LAUGHTER

The ancients associated laughter with the New Year. I am not sure whether or no it is of good omen to begin the New Year with laughter. Omens are such tricky things that I have given up paying any attention to them. One would think it might be held to be unlucky to stumble on the doorstep as you set out from home, but the old omen-wizards, apparently from sheer love of contradiction, said, "Not at all! It is unlucky to stumble as you come into the house, and therefore it is lucky to stumble as you go out!"

What is laughter? It is a spasmodic movement of various muscles of the body, beginning with those which half close the eyes and those which draw backwards and upwards the sides of the mouth, and open it so as to expose the teeth, next affecting those of respiration so as to produce short rapidly succeeding expirations accompanied by sound (called "guffaws" when in excess) and then extending to the limbs, causing up and down movement of the half-closed fists and stamping of the feet, and ending in a rolling on the ground and various contortions of the body. Clapping the hands is not part of the laughter "process," but a separate, often involuntary, action which has the calling of attention to oneself as its explanation, just as slapping the ground or a table or one's thigh has. Laughter is spontaneous, that is to say, the movements are not designed or directed by the conscious will. But in mankind, in proportion as individuals are trained in self-control, it is more or less completely under command, and in spite of the most urgent tendency of the automatic mechanism to enter upon the progressive series of movements which we distinguish as (1) smile, (2) broad smile or grin, (3) laugh, (4) loud laughter, (5) paroxysms of uncontrolled laughter, a man or woman can prevent all indication by muscular movement of a desire to laugh or even to smile. Usually laughter is excited by certain pleasurable emotions, and is to be regarded as an "expression" of such emotion just as certain movements and the flow of tears are an "expression" of the painful emotion of grief and physical suffering, and as other movements of the face and limbs are an "expression" of anger, others of "fear." The Greek gods of Olympus enjoyed "inextinguishable laughter."

It is interesting to see how far we can account for the strange movements of laughter as part of the inherited automatic mechanism of man. Why do we laugh? What is the advantage to the individual or the species of "laughing"? Why do we "express" our pleasurable emotion and why in this way? It is said that the outcast diminutive race of Ceylon known as the Veddas never laugh, and it has even been seriously but erroneously stated that the muscles which move the face in laughter are wanting in them. A planter induced some of these people to camp in his "compound," or park, in order to learn something of their habits, language, and beliefs. One day he said to the chief man of the little tribe, "You Veddas never laugh. Why do you never laugh?" The little wild man replied, "It is true; we never laugh. What is there for us to laugh at?"—an answer almost terrible in its pathetic submission to a joyless life. For laughter is primarily, to all races and conditions of men, the accompaniment, the expression of the simple joy of life. It has acquired a variety of relations and significations in the course of the long development of conscious man—but primarily it is an expression of emotion, set going by the experience of the elementary joys of life—the light and heat of the sun, the approach of food, of love of triumph.

Before we look further into the matter it is well to note some exceptional cases of the causation of laughter. The first of these is the excitation of laughter by a purely mechanical "stimulus" or action from the exterior, without any corresponding mental emotion of joy—namely by "tickling," that is to say, by light rubbing or touching of the skin under the arms or at the side of the neck, or on the soles of the feet. Yet a certain readiness to respond is necessary on the part of the person who is "tickled," for, although an unwilling subject may be thus made to laugh, yet there are conditions of mind and of body in which "tickling" produces no response. I do not propose to discuss why it is that "tickling," or gentle friction of the skin produces laughter. It is probably one of those cases in which a mechanism of the living body is set to work, as a machine may be, by directly causing the final movement (say the turning of a wheel), for the production of which a special train of apparatus, to be started by the letting loose of a spring or the turning of a steam-cock, is provided, and in ordinary circumstance is the regular mode in which the working of the mechanism is started. The apparatus of laughter is when due to "tickling" set at work by a short cut to the nerves and related muscles without recourse to the normal emotional steam-cock.

