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AN ESSAY ON LAUGHTER by JAMES SULLY
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR._
THE HUMAN MIND: a Text-book of Psychology. 2 vols. 8vo, 21_s._
OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY. Crown 8vo, 9_s._
THE TEACHER’S HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY. Crown 8vo, 6_s._ 6_d._
STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD. 8vo, 10_s._ 6_d._
CHILDREN’S WAYS: being Selections from “Studies of Childhood”. With 25
Illustrations. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 4_s._ 6_d._
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.,
LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY.
AN ESSAY
ON
LAUGHTER
ITS FORMS, ITS CAUSES, ITS DEVELOPMENT
AND ITS VALUE
BY
JAMES SULLY, M.A., LL.D.
AUTHOR OF “THE HUMAN MIND,” “STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD,” ETC.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1902
TO
MY CHILDREN AND MY PUPILS
IN THE HOPE
THAT IF THEY CULTIVATE BOTH BRAIN AND HEART,
AND HAVE A QUICK EAR FOR
THE MUFFLED MOANINGS ALONG THE ROAD,
THEY MAY HEAR ALSO,
ABOVE THE DEEPER MUSIC,
THE BLITHE NOTES OF LAUGHTER.
PREFACE.
The present work is, I believe, the first attempt to treat on a
considerable scale the whole subject of Laughter, under its various
aspects, and in its connections with our serious activities and
interests. As such, it will, I feel sure, lay itself open to the
criticism that it lacks completeness, or at least, proportion. A
further criticism to which, I feel equally sure, it will expose itself,
is that it clearly reflects the peculiarities of the experience of the
writer. The anticipation of this objection does not, however, disturb
me. It seems to me to be not only inevitable, but desirable—at least at
the present stage of our knowledge of the subject—that one who attempts
to understand an impulse, of which the intensities and the forms appear
to vary greatly among men, of which the workings are often subtle, and
of which the significance is by no means obvious, should, while making
full use of others’ impressions, draw largely on his own experience.
Portions of the volume have already appeared in Reviews. Chapter
I. was published (under the title “Prolegomena to a Theory of
Laughter”) in _The Philosophical Review_, 1900; Chapter V., in the
_Revue Philosophique_, 1902; and Chapter VIII., in _The International
Monthly_, 1901. The parts of Chapters III. and VI. which treat of the
psychology of tickling appeared in the _Compte rendu_ of the Fourth
International Congress of Psychology (_IV_^{me} _Congrès International
de Psychologie_), Paris, 1901. Some of the ideas in Chapter X. are
outlined in an article on “The Uses of Humour,” which appeared in _The
National Review_, 1897.
Some of my obligations to other writers and workers have been
acknowledged in the volume. For friendly assistance in reading the
proofs of the work I am greatly indebted to Mr. Carveth Read, Dr.
Alexander Hill, Prof. W. P. Ker, Mr. Ling Roth, Dr. W. H. R. Rivers,
Miss C. Osborn, and Miss Alice Woods.
HÔTEL DU WEISSHORN,
VAL D’ANNIVIERS, _August_, 1902.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Objections to serious study of laughter • 1
Previous treatment of subject by philosophers • 4
Their way of dealing with facts • 6
Examination of an illustration given by Dr. Lipps • 9
Common defects of theories • 17
Difficulties of attempt to treat subject scientifically • 19
Scope of inquiry • 20
CHAPTER II.
THE SMILE AND THE LAUGH.
Need of studying the bodily process in laughter • 25
Characteristics of the movements of the smile • 26
Expressive function of the smile • 27
Continuity of processes of smiling and laughing • 27
Characteristics of the movements of laughter • 30
Concomitant organic changes during laughter • 33
Physiological benefits of laughing • 34
Effects of excessive laughter • 37
The laugh as expression • 39
Relation of expression to feeling in laughter • 40
Interactions of joyous feeling and organic concomitants • 44
Deviations from the normal type of laugh • 48
CHAPTER III.
OCCASIONS AND CAUSES OF LAUGHTER.
