CHAPTER II.

THE SMILE AND THE LAUGH.

To treat the facts with proper respect seems to be more than ordinarily incumbent on us in dealing with the nature and the significance of our laughter. This means, as already hinted, that some inquiry be made into the act of laughing itself, the manner of it, and the circumstances which accompany it, and that this inquiry be carried out in the most comprehensive way possible.

We grave elders are wont to think of laughing and smiling as something quite occasional, a momentary lapse once in a while from the persistent attitude of seriousness. This view is apt to be expressed in too unqualified a form. Simple types of humanity, the child and the savage, frequently show us mirthful laughter filling a much larger space in the day’s hours than our view would suggest. A jolly boy, the subject of chronic high spirits, which are apt to try the patience of sedate seniors, might perhaps say—if indeed he could be brought to frame a theory of life—that laughing is the proper way to pass the time, and that seriousness is a tiresome necessity which can be tolerated only now and again. And in any case such a view might be said to represent the mental attitude of those happy idiots and imbeciles of whom we read that they “are persistently joyous and {26} benign,” and constantly laughing or smiling, and that “their countenances often exhibit a stereotyped smile”.[12]

Yet, attractive as this theory may be for a lover of laughter, it cannot well adjust itself to stern physiological facts. The full process of laughter is, like coughing, sobbing and other actions, a violent interruption of the rhythmic flow of the respiratory movements. As such, its function in the human organism seems to be limited to that of an occasional spurt. Even a perpetual smile, quite apart from its insipidity for others than the smiler, would, strictly speaking, hardly be compatible with the smooth on-flow of the vital processes. What has been named the “everlasting barren simper” does not really amount to this.

The Smile and the Laugh, viewed as physiological events, stand in the closest relation one to the other. A smile is, as we shall see, rightly regarded as an incomplete laugh. Hence we shall do well to study the two together.

Smiling involves a complex group of facial movements. It may suffice to remind the reader of such characteristic changes as the drawing back and slight lifting of the comers of the mouth, the raising of the upper lip, which partially uncovers the teeth, and the curving of the furrows betwixt the comers of the mouth and the nostrils (the naso-labial furrows) which these movements involve. To these must be added the formation of wrinkles under the eyes—a most characteristic part of the expression—which is a further result of the first movements. The increased brightness of the eyes is probably the effect of their tenseness, due to the contraction of the adjacent muscles and the pressure of the raised cheek, though {27} an acceleration of the circulation within the eyeball may have something to do with it.

These facial changes are common to the smile and to the laugh, though in the more violent forms of laughter the eyes are apt to lose under their lachrymal suffusion the sparkle which the smile brings.

As a characteristic group of facial movements the smile is excellently well suited for its purpose—the primitive and most universal expression of a pleasurable or happy state of mind. It forms, in respect of certain of its features at least, a marked contrast to the expression of opposite feelings. Thus it is far removed, and so easily distinguishable, from the facial expression during weeping, _viz._, the firmly closed eyelids and the wide opening of the mouth in the form of a squarish cavity; as also from the face’s betrayal of low spirits and “crossness,” in the depressed corners of the mouth, the oblique eyebrows and the furrowed forehead.

I have spoken here of the primitive unsophisticated smile as it may be observed in children and those adults who have not learned to control the primitive, and instinctive movements of the face. Among the cultivated classes of a civilised community, this primitive smile is not only restrained and modified, but serves other uses than the confession of the elemental experiences of pleasure and gladness. With the contemptuous smile, the slightly ironical smile of the superior person, the bitter, sardonic smile, we shall have happily but little to do here. It is enough to remark that these differentiations answer closely to those of laughter, and so further illustrate the organic affinity of the two.

