citement facilitates digestion.

* * * * *

Though in doing so I go beyond the boundaries of the immediate topic, I
may fitly point out that the method of inquiry here followed, is one
which enables us to understand various phenomena besides those of
laughter. To show the importance of pursuing it, I will indicate the
explanation it furnishes of another familiar class of facts.

All know how generally a large amount of emotion disturbs the action of
the intellect, and interferes with the power of expression. A speech
delivered with great facility to tables and chairs, is by no means so
easily delivered to an audience. Every schoolboy can testify that his
trepidation, when standing before a master, has often disabled him from
repeating a lesson which he had duly learnt. In explanation of this we
commonly say that the attention is distracted--that the proper train of
ideas is broken by the intrusion of ideas that are irrelevant. But the
question is, in what manner does unusual emotion produce this effect;
and we are here supplied with a tolerably obvious answer. The repetition
of a lesson, or set speech previously thought out, implies the flow of a
very moderate amount of nervous excitement through a comparatively
narrow channel. The thing to be done is simply to call up in succession
certain previously-arranged ideas--a process in which no great amount of
mental energy is expended. Hence, when there is a large quantity of
emotion, which must be discharged in some direction or other; and when,
as usually happens, the restricted series of intellectual actions to be
gone through, does not suffice to carry it off; there result discharges
along other channels besides the one prescribed: there are aroused
various ideas foreign to the train of thought to be pursued; and these
tend to exclude from consciousness those which should occupy it.

And now observe the meaning of those bodily actions spontaneously set up
under these circumstances. The school-boy saying his lesson commonly has
his fingers actively engaged--perhaps in twisting about a broken pen, or
perhaps squeezing the angle of his jacket; and if told to keep his hands
still, he soon again falls into the same or a similar trick. Many
anecdotes are current of public speakers having incurable automatic
actions of this class: barristers who perpetually wound and unwound
pieces of tape; members of parliament ever putting on and taking off
t