WHY DO WE LAUGH? 205 



the movements are not designed or directed by the 

 conscious will. But in mankind, in proportion as indivi- 

 duals are trained in self-control, it is more or less com- 

 pletely 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 

 (i) 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 move- 

 ment 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 " expres- 

 sion " 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 out- 

 cast diminutive race of Ceylon known as the Veddas 

 never laugh, and it has even been seriously but erro- 

 neously 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 