We may now pass to the larger experience of the audible laugh. That this action is physiologically continuous with {28} the smile has already been suggested. The facial expression is approximately the same in the broad smile and the gentle laugh. It is only when laughter grows immoderate that there is a marked addition of other features, _viz._, the strong contraction of the muscles about the eyes leading to frowning, and the shedding of tears. How closely connected are smiling and moderate laughing may be seen by the tendency we experience when we reach the broad smile and the fully open mouth to start the respiratory movements of laughter. As Darwin and others have pointed out, there is a series of gradations from the faintest and most decorous smile up to the full explosion of the laugh.[13]

One may, perhaps, go farther and say that the series of gradations here indicated is gone through, more or less rapidly, in an ordinary laugh. Persons who laugh slowly, finding it difficult to “let themselves go,” can be seen to pass through these stages. It has been said by an ingenious American inquirer that laughter may begin either with the eyes or with the mouth, the frequency of the former mode, as compared with the latter, in the instances examined being as 7 to 5.[14]

It may be added that, to this continuity of form in the actions of smiling and laughing, there answers a community of function. As will be shown more fully by-and-by, both are in their primitive forms manifestations of pleasure, laughter being primarily the expression of the fuller measures of the happy or gladsome state, and varying in energy and volume with the degree of this fulness.

The chronological relations of the reign of the smile and the laugh in the life of the individual will occupy us {29} presently. Here it may be enough to say that these relations allow us to think of smiling at once as the precursor and as the successor of her kinsman. The first smiles are a step away from the exceeding gravity of baby-hood towards full hilarity, the last are a step back from this hilarity to the stolid composure of senile infancy.

It would seem to follow that the sharp distinction often drawn between smiling and laughing is artificial. Society, led by its Chesterfield, may emphasise the difference between the incipient and the completed process, allowing the one and forbidding the other; but the natural man is inclined to regard them as one.

The recognition of this identity of the two actions is evidenced by the usages of speech. We see in the classical languages a tendency to employ the same word for the two, laughing like smiling being regarded—primarily and mainly at least—as an object of visual perception. This is particularly dear in the case of the Latin “ridere,” which means to smile as well as to laugh, the form “subridere” being rare. This tendency to assimilate the laugh and the smile as facial expressions was naturally supplemented by the employment, both in Greek and in Latin, of a separate word for audible laughter (“καχάζειν”, “cachinnare”) in cases where it was needful to emphasise the fact of sound. In some modern languages the relation of smiling to laughing is precisely indicated as that of a less full to a fuller action (Italian, “ridere” and “sorridere”; French, “rire” and “sourire”; German, “lachen” and “lächeln”). Possibly the existence of two unrelated words in our own and some other modern languages points to the fact that certain races have been more impressed by the dissimilarity between the audible and the inaudible expression than by the similarity of the visible manifestations. {30}

It is worth noting that even after the two expressions have been distinguished by separate names there is a tendency to use the stronger metaphor “to laugh,” rather than the weaker one “to smile,” in describing the brighter aspects of nature’s beauty, such as meadows when in flower. A painter, whom Dante meets in Purgatory, and recognises as the first in the art of illumination, gracefully transfers this distinction to a brother painter by saying that the leaves which the latter painted “laugh more” (piu ridon) than his own.[15]

We may now turn to the distinguishing characteristics of laughing, that is, the production of the familiar series of sounds. Like sighing, sobbing and some other actions, it is an interruption of the natural rhythm of the respiratory process, in which inspiration and expiration follow one another at regular intervals. The obvious feature of this interruption in the case of laughter is the series of short, spasmodic, expiratory movements by which the sounds are produced. These are, however, preceded by a less noticed inspiration of exceptional energy and depth. These interruptions of the ordinary respiratory movements involve an unusually energetic action of the large muscles by which the chest is expanded, _viz._, those which secure the contraction and so the descent of the dome-shaped diaphragm, and those by the action of which the ribs are elevated.

The production of the sounds by the spasmodic expiratory movements shows that the passage from the trachea into the pharynx, _viz._, the glottis or chink between the vocal cords, is partially closed. The quality of the sounds is {31} explained by the particular arrangements, at the moment of the cachinnation, of the vocal apparatus, and more particularly the shape of the resonance chamber of the mouth.

Familiar though we are with them, we should find it hard to give an accurate description of the sounds of laughter. To begin with, they seem to vary considerably in the case of the same person and still more in that of different persons. Laughter has not yet lent itself to the methods of the experimental psychologist, and so has not been studied with scientific precision. By-and-by, we may hope, the phonograph will capture its sounds, and enable us to observe them at our leisure. Meanwhile, only a very rough account of them is possible.

