LAUGHTER
The ancients associated laughter with the New Year. I am not sure
whether or no it is of good omen to begin the New Year with laughter.
Omens are such tricky things that I have given up paying any attention
to them. One would think it might be held to be unlucky to stumble on
the doorstep as you set out from home, but the old omen-wizards,
apparently from sheer love of contradiction, said, "Not at all! It is
unlucky to stumble as you come into the house, and therefore it is
lucky to stumble as you go out!"
What is laughter? It is a spasmodic movement of various muscles of the
body, beginning with those which half close the eyes and those which
draw backwards and upwards the sides of the mouth, and open it so as
to expose the teeth, next affecting those of respiration so as to
produce short rapidly succeeding expirations accompanied by sound
(called "guffaws" when in excess) and then extending to the limbs,
causing up and down movement of the half-closed fists and stamping of
the feet, and ending in a rolling on the ground and various
contortions of the body. Clapping the hands is not part of the
laughter "process," but a separate, often involuntary, action which
has the calling of attention to oneself as its explanation, just as
slapping the ground or a table or one's thigh has. Laughter is
spontaneous, that is to say, the movements are not designed or
directed by the conscious will. But in mankind, in proportion as
individuals are trained in self-control, it is more or less completely
under command, and in spite of the most urgent tendency of the
automatic mechanism to enter upon the progressive series of movements
which we distinguish as (1) smile, (2) broad smile or grin, (3)
laugh, (4) loud laughter, (5) paroxysms of uncontrolled laughter, a
man or woman can prevent all indication by muscular movement of a
desire to laugh or even to smile. Usually laughter is excited by
certain pleasurable emotions, and is to be regarded as an "expression"
of such emotion just as certain movements and the flow of tears are an
"expression" of the painful emotion of grief and physical suffering,
and as other movements of the face and limbs are an "expression" of
anger, others of "fear." The Greek gods of Olympus enjoyed
"inextinguishable laughter."
It is interesting to see how far we can account for the strange
movements of laughter as part of the inherited automatic mechanism of
man. Why do we laugh? What is the advantage to the individual or the
species of "laughing"? Why do we "express" our pleasurable emotion and
why in this way? It is said that the outcast diminutive race of Ceylon
known as the Veddas never laugh, and it has even been seriously but
erroneously stated that the muscles which move the face in laughter
are wanting in them. A planter induced some of these people to camp in
his "compound," or park, in order to learn something of their habits,
language, and beliefs. One day he said to the chief man of the little
tribe, "You Veddas never laugh. Why do you never laugh?" The little
wild man replied, "It is true; we never laugh. What is there for us to
laugh at?"--an answer almost terrible in its pathetic submission to a
joyless life. For laughter is primarily, to all races and conditions
of men, the accompaniment, the expression of the simple joy of life.
It has acquired a variety of relations and significations in the
course of the long development of conscious man--but primarily it is
an expression of emotion, set going by the experience of the
elementary joys of life--the light and heat of the sun, the approach
of food, of love of triumph.
Before we look further into the matter it is well to note some
exceptional cases of the causation of laughter. The first of these is
the excitation of laughter by a purely mechanical "stimulus" or action
from the exterior, without any corresponding mental emotion of
joy--namely by "tickling," that is to say, by light rubbing or
touching of the skin under the arms or at the side of the neck, or on
the soles of the feet. Yet a certain readiness to respond is necessary
on the part of the person who is "tickled," for, although an unwilling
subject may be thus made to laugh, yet there are conditions of mind
and of body in which "tickling" produces no response. I do not propose
to discuss why it is that "tickling," or gentle friction of the skin
produces laughter. It is probably one of those cases in which a
mechanism of the living body is set to work, as a machine may be, by
directly causing the final movement (say the turning of a wheel), for
the production of which a special train of apparatus, to be started by
the letting loose of a spring or the turning of a steam-cock, is
provided, and in ordinary circumstance is the regular mode in which
the working of the mechanism is started. The apparatus of laughter is
when due to "tickling" set at work by a short cut to the nerves and
related muscles without recourse to the normal emotional steam-cock.
Then we have laughter which is purely due to imitation and suggestion.
