(73) It is not easy to understand how a listener, before the days of shorthand writing, could so fully retail these orations from memory. He professes even to have preserved the different styles of the speakers, and he tells us that the style of Destouches was 'unaffected, pure, graceful, and copious'; that the style of Fontenelle 'showed more of art, was florid, subtle, and elegant'; and that the style of Montesquieu was now grave, now gay, now serious, now sublime.' He adds that all of them amply discussed their theme, and I endorse that opinion. The little book is excellent reading as regards style, and more excellent still as regards matter.

(74) The larger conclusions, which seem to be the outcome of this short study of laughter, are as follows:-

1. That laughter is a state of mental disorder, which is evidenced by the irrational and purposeless phenomena attending it, and the absence during their continuance of all coherent thought.

2. That these short states of mental disorder, which may be very frequent, do not hurt us, but on the contrary do us good.

3. That laughter is not, even usually, the expression of unalloyed pleasure and joy; that on the contrary it very often expresses states of mind which are mean, contemptible, and cruel, the moral faculty being then in abeyance; and that laughter so arising is only pardonable on the view that it is a state of mental disorder.

4. That deep joys are not expressed by laughter.

5. That laughter is not excited in regard to what involves danger or great suffering.

6. That in like manner blows or firm pressure do not tickle and so produce laughter.

7. That there are various kinds of laughter, as, for instance, (1) Laughter as the expression of a mental state; (2) Laughter by infection, not due to the mental state of the laugher; (3) Laughter from tickling certain parts of the skin; (4) Laughter on a threat of tickling, when the laugher is not actually tickled; and (5) Drug-laughter, consequent, for instance, on the inhalation of nitrous oxide gas.

8. That laughter is involuntary, that in a strict sense it is impossible to laugh at will, and that it is very difficult to imitate laughter successfully.

9. That there is a laughter the continuance of which we desire, even though we may be ashamed of its cause, if that cause be closely examined and fully realised.

10. That we always make efforts to avoid tickling and the laughter which follows it.

11. That the provocatives of laughter are not the same at all ages or in all individuals or races.

12. That individuals and races laugh differently from each other, but that the essentials of the phenomena are the same.

13. That apes seem to laugh in a fashion and dogs perhaps show the starting of laughter from tickling, but nevertheless that man may be said to be the only animal that laughs.

14. That there is no essential difference between the laughter of those having all their senses and those deprived from birth of sight or hearing or of both sight and hearing.