CAUSE OF LAUGHTER.
This has been partly explained by Beattie, partly by Hobbes; and it is
chiefly to vindicate the latter, who knew much more of the human mind than
the people who have attacked him, that I write the pages immediately
following.
Speaking of the quality in things, which makes them provoke the pleasing
emotion or sentiment of which laughter is the external sign, Beattie says:
"It is an uncommon mixture of relation and contrariety, exhibited, or
supposed to be united, in the same assemblage." And elsewhere he says:
"Laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or
incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one complex
object or assemblage, or as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the
peculiar manner in which the mind takes notice of them."
"The latter may arise from contiguity, from the relation of cause and
effect, from unexpected likeness, from dignity and meanness, from
absurdity, &c.
"Thus, at first view, the dawn of the morning and a boiled lobster seem
utterly incongruous, but when a change of color from black to red is
suggested, we recognise a likeness, and consequently a relation, or ground
of comparison.
"And here let it be observed, that the greater the number of incongruities
that are blended in the same assemblage, the more ludicrous it will
probably be. If, as in the last example, there be an opposition of dignity
and meanness, as well as of likeness and dissimilitude, the effect of the
contrast will be more powerful, than if only one of these oppositions had
appeared in the ludicrous idea."
The first part of the subject seems, indeed, so clear as to admit of no
objection.
Hobbes, viewing more particularly the act of the mind, defines laughter to
be a "sudden glory, arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in
ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own
formerly." And elsewhere he says: "Men laugh at jests, the wit whereof
always consisteth in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds,
some absurdity of another."[18]
Dr. Campbell objects that "contempt may be raised in a very high degree,
both suddenly and unexpectedly, without producing the least tendency to
laugh." But if there exist that incongruity in the same assemblage
described as the fundamental cause of this sudden conception of our own
superiority, laughter, as Beattie has shown, "will always, or for the most
part, excite the risible emotion, unless when the perception of it is
attended with some other emotion of greater authority," dependant on
custom, politeness, &c.
Dr. Campbell also observes, that "laughter may be, and is daily, produced
by the perception of incongruous associations, when there is no contempt.
"We often smile at a witty performance or passage, such as Butler's
allusion to a boiled lobster, in his picture of the morning, when we are
so far from conceiving any inferiority or turpitude in the author, that
we greatly admire his genius, and wish ourselves possessed of that very
turn of fancy which produced the drollery in question.
"Many have laughed at the queerness of the comparison in these lines,
'For rhyme the rudder is of verses,
With which like ships they steer their courses,'
who never dreamed that there was any person or party, practice or opinion,
derided in them.
"If any admirer of the Hobbesian philosophy should pretend to discover
some class of men whom the poet here meant to ridicule, he ought to
consider, that if any one hath been tickled with the passage to whom the
same thought never occurred, that single instance would be sufficient to
subvert the doctrine, as it would show that there may be laughter where
there is no triumph or glorying over anybody, and, consequently, no
conceit of one's own superiority.
Now, the class of men laughed at in both cases is the same, namely, poets,
whose lofty allusions are ridiculed by the former, and silly rhymes by the
latter; nor can any one duly appreciate or be pleased with either, to whom
this intention of the writer is not obvious. Who ever dreamed of
"turpitude in the author," as Dr. Campbell supposes!
"As to the wag," says Beattie, "who amuses himself on the first of April
with telling lies, he must be shallow, indeed, if he hope, by so doing, to
acquire any superiority over another man whom he knows to be wiser and
better than himself; for, on these occasions, the greatness of the joke,
and the loudness of the laugh, are, if I rightly remember, in exact
proportion to the sagacity of the person imposed on."--No doubt; but it is
because he is thrown into an apparent and whimsical, though momentary
inferiority; and the greater his sagacity, the more amusing does this
appear.
"Do we not," says he, "sometimes laugh at fortuitous combinations, in
which, as no mental energy is concerned in producing them, there cannot be
either fault or turpitude? Could not one imagine a set of people jumbled
together by accident, so as to present a laughable group to those who know
their characters?"--Undoubtedly; but then the slouch of one, and the
rigidity of the other, &c., make both contemptible, as to physical
characteristics at least, and there is no need of turpitude in either.
The strongest apparent objection, however, is that of Dr. Campbell, who
says: "Indeed, men's telling their own blunders, even blunders recently
committed, and laughing at them, a thing not uncommon in very risible
dispositions, is utterly inexplicable upon Hobbes's system. For, to
consider the thing only with regard to the laugher himself, there is to
him no subject of glorying, that is not counterbalanced by an equal
subject of humiliation (he being both the person laughing, and the person
laughed at), and these two subjects must destroy one another."
But he overlooks the precise terms employed by Hobbes, who says: "The
passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory, arising from a
sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the
infirmity of others, or with _our own formerly_. For men laugh at _the
follies of themselves past_, when they come suddenly to remembrance,
_except they bring with them any present dishonor_."
It is not therefore true, as Dr. Campbell says, that "with regard to
others, he appears solely under the notion of inferiority, as the person
triumphed over." He, on the contrary, appears as achieving a very glorious
triumph, that, namely, over his own errors.
This shows also the error of Addison's remarks, that "according to this
account, when we hear a man laugh excessively, instead of saying that he
is very merry, we ought to tell him that he is very proud."--A man may
contemn the errors both of himself and others, without pride: and, indeed,
in contemning the former, he proves himself to be far above that
sentiment, and verifies Dr. Campbell's remark that no two characters more
rarely meet in the same person, than that of a very risible man, and a
very self-conceited supercilious man.
It is curious to see a great man, like Hobbes, thus attacked by less ones,
who do not even understand him.