When Man Laughs

A gifted woman of letters plunges to the very heart of the human soul in this reflection:

There is a strange psychological phenomenon in which man stands almost alone among all other creatures, one that carries within itself a wondrous secret, provoking bewilderment and amazement.

At times it is loud and at times silent — now indignant, now content.

It appears forever in different colors, and from it all manner of meanings arise.

Each one of its ringing notes reveals to the eye a particular color among its colors, and carries to the soul one of its meanings! Sometimes it is a sigh, when the breast sends it forth to relieve itself of its burdens; sometimes it is a thunderbolt that crushes whatever it falls upon; and sometimes it is a breeze, as though blowing gently from a "fathomless ocean" whose depths have risen, in a serene hour, to its surface, so that it appears plain, wrapped in no obscurity.

Man's laugh! That is the strange psychological phenomenon in which man stands alone among all other creatures!

Man's laugh! Among all the stirrings of the soul, it is the one hedged about with riddles on every side!

What creature has been able to penetrate to the core of its own soul, to sound the depths of the laugh that the breast sends up from it?

What creature has been able to examine closely the buried inner impulses that release the laugh from its bonds and send it forth, now a sigh, now a breeze, now a thunderbolt?

I wish it were given me to contemplate every face on which the lips trace this laugh in each of its states and stirrings, so that I might see its impressions upon that face when it is indignant or content, mocking or angry!

I wish to hear every throat that sends out the ring of this laugh, or bursts it forth in an explosion!

Nay, I wish for more than this! I wish I could touch with my hand the ribs of the heart from which the laugh springs and takes flight, so that I might feel the tremors of the breast as it vents thereby now its joy and now its anguish.

Man laughs because he is alive, and because he is a human being in whose depths life teems in all its difference and variety!

Man laughs in the measure that the feeling of life is strong within him!

He laughs in pain, because he is, as Nietzsche said of him, the only animal conscious of its pain!

He laughs doubting and he laughs weeping — have you not heard the bitterness of doubt spread at times through the ring of his laugh, and the cry of weeping rise out of its peals?

And he laughs mocking, and he laughs in anger! Have you not heard the stings of sarcasm cackle scoffingly through his laugh? And have you not heard the wail of anger resound in the shout of this laugh, setting it rolling in waves through the air as the currents of the atmosphere billow when nature grows angry and quakes?

Man's laugh! That is the strange psychological phenomenon that proclaims his personality and brings out his vitality in all the conditions of life, showing him a human being whose whole frame quivers at every one of life's feelings; showing him a human being who rejoices and suffers, then mocks and doubts, until faith visits him, and then peace of mind!