LAUGHTER AND WHAT IT IS.
A NEW THEORY
NATURE'S GIFT
(Times —Sydney Sun Special Cables.) Received 8 p.m., September 13. LONDON, September 23. Before the British Association, Dr. McDougall, of Oxford, submitted a new theory on luaghter^. He argued that laughter was primarily and fundamentally the antidote of sympathy. Sympathetic tendencies were of the first importance for social life. It would be a serious disadvantage if each man had to suffer all those minor pains wherefrom liis fellows ailed. The cumulative effect of many slight pains would seriously lower his vitality. Hence social habits required an antidote or preventive there. The sympathetic pains of nature therefore created laughter as a protective reaction against them.
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Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 19897, 15 September 1913, Page 5
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114LAUGHTER AND WHAT IT IS. Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 19897, 15 September 1913, Page 5
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