ch move the face in laughter
are wanting in them. A planter induced some of these people to camp in
his "compound," or park, in order to learn something of their habits,
language, and beliefs. One day he said to the chief man of the little
tribe, "You Veddas never laugh. Why do you never laugh?" The little
wild man replied, "It is true; we never laugh. What is there for us to
laugh at?"--an answer almost terrible in its pathetic submission to a
joyless life. For laughter is primarily, to all races and conditions
of men, the accompaniment, the expression of the simple joy of life.
It has acquired a variety of relations and significations in the
course of the long development of conscious man--but primarily it is
an expression of emotion, set going by the experience of the
elementary joys of life--the light and heat of the sun, the approach
of food, of love of triumph.

Before we look further into the matter it is well to note some
exceptional cases of the causation of laughter. The first of these is
the excitation of laughter by a purely mechanical "stimulus" or action
from the exterior, without any corresponding mental emotion of
joy--namely by "tickling," that is to say, by light rubbing or
touching of the skin under the arms or at the side of the neck, or on
the soles of the feet. Yet a certain readiness to respond is necessary
on the part of the person who is "tickled," for, although an unwilling
subject may be thus made to laugh, yet there are conditions of mind
and of body in which "tickling" produces no response. I do not propose
to discuss why it is that "tickling," or gentle friction of the skin
produces laughter. It is probably one of those cases in which a
mechanism of the living body is set to work, as a machine may be, by
directly causing the final movement (say the turning of a wheel), for
the production of which a special train of apparatus, to be started by
the letting loose of a spring or the turning of a steam-cock, is
provided, and in ordinary circumstance is the regular mode in which
the working of the mechanism is started. The apparatus of laughter is
when due to "tickling" set at work by a short cut to the nerves and
related muscles without recourse to the normal emotional steam-cock.

Then we have laughter which is purely due to imitation and suggestion.
People laugh because others are laughing, without knowing why. This
throws a good deal of light on the significance of laughter. It is
essential