Then we have laughter which is purely due to imitation and suggestion. People laugh because others are laughing, without knowing why. This throws a good deal of light on the significance of laughter. It is essentially a social appeal and response. Only in rare cases do people laugh when they are alone. Under conditions which in the presence of others would cause them to laugh they only "chuckle" or smile, and may, though ready to burst into laughter, not even exhibit its minor expressions when alone. On the other hand, some sane people have the habit of laughing aloud when alone, and there is a recognised form of idiocy which is accompanied by incessant laughter, ceasing only with sleep. Then there is that peculiar condition of laughter which is called "giggling," which is laughter asserting itself in spite of efforts made to restrain it, and frequently only because the occasion is one when the "giggler" is especially anxious not to laugh. This kind of "inverted suggestion," as in the case where an individual "blurts out" the very word or phrase which he is anxious not to use, is obviously not primitive, but connected with the long training and drilling of mankind into approved "behaviour" by "taboos" and restrictive injunctions. Efforts to behave correctly, by causing anxiety and mental disturbance in excitable or so-called "nervous" subjects, lead to an over mastering impulse to do the very thing which must not be done!

It seems that laughter has its origin far back in the animal ancestry of man, and is essentially an expression to others of the joy and exhilaration felt by the laugher. It is an appeal through the eye and ear for sympathy and comradeship in enjoyment. Its use to social animals is in the binding together of the members of a group or society in common feeling and action. Many monkeys laugh, some of them grinning so as to show the teeth, partly opening the mouth and making sounds by spasmodic breathing, identical with those made by man. I have seen and heard the chimpanzees at the Zoological Gardens laugh like children at the approach of their friend and my friend, the distinguished naturalist, Mr. George Boulenger, F.R.S., recognising him among the crowd in front of their cage when he was still far off. And I have often made chimpanzees laugh—"roar with laughter," and roll over in excitement—by tickling them under the arms. The saying of Aristotle (inscribed over the curtain of the Palais Royal Theatre in Paris) that "Laughter is better than tears, because laughter is the speciality of man," is not true. Not only do the higher apes and some of the smaller monkeys laugh, but dogs also laugh, although they do not make sounds whilst indulging in "spasms of laughter." But their distant cousin, the hyena, does laugh aloud, and its laughter agrees with that of the dog and with the laughter of children and grown men in simpler moods in that it is caused by the pleasurable emotion set up by the imminent gratification of a healthy desire. The hyena laughs, the dog grins and bounds, the child laughs and jumps for joy at the approach of something good to eat. But it is a curious fact that the whole attitude is changed when the food is within reach, and the serious business of consuming it has commenced! Nor, indeed, is the satisfaction which is felt after the gratification of appetite accompanied by laughter. It seems that the display of the teeth by drawing back the corners of the mouth, which is called a "grin," and is associated in many dogs with a short, sharp, demonstrative bark, and in mankind with the cackle we call a "laugh," is a retention, a survival, of the playful, good-natured movement of gently biting or pulling a companion with the teeth used by our animal ancestors to draw attention to their joy and to communicate it to others. Gradually it has lost the actual character of a friendly bite; the fore-feet or hand pull instead of the teeth; the sound emitted has become further differentiated from other sounds made by the animal. But the movement for the display of the teeth, though no longer needed as a part of the act of gripping, remains as an understood and universal indication of joy and kindly feeling. So universal is it that this friendly display of the teeth under the name "smile" is attributed to Nature, to Fortune, and to deities by all races of men when those powers seem to favour them.