1. Laughter as provoked by sense-stimulus: tickling • 50
Ticklish areas • 52
Characteristics of the sensations of tickling • 53
Motor reactions provoked by tickling • 56
How far attributes of sensation determine laughter of tickling
• 57
The mental factor in effect of tickling • 59
Objective conditions of successful tickling • 60
Tickling as appealing to a particular mood • 62
2. Other quasi-reflex forms of laughter • 64
Varieties of automatic or “nervous” laughter • 65
Common element in these varieties: relief from strain • 67
3. Varieties of joyous laughter • 70
Prolonged laughing fit • 73
The essential element in joyous laughter • 75
Occasions of joyous laughter • 76
(_a_) Play • 76
(_b_) Teasing as provocative situation • 77
(_c_) Practical joking and laughter • 78
(_d_) Laughter as an accompaniment of contest • 78
(_e_) Occasions of unusual solemnity as provoking laughter • 79
Physiological basis of laughing habit • 80
CHAPTER IV.
VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE.
The objective reference in laughter • 82
Universal element in the laughable • 83
Groups of laughable things • 87
(1) Novelty and oddity • 87
(2) Bodily deformities • 88
(3) Moral deformities and vices • 91
(4) Breaches of order and rule • 94
(5) Small misfortunes • 96
(6) References to the indecent • 98
(7) Pretences • 101
(8) Want of knowledge or skill • 102
(9) Relations of contrariety and incongruity • 107
(10) Verbal play and witticism • 111
Co-operation of different laughable features • 114
(11) Manifestations of playfulness in objects • 116
(12) Spectacle of successful combat • 117
CHAPTER V.
THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS.
1. The Theory of Degradation • 119
Aristotle’s theory • 120
Theory of Hobbes • 120
Prof. Bain’s theory • 121
Criticism of theory of degradation • 122
2. Theory of Contrariety or Incongruity • 125
Kant’s theory of nullified expectation • 126
Criticism of Kant’s theory • 126
Function of surprise in effect of the ludicrous • 129
Schopenhauer’s theory of incongruity • 130
Criticism of Schopenhauer’s theory • 132
Different forms of the incongruous • 134
Summary of criticism of theories • 135
Attempts to unify the two principles • 136
The laughable as failure to comply with a social requirement • 139
How primitive laughter comes into effect of the ludicrous • 140
Relation of sudden gladness to release from constraint • 141
Element of contempt in effect of the ludicrous • 142
Laughter and the play-mood • 145
The play-mood in the effects of the ludicrous • 149
Summary of results of inquiry into theories • 153
CHAPTER VI.
THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER.
Problem of the origin of laughter in the race • 155
Supposed rudiments of mirth in animals • 156
The dog’s manifestations of a sense of fun • 159
The mirthful displays of the ape • 162
First appearance of laughter in child: date of the first smile
• 164
Date of the first laugh • 166
The laugh as following the smile • 168
Order of the two in the evolution of the race • 170
Conjecture as to genesis of the human smile • 171
How the primitive smile may have grown into the laugh • 173
Problem of the evolution of the laughter of tickling • 176
Effects of tickling in animals • 177
Date of first response to tickling in the child • 177
Tickling as inheritance from remote ancestors • 178
Value of evolutional theories of tickling • 181
How laughter may have come into tickling • 183
CHAPTER VII.
DEVELOPMENT OF LAUGHTER DURING THE FIRST THREE YEARS OF LIFE.
Problem of the early development of laughter in the individual
• 186
Development of smile and laugh as movements • 188
The general process of emotional development • 189
Relation of laughter of joy to that of play • 194
Development of laughter of joy • 195
Emergence of laughter of surprise • 197
First laughter of release from strain • 197
Crude form of laughter of jubilation • 198
Development of laughter as accompaniment of play • 198
Early forms of laughing impishness • 201
First manifestations of rowdyish laughter • 203
Germs of roguish laughter • 205
First crude perceptions of the laughable • 207
The mirthful greeting of sounds • 209
Early responses to the funny in the visible world • 212
First enjoyment of pretences • 214
Early laughter at the improper • 215
Dim perceptions of the incongruous and the absurd • 216
Early sense of verbal fun • 217
Summary of results • 218
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LAUGHTER OF SAVAGES.
