198 EXPRESSION OF JOY: Chap. VIII. 



With grown-up persons laughter is excited by causes 

 considerably different from those which suffice during 

 childhood; but this remark hardly applies to smiling. 

 Laughter in this respect is analogous with weeping, 

 which with adults is almost confined to mental distress, 

 whilst with children it is excited by bodily pain or any 

 suffering, as well as by fear or rage. Many curious dis- 

 cussions have been written on the causes of laughter 

 with grown-up persons. The subject is extremely com- 

 plex. Something incongruous or unaccountable, excit- 

 ing surprise and some sense of superiority in the laugher, 

 who must be in a happy frame of mind, seems to be the 

 commonest cause. 4 The circumstances must not be of 

 a momentous nature : no poor man would laugh or smile 

 on suddenly hearing that a large fortune had been be- 

 queathed to him. If the mind is strongly excited by 

 pleasurable feelings, and any little unexpected event or 

 thought occurs, then, as Mr. Herbert Spencer remarks, 5 

 " a large amount of nervous energy, instead of being 

 allowed to expend itself in producing an equivalent 

 amount of the new thoughts and emotion which were 

 nascent, is suddenly checked in its flow." ..." The 

 excess must discharge itself in some other direction, and 

 there results an efflux through the motor nerves to vari- 

 ous classes of the muscles, producing the half-convul- 

 sive actions we term laughter." An observation, bear- 

 ing on this point, was made by a correspondent during 

 the recent siege of Paris, namely, that the German sol- 

 diers, after strong excitement from exposure to extreme 



4 Mr. Bain (' The Emotions and the Will,' 1865, p. 247) 

 has a long" and interesting" discussion on the Ludicrous. 

 The quotation above given about the laug'hter of the 

 gods is taken from this work. See, also, Mandeville, 

 ' The Fable of the Bees,' vol. ii. p. 168. 



5 ' The Physiology of Laughter,' Essays, Second Series, 

 1863, p. 114. 



