er, which was greater formerly than now, and to the same origin we
may attribute the stories of the fatal consequences it has, at times,
produced; of Zeuxis, the painter, having expired in a fit brought on by
contemplating a caricature he had made of an old woman, and of
Franciscus Cosalinus, a learned logician, having thus broken a
blood-vessel, which led to his dying of consumption. Wolfius relates
"that a country bumpkin, called Brunsellius, by chance seeing a woman
asleep at a sermon fall off her seat, was so taken that he laughed for
three days, which weakened him so that he continued for a long time
afterwards in an infirm state."

We must suppose that laughter has always existed in man, at least as
long as he has been physically constituted as he is now, for it might
always have been produced by tickling the papillae of the nerves, which
are said to be more exposed in man than in other animals. When we have
stated the possibility of this pleasurable sensation being awakened
under such circumstances, we have, in fact, asserted that it was in
course of time thus called into existence. But the enjoyment might have
been limited to this low phase, for the mind might have been so vacant,
so deficient in emotion and intelligence that the moral and intellectual
conditions necessary for a higher kind of laughter might have been
wanting. This seems to be the case among some savages at the present
day, such as the New Zealanders and North American Indians. The earliest
laughter did not arise from what we call the ludicrous, but from
something apparently physical--such as touch--though it does not follow
that it would never otherwise have existed at all, for, as the mind more
fully developed itself, facial expressions would flow from superior and
more numerous causes. Nor can we consider that what is properly called
mirth was shown in this primitive physical laughter, which was such as
may be supposed to have existed when darkness was on the face of the
intellectual world. How great, and of what continuance, was this
primeval stagnation must be for ever unknown to us, but it was not
destined to prevail. Light gradually dawned upon the mental wastes, and
they became productive of beauty and order. As greater sensibility
developed itself, emotion began to be expressed; first, probably at an
adult period of life, by the sounds belonging to the corresponding
feelings in the bodily constitution. Tears and cries betoken mental as