Taking the laughter of the adult male, which is perhaps more frank and better pronounced, we find the more common forms of iterated sounds to range from the broad vowel sound _aw_ (in “law”) to the sharp _a_ (in “bat”). The long _o_ sound (as in “go”), involving the rounded mouth aperture, seems to me to be far less common. The same applies to the long _ee_ and _ai_ sounds, and those which seem to be most closely allied to them.

These variations appear, so far as I can judge, to go with alterations of pitch. The broader sounds, _e.g._, _aw_, seem naturally to ally themselves to the hardier deep-pitched explosion, the others to the more cackle-like utterances in the higher parts of the register. This connection shows itself, too, in the change in the vowel-quality when, as frequently happens, the laugh runs through a cadence of pitch from a higher to a lower note.

These considerations will prepare us to find that the vowel-quality of the sound varies in general with sex and with age. According to Haller and Gratiolet the sounds of {32} the laughter of women and children, which correspond with their higher vocal pitch, approach in vowel-quality to the French _i_ and _e_.[16]

Considerable variations from these typical forms would seem to occur now and again. In the American returns already referred to, the mode of laughing described is represented by such odd symbols as “gah! gah!” “iff! iff!” “tse! tse!” etc. These singularities, if, as it seems, they are intended to represent habitual modes of voicing mirth, are, one suspects, hardly referrible to natural differences of vocalisation, but are probably the result of the interfering agencies of nervousness and affectation which, as we know, have much to do with fixing the form of mirthful expression.

The description of laughter here offered applies only to the typical form. It would have to be modified considerably to suit the attenuated forms to which the expression is reduced in “polite society”. Of these, more presently. Even where the vocal outburst retains its primitive spontaneity and fulness considerable variations are observable, connected with differences in the whole respiratory and vocal apparatus. The intensity and volume of the sound, the pitch and vowel-quality, the rapidity of the successive expirations, the length of the series, the mode of commencing and of ending, may all exhibit variations which help to make the laughter of one person or of one race different from that of another.

We may now pass to some other accompaniments of the muscular movements of laughter. It is of importance to study these with care if we wish to estimate the precise value of the hilarious explosion in the economy of human life. {33}

Since the movements of laughter are sudden and violent interruptions of the smooth rhythmic flow of the respiratory process, we may expect to find that they have important organic effects, involving not merely the mechanism of respiration, but also that of the circulation of the blood. Here, it seems, we have to do with a double effect First of all (we are told), this series of spasmodic expirations—during which, as we have seen, the glottis is partially closed—increases the pressure within the thorax or chest, and so impedes the entry of blood from the veins into the heart. This effect is seen in the turgidity of the head and neck which appears after prolonged and violent laughing. In the second place, the exceptionally deep inspirations tend to expand the lungs with air, and to drain off the blood from the veins into the heart. The manner in which these two actions, the deepened inspiration and the prolonged expiration, alternate during a fit of laughter, appears to secure a considerable advantage in respect both of accelerated circulation and more complete oxygenation of the blood. The brisker movement of the blood after laughter has recently been observed in some experimental inquiries into the effects of emotional excitement of various kinds on the pulse.[17]

It is not improbable that this expedited circulation produces more remote effects on the organism. It has been suggested that one of the advantages of a “good laugh” is that it relieves the brain, and this would seem to imply that it quickens the movement of the blood through the fine and readily clogged vessels which permeate the brain-structures. {34}

And here we find ourselves face to face with the question: What truth is there in the saying that laughter has beneficial physiological effects? A curious chapter might be written on the views propounded, both by the light-hearted reveller and the grave and philosophic onlooker, on the wholesomeness of this form of “bodily exercise”. Only a bare reference to this aspect of the subject can, however, be given here.

To begin with, the unlearned, who know nothing of diaphragms or of congested veins needing to be relieved, have had a shrewd conviction that laughter sets the current of life moving briskly. Proverbs, such as “laugh and grow fat,” attest this common conviction. Those who have catered to the laughter-lovers have not unnaturally made much of this salutary influence. The mediæval writers of the laughable story in verse (the “fabliau” or “Conte à rire en vers”) held firmly to the belief in the “sanitary virtue” (“vertu saine”) of a burst of laughter.