Sources of our knowledge of savage laughter • 220
Different views of travellers on the subject • 220
Laughter as a salient characteristic of savages • 223
Descriptions of their movements of laughter • 227
Abundance of good spirits • 228
Laughter as accompaniment of shyness • 228
Laughter and fondness for teasing • 229
Rough practical jokes • 230
The way in which laughter is accepted • 232
Laughter of superiority and contempt • 233
Indecent character of jocosity • 234
Appreciation of the laughably odd • 235
Ridicule of foreign ways • 237
Laughter at the doings of the white man • 238
Laughter of the expert at the ignoramus • 240
Savage society and the white man’s _gaucherie_ • 241
Germ of sense of the absurd • 242
The ridiculing of fellow-tribesmen • 244
Reciprocal laughter of the men and the women • 245
Example of dry humour • 246
Organisation of laughter as entertainment • 247
Germs of the mimetic art • 247
Differentiation of professional jesters, etc. • 249
Amusing songs and stories • 250
Co-existence of different levels of laughter • 251
How to manage the savage by laughter • 252
CHAPTER IX.
LAUGHTER IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION.
Connection between laughter and social life • 254
Contagiousness of mirth as social quality • 255
Social uses of laughter • 256
Class-differentiation as condition of laughter • 258
How social grouping widens the field of the laughable • 259
Utility of reciprocal group-laughter • 261
Screwing up members of other groups • 261
Laughter of superiors at inferiors • 263
Quizzing of authorities by subjects • 264
Mirthful turning on task-masters • 265
Woman’s laughing retort • 267
Corrective function of laughter of inferiors • 268
Conciliatory service of group-laughter • 269
Summary of social utilities of laughter • 271
Laughter of other groups as corrective of self-importance • 272
Social movements as influencing laughter • 272
Changes of fashion • 273
Fashion and custom • 275
Merry aspects of movements of fashion • 276
Droll side of descent of fashion to lower ranks • 277
Laughter at the old-fashioned • 279
The movement of progress • 279
Mirthful greeting of new ideas and practices • 280
Laughing away effete customs • 281
Influence of mirthful spirit on social changes • 283
Effect of evolution of culture groups • 283
Effect of minuter subdivision of sets • 285
Effect of progress in breaking down group-barriers • 286
Droll aspects of transition of society to a plutocratic form • 287
Refining effect of culture-movement on hilarity • 288
Decline of older voluminous merriment • 290
Conflict between popular mirth and authority • 291
Combination of standards in popular estimate of laughable • 293
Preparation for individual laughter • 295
CHAPTER X.
LAUGHTER OF THE INDIVIDUAL: HUMOUR.
Definition of humour • 297
Characteristics of humour • 298
Intellectual basis of humorous sentiment • 300
Humorous contemplation as binocular • 301
The field of the laughable for the humorist • 302
Modification of the conative attitude in humour
• 304
Complexity of humour as feeling • 305
Problem of fusion of dissimilar feelings • 307
Facts explained by our analysis of humour • 310
Variations of humour with race and nationality • 311
Temperament and individuality in humour • 313
Humour as enlarging range of laughing activity • 315
The finer detection of the amusing in character • 315
The appreciation of unfitness of men to circumstances • 317
Character-study as a pastime • 318
Laughter as permeating sphere of serious • 319
Effect of kindliness in extending range of laughter • 320
Scope for amusing form of self-scrutiny • 321
Laughter as mode of self-correction • 322
How humour aids a man in dealing with others • 325
Laughing away the smaller troubles • 326
Service of humour in the greater troubles • 328
Humorous contemplation of social scene • 330
Amusing aspects of the fine world • 331
The journal as medium of amusing self-display • 334
The social spectacle of the past and of the present • 337
Humour in contemplation of social scene in seasons of stress • 337
The manifestations of war-temper as humorous spectacle • 338
CHAPTER XI.
THE LAUGHABLE IN ART: COMEDY.
