MIS C MEVOITSNES S.
ITARDLY any tendency in the human mind is quite so hard to explain satisfactorily as the one which the educated call Mischievousness, and the uneducated, with a clearer idea than usual of the value of emphasis, Mischeevions- nese. It is, to all appearance, a self-begotten tendency. Cer- tainly, no theory of evolution will account for an instinct so little profitable, and producing rather danger and loss to its possessor, than safety or advantage. It does not in most of its manifestations help any one to defend himself, while it does draw down on him that increase of hostility which so many of the arrangements of Nature are intended to avert. The raven gets nothing for himself by hiding things he can neither eat nor use; the parrot is not rendering himself safer when he makes the- dog run about to imaginary calls ; the monkey has won nothing in the race when he "makes hay" of the pretty things in a room, or twitches the tail of another monkey stronger than himself, and then looks away into space, with that, innocent inquisitiveness which, be it noted, in spite of the cleverness attributed to these beasts, usually takes-in the more-experienced monkey. Nor does the boy benefit who hides his comrades' toys, spoils their lesson-books, fills their boots in the morning with water, thereby compelling himself also to fill his own, lest their dryness should betray him ; or drops break- able things in half-open doorways upon their heads. Yet so strong is this tendency, that in some animals it can scarcely be checked by severe punishment—nothing, for instance, will cure a really mischievous monkey—that in some boys it is a leading feature of character ; and that in some men it lasts far down into middle- life, and is only apologised for as freakishness in old age. It must almost have dominated Theodore Hook, and rises in some of the girls who pretend to be Spiritualists into a sort of hysteric passion. Men have been repeatedly brought up in Police-courts for freaks ascribed to drunkenness, but perpetrated in pure, wanton mischief ; and it is to be noted that these freaks usually cause danger to the person attacked, or those around. The lad Moriarty, now in custody for wounding a gentleman he never previously saw, may have been" practising," as he says, or may have had some other motive, or may be insane, but his act hardly transcends some others frequently committed in the country out of pure wantonness and perversity. Boys have been known to fire hayricks, to set dogs on sheep, and to drop stones on passing trains, from no more serious impulse, and this, too, with a nearly full appreciation of the consequences. In fact, it is only because mischievousness is limited to a small number, that it does not become one of the more serious troubles with which the human race have to contend. A country in which every second young man or growing girl displayed this spirit would be almost uninhabitable.
We should have said that the cause of Mischievousness was an abnormal desire to enjoy the sense of power by giving pain, but for its manifestation in so many animals. It is difficult, however, to believe that the raven thieves from any such motive ; while the monkey often, and the dog almost always, tries to hide away the evidence of his conduct, which is inconsistent with the enjoyment of power. That may influence the boy who fires a hayrick or stretches twine before a horse's feet, or the girl who collects a crowd of starers by throwing furniture about, but it will not explain acts of pure "bedevilment," like that of the boy who sets fire to his own hair, or swallows ten peach-stones in succession. Nor will the commonest form of vanity, the desire to be an object of attention—or, as we now phrase it, the "craving for notoriety "—account for many of the manifestations of mischievousness which are intended always to remain secret, and sometimes are enjoyed in proportion to their secrecy. We should, therefore, be inclined to suggest another explanation. The truly mis- chievous are rarely bright, trick sincss, not mischievousness, being the attribute of the over-vivacious ; and we suspect that in some animals and men there exists a duller form of laughter, a rudimentary laughter, as it were, which mischievousness pro. yokes, and which is, therefore, enjoyable. The foundation of laughter is the sense of surprise, and it is to awaken this sense in themselves and others, in a rude and immature, but violent way, that the mischievous display their per- versities. "I did it to see how he would look," or "I did. it to see what would happen," is the frequent and true explan- ation of the guilty, and would be the constant explanation, but that the world does not accept it as an excuse, and the mischiev- ous know that. Why Nature should evolve this desire to excite and to feel surprise, when surprise can in no way add strength to the animal or man who enjoys it, is, like laughter itself, one of those mysteries which the metaphysical evolutionists have not explained, and which, like that extraordinary fact, the apparent occasional existence of what we call "irony" in natural forces, is inexplicable on any theory ever offered, except the single one that behind the " Forces" is a Mind with a design.
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