Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. We weep at what exceeds our expectations in serious matters; we laugh at what disappoints our expectations in trifles. We shed tears from sympathy with real and necessary distress, as we burst into laughter from want of sympathy with that which is unreasonable and unnecessary.
Tears are the natural and involuntary response of the mind overcome by some sudden and violent emotion. Laughter is the same sort of convulsive and involuntary movement, occasioned by mere surprise or contrast.
The serious is the stress which the mind lays upon the expectation of a given order of events and the weight attached to them. When this stress is increased beyond its usual intensity and strains the feelings by the violent opposition of good and bad, it becomes the tragic. The ludicrous is the unexpected relaxing of this stress below its usual intensity, by an abrupt transposition of ideas that takes the mind by surprise and startles it into a lively sense of pleasure.
The author implies that animals lack the ability to
The author implies animals cannot laugh or weep, so the answer is laugh or weep.
The passage opens by saying man is the only animal that laughs and weeps.
This directly implies that other animals lack the ability to laugh or weep.
The reason given is that only man is struck by the gap between what is and what ought to be.
The passage says nothing about animals perceiving human emotion.
It also does not discuss animals evoking sorrow or laughter in humans.
So the only ability the passage denies to animals is that of laughing or weeping.
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