er. It feels enjoyment as well as
pain, but has only one way of expressing both.

Then, look at the baby when it has turned into a little boy or girl,
and come up in some degree to the cachinnation. The laughter is still
only rudimental: it is not genuine laughter. It expresses triumph,
scorn, passion--anything but a feeling of natural amusement. It is
provoked by misfortune, by bodily infirmities, by the writhings of
agonised animals; and it indicates either a sense of power or a
selfish feeling of exemption from suffering. The 'light-hearted laugh
of children!' What a mistake! Observe the gravity of their sports.
They are masters or mistresses, with the care of a family upon their
hands; and they take especial delight in correcting their children
with severity. They are washer-women, housemaids, cooks; soldiers,
policemen, postmen; coach, horsemen, and horses, by turns; and in all
these characters they scour, sweep, fry, fight, pursue, carry, whirl,
ride, and are ridden, without changing a muscle.

At the games of the young people there is much shouting, argument,
vituperation--but no laughter. A game is a serious business with a
boy, and he derives from it excitement, but no amusement. If he laughs
at all, it is at something quite distinct from the purpose of the
sport: for instance, when one of his comrades has his nose broken by
the ball, or when the feet of another make off from him on the ice,
and he comes down upon his back like a thunderbolt. On such occasions,
the laugh of a boy puts us in mind of the laugh of a hyaena: it is, in
fact, the broken, asthmatic roar of a beast of prey.

It would thus appear that the common charge brought against laughter,
of being something babyish, or childish, or boyish--something properly
appertaining to early life--is unfounded. But we of course must not be
understood to speak of what is technically called giggling, which
proceeds more from a looseness of the structures than from any
sensation of amusement. Many young persons are continually on the
giggle till their muscles strengthen; and indeed, when a company of
them are met together, the affection, aggravated by emulation,
acquires the loudness of laughter, when it may be likened, in
Scripture phrase, to the crackling of thorns. What we mean is a
regular guffaw; that explosion of high spirits, and the feeling of
joyous excitement, which is commonly written ha! ha! ha! This is
altogether unknown in babyhood; in boyhood,