The common solution as set forth by Vischer and Zeising is to the
effect that this stimulus is identical with that of any other
impropriety, the laugh being at the outrage to conventionality.[523]
But while this explains some cases there are others which it does not
touch. Civilized man who is prohibited by strict rules of propriety any
reference to such subjects may experience a feeling of triumph when
he boldly bursts the bonds of custom, but with children and savages
the case is quite different, and they exhibit a peculiar enjoyment
of such things which is not identical with their relish of forbidden
fruit. Von den Steinen tells us that the Bakaïri consider it a shameful
thing to be seen eating, but do not regard the broadest reference to
things sexual as the least breach of good manners.[524] Yet they too
find them comic. “It is true,” says the famous and learned traveller,
“that things which would seem indecent to us afforded the Bakaïri,
both men and women, evident enjoyment, and if any delving pedant who
considers modesty in our sense an inborn inheritance of mankind could
follow the rising tide of gaiety which would have offended a member of
our degenerate race, he would be obliged to admit that their hearty
laugh is not shameless in our sense, nor is it an effort to conceal
embarrassment. Yet it is undeniably erotic in a mild way, and resembles
as much as the difference in circumstances and conditions will allow
the laughter over games with us in which the two sexes are thrown
together.”[525]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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