“Oh,” you will say, “I laugh because I am happy or amused!”
Which may be very true, but your simple reply does not quite answer our
question. You may also laugh in derision or disdain, you may laugh when
at play, you may laugh at something novel, from a sense of freedom,
from the mere joy of living, or even at the misfortune of another--as
you so often do when looking at slap-stick comedy. So there are many
kinds of laughs, all of which are due to varying causes.
There are probably two main causes for all laughter. One is physical,
or rather physiological; the other is mental or emotional. When we
laugh in play, or because we “feel good,” this is due to superabundance
of energy. It is always the robust, hearty man who laughs, though his
crabbed, anaemic brother rarely does. This energy can find a ready
outlet in no other manner, so finds its expression in smiles and
laughter.
Comedy situations of any sort--on the stage or screen or in real
life--cause laughter because they release, in an individual this spring
of reserve energy. Laughter follows. This spring of reserve is loosed
when the sense of the comic, the ludicrous or the absurd is touched.
And this brings us to the mental factor.
Why does anything strike us as particularly “funny”? Many things do
merely because they are unusual or novel (different clothes), or
because we see someone finding it difficult to perform an action we
could easily perform, (lifting some light object), or because some man
is abnormally stupid or foolish or ignorant. The source of laughter
in all such cases is the same; we feel a sense of superiority over
that individual, and laughter arises from our consciousness of our
superiority. We laugh from strength, at weakness. It is ultimately a
case of the “survival of the fittest.” It is biological.