This popular view has been supported by the weight of learned authority. Vocal exercises, of which laughing is clearly one, have been recommended by experts from the time of Aristotle as a means of strengthening the lungs and of furthering the health of the organism as a whole. By many, moreover, laughter has been specifically inculcated as a hygienic measure. The learned Burton (_b._ 1577) quotes a number of physicians in favour of the ancient custom of enlivening the feast with mirth and jokes.[18] The reader may find references to the salutary effects of laughter in the latest text-books of physiology. Both by a vigorous reinforcement of the actions of the large muscles which do the work of respiration, and, still more, by the beneficial effects of these reinforced actions on the functions of the {35} lungs and the circulatory apparatus, laughter properly finds a place among “bodily exercises”.[19]

The beneficial effects of laughter have not been overlooked by the pedagogue. Mulcaster, for example (born about 1530), gives a high place to laughing among his “physical” or health-giving exercises. The physiological reasons adduced are sometimes funny enough: for the author relies on Galen and the doctrine of “spirits”. He thinks that laughter will help those who have cold hands and cold chests and are troubled with melancholia, since it “moveth much aire in the breast, and sendeth the warmer spirites outward”. Tickling under the armpits may well be added, seeing that these parts have a great store of small veins and little arteries “which being tickled so become warme themselves, and from thence disperse heat throughout the whole bodie”.[20]

How far these benign effects on health, which are recognised by the modern physician as well as by his predecessor, are due to the vigorous reinforcement brought by laughter to the work of respiration and of the circulation of the blood, it is not easy to say. The latter process reminds one of the circulation of pedestrians and vehicles in our London streets. In a general way it manages itself fairly well. Yet now and again a lusty “Move on!” from a policeman seems to be distinctly beneficial. Similar benefits may be extended to the organs of digestion and the rest.

At the same time we must not lose sight of the possibility that laughter may act beneficially on our hard-pressed {36} frames in another way. As has been suggested above, the lusty cachinnation is nature’s way of voicing gladness, a sudden increase of pleasure. Now it has been held by psychologists that pleasurable feelings tend to further the whole group of organic functions, by adding to the nervous vigour which keeps them going. Laughter may owe a part of its benign influence on our bodily state to the fact that it produces a considerable increase of vital activity by way of heightened nervous stimulation.[21]

One feature of the laughing outburst may pretty safely be ascribed to this increase of nervous action under pleasurable excitement. In all genuinely hilarious moods, the laugh is accompanied by a good deal of diffused activity of the voluntary muscles. This is seen most clearly in the unsophisticated laughter of children and savages. The sudden glee which starts the laugh starts also movements of arm, leg and trunk, so that arms flap wing-like, or meet in the joyous clap, and the whole body jumps. In older people matters may not be carried so far, though there are examples of the large shakings of laughter, notably that of Carlyle’s Teufelsdröckh, whose great laugh was one “not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel”; and it is hard perhaps for any man taken by the “stab” of a good joke to keep his arms down and his body vertical.

It may be added that this supplementing of the energetic {37} respiratory actions by movements of the limbs gives to laughter its clear title to be called a muscular exercise. As such it is vigorous, voluminous and bordering, so to speak, on the violent. Its salutary influence, like that of the surgeon’s knife, will consequently depend on the celerity of its operation.

Here we come to the other column in the reckoning. If laughter does good by its occasional irruption into a domain which otherwise would have too much of drowsy monotony, its benefit is rigorously circumscribed. Only too easily can it overdo the “flushing” part, and inundate and destroy when it should merely cleanse. In other words, the mirthful cachinnation, just because it is an irruption, a disorderly proceeding, must not be unduly prolonged.

At what moment in a prolonged fit of laughter the undesirable effects begin to appear, it is not easy to say. It must be remembered that a good part of what remains of modern laughter is by no means pure hilarity. There is in it from the first ejaculation something of a biting sensation, or something of a melancholy pain. Yet, waiving this and looking on what begins as genuine hilarity, we shall find that it is not so simple a matter to determine the moment when further prolongation of the exercise will be weakening rather than strengthening. The excitement of laughter, like that of wine, may in its measurements have to be adjusted to individual constitution. Among the humiliations of life may be reckoned the discovery of an inability to go on laughing at the brilliant descriptions of a caricaturist, and an experience of aching exhaustion, of flabby collapse, while others continue the exhilarating chorus.

