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.
{50}