People laugh because others are laughing, without knowing why. This
throws a good deal of light on the significance of laughter. It is
essentially a social appeal and response. Only in rare cases do people
laugh when they are alone. Under conditions which in the presence of
others would cause them to laugh they only "chuckle" or smile, and
may, though ready to burst into laughter, not even exhibit its minor
expressions when alone. On the other hand, some sane people have the
habit of laughing aloud when alone, and there is a recognised form of
idiocy which is accompanied by incessant laughter, ceasing only with
sleep. Then there is that peculiar condition of laughter which is
called "giggling," which is laughter asserting itself in spite of
efforts made to restrain it, and frequently only because the occasion
is one when the "giggler" is especially anxious not to laugh. This
kind of "inverted suggestion," as in the case where an individual
"blurts out" the very word or phrase which he is anxious not to use,
is obviously not primitive, but connected with the long training and
drilling of mankind into approved "behaviour" by "taboos" and
restrictive injunctions. Efforts to behave correctly, by causing
anxiety and mental disturbance in excitable or so-called "nervous"
subjects, lead to an over mastering impulse to do the very thing which
must not be done!
It seems that laughter has its origin far back in the animal ancestry
of man, and is essentially an expression to others of the joy and
exhilaration felt by the laugher. It is an appeal through the eye and
ear for sympathy and comradeship in enjoyment. Its use to social
animals is in the binding together of the members of a group or
society in common feeling and action. Many monkeys laugh, some of them
grinning so as to show the teeth, partly opening the mouth and making
sounds by spasmodic breathing, identical with those made by man. I
have seen and heard the chimpanzees at the Zoological Gardens laugh
like children at the approach of their friend and my friend, the
distinguished naturalist, Mr. George Boulenger, F.R.S., recognising
him among the crowd in front of their cage when he was still far off.
And I have often made chimpanzees laugh--"roar with laughter," and
roll over in excitement--by tickling them under the arms. The saying
of Aristotle (inscribed over the curtain of the Palais Royal Theatre
in Paris) that "Laughter is better than tears, because laughter is the
speciality of man," is not true. Not only do the higher apes and some
of the smaller monkeys laugh, but dogs also laugh, although they do
not make sounds whilst indulging in "spasms of laughter." But their
distant cousin, the hyena, does laugh aloud, and its laughter agrees
with that of the dog and with the laughter of children and grown men
in simpler moods in that it is caused by the pleasurable emotion set
up by the imminent gratification of a healthy desire. The hyena
laughs, the dog grins and bounds, the child laughs and jumps for joy
at the approach of something good to eat. But it is a curious fact
that the whole attitude is changed when the food is within reach, and
the serious business of consuming it has commenced! Nor, indeed, is
the satisfaction which is felt after the gratification of appetite
accompanied by laughter. It seems that the display of the teeth by
drawing back the corners of the mouth, which is called a "grin," and
is associated in many dogs with a short, sharp, demonstrative bark,
and in mankind with the cackle we call a "laugh," is a retention, a
survival, of the playful, good-natured movement of gently biting or
pulling a companion with the teeth used by our animal ancestors to
draw attention to their joy and to communicate it to others. Gradually
it has lost the actual character of a friendly bite; the fore-feet or
hand pull instead of the teeth; the sound emitted has become further
differentiated from other sounds made by the animal. But the movement
for the display of the teeth, though no longer needed as a part of the
act of gripping, remains as an understood and universal indication of
joy and kindly feeling. So universal is it that this friendly display
of the teeth under the name "smile" is attributed to Nature, to
Fortune, and to deities by all races of men when those powers seem to
favour them.
Laughter is, then, in its essence and origin, a communication or
expression to others of the joyous mood of the laugher. There are many
and strangely varied occasions when laughter seizes on man, and it is
interesting to see how far they can be explained by this conception of
the primary and essential nature of the laugh, for many of them seem
at first sight remote from it. There is, first of all, the laughter of
revivification and escape from death or danger. After railway
accidents, earthquakes, and such terrible occurrences, those who have
been in great danger often burst into laughter. The nervous balance
has been upset by the shock (we call them "shocking accidents"), and
the emotional joy of escape, the joy of recovered life, asserts itself
in what appears to the onlooker to be an unseemly, an unfeeling laugh.
