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Show 200 EXPRESSION OF .TOY: CHAP. VIII. Lauo·ht r in this r spect is analogous with weeping, which with adults is almost confined to mental distress, whilst with children it is excited by bodily pain or any su:ffi rin<r, as well as by fear or rage. Man! curious discusjons have been written on the causes of laughter with grown-up persons. The subject is extremely complex. Something incongruous or u~ac?ou~tabl e, e .. rciting surprise and some sense of super1or~ty In the langher, who must be in a hap~y fra~e of mind, see1ns to Le the commonest cause.4 The circumstances 1nust not be of a momentous nature: no poor man would laugh or smile on sudden]~ hearing that ~ lar.ge fortune had been bequeathed to him. If the mind IS strongly excited by pleasurable feelings, and any little unexpected event or thought occurs, then, as Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks/ "a large amount ~f ne.r:ous ener?y, "instead of being allowed to expend Itself 1n produc1ng " an equivalent amount of the new thoughts and emo· "tion which ·were nascent, is suddenly checked jn its "flow." . . . "'fhe excess must discharge itself in some " other direction, and there results an efflux through the "motor nerves to various classes of the 1nuscles, pro" clueing the half-convulsive actions we term laughter." An observation, bearing on this point, was made by a correspondent during the recent siege of Paris, namely, that the Gennan soldiers, after strong excitelnent ii.·om exposure to extreme danger, were particularly apt to burst out into loud laughter at the smallest joke. So again when young children are just beginning to cry, au unexpected event will sometimes suddenly turn their " Mr. Bain ('The Emotions and the Will,' 1865, p. 247) ht~s a long and interesting discussion on the Ludic1·ous. The quotation abovEl given about the laughter of the gods is taken from this work. See, ~lso, Mandeville, ' The Fable of the Bees,' vol. ii. p. 168. fl ''fho fh~siolog~ of Lal-l~lltel·,' Ess~ys, Second Series! 18Gi:l, p. llt. CHAP. VIII. LAUGHTER. 201 crying into laughter, which apparently serves equally well to expend their superfluous n rvous energy. The imagination is sometimes ~aid to be tickl ed by a ludicrous idea; and this so-called tickling of the mind is curiously analogous with that of the body. Every one knows how immoderately children laugh, and how their whole bodies are convulsed when they are tickled. The anthropoid apes, as we have seen, likewise utter a reiterated sound, corresponding with our laughter, when they are tickled, especially under the armpit . I touched with a bit of paper the sole of the foot of one of my infants, when only seven days old, and it was suddenly jerked away and the toes curled about, aR in an older child. Such movements, as well as laughter from being tickled, are manifestly reflex actions; anfl this is likewise shown by the minute unstriped n1uscleA, which serve to e~·ect the separate hairs on the body, contracting near a tickled surface. 6 Yet laughter fr01n a ludicrous idea, though in voluntary, cannot be called a strictly reflex action. In this case, and in that of laughter from being tickled, the mind must be in a pleasurable condition; a young child, if tickled by a strange 1nan, would screan1 from fear. The touch n1ust be light, and an idea or event, to be ludicrous, 1nust not be of grave i1nport. The parts of the body which are most easily tickled are those which are not commonly touched, such as the armpits or between the toes, or parts such as the soles of the feet, which are habitually touched by a broad surface; but the surface on which we sit offers a n1arked exception to this rule. According to Gratiolet, 7 certain 11erves are much more sensitive to tickling than others. From the fact that a child can hardly tickle itself, or in 6 J. Li ter in 'Quarterly J ournal of l\ficmscopical Science,' 1 853~ vol. i, p. 2GG. 7 ' De lf\ Physionomie,' p. 186, |