What is Laughter?

130. How Pain to the Eye Induces Tears

The vapors exiting the eyes turn into tears due to 2 causes:

1. When the structure of the pores through which they pass is altered by some accident.

This alteration slows the movement of these vapors and changes their order, causing them to convert into water. Hence, even a speck falling into the eye can elicit tears, because it induces pain, altering the disposition of its pores.

Some pores narrow, causing the vapors’ tiny particles to pass more slowly. Previously evenly spaced, they now collide due to the disruption of pore order, thereby combining and turning into tears.

131. How Sadness Leads to Crying

2. Sadness, accompanied by love, joy, or generally by some factor

This causes the heart to push a lot of blood through the arteries.

Sadness is necessary because it cools the blood, narrowing the eye’s pores.

However, as it constricts the eye’s pores, it also reduces the amount of vapors needing passage. These are insufficient to produce tears unless the amount of these vapors is concurrently increased by some other cause.

The blood sent to the heart in the passion of love increases them the most.

Those who are sad do not continually shed tears, only intermittently when they reflect anew on the objects they cherish.

132. Moans Accompanying Tears

Sometimes, the lungs suddenly swell due to an abundance of blood entering and displacing the air they contain.

This air, escaping through the windpipe, generates moans and cries typically accompanying tears.

These cries are usually sharper than those accompanying laughter, although produced in a similar manner.

There are nerves that govern the expansion or contraction of voice organs, making it deeper or higher-pitched.

These are linked with the nerves opening the heart’s openings during joy and constricting them during sadness. This simultaneously expands or contracts these organs.

133. Why Children and Elderly Cry Easily

Children and the elderly are more prone to crying than those in middle age, but for different reasons.

The elderly often cry from affection and joy because these 2 emotions together send a lot of blood to their hearts and hence a lot of vapors to their eyes.

These vapors’ agitation is sufficiently delayed by their cool temperament, easily converting them into tears, even without preceding sadness.

If some elderly cry readily out of annoyance, it’s more a reflection of their spirit than their body’s temperament, showing they are so weak that small sources of grief, fear, or pity can entirely overwhelm them.

The same applies to children, who rarely cry from joy but more often from sadness, even without accompanying love. They always have enough blood to produce many vapors, the movement of which sadness delays, converting them into tears.

134. Why Some Children Pale Instead of Crying.

However, some children pale instead of crying when upset, which may indicate exceptional judgment and courage in them.

This occurs when they consider the magnitude of the trouble and prepare for strong resistance, much like older individuals.

Yet, it’s more often a sign of bad temperament when they incline toward hatred or fear, as these emotions reduce tear production.

Conversely, those who cry easily are inclined toward love and pity.

135. Sighs

The cause of sighs differs greatly from that of tears, though both presuppose sadness.

Tears are prompted when the lungs are full of blood.

Sighs are prompted when the lungs are nearly empty, and some hope or joy prompts the opening of the veinous artery that sadness has narrowed.

Then, the little blood remaining in the lungs suddenly falls into the heart’s left side through this veinous artery, pushed by the desire to attain this joy, which simultaneously agitates all the muscles of the diaphragm and chest.

Air is quickly pushed through the mouth into the lungs, filling the space left by this blood.

136. The Specific Effects of Passions on Certain Individuals

Our soul is so connected to our body. After we have associated a bodily action with a thought, one does not present itself to us without the other.

The same thoughts are not always associated with the same actions.

Some people have strange aversions such as an inability to tolerate:

• the smell of roses or
• the presence of a cat

These stem from early life experiences where they were greatly offended by similar objects or empathized with their mother’s discomfort during pregnancy.

There is a correlation between all movements of the mother and those of the child in her womb, so what is adverse to one can be detrimental to the other.

The smell of roses might have caused a severe headache for a child while still in the cradle.

A cat might have frightened them greatly, without anyone taking note or them having any subsequent memory of it.

Nonetheless, the aversion they then felt toward roses or cats remains imprinted in their brain for their entire life.

137. The Use of the Five Passions Discussed Here, in Relation to the Body.

What is the use of Love, Hate, Desire, Joy, and Sadness?

According to Nature’s design, they all relate to the body. They are given to the soul only insofar as it is connected with it.

Therefore, their natural use is to prompt the soul to consent and contribute to actions that can either:

• preserve the body or
• make it more perfect in some way.

In this sense, Sadness and Joy are the first two passions employed.

The soul is only immediately alerted to things that are harmful to the body by the pain it feels. This pain:

• first produces Sadness
• then it is followed by hatred for what causes this pain
• finally, the desire to rid oneself of it.

Similarly, the soul is only immediately alerted to things beneficial to the body by some kind of pleasurable sensation. This pleasure:

• first arouses Joy
• then gives rise to love for what is believed to be its cause
• finally, the desire to acquire what can perpetuate this Joy

This shows that all 5 are very useful concerning the body.

Sadness is somewhat more primary and necessary than Joy.

Hatred is more so than Love, because it is more important to repel things that are harmful and can destroy than to acquire things that add some perfection without which one can exist.