Chapter 8 - Page 2

and next to this, pleasure arising from the approbation of their conduct.

[2] F. Lieber on the vocal sounds of L. Bridgman, 'Smithsonian Contributions,' 1851, vol. ii. p. 6.

[3] See, also, Mr. Marshall, in Phil. Transact. 1864, p. 526.

With grown-up persons laughter is excited by causes considerably different from those which suffice during childhood; but this remark hardly applies to smiling. Laughter in this respect is analogous with weeping, which with adults is almost confined to mental distress, whilst with children it is excited by bodily pain or any suffering, as well as by fear or rage. Many curious discussions have been written on the causes of laughter with grown-up persons. The subject is extremely complex. Something incongruous or unaccountable, exciting surprise and some sense of superiority in the laugher, who must be in a happy frame of mind, seems to be the commonest cause.[4] The circumstances must not be of a momentous nature: no poor man would laugh or smile on suddenly hearing that a large fortune had been bequeathed to him. If the mind is strongly excited by pleasurable feelings, and any little unexpected event or thought occurs, then, as Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks,[5] "a large amount of nervous energy, instead of being allowed to expend itself in producing an equivalent amount of the new thoughts and emotion which were nascent, is suddenly checked in its flow." . . . "The excess must discharge itself in some other direction, and there results an efflux through the motor nerves to various classes of the muscles, producing the half-convulsive actions we term laughter." An observation, bearing on this point, was made by a correspondent during the recent siege of Paris, namely, that the German soldiers. after strong excitement from exposure to extreme danger, were particularly apt to burst out into loud laughter at the smallest joke. So again when young children are just beginning to cry, an unexpected event will sometimes suddenly turn their crying into laughter, which apparently serves equally well to expend their superfluous nervous energy.

[4] Mr. Bain ('The Emotions and the Will,' 1865, p. 247) has a long and interesting discussion on the Ludicrous. The quotation above given about the laughter of the gods is taken from this work. See, also, Mandeville, 'The Fable of the Bees,' vol. ii. p. 168.

[5] 'The Physiology of Laughter,' Essays, Second Series, 1863, p. 114.

The imagination is sometimes said to be tickled by a ludicrous idea; and this so-called tickling of the mind is curiously analogous with that of the body. Every one knows how immoderately children laugh, and how their whole bodies are convulsed when they are tickled. The anthropoid apes, as we have seen, likewise utter a reiterated sound, corresponding with our laughter, when they are tickled, especially under the armpits. I touched with a bit of paper the sole of the foot of