3i8 



NA TURE 



[February 5, 1903 



painting. The proportions are such as one sees in figures in 

 certain stained-glass windows and in mediaeval illuminations ; 

 observe the plane of the elbows and the strange disproportion 

 in the entire arms. One can hardly imagine normal upper and 

 lower arm bones ^fitting into the ill-drawn shapes into which 

 I have sketched the bones. The radius and ulna of both arms, 

 instead of being much shorter than the humerus, would, if in- 

 serted, be longer. If the left humerus of ihe figure is assumed 

 to be correct in length as shown from A to B in my added black 

 line, then the true length of the ulna should only reach from 

 B to c, and not be half as long again as in the painting. On 

 the other hand, if the length of the right ulna is considered cor- 

 rect as from D to E in my added black line, then the humerus 

 would, in nature, reach from E to F — assuming the relative 

 proportions of humerus and ulna to be 13 and led. It is quite 

 within the bounds of possibility to name the painter of this 

 strange figure. 



The fold of the shroud is just over the top of the head, yet the 

 painter was so incompetent to deceive that he made the two 

 head-tops touch, like two hemispheres — as shown in the outline 



— whereas if the mate- 

 rial had been folded 

 over a head, a space of 

 6 inches would have 

 been necessary for 

 covering the neighbour- 

 hood of the junction of 

 the coronal with the 

 saggital suture. As 

 painted, the shroud ap- 

 pears to have been 

 folded over a piece of 

 flat pasteboard. 



As for an artist — 

 especially a mediaeval 

 one — being able to 

 paint a picture in imita- 

 tion of a negative, as 

 suggested by Prof. 

 Meldola, I have never 

 heard of such a work, 

 but if the painter of 

 this picture had used 

 an inferior white pig- 

 ment as a body colour, 

 as one of the com- 

 pounds of carbonate or 

 hydrate of lead, and 

 heightened the light 

 places with this white colour, all the whites by this time would 

 have become black or nearly so, and the positive of medieval 

 times would be a present-day negative. 



When I repainted Sowerby's models of fungi in the British 

 Museum, all Sowerby's whites had become a leaden-black. One 

 sees the same result of time with inferior whites in old coloured 

 prints. 



The triangular black patches in the outline are damages upon 

 the shroud. Worthington G. Smith. 



Dunstable. 



The Theory of Laughter. 



Prof. Sully has given us in his latest work a model mono- 

 graph on laughter. 1 With much charm and penetration, and in 

 the light of a wide knowledge of the very extensive literature of 

 the subject, he discusses the nature, causes and effects of 

 laughter, its uses, its origin, its development and its future in 

 the race and in the individual. He criticises the more im- 

 portant of the many theories of the ludicrous propounded by 

 philosophers in all ages ; he shows that each one of them fails 

 to account for a considerable proportion of the many varieties 

 -of the ludicrous, and he concludes " that the impressions of the 

 laughable cannot be reduced to one or two principles." While 

 thus recognising the impossibility of bringing all kinds of 

 laughter-causing things under one formula, Prof. Sully points 

 to two causes of laughter which are closely allied and frequently 

 cooperate, namely a sudden oncoming of gladness ani a sudden 

 release from constraint, and these he regards as the two 



'"AnEsiy nLaught r." James Sully, M. A., LL.D. Pp. xvi + 4.,1. 

 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1902.) Price 12s. 6d. net. 



Fig. i.— Reduced outline of figure on Holy 

 Shroud with arm bones drawn in. 



NO. 1736, VOL. 67] 



principles most generally applicable to the explanation of the 

 nature of the ludicrous. There is'implied here and throughout 

 the book the assumption that "the laugh ... is in general an 

 expression of a pleasurable state of feeling," an assumption 

 which finds also explicit expression in several passages, e.g. 

 "that outburst of gladness which we call laughter" and 

 " laughter being primarily the expression of the fuller measure 

 of the happy or gladsome state," It is assumed, in fact, that 

 that which makes us laugh does so in general in virtue of its 

 pleasing us, or, more shortly, that in general we laugh because 

 we are pleased. 



