This brings us face to face with the kernel, the valuable kernel, of truth which lies in what seems at first an empty paradoxical nutshell. Though the “bodily reverberation” that is, the swiftly returning tidings of a raised or depressed nervous activity in outlying regions of the organism, is not everything in an emotion, it is a part, and an important part. The full experience of the joys of the comic, like other full emotional experiences, implies that the vents are clear, that the nervous swirl started at the centres at the moment when we greet the coming of fun with gladness can find its customary outflow along the familiar channels. Not only so, but as suggested above, this large expansion of the area of nervous commotion throughout the bodily system gives added life and a more distinctive character to the enjoyment of fun.
I have here supposed a perfectly simple instance of laughter in which a sudden increase of pleasure up to the point of gladness brings on the reaction. Even in this case, however, there is some complication, some reciprocal action between the out-pouring mental gladness and the in-pouring somatic resonance. In a good, prolonged laugh the bodily factor does undoubtedly react upon the psycho-physical process which makes up the mental gaiety, and this means that it precedes the later stages of this process. In all cases where this central psycho-physical factor is complex and requires time for its {45} completion, the interactions between it and the bodily factor become vital. As hinted in the preceding chapter, the reflective intuitions which are said by certain theorists to be the cause, and so to precede laughter, are often after-thoughts. This means that when the laughing apparatus is set and ready to discharge, the first joyous perception of something funny, though utterly vague with respect to the particular features and relations wherein lies the funniness, suffices to bring on the reaction, which instantly reinforces the gladsome mood. And the jollity may sustain itself for a while mainly as a fit of laughter; though swift mental glances are all along being shot across the spasms at the provoking “object,” glances which make clearer and clearer the ludicrous features, and by so doing raise the force of the mental stimulus.
If, as we have seen to be probable, laughter is within limits a good exercise, bringing a considerable increase of pleasurable activity and furthering the sense of bodily well-being, we can easily understand how essential it is to the full realisation of good spirits and the hilarious mood. Its explosive movements seem, indeed, to belong to the state of exhilaration, of conscious expansion, and to give it much of its piquant flavour: whence the hardship of losing breath through excessive indulgence, or having to stifle the impulse to laugh at its birth when exposed to the shocked look of the agelast. The deep, forcible chest-movements bring a sense of heightened energy, of a high-tide fulness of the life-current. The voluminous mass of sensation which they supply, partly in the stirring sounds which react on the laugher’s own ears, and partly in the large, exhilarating effects in the viscera, is in itself a vast expansion of our consciousness. This sudden rise of the tide in our organic life is a part at least of that sense {46} of “sudden glory” which the sight of the ludicrous is said to bring us.
That this organic swell is a large factor, is, I think, shown in more ways than one. To name but one fact; we may begin a laugh with something of bitterness, something of malignity in our hearts; but end it having a freer, serener consciousness, as if the laughter had been a sort of cleansing process, and, like another and widely different κάθαρσις, substituted a happy and peaceful for a disturbed and unhappy state of feeling. It will be seen presently that among the causes of laughter, a moment’s relaxation of strain—muscular, intellectual or emotional tension—is one of the most common, if it be not universal. The delicious sense of relief which the collapse of the strained attitude brings us may no doubt be due to a consciousness of the transition, the escape from pressure of the moment before. At the same time, it is not improbable that the physiological processes of laughter themselves, by securing organic relief and refreshment, contribute a large element to the whole mental state.
A like remark applies to the element of disagreeable feeling which frequently, at least, makes our laughter a mixed experience:—
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught.
Shelley was hardly the person, one suspects, to judge of the quality of men’s laughter: yet his couplet contains an element of truth. This mixture of elements is, no doubt, largely due to the initiating perception itself; for, as we shall see, the laughable spectacle commonly shows us in the background something regrettable. But it seems reasonable to say that the element of sadness in our hilarity has its organic support in the unpleasant feeling-tones {47} which accompany the effects of all violent and prolonged laughter.[27]
What may be the precise proportions between the initial or “cerebral” joy and the joy reverberated by the organism we have no data for determining. There seems something plausible in the contention that the former, when it lacks the reinforcement of the latter, is but a “thin” and “pale” feeling. This view may be supported by the fact that the response of the body is never wholly silenced. Even when a man controls his laughter, say in church, he is aware of a swift spasm in the throat. But there are facts which tell powerfully in the other direction. We never stifle the organic resonance without introducing other and distinctly adverse influences. When by a forcible effort we hold back our laughter this effort itself, as an artificial and difficult attitude, does much to spoil the whole experience. The conflict between the impulse to laugh and the curbing will is distinctly disagreeable, and may readily grow into an acute suffering. And when the corporeal reverberation fails through sheer fatigue, this fatigue, both in itself and in its antagonism to the appeal to mirth, becomes a large factor in the whole experience. We must consequently wait for this knowledge of the precise shares contributed by the two factors, until some ingenious experimenter can succeed in exciting the mirthful mood and at the same time cutting off the bodily reverberation without inducing a new organic consciousness; or, on the other hand, can devise a method of securing for us in some utterly serious moment the full bodily reverberation of laughter, say by electrically {48} stimulating our respiratory muscles. It may be predicted with some confidence that this waiting will be a long one.
Here again, as in the case of the smile, we have to note various deviations from the typical form of the expression. When laughter no longer springs from pure joy, but has in it something of a sardonic bitterness, or something of a contemptuous defiance, the experience will of course be complicated by a new ingredient of consciousness. Whether this change of experience is due merely to the difference in the initial mental attitude may be doubted. It is not improbable that the physiological processes, that is to say, the respiratory movements, the vocalisation, and the more diffused organic effects, will be altered in such cases. A bitter laugh seems both to taste differently and to sound differently from a perfectly joyous one.