It is natural to look on the tears which often accompany boisterous laughter as an unfavourable symptom. Things which do us good should not, we argue, make us cry. Yet {38} we may reflect that men have been known to cry out of sheer happiness. With some laughers, too, the moisture may come at an earlier stage than with others. Was Shakespeare, one wonders, thinking of a violent laughter when he made Iachimo tell Imogen that her lord Leonatus had mocked the French lover’s lugubrious despondencies “with his eyes in flood with laughter”? Perhaps in Shakespeare’s age, when laughter was held in with looser rein, the tears came more readily.

According to Darwin, who has made a careful study of laughter’s tears, their appearance during a violent attack is common to all the races of mankind. He connects them with the contraction of the muscles round the eyes which has for its purpose the compressing of the gorged blood-vessels and so the protection of the eyes. This is the meaning of the tears alike in the case of grief and of extravagant mirth. The paroxysm of excessive laughter thus approaches the other extreme of violent grief; and this fact, Darwin thinks, may help us to understand how it is that hysterical patients and children often laugh and cry alternately.[22]

However it may be with the tears, there is no doubt that violent and prolonged laughter works mischief in other ways. The sigh that so frequently follows the laugh, and has been supposed to illustrate the wider truth that “all pleasures have a sting in the tail,” need not be taken too seriously. It is the sign of restoration of equilibrium after the hilarious upset. The prostrating effects of violent laughter were well known to Shakespeare. Thus he speaks of being “stabbed” {39} with laughter, of laughing oneself “into stitches”—an experience which Milton probably had in mind when he wrote of “laughter holding both his sides”—of the heart being almost broken “with extreme laughing” and of laughing oneself “to death”.[23] The American returns speak of a whole Iliad of evil after-effects: fatigue, weakness, sadness, giddiness, breathlessness and so forth. It may, however, be urged that these unpleasant experiences hardly justify us in applying to laughter the rather strong epithet of “killing”. They are, under normal circumstances, temporary inconveniences only, and to the lover of fun do not seriously count as against its substantial blessings. When laughter kills, as it does sometimes, it is because it has degenerated into something distinctly abnormal, allying itself to hysterical grief or to the unhinging effect of a great mental shock.

As already noted, the laugh, like the smile which is its beginning, is in general an expression of a pleasurable state of feeling. Among unsophisticated children and savage adults it is the common mode of expressing all considerable intensities of pleasure when they involve a sudden brightening of the pleasure-tone of consciousness, as in the overflow of gladness or good spirits. As such it stands in marked dissimilarity to the expression of opposite tones of feeling. To begin with, it presents a striking contrast to states of suffering, sorrow and low spirits in general. It illustrates the broad generalisation laid down by psychologists that a state of pleasure manifests itself in vigorous and expansive movements, whereas a state of pain involves a lowering of muscular energy and a kind of shrinking into oneself. In a more special way it forms an antithesis, in certain of its features at least, to the expression of violent {40} suffering. Darwin remarks that in the production of screams or cries of distress the expirations are prolonged and continuous and the inspirations short and interrupted; whereas in the production of laughter we have, as we have seen, the expirations short and broken and the inspirations prolonged. This is merely one case of the wider generalisation that “the whole expression of a man in good spirits is exactly the opposite of that of one suffering from sorrow”.[24]

The value of this arrangement as helping us to understand one another’s feelings is obvious. Among the many mistakes which we are wont to commit in reading our children’s minds, that of confusing their joy and grief cannot, fortunately, be a frequent one. It is only in exceptional and abnormal cases, where the extremes of boisterous mirth and grief seem to approach one another, that the language of the one can be mistaken for that of the other.

