A full account of the development of laughter during these first years, as an ingredient of the play-mood, would be of great value. It would, in particular, help us to see how the reaction comes to be definitely co-ordinated with the sense of make-believe, and the attitude of throwing off the burdensome restrictions of reality. The vocal mirth of children, as they give reins to their fancy, attests to {207} the weight of this burden and to the intense delight which comes from its momentary abandonment. In seeking for the first traces of the laughter of play and of defiance, we are not greatly troubled by the interfering influence of others. No doubt this influence is at work even here. The nurse and the parents are pretty certain to laugh at much of the roguish “trying it on”; and this laughter will react upon the child’s own merriment. In play, too, in which others usually take some part, there is this action of older persons’ laughter. Still, in the main, the utterances are spontaneous, and at most are reinforced by way of some sympathetic rapport with another. It is otherwise when we come to consider the first instances of laughing amusement at the presentation of “funny” objects. The lead of others now complicates the phenomenon to a much more serious extent. The recognition of an object as “funny” implies some detection of a quality which acts on others as well as on the self;[131] consequently, it presupposes a certain development of the social consciousness. Hence, some cautiousness is needed in noting the first clear examples of a perception of the quality. Before language comes and supplies a means of self-interpretation, we cannot safely say that because a child laughs in presence of an object there is a recognition of something objectively “funny”. As we have seen, such laughter may be fully accounted for by supposing that the object has an exhilarating or gladdening effect on the child’s feeling. On the other hand, when language is added we have to cope with the difficulty, already touched on, that a child’s pronouncements are apt to be controlled by what others laugh at and call funny. Nevertheless, here, too, the child’s spontaneity and his way of discovering his own {208} sources of amusement may enable us to overcome the difficulties.