Of very special interest in these early manifestations of a feeling for
art is the appearance of a crude form of the two emotions to which all
representations of life and character make appeal—the feeling for the
comic, and for the tragic side of things. What we may call the adults
fallacy, the tendency to judge children by grown-up standards,
frequently shows itself in an expectation that their laughter will
follow the directions of our own. I remember having made the mistake of
putting those delightful books, _Tom Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_,
into the hands of a small boy with a considerable sense of fun, and
having been humiliated at discovering that there was no response.
Children’s fun is of a very elemental character. They are mostly
tickled, I suspect, by the spectacle of some upsetting of the
proprieties, some confusion of the established distinctions of rank.
Dress, as we have seen, has an enormous symbolic value for the child’s
mind, and any confusion here is apt to be specially laughter-provoking.
One child between three and four was convulsed at the sight of his baby
bib fastened round the neck of his bearded sire. There is, too, a
considerable element of rowdiness in children’s sense of the comical, as
may be seen by the enduring popularity of the spectacle of Punch’s
successful misdemeanours and bravings of the legal authority.
Since children are apt to take spectacles with an exacting seriousness,
it becomes interesting to note how the two moods, realistic stickling
for correctness, and rollicking hilarity at the sight of the disorderly,
behave in relation one to another. More facts are needed on this point.
It is probable that we have here to do in part with a permanent
difference of temperament. There are serious matter-of-fact little minds
which are shocked by a kind of spectacle or narrative that would give
boundless delight to a more elastic fun-loving spirit. But discarding
these permanent differences of disposition, I think that in general the
sense of fun, the delight in the topsy-turviness of things, is apt to
develop later than the serious realistic attitude already referred to.
Here, too, it is probable that the evolution of the individual follows
that of the race: the solemnities of custom and ritual weigh so heavily
at first on the savage-mind that there is no chance for sprightly
laughter to show himself. However this be, most young children appear to
be unable to appreciate true comedy where the incongruous co-exists with
and takes on one half of its charm from serious surroundings. Their
laughter is best called forth by a broadly farcical show in which all
serious rules are set at nought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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