LAUGHTER .

Colonist, Volume LIV, Issue 13418, 16 May 1912, Page 3

LAUGHTER .

Laughter, writes Sir Ray Lankester in the "Daily Telegraph," is in its essence and origin a communication or expression to others of tho joyous ■mood of the laughter: Thcro are many and strangely varied occasions upon which laughter s-sizes on man, and it is inter-

esting to sec how far they can bo explained by this conception of the primary and essential nature of the laugh, for many of them seem at first sight remote from it.

Thero is, first of all, tho laughter of revivification and escape from death or danger. After railway accidents, earthquakes, and such terrible occurrences, those who have been in great danger often burst into laughter. The nervous balance has boon upset by the shock (we call them "shocking accidents"'), and tho emotional joy of escape, tho joy of recuvored life, asserts itself in what appears to tho onlooker to be an unseemly, an unfeelingly laugh. One of the entombed French coalmincrs, who two years ago were imprisoned without food or light for 20 days a thousand feet below in the bowels of the earth, is recorded as having burst into a ghastly laugh when he was rescued and brought to the

upper air once more,

Tho Greeks and Romans in some of their festal ceremonies made tho priest or actor who represented dead nature returning to life in the spring, burst into a laugh a ceremonial, or "ritual" laugh. Our poets spoak of tho smiles, and even of the laughter of spring, and that is why laughter is appropriate to Now Year's Day. It is tho laughter of escape from tho death of winter and to return to life, for tho true and oldestablished New Year's Day was not in midwinter, but a quarter of a year later, when buds and flowers are bursting into life.

It is recorded by ancient writers that tho "ritual laugh" was enforced by the Sardinians and others, who habitually killed their old people (their parents) upon their altars. Thoy smiled and laughed as part of tho ceremony, tho executioners also smiling. Tho old peopta were suposed to laupgh with joy at tho revivification which was in storo for them in a future state. So too, tho Hindoo widows used to lea ugh when seated on the funeral pyro ready to be

burnt

So, too, is explained (by Xleinach) the laughter of Joan of Arc when she made her abjuration in front of the faggots which were to burn her to death.. Her laugh was caused by tho thought of her escape from persecution and of the joyful resurrection soon to come.