Source of impulse of comic art • 343
Scope for laughter in art as a whole • 345
Origin of jocose literature • 346
The dawn of comedy • 346
Comic incidents as development of child’s play • 347
Comic value of repetitions • 348
Elements of trickery and dupery • 349
Comedy as reflecting movements of social laughter • 351
Comic dialogue as display of wit • 353
Theories of wit • 354
Wit as intellect at play • 354
Wit and word-play • 356
Character as comic material • 357
Mode of representation of character in comedy • 358
Comic character as type • 359
Development of character-drawing in classic comedy • 359
Treatment of character in early English comedy • 361
Molière as comic portrayer • 364
His art of constructing character • 364
Contrast of the anti-social person and the social world • 365
The abstract and the concrete in Molière’s characters • 365
The comic dénouement in Molière’s plays • 368
Molière’s point of view • 368
Characteristics of Comedy of Restoration • 370
Lamb and Macaulay on moral aspect of comedy • 371
Justification of Lamb’s view of Restoration Comedy • 373
The social as distinct from the moral point of view • 373
Slackening of social restraints by comedy • 376
Limitations of field of comic presentation • 377
The comic point of view in fiction • 378
Laughter of mixed tone in literature: satire • 380
Different degrees of seriousness in satire • 381
Method of virulent satire • 382
Wit in satire • 383
Contrast of satirical and humorous literature • 384
The relation of wit to humour • 385
Boundaries of satire and humorous literature • 386
Humour as ingredient of prose fiction • 387
The boundaries of humour of fiction and of philosophy • 390
Humour in other species of literature • 390
CHAPTER XII.
ULTIMATE VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF LAUGHTER.
Need of bringing in philosophic point of view • 392
Philosophy as completion of individual criticism of life • 398
Room for laughter in philosophic contemplation • 393
Philosophy as belittling our everyday world • 394
Reasons why philosophers are not commonly humorists • 395
Speculative Idealism as robbing our common world of interest • 396
Relation of Optimism and of Pessimism to laughter • 397
Possibilities of laughter in philosophic Scepticism • 399
Conditions of development of philosophic humour • 401
Humour in the final evaluation of life • 402
Service of philosophic humour • 403
Justification of the individual point of view • 405
Legitimacy of an amused contemplation of one’s world • 405
Amused contemplation as favouring the survival of the unfit • 408
The philosopher’s preference for retirement • 408
Point of view of contemplation of things by philosophic humorist
• 409
The contemplator as held by his social world • 409
Points of view of humorist, comedian and satirist • 410
Question of total value of laughter • 411
Alleged purifying function of comedy • 411
Corrective function of social laughter to-day • 413
Ridicule as a test of truth • 414
Estimate of helpfulness of private laughter • 415
Place of laughter among human qualities • 416
Relation of laughter to social affections • 417
Restraint of laughter by society • 418
Control of laughter as part of moral self-regulation • 420
Prudential reasons for controlling laughter • 422
The promotion of a love of laughter in others • 423
The claims of the agelast to be let alone • 424
The cultivation of laughter in the young • 426
The status of laughter to-day • 427
Causes of decline of popular mirth • 428
Characteristics of laughter of the hour • 430
Possibility of death of laughter • 431
How its conservation may be effected • 432
{1}
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
A writer who undertakes to discourse on laughter has to encounter more
than one variety of irritating objection. He finds to his dismay that a
considerable part of his species, which has been flatteringly described
as the laughing animal, has never exercised its high and distinguishing
capacity. Nay, more, he soon learns that a good many oppose themselves
to the practice and are laughter-haters. This kind of person (ὁ
μισόγελως) is so possessed with the spirit of seriousness that the
opposite temper of jocosity appears to him to be something shockingly
wrong. All audible laughter is for him an ill-bred display, at once
unsightly as a bodily contortion, and, as a lapse from the gravity
of reason, a kind of mental degradation. This estimate of laughter
as something unseemly is well represented in Lord Chesterfield’s
_Letters_, in which the writer congratulates himself on the fact that
since he has had the full use of his reason nobody has ever heard him
laugh. In some cases this feeling of repugnance towards mirth and fun
takes on more of an ethical aspect. The laugher is identified with
the scoffer at all things worthy and condemned as morally bad—a view
illustrated in the saying of Pascal: “Diseur de bons mots, mauvais
caractère”.
