There is another point worthy of notice. The dog licks his feet without causing the jerk, though in the lick some of the touching must be light and the seeming equivalent of tickling. It appears as if he could not do to himself what is needed to produce the jerk So it is also with infants. They can touch Another old friend, alas now gone over to the majority, not only smiled voluntarily when pleased, but did so when told to "laugh." Another, a dandie, was a great humorist and smiler, notwithstanding that he took life seriously.' Mr. Cook is clear as to dogs having a decided sense of humour, and as to their thoroughly enjoying a joke.

The late Miss Frances Power Cobbe, a great lover of dogs (as of all animals), and a student of their ways, wrote me that she has had many dogs which smiled, 'their mouths decidedly opening into smiles or wide grinning.' She adds, with severity as regards man: 'Of course, of the bitter, sarcastic smiles and laughter of men, which mean a sense of superiority, the poor dog knows nothing.'

About the dog's ability to joke himself and to enjoy the jokes of men, I have countless assurances from persons who are good observers in other matters, but I have never been able to see the thing myself.

My difficulty is in finding evidence that the physical phenomena of the so-called smile of the dog are sufficiently related to those of man's smile to render them in a proper sense modifications of the same thing. I have no difficulty in accepting the view that dogs express feelings of pleasure in a recognisable manner and chiefly in the face, and that in that sense there exists a dog's smile, not so capable of description as man's smile, but still quite easily recognised and understood - nearly as much so as his expression of anger.

I often meet a high-bred collie that smiles when asked to do so. He was observed to separate his lips, stretch them transversely, and slightly open his mouth, in order, as was thought, to express his pleasure at receiving a biscuit, and he was easily taught to repeat the movements on the offer of another biscuit. These actions of the facial muscles have some slight resemblance to the actions of these muscles in man's smile. I have had frequent opportunities of examining them carefully, and they no doubt always coincide with a pleasant state of the dog's mind. He is always happy when he thus smiles, but there does not seem to me to be anything involuntary about the movements. He calls them into play. And if this is correct, it constitutes a radical difference. The results of the facial changes might of course be as correctly called a grimace as a smile, but that would prove nothing, for man's smiling has often been called grimacing, and at times it can be ugly.

(25) It is a question of some interest whether children laugh from tickling before they laugh from pleasant mental feelings, and whether their earliest laughter is from neither of these causes, but is merely an imitation of the laughter and smiling of those around them, who no doubt laugh much and often, generally in the hope of giving pleasure, but sometimes, it has been said, 'out of vanity at the thought of being parents.'

If laughter from tickling in early childhood precedes laughter from a pleasant state of mind, then it seems to follow that the strange physical phenomena of laughter may first appear as an expression of such doubtful pleasure as is experienced in tickling almost as an expression of what is painful. And it may only afterwards, at a more advanced age, appear as the expression of a real, and generally pleasant, state of mind.

Probably the first pleasure which an infant feels amounts only to the absence of pain - a sense of general wellbeing - a happiness because there is no unhappiness. The mere being alive and in perfect health may at times bring this kind of pleasure to young adults - to those, for example, who are coming back rapidly to health during recovery from such a disease as typhus fever. Perhaps I have chosen too telling an illustration, for the sense of pleasure during such a recovery is more active than that which merely arises from feeling quite well and free from all discomfort - it may go far beyond the narrow view which makes all pleasure consist in the mere absence of pain. In the pleasure experienced during recovery from typhus, there is not only the sense of well-being, but the sense of healthy growing. And this makes it quite comparable with the pleasure which infants probably experience, when they arc quite well and growing in a healthy manner with rapidity. How early their feelings of pleasure get beyond this. and involve ideas, has not yet been satisfactorily determined.

If the first smile of the child is due to imitation, then important mental work, which imitation involves, must begin very early, so early as to support the view that we are born with reason at work - that is, from our very start in a separate life. There are no serious difficulties in the way of accepting this view.

(26) It is of importance to realise that every person has both a laughter and a smile proper and peculiar to himself. In like manner races of men laugh and smile each in its own fashion, and the range of the difference is considerable. The laughter of a woman can generally be distinguished from that of a man, and the laughter of children is characteristic. All this, I think, is what we would expect, and it has no important significance. Nearly the same thing could be said of the voice apart from laughter. Perhaps we could even say it of yawning and sneezing. In the sonorousness of the laughter of men the vowels a and o are thought to prevail, and e and i in the sonorousness of the laughter of women. Laughter may be tumultuous, loud, vehement, and explosive, with much grimacing and gesticulation. On the other hand there is a laughter which is comparatively quiet, low-voiced, subdued, and even gracious. Between these two kinds all gradations occur. But they are all mere varieties -forms of the same thing. They all bear the same name. They are all called laughter without any hesitation, and the physical phenomena are essentially identical.