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The origin and nature of the emotions; miscellaneous papers . d Fig. 29.—The laugliter of this boy is doulitless the outward physical ex-pression of the motor activation excited by the anticipation of vigorous out-door exercise. When he begins to exercise, this laughter will diminish ordisappear. seriously interfering with the maintenance of , however, is only one form of muscular action whichmay consume the fuel thrown into the blood by these products of excitation are often consumed byother motor acts than laughter is frequently seen in publicmeetings when the
The origin and nature of the emotions; miscellaneous papers . d Fig. 29.—The laugliter of this boy is doulitless the outward physical ex-pression of the motor activation excited by the anticipation of vigorous out-door exercise. When he begins to exercise, this laughter will diminish ordisappear. seriously interfering with the maintenance of , however, is only one form of muscular action whichmay consume the fuel thrown into the blood by these products of excitation are often consumed byother motor acts than laughter is frequently seen in publicmeetings when the stamping of feet and the clapping ofhands in applause gives relief to the excitation (Fig. 30). 96 THE EMOTIONS. iir - y. Q H Z -f y. o H ^ 0^ o H > ?/_ ^ H -i ~t Uh Ch ;,- It •a a PAIN, LAUGHTER, AND CRYING 97 Why the noise of laughter? In order that the products ofexcitation may be quickly and completely consumed, thepowerful group of expiratory muscles must have some re-sistance against which they can exert themselves stronglyand at the same time provide for adequate respiratory^ ex-change. The intermittent closure of the epiglottis servesthis purpose admirably, just as the horizontal bars afford theresistance against which muscles may be exercised. Thefacial muscles are not in use for other purposes, hence theircontractions will consume a little of the fuel. An audienceexcited by the words of an impassioned speaker undergoesa body-wide stimulation for action, all of which may beeliminated by laughter or by applause (Fig. 31). Let us test this hypothesis by some practical first is an incident that accidentally occurred in ourlaboratory during experiments on fear which were
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubject, booksubjectemotions