Now it seems evident that one who discourses on laughter is bound to
notice this attitude of the laughter-hater. If {2} he believes that
the moods of hilarity and the enjoyment of the ludicrous have their
rightful place in human experience, he must be ready to challenge
the monopoly of wisdom claimed by the out-and-out sticklers for
seriousness, and to dispute the proposition that the open, honest laugh
connotes either a vulgar taste or a depraved moral nature.
Perhaps, however, our discourser need not distress himself about these
rather sour-tempered laughter-haters. In these days we have to confront
not so much opposition as indifference. Instead of the denouncer of
mirth as vulgar or wicked, we have the refrainer from laughter, the
non-laugher pure and simple. As his Greek name “agelast” (ἀγέλαστος)
suggests, this rather annoying type was not unknown in ancient times.
In merry England, too, Shakespeare had met with the agelasts who would
Not show their teeth in way of smile,
Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.
Yet it is only of late that the variety has appeared in its full force.
To what scanty proportions in these latter days the band of laughers
has dwindled is suggested by the name which is now commonly given them,
for “humorist” meant not so long ago an odd fellow or “eccentric”.
Indeed, one of our living writers suggests that “as the world becomes
more decorous humour becomes tongue-tied and obsolete”.[1]
Even if we grant that the “gelasts” are getting reduced to the
dimensions of a petty sect, the consideration need not deter us from
choosing laughter as our theme. Those who have the perfect ear for
music are probably but a tiny portion of the human family; yet nobody
has suggested {3} that this is an argument against the writing of books
on musical form, the science of thorough bass and the rest.
The friends of laughter have, however, always existed, and even in
these rather dreary days are perhaps more numerous than is often
supposed. In support of this idea one may recall the curious fact
that, as the essayist just quoted remarks, we all shrink from the
“awful imputation” implied in the words “You have no sense of humour”.
This recognition of the capacity for appreciating a joke as a human
attribute which it is well not to be without is, of course, very
far from being proof of a genuine love of fun in the recognisers
themselves. Yet it at least attests the existence of this love in a
respectable number of their fellows.
Now this true friend of laughter (ὁ φιλόγελως) may urge his own
objection to our proposed discussion, an objection less irritating
perhaps than that of the zealous laughter-hater and of the indifferent
agelast, but on the other hand of a more penetrating thrust. He not
unnaturally dislikes the idea of his daily pastime being made the
subject of grave inquiry. He feels in its acutest form the resentment
of the natural man on seeing his enjoyment brought under the scalpel
and lens of the scientific inquirer. He urges with force that the
chucklings of humour are the very lightest and flimsiest of human
things; and that to try to capture them and subject them to serious
investigation looks much like the procedure of the child whose
impulsive hand would seize and examine his dainty soap bubbles.
To these objections from the true friends of the mirthful god one owes
it to reply courteously and at length. Yet the answer cannot well be
given at the outset. A discourse on laughter can remove this kind of
objection, if at all, only by showing in its own treatment of the
subject that serious thought may touch even the gossamer wing of the
merry {4} sprite and not destroy; that all things, and so the lightest,
are things to be comprehended, if only we can reach the right points
of view; and that the problems which rise above the mental horizon,
as soon as we begin to think about man’s humorous bent, have a quite
peculiar interest, an interest in which all who can both laugh at
things and ponder on them may be expected to share.
It seems evident that one who is to probe the spirit of fun in man, and
to extract its meaning, should have special qualifications. It is by
no means sufficient, as some would seem to suppose, that he should be
able to think clearly. He must couple with the gravity of the thinker
something of the intellectual lightness and nimbleness of the jester.
That is to say, he must be in warm touch with his theme, the jocose
mood itself, realising his subject at once vividly and comprehensively
by help of a rich personal experience.
