An Essay on Laughter: Its Forms, Its Causes, Its Development and Its Value

by James Sully

CHAPTER II. THE SMILE AND THE LAUGH.

To treat the facts with proper respect seems to be more than ordinarily incumbent on us in dealing with the nature and the significance of our laughter. This means, as already hinted, that some inquiry be made into the act of laughing itself, the manner of it, and the circumstances which accompany it, and that this inquiry be carried out in the most comprehensive way possible.

We grave elders are wont to think of laughing and smiling as something quite occasional, a momentary lapse once in a while from the persistent attitude of seriousness. This view is apt to be expressed in too unqualified a form. Simple types of humanity, the child and the savage, frequently show us mirthful laughter filling a much larger space in the day’s hours than our view would suggest. A jolly boy, the subject of chronic high spirits, which are apt to try the patience of sedate seniors, might perhaps say—if indeed he could be brought to frame a theory of life—that laughing is the proper way to pass the time, and that seriousness is a tiresome necessity which can be tolerated only now and again. And in any case such a view might be said to represent the mental attitude of those happy idiots and imbeciles of whom we read that they “are persistently joyous and {26} benign,” and constantly laughing or smiling, and that “their countenances often exhibit a stereotyped smile”.[12]

Yet, attractive as this theory may be for a lover of laughter, it cannot well adjust itself to stern physiological facts. The full process of laughter is, like coughing, sobbing and other actions, a violent interruption of the rhythmic flow of the respiratory movements. As such, its function in the human organism seems to be limited to that of an occasional spurt. Even a perpetual smile, quite apart from its insipidity for others than the smiler, would, strictly speaking, hardly be compatible with the smooth on-flow of the vital processes. What has been named the “everlasting barren simper” does not really amount to this.

The Smile and the Laugh, viewed as physiological events, stand in the closest relation one to the other. A smile is, as we shall see, rightly regarded as an incomplete laugh. Hence we shall do well to study the two together.

Smiling involves a complex group of facial movements. It may suffice to remind the reader of such characteristic changes as the drawing back and slight lifting of the comers of the mouth, the raising of the upper lip, which partially uncovers the teeth, and the curving of the furrows betwixt the comers of the mouth and the nostrils (the naso-labial furrows) which these movements involve. To these must be added the formation of wrinkles under the eyes—a most characteristic part of the expression—which is a further result of the first movements. The increased brightness of the eyes is probably the effect of their tenseness, due to the contraction of the adjacent muscles and the pressure of the raised cheek, though {27} an acceleration of the circulation within the eyeball may have something to do with it.

These facial changes are common to the smile and to the laugh, though in the more violent forms of laughter the eyes are apt to lose under their lachrymal suffusion the sparkle which the smile brings.

As a characteristic group of facial movements the smile is excellently well suited for its purpose—the primitive and most universal expression of a pleasurable or happy state of mind. It forms, in respect of certain of its features at least, a marked contrast to the expression of opposite feelings. Thus it is far removed, and so easily distinguishable, from the facial expression during weeping, viz., the firmly closed eyelids and the wide opening of the mouth in the form of a squarish cavity; as also from the face’s betrayal of low spirits and “crossness,” in the depressed corners of the mouth, the oblique eyebrows and the furrowed forehead.

I have spoken here of the primitive unsophisticated smile as it may be observed in children and those adults who have not learned to control the primitive, and instinctive movements of the face. Among the cultivated classes of a civilised community, this primitive smile is not only restrained and modified, but serves other uses than the confession of the elemental experiences of pleasure and gladness. With the contemptuous smile, the slightly ironical smile of the superior person, the bitter, sardonic smile, we shall have happily but little to do here. It is enough to remark that these differentiations answer closely to those of laughter, and so further illustrate the organic affinity of the two.

We may now pass to the larger experience of the audible laugh. That this action is physiologically continuous with {28} the smile has already been suggested. The facial expression is approximately the same in the broad smile and the gentle laugh. It is only when laughter grows immoderate that there is a marked addition of other features, viz., the strong contraction of the muscles about the eyes leading to frowning, and the shedding of tears. How closely connected are smiling and moderate laughing may be seen by the tendency we experience when we reach the broad smile and the fully open mouth to start the respiratory movements of laughter. As Darwin and others have pointed out, there is a series of gradations from the faintest and most decorous smile up to the full explosion of the laugh.[13]