The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-09-01
PHILOSOPHY OF LAUGHTER
IT IS GOOD FOR BOTH THE MIND
And the Body and Re:reahes ths
 Spirit.

Again, word about the philosophy
 of laughter. When the system is
 nerEed and is making conscious or nn- conscious effort, the nerves that tight
 en the walls of the blood vessels are hard at work, and pressure in the ar teries is great; but a hearty laugh, as Brucke's interesting experiments show. tends to bring the blood over into the veins where there is no pressure, re- Heves the arteries and brings the ex-
 quisite sensations of relaxation and
 rest. This is favored even by the at
 titude of hearty laugh. To draw in a
 full breath, throw back the head,
 open the mouth and let the expiration 1 'guTgle forth with sonorOus intermit- tence, to quote a phrase philosophy
 of Laughter" and so do it again and again. slowly throws off the chains of the worlds great taskmaster and brings us back, back toward the ] primeval paradise, where there was nothing but joy. and sin and sorrow
 were unknown.
 Once more. optimism is one of the : supreme sedatives. There are men who
 worry because the sun will some time
 go out and the earth grow dead and cold like the moon; or the coal measure be exhausted: or the fertile areas of
 the world dry up because of the l denudation of forests, but the philoso- ] phy of health is that the best things have not happened. that mans history
 has only just begun. that, on the whole, there has been steady progress. that in
 virtue, comfort, knowledge. arts, re- ligion and nearly, if not quite. all the l esentials of the further development of 1 man, faith in human nature and belief 1 in future better than the present is
 the conclusion of every philosophy of
 development and evolution. It is our good fortune to live in day of the evolution of evolution, and this is given
 a new meaning to the very word progress and makes us feel that the world is rational and beneficent to the core, and that where conscious purpose
 and effort fail we sink back into ever lasting arms. This is a sensifying point 1 of view authorized now by both science
 and religion, and is a good psychic state to sleep on or in which to enter
 the great rest
 The idea of the kingdom of God is
 net yet realized. It makes the op-
 tinistic assumption that the human race as aw hole is ascepdant, not de-
 scendant, and that society is in the
 making, not moribund. Again. it is not
 content with the less .discouraging
 philosophy of history that assumes
 that everything is good and great that can happen or be done in the world of
 men has already occurred, that Eden 1 has bloomed and faded, and if it comes again win be only because history Is
 made up of cycles in the sense of either
 Plato or Herder; that periods of great
 reform and advance can never present
 anything of importance that is new,
 but only undergo a palingenesis in- definitely repeated. Lotze says that we must not envy our more fortunate descendants in the future, but only
 serve them, for God loves man at all
 stakes alike. Weiss interprets the
 kingdom as meaning worthy close of
 the historic stadia, perhaps sub specie aeternitatis: that the personality of fman is Gods greatest work; that we should rejoice that others. who come after, can stand upon our shoulders,
 and that no ultimate good Is lost for
 the early workers in the historic field
 to which we should subordinate our i selves as we love to do for our cfil-
 dren.--G. Stanley Hall In Ainslee's.