Now it cannot be said that those who have offered to teach us the
secrets of laughter have commonly exhibited these qualifications
in a conspicuous measure. It is a part of the whimsicality which
seems to run through human affairs that the spirit of fun should be
misunderstood not merely by the avowedly indifferent and the avowedly
hostile, but by those who, since they offer to elucidate its ways,
might be expected to have some personal acquaintance with it. The
combination of a fine feeling for the baffling behaviour of this
spirit with a keen scientific analysis, such as is found in Mr. George
Meredith’s _Essay on Comedy_, seems to be a rarity in literature.
This want of the familiar touch is especially observable in a good
deal of the treatment of laughter by philosophic writers. It is not
necessary to dwell on the sublime subtleties of the metaphysicians
who conceive of the comic as a “moment” in the dialectic process
which the æsthetic “Idea” {5} has to pass through. The account of the
gyrations which the Idea has to describe, when once it passes out of
that state of harmonious union with the sensuous image which we call
“the beautiful,” reads strangely enough. Having, for reasons that are
not made too clear, torn itself away from its peaceful companion (the
image), and set itself up as antagonist to this in “the sublime,” the
august Idea encounters the unpleasant retaliation of the image it has
discarded in “the ugly,” where we see the determination of the injured
party to defy its late companion; though, in the end, it revives from
the “swoon” into which this rude behaviour of the image has plunged it,
and recovers its legitimate claims—with which it would seem it was at
the outset dissatisfied—in what we call “the ludicrous”.
I have here tried to put the speculative subtleties of these Hegelian
writers, so far as I am able to catch their drift, into intelligible
English, and not to caricature them. Even favourable critics of these
theories have found it difficult not to treat them with some amount of
irony; and, so far as I am aware, no rehabilitator of Hegelian thought
in England has as yet been bold enough to introduce to our insular mind
a chapter of the sacred mysteries which, as they may well suspect, so
easily lends itself to profane jesting.
How remote this kind of conception of the ludicrous is from the homely
laughter of mortals may be seen in such attempts as are made by these
Hegelian thinkers to connect the two. Hegel himself, in touching on
the nature of comedy, asserted that “only that is truly comic in
which the persons of the play are comic for themselves as well as for
the spectators”. This seems to mean (it is always hazardous to say
confidently what a Hegelian pronouncement does mean) that a large part
of what the world has {6} foolishly supposed to be comedy, including
the plays of Molière, are not so.[2]
It is, perhaps, too much to expect that the aspiring metaphysician,
when, as he fondly thinks, he has gained the altitude from which the
dialectic process of the World-idea is seen to unfold itself, should
trouble himself about so vulgar a thing as our everyday laughter. But
laughter has its mild retaliations for the negligent, and the comedian
of to-day, as of old, is more likely to pluck from those who tread the
speculative cloud-heights material for his merriment than any further
enlightenment on the mysteries of his craft.
It is, however, more to the purpose to refer to those theorists who
make some show of explaining what the ordinary man understands by the
ludicrous, and of testing their theories by an appeal to recognisable
examples. It is instructive to note the cautiousness with which
they will sometimes venture on the slippery “empirical” ground.
Schopenhauer, for example, in setting out his theory of the ludicrous—a
theory which we shall deal with later on—in the first volume of his
chief work, thought it “superfluous” to illustrate his theory by
example. In the second volume, however, he comes to the help of the
“intellectual sluggishness” of his readers and condescends to furnish
illustrations. And what does the reader suppose is the first to be
selected? The amusing look of the angle formed by the meeting of the
tangent and the curve of the circle; which look is due, he tells us, to
the reflection that an angle implies the meeting of two lines which,
when prolonged, intersect, whereas the straight line of the tangent
{7} and the carve of the circle are able merely to graze at one point,
where, strictly speaking, they are parallel. In other words, we laugh
here because the angle which stares us in the face is irreconcilable
with the idea of a meeting of a tangent and a curved line. With a
charming candour the writer proceeds: “The ludicrous in this case
is, no doubt, extremely weak; on the other hand, it illustrates with
exceptional clearness the origin of the ludicrous in the incongruity
between what is thought and what is perceived”.[3]
The significance of this invention of his own illustration by
Schopenhauer is that he was not a metaphysical recluse, but knew the
world and its literatures. Other theorists have not shown the same
daring, but have contented themselves with _finding_ their instances.