It is recorded that one of the entombed French coal miners, who two
years ago were imprisoned without food or light for twenty days a
thousand feet below in the bowels of the earth, burst into a ghastly
laugh when he was rescued and brought to the upper air once more. The
Greeks and Romans in some of their festal ceremonies made the priest
or actor who represented dead nature returning to life in the spring,
burst into a laugh--a ceremonial or "ritual" laugh. Our poets speak of
the smiles, and even of the laughter of spring, and that is why
laughter is appropriate to New Year's Day. It is the laughter of
escape from the death of winter and of return to life, for the true
and old-established New Year's Day was not in mid-winter, but a
quarter of a year later, when buds and flowers are bursting into life.
It is recorded by ancient writers that the "ritual laugh" was enforced
by the Sardinians and others who habitually killed their old people
(their parents) upon their victims. They smiled and laughed as part of
the ceremony, the executioners also smiling. The old people were
supposed to laugh with joy at the revivification which was in store
for them in a future state. So, too, the Hindoo widows used to laugh
when seated on the funeral pyre ready to be burnt. So, too, is
explained (by Reinach) the laughter of Joan of Arc when she made her
abjuration in front of the faggots which were to burn her to death.
Her laugh was caused by the thought of her escape from persecution and
of the joyful resurrection soon to come. It was not an indication that
she was not serious, and that her abjuration of witchcraft was a
farce, as her enemies asserted.
More difficult to explain is the laughter excited by scenes or
narrations which we call ludicrous, funny, grotesque, comic; and still
more so the derisive and contemptuous laugh. Caricature or burlesque
of well known men is a favourite method of producing laughter among
savages as well as civilised peoples. Why do we laugh when a man on
the stage searches everywhere for his hat, which is all the time on
his head? Why do we laugh when a pompous gentleman slips on a piece of
orange-peel and falls to the ground, or when one buffoon unexpectedly
hits another on the head, and, before he has time to recover, with
equal unexpectedness hooks his legs with a stick and brings him
heavily to the ground? Why did we laugh at the adventures of Mr.
Penley in "Charley's Aunt"? In all of these "ludicrous" affairs there
is an element of surprise, a slight shock which puts us off our mental
balance, and the subsequent laughter, when we realise either that no
serious harm has been done or that the whole thing is make-believe,
seems to partake of the character of the "laugh of escape." It is
caused by a sense of relief when we recognise that the disaster is not
real. We laugh at the "unreal" when we should be filled with horror
and grief were we assured that there was real pain and cruelty going
on in front of us. The laughter caused by grotesque mimicry or
caricature of pompous or solemn individuals seems to arise from the
same (more or less unconscious) working of the mind as that caused by
some unexpected neglect of those social "taboos" or laws of behaviour
which we call modesty, decency, and propriety. They either cause
indignation and resentment in the onlooker at the neglect of respect
for the taboo, or, on the contrary, the natural man, long oppressed by
pomposity or by the fetters of propriety imposed by society, suddenly
feels a joyous sense of escape from his bonds, and bursts into
laughter--the laughter of a return to vitality and nature--which is
enormously encouraged and developed into "roars of merriment" by the
sympathy of others around him who are experiencing the same emotion
and expressing it in the same way.
The laugh of derision and contempt and the laugh of exultation and
triumph are of a different character. I cannot now discuss them
further than to say that they are either genuine or pretended
assertions of joy in one's own superior vitality or other superiority.
The "sardonic smile" and "sardonic laughter" have been supposed by
some learned men to refer to the smiles of the ancient Sardinians when
stoning their aged parents. But they have no more to do with
Sardinians than they have with sardines or sardonyx. The word
"sardonic" is related to a Greek word which means "to snarl," and a
sardonic grin is merely a snarl. In it the teeth are shown with
malicious intent, and not as they are in the benevolent appeal of true
laughter. Mrs. Grote, the wife of the great historian (who was
herself declared by a French wit to furnish the explanation of the
word "grotesque"), wrote of "Owen's sugar-of-lead smile"--referring to
the great naturalist, Richard Owen. There was no malice in the
description, for he had, as some others have, a very sweet smile,
accompanied by a strangely grave and disapproving glare in his large
blue prominent eyes. It was only apparently sugar of lead; really, it
was sugar of milk--the milk of human kindness. The smile of the lost
picture called "La Gioconda" is by fanciful people regarded as
something very wonderful. It is really the clever portraiture of the
habitual "leer" of a somewhat wearied sensual woman. It had a
fascination for the great Leonardo, but no profound significance.