Lastly, this larger consideration of the subject will, we shall probably find, take us to an examination of certain ethical or practical questions, _viz._, the value which is to be assigned to the laughing propensity, and the proper limits to be set to its indulgence. The subject so conceived is a large and complex one, and it will be hard to deal with it at once thoughtfully and familiarly, with the genuine ring of laughter ever present to the ear. The present writer will account himself happy if, in a line where so many appear to have missed success, he attain to a moderate measure of it. {25} CHAPTER II. THE SMILE AND THE LAUGH. To treat the facts with proper respect seems to be more than ordinarily incumbent on us in dealing with the nature and the significance of our laughter. This means, as already hinted, that some inquiry be made into the act of laughing itself, the manner of it, and the circumstances which accompany it, and that this inquiry be carried out in the most comprehensive way possible. We grave elders are wont to think of laughing and smiling as something quite occasional, a momentary lapse once in a while from the persistent attitude of seriousness. This view is apt to be expressed in too unqualified a form. Simple types of humanity, the child and the savage, frequently show us mirthful laughter filling a much larger space in the day’s hours than our view would suggest. A jolly boy, the subject of chronic high spirits, which are apt to try the patience of sedate seniors, might perhaps say—if indeed he could be brought to frame a theory of life—that laughing is the proper way to pass the time, and that seriousness is a tiresome necessity which can be tolerated only now and again. And in any case such a view might be said to represent the mental attitude of those happy idiots and imbeciles of whom we read that they “are persistently joyous and {26} benign,” and constantly laughing or smiling, and that “their countenances often exhibit a stereotyped smile”.[12] Yet, attractive as this theory may be for a lover of laughter, it cannot well adjust itself to stern physiological facts. The full process of laughter is, like coughing, sobbing and other actions, a violent interruption of the rhythmic flow of the respiratory movements. As such, its function in the human organism seems to be limited to that of an occasional spurt. Even a perpetual smile, quite apart from its insipidity for others than the smiler, would, strictly speaking, hardly be compatible with the smooth on-flow of the vital processes. What has been named the “everlasting barren simper” does not really amount to this. The Smile and the Laugh, viewed as physiological events, stand in the closest relation one to the other. A smile is, as we shall see, rightly regarded as an incomplete laugh. Hence we shall do well to study the two together.