Laughing and Crying 
The answer seems to him obvious. 
Were laughter expressed by the hands 
the monkey, who shares with man 
the privilege of a hearty laugh, would 
fall from the tree. Were it expressed 
with the feet, a man would either fall 
down or be temporarily “crippled.” 
The muscles of the face and chest seem 
to be the most available ones at liberty 
to perform this action, since they do not 
incapacitate the subject for any other 
action that may be useful to him. It 
may be supposed, then, that in the 
course of evolution, natural selection 
has picked out these muscles and fixed 
on them the duty of relieving a man of 
the effects of his emotions, by the 
exercise which we call laughing. 
“Let us test this hypothesis by some 
practical examples. The first is an 
incident that accidentally occurred in 
our laboratory during experiments on 
fear which were performed as follows: 
A keen, snappy, fox-terrier was com- 
pletely muzzled by winding a broad 
strip of adhesive plaster around his jaw 
so as to include all but the nostrils. 
When this aggressive little terrier and 
a rabbit found themselves in close 
quarters each animal became completely 
governed by instinct; the rabbit 
crouched in fear, while the terrier, 
with all the ancestral assurance of 
seizing his prey, rushed upon the rabbit, 
his muzzle always glancing off and his 
attack ending in awkward failure. 
“This experiment was repeated many 
times and each time provoked the seri- 
ous-minded scientific visitors who wit- 
nessed it to laughter. Why? Because 
the spectacle of a savage little terrier 
rushing upon an innocent rabbit as if 
to mangle it integrated the body of: the 
onlooker with a strong desire to exert 
muscular action to prevent the cruelty. 
This integration caused a conversion 
of the potential energy in the brain-cells 
into kinetic energy, and there resulted 
a discharge into the blood-stream of 
activating internal secretions for the 
purpose of producing muscular action. 
Instantly and unexpectedly the danger 
passed and the preparation for muscular 
action intended for use in the protection 
of the rabbit was not needed. This 
3 Spencer, Herbert, ‘‘The Physiology of Laughter.” 
(New York, 1872), p. 203. 
283 
fuel was consumed by the neutral 
muscular action of laughter, which thus 
afforded relief. _ 
“A common example of the same na- 
ture is that encountered on the street 
when a pedestrian slips on a banana 
peel and, just as he is about to tumble, 
recovers his equilibrium. The onlookers 
secure relief from the integration to 
run to his rescue by laughing. On the 
other hand, should the same pedestrian 
fall and fracture his skull the motor 
integration of the onlookers would be 
consumed by rendering physical assist- 
ance—mence. there — would” be, sie 
laughter.” 
THE EFFECT OF A JOKE 
Dr. Crile attempts to apply this view 
to laughter produced by a joke. Jokes, 
he says, consist of two parts; in the 
first, the reader’s emotion is stirred by 
the presentation of some _ situation 
which seems to call for action, and in the 
second he is suddenly shown that he 
has been hoaxed, that it is a false 
alarm. This element of incongruity has 
long been recognized as the basis of 
much humor, and in Se far as. it as, 
Dr. Crile’s explanation will in many 
cases cover the resulting laughter. 
Other cases may be explained as asso- 
ciation of ideas. Obviously, however, 
there must be ramifications of the 
subject, and some of them were ingeni- 
ously explained by Herbert Spencer, 
whose discussion of laughter is in many 
ways like that of Dr. Crile, although 
the latter has the advantage of much 
work in physiology which has been 
done since Spencer’s time. The phil- 
osopher offers? this case: 
“You are sitting in a theater, absorbed 
in the progress of an interesting drama. 
Some climax has been reached which 
has aroused your sympathies—say, a 
reconciliation between the hero and 
heroine, after long and painful mis- 
understanding. The feelings excited by 
this scene are not of a kind from which 
you seek relief; but are, on the contrary, 
a grateful relief from the painful feelings 
with which you have witnessed the 
previous estrangement. Moreover, the 
sentiments these fictitious personages 
In “‘Tllustrations of Universal Progress’” 
