Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The physiology of laughter. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![f being allowed to expend itself in j)ro- ducing an equivalent quantity of the new thoughts and emotions which W’ere nascent, is suddenly checked in its flow. The channels along which the discharge was about to take place are closed. The new channel opened—that afforded by the a]:)pear- ance and proceedings of the goat—is a very small one ; the ideas and feelings suggested are not nearly numerous and massive enough to carry ofl' the nervous energy to bo^ expended. The excess must therefore discharge itself in some other direction; and in the way already explained, there results an efflux through the motor nerves to various classes of the muscles, producing the half-convul- sive actions we term laughter. This explanation is quite in harmony with the fact, that when, amongst a number of persons who are witness to the same ludicrous occurrence, there arc some who do not laugh, it is because there has arisen in them an emotion not participated in by the rest, which is sufficiently massive to absorb all the nascent excitement. Among the spec- tators of an awkward tumble, those who preserve their gravity are commonly those in whom there is excited a degree of sympathy with the sufferer sufficiently great to serve as an outlet for the feeling wliich the occurrence had turned out of its previous course. Sometimes anger carries off the arrested current, and so prevents laughter. A good instance of this was lately furnished me by a fi-iend who had been witnessing the feats at Tranconi’s. A tremendous leap had just been made by an acrobat over a number of horses. The clown, seem- ingly envious of this success, made os- tentatious preparations for doing the like; and then taking the preliminary run with immense energ}^, stopped short on reaching the first horse, and pre- tended to wipe some dust from its haunches. In the majority of the spec- tators merriment w^as excited; but in my friend, wound Tip by the expecta- tion of the coming leap to a state of great nervous tension, the effect of the baulk was to produce indignation. Ex- perience thus proves what the tliQory implies; namely, that the discharge of arrested feelings into the muscular sys- tem, takes place only in the absence of other adequate channels, does not take place if there arise other feelings equal in amount to those arrested. Evidence still more conclusive is at hand. If we contrast the incongruities which produce laughter with those which do not, we at once see that in the non- ludicrous ones the unexpected state of feeling aroused, though wholly different in kind, is not less in quantity or in- tensity. Among incongruities that may excite anything but a laugh, Mr. Bain instances—“A decrepit man under a “ heavy burden, five loaves and two “ fishes aTuong a multitude, and all un- “ fitness and gross disjiroportion ; an in- “strument out of tune, a fly in oint- “ment, snow in May, Archimedes study- “ ing geometry in siege, and all discordant “ things; a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a “breach of bargain, and falsehood in “general; the multitude taking the law “ in their own hands, and everything of “the nature of disorder; a corpse at “ a feast, parental cruelty, filial ingrati- “tude, and whatever is unnatural; the “ entire catalogue of the vanities given “ by Solomon, are all incongruous, but “ they cause feelings of pain, anger, sad- “ ness, loathing, rather than mirth.” Eow in these cases, where evidently the totally unlike state of consciousness sud- denly produced, is not inferior in mass to the preceding one, the conditions to laughter are not fulfilled. As above shown, laughter naturally results only when consciousness is Tinawares trans- ferred from great things to small—only ■when there is what we may call a de- scending incongruity. And now observe, finally, the fact, alike inferable, d, priori, and illustrated in experience, that an ascending incon- gruity not only fails to cause laughter, but produces on the muscular system an effect of exactly the reverse kind. MTieii after something very insignificant there arises without anticipation some- thing very great, the emotion we call wonder results ; and this emotion is ac-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2246797x_0008.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