This assumption, which is implied in several of the older 

 theories of the ludicrous, seems to be regarded as self-evident 

 and in need of no justification, and yet it logically leads to some 

 strange and startling conclusions. Thus we are led to infer that 

 to a normal human being the sight of a man on crutches gladdens 

 the eye (p. 89), that there exists a general tendency " to rejoice 

 in the sight of what is degraded, base or contemptible " (p. 89), 

 that very laughable and therefore, according to this theory, 

 very pleasing things are exhibitions of vanity, hypocrisy, lying 

 and deceit. Prof. Sully makes out the following list of twelve 

 classes of laughable things, i.e. things the spectacle of which 

 provokes laughter : — (1) Novelties, (2) physical deformities, (3) 

 moral deformities and vices, (4) disordertiness, (5) small mis- 

 fortunes, (6) indecencies, (7) pretences, (8) want of knowledge 

 and skill, (9) the incongruous and absurd, (10) word-plays, (n) 

 that which is the expression of a merry mood, (12) the outwit- 

 ting or getting the better of a person. We may perhaps strike 

 out from this list the eleventh class, because it cannot properly 

 be said that we laugh at that which is the expression of a 

 merry mood ; we should rather say that it excites our laughter 

 through the force of sympathy and imitation. And we may 

 perhaps emend the definition of the twelfth class and say that 

 what we laugh at is the spectacle of the man being outwitted or 

 got the better of. Laughable things, then, fall into eleven classes, 

 each one of which is for most men highly displeasing when the 

 specific character of the class is strongly marked, but provokes 

 laughter in most of us, when in certain moods, if its specific 

 character is but slightly marked, though to many men (the age- 

 lasts) the spectacle of any one of these things (with the possible 

 exception of those of the first class) is at all times and in all 

 degrees displeasing. And, in fact, well-nigh every instance of 

 the ludicrous mentioned in the book is essentially displeasing in 

 character, and even the laughter of the refined individual 

 laugher, the humorist, is said to be fed on " the spectacle of 

 folly, of make-believe and of self-inflation." Surely an un- 

 pleasing diet ! It is significant, too, that laughter is not in- 

 frequently provoked by the sudden announcement of a death 

 or by the description of some extremely horrible experience or 

 series of events, as also by a severe blow on the shin, on the 

 " funny-bone" or on other parts of the body, and by situations 

 that excite an unpleasant state of " nerves " or " needle." 



If, then, we rid ourselves of the assumption that laughter is 

 the expression of pleasure, we shall admit that, while on the 

 one hand the noble, the beautiful, the harmonious, the orderly 

 and the sublime are pleasing but not laughable, on the other 

 hand the mean, the ugly, the incongruous, the riotous and the 

 ridiculous are displeasing, although in certain circumstances 

 they may provoke laughter ; we shall admit, in short, that the 

 laughable or the ludicrous is essentially displeasing, apart from 

 the laughter that it may provoke. We may put alongside this 

 conclusion two other indisputable facts of great significance ; 

 firstly, the fact that laughter, if not excessive, produces 

 beneficial physiological effects of an • exhilarating nature, it 

 produces "accelerated circulation and more complete oxygen- 

 ation of the blood" and "a considerable increase of vital 

 activity by way of heightened nervous stimulation" ; secondly, 

 the fact that laughter causes " a dispersion of the energies 

 which for the maintenance of the attention ought to be 

 concentrated. We are never less attentive during our waking 

 life than at the moment of laughter." 



We have, then, these three facts : — (1) The things we laugh 

 at are in themselves displeasing, (2) laughter disperses our 

 attention, (3) laughter produces a general increase of the vital 

 activities. When thus brought together, these facts irresistibly 

 suggest that we, being but imperfectly adapted to the world in 

 which we live and therefore necessarily surrounded by the 

 depressing spectacle of suffering, of disorder and of incongruities, 

 and sympathy being inwrought in the very bases of our consti- 

 tution, have been endowed, by beneficent Nature .with the 