A curious point, which the ingenuities of some later psychologists compel us to consider, is whether the pleasure, of which laughter is popularly supposed to be the outcome or effect, really stands in this relation to it. According to the theory here referred to, of which Prof. W. James is the best-known advocate in our language, a blush cannot be attributed to an antecedent feeling of modesty or shamefacedness: but for the blush there would be no feeling of modesty: in truth, it is the blush, _i.e._, the hot sensation of it, that constitutes the feeling. The theory has done much to popularise psychology in these last days. It is, I have found, a plum in a pudding where plums are rare for many who read psychology for examinations. It seems to be {41} particularly dear to young women. It certainly has about it the charm of a lively fancy.

But science has, alas! sometimes to do battle with liveliness of fancy; and it has to do this here. By trying to get all your emotions out of the organic effects, you find yourself in the awkward situation of being unable to say how these organic effects themselves are brought about. You must have something of the emotional thrill and of the nervous thrill which this involves before you get that interference with the routine action of the muscles of the facial capillaries which brings on the blush.

Not only may the presence of an element of feeling at the very beginning of an emotional experience be thus shown to be a necessary assumption, it can, in certain cases at least, be clearly observed. This applies more particularly to such feelings as the admiration of a beautiful landscape or a fine bit of harmonised melody. In these cases it must, one would suppose, be evident to all that the pleasurable emotion is started and sustained by numerous currents of agreeable sensation pouring in by way of eye or ear, and by the agreeable perceptions which grow immediately out of these. To say that all the joyous elevation in these experiences springs out of the secondary, internally excited sensations, those which accompany the altered condition of muscle and gland, the heightened pulse-rate, the bodily thrill and the rest, is surely to inflict an undeserved indignity on “the higher senses,” and to exhibit the full depth of ludicrous paradox which lurks in this theory.[25]

The case of laughter is not quite so clear. It has, indeed, one characteristic which seems to favour the {42} view that the bodily resonance is everything, namely, that it is easily induced in a mechanical or quasi-mechanical manner. It is of all the expressive movements the one most subject to the force of imitation. Children’s laughter, and that excited by the popular game, the “laughing chorus,” clearly illustrate its contagious character.[26] Moreover, as we know, a fit of laughter may be brought on, in part at least, by actions which presumably reinstate some of the physiological elements in the process. Thus my son tells me that he was overtaken by an irresistible impulse to laugh when riding a horse without a saddle, and again when running a race; and my daughter had the same tendency at the end of her first mountain climb. It seems probable that the movements and the changed condition of the breathing function are prime causes of the irresistible tendency in such cases.

It is, however, one thing to allow the indisputable fact that laughter can be excited in this seemingly mechanical way, another thing to claim for the reaction in such cases the value of the full joyous outburst. I believe that a person who watches his mental processes can observe that a merely imitative laughter does not bring the whole delightful psychosis which arises when some agreeable impression initiates the movements.

To this it must be added that in the cases here touched on the imitation is not wholly mechanical. When we laugh because others laugh, do we not accept their laughter as a playful challenge and fall into the gay mood? And are we not, commonly at least, affected by others’ voluminous laughter as by a droll sight and sound, which directly stimulates the mirthful muscles? My son’s laughter, {43} in the circumstances just referred to, seemed to be directed to the movements of the horse’s ears, and to those of the boy running just in front of him. The movements of laughter have, in the case of some adults, come so completely under the initiative control of mental processes, that even when powerful organic forces prompt the movements, it is necessary to make a show of finding some cause of merriment.

Coming now to the ordinary case of the emotional reaction, we note first of all the swift, explosive character of the outburst. If the motor discharge follow the first swell of joyous feeling, which is popularly said to excite it, it seems to do so with such electrical rapidity as to make it impossible to detect this initial swell as distinctly preceding it. Yet this fact need not baffle our inquiry. When for example we laugh at some absurd incongruity in speech or manners, can we not see that the perception which starts the laugh is an emotional perception, one which not only directs itself to something that has emotional interest and value, namely, the incongruous features as such, but is flooded from the very first with the gladness of mirth. To say that my perception of a big woman hanging upon the arm of a small man is a purely intellectual affair, like the perception of the inequality of two lines in a geometrical figure, is, one fears, to confess either to a poverty of humorous experience or to a very scanty faculty of psychological analysis.

