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.