akness, not a vice.
Even if it were a vice, the jester would not be justified in laughing at
it, for it does not appear that he himself is exempt. On the contrary,
his vanity is magnified when that of others is upon the rack. Finally
the humiliation caused by laughter is not a chastisement which one
accepts but a torture to which one submits; it is a feeling of
resentment, of bitterness, not a wholesome sense of shame, nor one from
which anyone is likely to profit. Laughter may then have a social use;
but it is not an act of justice. It is a quick and summary police
measure which will not stand too close a scrutiny but which it would be
imprudent either to condemn or to approve without reserve. Society is
established and organized according to natural laws which seem to be
modeled on those of reason, but self-loves discipline themselves, they
enter into conflict and hold each other in check.

C. LANGUAGE AND THE COMMUNICATION OF IDEAS

1. Intercommunication in the Lower Animals[142]

The foundations of intercommunication, like those of imitation, are laid
in certain instinctive modes of response, which are stimulated by the
acts of other animals of the same social group.

Some account has already been given of the sounds made by young birds,
which seem to be instinctive and to afford an index of the emotional
state at the time of utterance. That in many cases they serve to evoke a
like emotional state and correlated expressive behavior in other birds
of the same brood cannot be questioned. The alarm note of a chick will
place its companions on the alert; and the harsh "krek" of a young
moor-hen, uttered in a peculiar crouching attitude, will often throw
others into this attitude, though the maker of the warning sound may be
invisible. That the cries of her brood influence the conduct of the hen
is a matter of familiar observation; and that her danger signal causes
them at once to crouch or run to her for protection is not less
familiar. No one who has watched a cat with her kittens, or a sheep with
her lambs, can doubt that such "dumb animals" are influenced in their
behavior by suggestive sounds. The important questions are, how they
originate, what is their value, and how far such intercommunication--if
such we may call it--extends.

There can be but little question that in all cases of animals under
natural conditions such behavior has an instinctive basis. Though the
effect may be to establish a means of co