But perhaps the clearest disproof of this quaint paradox in the realm of laughter is supplied by the situation already referred to, that of forced abstention from a choral laugh through fatigue. When thus “doubled up” and impotent, we may be quite capable of seizing the funny turns of the good “story,” and of feeling all the {44} force of the bugle-call of the others’ laughter. In sooth it is just here that the misery of the situation lies, that the joyous sense of fun in the air is now robbed of its sturdy ally and so reduced to a state of limp inefficiency. The comicality still makes full appeal: we feel it, but the feeling is denied its full normal outflow.

This brings us face to face with the kernel, the valuable kernel, of truth which lies in what seems at first an empty paradoxical nutshell. Though the “bodily reverberation” that is, the swiftly returning tidings of a raised or depressed nervous activity in outlying regions of the organism, is not everything in an emotion, it is a part, and an important part. The full experience of the joys of the comic, like other full emotional experiences, implies that the vents are clear, that the nervous swirl started at the centres at the moment when we greet the coming of fun with gladness can find its customary outflow along the familiar channels. Not only so, but as suggested above, this large expansion of the area of nervous commotion throughout the bodily system gives added life and a more distinctive character to the enjoyment of fun.

I have here supposed a perfectly simple instance of laughter in which a sudden increase of pleasure up to the point of gladness brings on the reaction. Even in this case, however, there is some complication, some reciprocal action between the out-pouring mental gladness and the in-pouring somatic resonance. In a good, prolonged laugh the bodily factor does undoubtedly react upon the psycho-physical process which makes up the mental gaiety, and this means that it precedes the later stages of this process. In all cases where this central psycho-physical factor is complex and requires time for its {45} completion, the interactions between it and the bodily factor become vital. As hinted in the preceding chapter, the reflective intuitions which are said by certain theorists to be the cause, and so to precede laughter, are often after-thoughts. This means that when the laughing apparatus is set and ready to discharge, the first joyous perception of something funny, though utterly vague with respect to the particular features and relations wherein lies the funniness, suffices to bring on the reaction, which instantly reinforces the gladsome mood. And the jollity may sustain itself for a while mainly as a fit of laughter; though swift mental glances are all along being shot across the spasms at the provoking “object,” glances which make clearer and clearer the ludicrous features, and by so doing raise the force of the mental stimulus.

If, as we have seen to be probable, laughter is within limits a good exercise, bringing a considerable increase of pleasurable activity and furthering the sense of bodily well-being, we can easily understand how essential it is to the full realisation of good spirits and the hilarious mood. Its explosive movements seem, indeed, to belong to the state of exhilaration, of conscious expansion, and to give it much of its piquant flavour: whence the hardship of losing breath through excessive indulgence, or having to stifle the impulse to laugh at its birth when exposed to the shocked look of the agelast. The deep, forcible chest-movements bring a sense of heightened energy, of a high-tide fulness of the life-current. The voluminous mass of sensation which they supply, partly in the stirring sounds which react on the laugher’s own ears, and partly in the large, exhilarating effects in the viscera, is in itself a vast expansion of our consciousness. This sudden rise of the tide in our organic life is a part at least of that sense {46} of “sudden glory” which the sight of the ludicrous is said to bring us.

That this organic swell is a large factor, is, I think, shown in more ways than one. To name but one fact; we may begin a laugh with something of bitterness, something of malignity in our hearts; but end it having a freer, serener consciousness, as if the laughter had been a sort of cleansing process, and, like another and widely different κάθαρσις, substituted a happy and peaceful for a disturbed and unhappy state of feeling. It will be seen presently that among the causes of laughter, a moment’s relaxation of strain—muscular, intellectual or emotional tension—is one of the most common, if it be not universal. The delicious sense of relief which the collapse of the strained attitude brings us may no doubt be due to a consciousness of the transition, the escape from pressure of the moment before. At the same time, it is not improbable that the physiological processes of laughter themselves, by securing organic relief and refreshment, contribute a large element to the whole mental state.

A like remark applies to the element of disagreeable feeling which frequently, at least, makes our laughter a mixed experience:—

Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught.

