This intrusion of will serves both to restrain the natural process, reducing it to a degraded and rudimentary form, and to originate various affected counterfeits of the spontaneous outburst. This double action supports the idea that the conventions of polite society aim not merely at suppressing the “vulgar” kind of explosion, but at evoking the signs of amusement when an effort is being made to amuse. Hence the multiplicity of weird utterances which cultivated humanity has adopted. The giggle, the titter, the snicker and the rest appear to be not merely reduced or half-suppressed laughter, but substitutes which can readily {49} be produced when the occasion asks for them.[28] Those who confine themselves to this debased laughter are naturally despised by the much-laughing soul. Carlyle—himself a voluminous laugher at times—when writing of Teufelsdröckh’s great laugh hurls contempt on these triflers with the big things of mirth in this wise: they “only sniff and titter and sniggle from the throat outwards; or at best produce some whiffling, husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool”.[29] An accurate scientific record of these strange perversions of laughter, even though it were less picturesque than Carlyle’s description, would be of considerable value. The laughter-lover may at least console himself for the injury done him by this kind of imitation with the reflection that it is empty of joy, and even of the refreshing sensations which issue from the genuine laugh. Nay, more, as a forced performance, it presumably has a disagreeable feeling of irksomeness as its accompaniment. It is sad to reflect that these spurious varieties of laughter are apt to appear early in the life of the individual. Preyer tells us he was able to distinguish, in the third year of his boy’s utterances, the genuine laugh of hilarity from that of imitation, which was probably rather more forced. Possibly they all appear among that wondrous gathering of queer sounds for which infancy is famous, and may be permanently selected by a certain number of “highly proper” children in preference to the fuller sounds. {50} CHAPTER III. OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER. It seemed desirable to examine the process of laughter itself before taking up the much-discussed question of its causes. In considering this side of our subject, we shall, as already hinted, take a comprehensive view of the occasions and modes of production of the mirthful outburst, and approach the narrower problem of the nature and mode of action of the ludicrous by way of this larger inquiry.