tire catalogue of the
vanities given by Solomon, are all incongruous, but they cause feelings
of pain, anger, sadness, loathing, rather than mirth." Now in these
cases, where the totally unlike state of consciousness suddenly produced
is not inferior in mass to the preceding one, the conditions to laughter
are not fulfilled. As above shown, laughter naturally results only when
consciousness is unawares transferred from great things to small--only
when there is what we call a _descending_ incongruity.

And now observe, finally, the fact, alike inferable _a priori_ and
illustrated in experience, that an _ascending_ incongruity not only
fails to cause laughter, but works on the muscular system an effect of
exactly the reverse kind. When after something very insignificant there
arises without anticipation something very great, the emotion we call
wonder results; and this emotion is accompanied not by an excitement of
the muscles, but by a relaxation of them. In children and country
people, that falling of the jaw which occurs on witnessing something
that is imposing and unexpected exemplifies this effect. Persons who
have been wonder-struck at the production of very striking results by a
seemingly inadequate cause, are frequently described as unconsciously
dropping the things they held in their hands. Such are just the effects
to be anticipated. After an average state of consciousness, absorbing
but a small quantity of nervous energy, is aroused without the slightest
notice, a strong emotion of awe, terror, or admiration, joined with the
astonishment due to an apparent want of adequate causation. This new
state of consciousness demands far more nervous energy than that which
it has suddenly replaced; and this increased absorption of nervous
energy in mental changes involves a temporary diminution of the outflow
in other directions: whence the pendent jaw and the relaxing grasp.

One further observation is worth making. Among the several sets of
channels into which surplus feeling might be discharged, was named the
nervous system of the viscera. The sudden overflow of an arrested mental
excitement, which, as we have seen, results from a descending
incongruity, must doubtless stimulate not only the muscular system, as
we see it does, but also the internal organs; the heart and stomach must
come in for a share of the discharge. And thus there seems to be a good
physiological basis for the popular notion that mirth-creating
ex