PAIN, LAUGHTER AND WEEPING 331 



less an action pattern. We have shown (Chapter V) 

 that emotions and psychic concepts, being responses 

 to distance ceptor stimulation, are as truly representa- 

 tive of motor acts as are the responses to contact 

 ceptor stimulation. Fear, anger and sexual love are 

 representations of definite phylogenetic acts, which, 

 if they do not follow directly upon the activating 

 stimulus, leave the body in a physiological state of 

 preparation for the act, which means that a certain 

 amount of activating substances, which must be 

 consumed or eliminated are thrown into the blood 

 stream. If a motor act takes place in the midst of 

 the emotion, the intensity of the emotion itself is 

 lessened. A man in anger who fights, finds his anger 

 dissipated as a result of his activity. A man in fear 

 who flees, experiences less fear than he who waits 

 motionless for the outcome of a situation. 



The activating substances thrown into the blood by 

 any emotion may be consumed as completely by any 

 other muscular action, as by the particular muscular 

 action for which these chemical substances were in- 

 tended. On this principle, the purpose and cause of 

 laughter and of weeping may be explained. If an 

 individual be intensely provoked to anger, one of three 

 things might happen : he might perform no physical 

 act, but give expression to the emotion of anger; he 

 might engage in a physical struggle and satisfy his 

 anger ; or he might immediately engage in violent 

 gymnastic exercise which would consume the motor- 

 producing elements mobilized in his body, and thus 

 clarify the organism. Laughter and weeping are the 

 gymnastic exercises which clarify the body under many 



