LAUGHTER
[It seemed advisable to give here[122] some views on laughter, most of
which were also held by Mr. R*ss*ll, though no written expression of his
views has yet been found. In a review[123] of M. Bergson's book on
_Laughter_,[124] Mr. Russell has remarked:
"It has long been recognized by publishers that everybody desires to be
a perfect lady or gentleman (as the case may be); to this fact we owe
the constant stream of etiquette-books. But if there is one thing which
people desire even more, it is to have a faultless sense of humour. Yet
so far as I know, there is no book called 'Jokes without Tears, by Mr.
McQuedy.' This extraordinary lacuna has now been filled. Those to whom
laughter has hitherto been an unintelligible vagary, in which one must
join, though one could never tell when it would break out, need only
study M. Bergson's book to acquire the finest flower of Parisian wit. By
observing a very simple formula they will know infallibly what is funny
and what is not; if they sometimes surprise their unlearned friends,
they have only to mention their authority in order to silence doubt.
'The attitudes, gestures and movements of the human body,' says M.
Bergson, 'are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of a
mere machine.' When an elderly gentleman slips on a piece of orange-peel
and falls, we laugh, because his body follows the laws of dynamics
instead of a human purpose. When a man falls from a scaffolding and
breaks his neck on the pavement, we presumably laugh even more, since
the movement is even more completely mechanical. When the clown makes a
bad joke for the first time, we keep our countenance, but at the fifth
repetition we smile, and at the tenth we roar with laughter, because we
begin to feel him a mere automaton. We laugh at Moliere's misers,
misanthropists and hypocrites, because they are mere types mechanically
dominated by a master impulse. Presumably we laugh at Balzac's
characters for the same reason; and presumably we never smile at
Falstaff, because he is individual throughout."
The review concludes with the reflection that "it would seem to be
impossible to find any such formula as M. Bergson seeks. Every formula
treats what is living as if it were mechanical, and is therefore by his
own rule a fitting object of laughter." Now, this undoubtedly true
conclusion has been obtained, as is readily seen, by a vicious-circle
fallacy which Mr. R*ss*ll would hardly have committed.--ED.]
FOOTNOTES:
[122] From a remark on p. 47 above, it is evident that Mr. R*ss*ll
intended to write some such chapter as this.
[123] _The Professor's Guide to Laughter, The Cambridge Review_, vol.
xxxii., 1912, pp. 193-4.
[124] _Laughter, an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic_, English
translation by C. Brereton and F. Rothwell, London, 1911.