for some days behaved with great gravity when with her, was during the same period “extremely hilarious” when alone with his parents.