LAUGHTER AS AN INDEX TO CHARACTER.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5847, 25 December 1879, Page 3

LAUGHTER AS AN INDEX TO CHARACTER.

(From the Oolhe), It was a favorite maxim with Goethe that a man might be known by his laugh. Goethe 1 did not mean to say that a man might be known by what he laughs at, though that sometimes affords a very trustworthy test of character, and one which Steele says he wan wont to depend upon. “fn order to look into any person’s temper,” he remarks, “ I generally make my first observation upon his laugh ; whether he is easily moved, and what are the passages which throw him into shat agreeable kind of convulsion. People ire never so much unguarded,” he continues, as when they are pleased. And laughter )eing a visible symptom of some inward latisfaction, it is then, if ever, we may believe r,he face. There is perhaps no better index to point ua to the particaliarities of the mind than this, which is in itself one of the chief distinctions of our rationality.” But Goethe believed that it was possible to form i pretty safe estimate of a man's character by ois manner of laughing, and few careful ob<ervei.*s will dispute that much, at all events, may be learnt from it. From the cynical unite of Cassius, as described by Shakspere’s Osesar, to the rampant, uproarious guffaw of feufelsdrockh, ,as described by Carlyle, laughter has as many peculiarities of expression as there are peculiarities of miud and mart. “ Paul,” says Carlyle, “in hia serious vay was giving one of those inimitable ‘ extract harangue*. 1 an A an It changed, on ‘h ; proposal or a cast metal king. Gradually a light gathered in our professor’s eyes and face —a learning, mantling, loveliest light; through hose murky features a radiaut ever young \pollo looked, and he burst forth like the aeighing of TattersaU’s—tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloof, foot clutched in the air—loud, loug-continuiog, uncontrollable ; 1 laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, mt of the whole man from head to heel.” Ct was the laugh of a simple, honest, nature, md Sir John Falstaff could no more have augbed so than could lago or Don John, At he same time, it would undoubtedly be a mis--.ake to imagine that turbulent, boisterous aughter is in Itself always, or even generally, a creditable symptom of character. The real, hearty outburst of irrepressible merriment is unquestionably so ; but it has often been remarked by acute observers that uproarious aughter marks the vacant and ill-regulated mind, and that they who are the most, boisterous in their risibility, are often Uwoe vvLj did not smile. With many a forlorn and uneasy wretch the seemingly hearty guffaw is but the vive la bagatelle of a Swift, feeling himself doomed to. hopeless despondency, and struggling to ward it off. Daughter in all its phases is a valuable index of character, but it requires to be intelligently read, and it may be observed that the keenest observers have been wont to mark the smile of a man as a more delicate criterion of character than his laugh. It is interesting to notice with what marvellous skill and effect Shakspere is always employing the smile as an indication of what is within—men’s smiles with daggers in them, the smile of safety, the scattered smile, the modest smile, the dimpled smile, the smile of knaves, the smile mocking, the fawning smiles, enforced smiles; and so on. One might also make out the characters that figure on the stage of the great dramatist by merely noting (his description of their smiles and what they smile at. And as it is on the Shaksperian stage, so it is around us. The light that ever, and anon kindles in the faces we meet is a light called forth by something without, but it comes from within, and the significance and importance of that face is one which all close students of human nature hay© been quick to recognise.