st condition, the mental endowments of man were of the very
humblest description, but that he had always a tendency to progress and
improve. This view obtains some little corroboration from the fact that
the sounds animals utter in the early stages of their lives are not
fully developed, and that the children of the poor are graver and more
silent than those of the educated classes. But a certain predisposition
to laughter there always was, for what animal has ever produced any but
its own characteristic sound? Has not everyone its own natural mode of
expression? Does not the dog show its pleasure by wagging its tail, and
the cat by purring? We never find one animal adopting the vocal sounds
of another--a bird never mews, and a cat never sings. Some men have been
called cynics from their whelpish ill-temper, but none of them have ever
adopted a real canine snarl, though it might express their feelings
better than human language. Laughter, so far as we can judge, could not
have been obtained by any mere mental exercise, nor would it have come
from imitation, for it is only found in man, the yelping of a hyena
being as different from it as the barking of a dog, or the cackling of
a goose. We may, however, suppose that the first sounds uttered by man
were demonstrative of pain or pleasure, marking a great primary
distinction, which we make in common with all animals. But our next
expression showed superior sensibility and organism: it denoted a very
peculiar perception of the intermingling of pain and pleasure, a
combination of opposite feelings not possessed by other animals, or not
distinct enough in them to have a specific utterance. There might seem
to be something almost physical in the sensation, as it can be excited
by tickling, or the inhalation of gas. Similar results may be produced
by other bodily causes. Homer speaks of the chiefs laughing after a
sumptuous banquet, and of a man "laughing sweetly" when drunk. Bacon's
term _titillatio_, would seem very appropriate in such cases. There was
an idea, in olden times, that laughter emanated from a particular part
of the body. Tasso, in "Jerusalem Delivered," describing the death of
Ardonio, who was slain by a lance, says that it

"Pierced him through the vein
Where laughter has her fountain and her seat,
So that (a dreadful bane)
He laughed for pain, and laughed himself to death."

This idea probably arose from observing the spasmodic power of
laught