Shelley was hardly the person, one suspects, to judge of the quality of men’s laughter: yet his couplet contains an element of truth. This mixture of elements is, no doubt, largely due to the initiating perception itself; for, as we shall see, the laughable spectacle commonly shows us in the background something regrettable. But it seems reasonable to say that the element of sadness in our hilarity has its organic support in the unpleasant feeling-tones {47} which accompany the effects of all violent and prolonged laughter.[27]

What may be the precise proportions between the initial or “cerebral” joy and the joy reverberated by the organism we have no data for determining. There seems something plausible in the contention that the former, when it lacks the reinforcement of the latter, is but a “thin” and “pale” feeling. This view may be supported by the fact that the response of the body is never wholly silenced. Even when a man controls his laughter, say in church, he is aware of a swift spasm in the throat. But there are facts which tell powerfully in the other direction. We never stifle the organic resonance without introducing other and distinctly adverse influences. When by a forcible effort we hold back our laughter this effort itself, as an artificial and difficult attitude, does much to spoil the whole experience. The conflict between the impulse to laugh and the curbing will is distinctly disagreeable, and may readily grow into an acute suffering. And when the corporeal reverberation fails through sheer fatigue, this fatigue, both in itself and in its antagonism to the appeal to mirth, becomes a large factor in the whole experience. We must consequently wait for this knowledge of the precise shares contributed by the two factors, until some ingenious experimenter can succeed in exciting the mirthful mood and at the same time cutting off the bodily reverberation without inducing a new organic consciousness; or, on the other hand, can devise a method of securing for us in some utterly serious moment the full bodily reverberation of laughter, say by electrically {48} stimulating our respiratory muscles. It may be predicted with some confidence that this waiting will be a long one.

Here again, as in the case of the smile, we have to note various deviations from the typical form of the expression. When laughter no longer springs from pure joy, but has in it something of a sardonic bitterness, or something of a contemptuous defiance, the experience will of course be complicated by a new ingredient of consciousness. Whether this change of experience is due merely to the difference in the initial mental attitude may be doubted. It is not improbable that the physiological processes, that is to say, the respiratory movements, the vocalisation, and the more diffused organic effects, will be altered in such cases. A bitter laugh seems both to taste differently and to sound differently from a perfectly joyous one.

In these deviations from the typical laugh of the joyous mood we see the beginning of the intrusion of a new factor, the will. There is more of intention to be heard in, say, the ironical laughter of one side of the House of Commons than in the laughter of an unsophisticated child.

This intrusion of will serves both to restrain the natural process, reducing it to a degraded and rudimentary form, and to originate various affected counterfeits of the spontaneous outburst. This double action supports the idea that the conventions of polite society aim not merely at suppressing the “vulgar” kind of explosion, but at evoking the signs of amusement when an effort is being made to amuse. Hence the multiplicity of weird utterances which cultivated humanity has adopted. The giggle, the titter, the snicker and the rest appear to be not merely reduced or half-suppressed laughter, but substitutes which can readily {49} be produced when the occasion asks for them.[28] Those who confine themselves to this debased laughter are naturally despised by the much-laughing soul. Carlyle—himself a voluminous laugher at times—when writing of Teufelsdröckh’s great laugh hurls contempt on these triflers with the big things of mirth in this wise: they “only sniff and titter and sniggle from the throat outwards; or at best produce some whiffling, husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool”.[29] An accurate scientific record of these strange perversions of laughter, even though it were less picturesque than Carlyle’s description, would be of considerable value. The laughter-lover may at least console himself for the injury done him by this kind of imitation with the reflection that it is empty of joy, and even of the refreshing sensations which issue from the genuine laugh. Nay, more, as a forced performance, it presumably has a disagreeable feeling of irksomeness as its accompaniment.

It is sad to reflect that these spurious varieties of laughter are apt to appear early in the life of the individual. Preyer tells us he was able to distinguish, in the third year of his boy’s utterances, the genuine laugh of hilarity from that of imitation, which was probably rather more forced. Possibly they all appear among that wondrous gathering of queer sounds for which infancy is famous, and may be permanently selected by a certain number of “highly proper” children in preference to the fuller sounds.

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