Laughter is, then, in its essence and origin, a communication or expression to others of the joyous mood of the laugher. There are many and strangely varied occasions when laughter seizes on man, and it is interesting to see how far they can be explained by this conception of the primary and essential nature of the laugh, for many of them seem at first sight remote from it. There is, first of all, the laughter of revivification and escape from death or danger. After railway accidents, earthquakes, and such terrible occurrences, those who have been in great danger often burst into laughter. The nervous balance has been upset by the shock (we call them "shocking accidents"), and the emotional joy of escape, the joy of recovered life, asserts itself in what appears to the onlooker to be an unseemly, an unfeeling laugh. It is recorded that one of the entombed French coal miners, who two years ago were imprisoned without food or light for twenty days a thousand feet below in the bowels of the earth, burst into a ghastly laugh when he was rescued and brought to the upper air once more. The Greeks and Romans in some of their festal ceremonies made the priest or actor who represented dead nature returning to life in the spring, burst into a laugh—a ceremonial or "ritual" laugh. Our poets speak of the smiles, and even of the laughter of spring, and that is why laughter is appropriate to New Year's Day. It is the laughter of escape from the death of winter and of return to life, for the true and old-established New Year's Day was not in mid-winter, but a quarter of a year later, when buds and flowers are bursting into life. It is recorded by ancient writers that the "ritual laugh" was enforced by the Sardinians and others who habitually killed their old people (their parents) upon their victims. They smiled and laughed as part of the ceremony, the executioners also smiling. The old people were supposed to laugh with joy at the revivification which was in store for them in a future state. So, too, the Hindoo widows used to laugh when seated on the funeral pyre ready to be burnt. So, too, is explained (by Reinach) the laughter of Joan of Arc when she made her abjuration in front of the faggots which were to burn her to death. Her laugh was caused by the thought of her escape from persecution and of the joyful resurrection soon to come. It was not an indication that she was not serious, and that her abjuration of witchcraft was a farce, as her enemies asserted.

More difficult to explain is the laughter excited by scenes or narrations which we call ludicrous, funny, grotesque, comic; and still more so the derisive and contemptuous laugh. Caricature or burlesque of well known men is a favourite method of producing laughter among savages as well as civilised peoples. Why do we laugh when a man on the stage searches everywhere for his hat, which is all the time on his head? Why do we laugh when a pompous gentleman slips on a piece of orange-peel and falls to the ground, or when one buffoon unexpectedly hits another on the head, and, before he has time to recover, with equal unexpectedness hooks his legs with a stick and brings him heavily to the ground? Why did we laugh at the adventures of Mr. Penley in "Charley's Aunt"? In all of these "ludicrous" affairs there is an element of surprise, a slight shock which puts us off our mental balance, and the subsequent laughter, when we realise either that no serious harm has been done or that the whole thing is make-believe, seems to partake of the character of the "laugh of escape." It is caused by a sense of relief when we recognise that the disaster is not real. We laugh at the "unreal" when we should be filled with horror and grief were we assured that there was real pain and cruelty going on in front of us. The laughter caused by grotesque mimicry or caricature of pompous or solemn individuals seems to arise from the same (more or less unconscious) working of the mind as that caused by some unexpected neglect of those social "taboos" or laws of behaviour which we call modesty, decency, and propriety. They either cause indignation and resentment in the onlooker at the neglect of respect for the taboo, or, on the contrary, the natural man, long oppressed by pomposity or by the fetters of propriety imposed by society, suddenly feels a joyous sense of escape from his bonds, and bursts into laughter—the laughter of a return to vitality and nature—which is enormously encouraged and developed into "roars of merriment" by the sympathy of others around him who are experiencing the same emotion and expressing it in the same way.

The laugh of derision and contempt and the laugh of exultation and triumph are of a different character. I cannot now discuss them further than to say that they are either genuine or pretended assertions of joy in one's own superior vitality or other superiority. The "sardonic smile" and "sardonic laughter" have been supposed by some learned men to refer to the smiles of the ancient Sardinians when stoning their aged parents. But they have no more to do with Sardinians than they have with sardines or sardonyx. The word "sardonic" is related to a Greek word which means "to snarl," and a sardonic grin is merely a snarl. In it the teeth are shown with malicious intent, and not as they are in the benevolent appeal of true laughter. Mrs. Grote, the wife of the great historian (who was herself declared by a French wit to furnish the explanation of the word "grotesque"), wrote of "Owen's sugar-of-lead smile"—referring to the great naturalist, Richard Owen. There was no malice in the description, for he had, as some others have, a very sweet smile, accompanied by a strangely grave and disapproving glare in his large blue prominent eyes. It was only apparently sugar of lead; really, it was sugar of milk—the milk of human kindness. The smile of the lost picture called "La Gioconda" is by fanciful people regarded as something very wonderful. It is really the clever portraiture of the habitual "leer" of a somewhat wearied sensual woman. It had a fascination for the great Leonardo, but no profound significance.