Yet in too many cases the arbitrary way in which illustrations have
been selected, while instances making against the theory have been
ignored, shows clearly enough that there has been no serious effort to
build on a large and firm basis of observation. This may be illustrated
not only from the works of Germans, but from those of a people
which has claimed, and with justice, to be the laughing nation _par
excellence_. In a recent volume, marked by great ingenuity, M. Henri
Bergson,[4] an accomplished thinker, attempts to reduce all forms of
the ludicrous to a substitution in our movements, speech and action, of
the rigidity (raideur) of a machine for the pliancy and variability of
an organism. The writer has no difficulty in finding examples of the
stiff mechanical effects which amuse us, say, in gestures and carriage.
But the astonishing thing is that he never refers to the complementary
group of facts, the instances of excessive spontaneity and {8} freedom
of movement where a certain repression and mechanical uniformity are
looked for. The exuberant childish boundings of the clown, an excess
of emphasis or gesture in social intercourse, these and the like are
surely just as comical as the want of the signs of a full play of life
may be in other circumstances.
Perhaps an even worse offence than ignoring facts is trying to twist
them into a shape that will fit an adopted theory. This occurs, too,
and frequently, among writers on our subject. Here is an example among
recent theorists. According to a French essayist, when we laugh at a
clown pushing hard against an open door, we do not laugh merely at
the absurd disproportion between the task to be accomplished and the
amount of effort put into it. We only laugh when our minds pass to
_a second and reflective stage_, and recognise that the man does not
perceive the door to be open, when, consequently, we are able to view
the disproportionate and quite needless exertion as natural.[5] A
more striking instance of inability to understand the swift movement
of common men’s laughter it would be difficult to find. As we shall
see, theories of laughter, like theories of Shakespeare’s genius, have
frequently come to grief by projecting behind the thing which they seek
to account for too much of the author’s own habitual reflectiveness.[6]
Perhaps we shall the better see how theorists have been wont to
ignore and to misunderstand the laughing experiences of the plain
man if we examine at some length {9} the mode of dealing with the
subject adopted by a writer who holds a high place among contemporary
psychologists. Prof. Lipps has recently elaborated a theory of the
ludicrous, illustrating it at some length.[7] This theory may be
described as a modification of Kant’s, which places the cause of
laughter in “the sudden transformation of a tense expectation into
nothing”. According to Lipps, we have the “comic” when “the little”
measures itself with something else and so steps into the daylight.
There is a mental movement (Vorstellungsbewegung) from a presentation
relatively great or important to one relatively little or unimportant;
and the impression of the comic depends on the nullification of the
latter through its contrariety to the former and the disappointment
which this involves. What may be called the belittling idea—which the
reader must bear in mind is the important one—always comes first, the
belittled or nullified one, always second.
In order to illustrate his point he takes among other examples that
of a hat on the wrong head. A man topped by a child’s small cap,
and a child covered with a man’s big hat are, he tells us, equally
comical. But the reason is different in the two cases. In the first,
starting with the perception of the worthy man, we expect an adequate
head-covering, and this expectation is nullified by the obstinate
presence of the tiny cap. Here, then, the funny feature, the belittled
thing, is the diminutive cap. In the second case, however, the movement
of thought is just the reverse. We here set out with the perception of
the headgear, not with that of its wearer. It is the dignified man’s
hat that now {10} first fixes our attention, and it is the obtrusion of
the child beneath when we expect the proper wearer which is the comical
feature. In other words, when a man puts on a baby’s cap it is the cap
which is absurd, when a baby dons his father’s cylinder it is the baby
which is absurd.
This is ingenious, one must confess, but does it not involve some
twisting of facts? Would the unphilosophic humorist recognise this
account of the ways of laughter? Has this account the note of
familiarity with these ways? Let us see.
At the outset one may enter a modest protest against the quiet
assumption that the two incidents here selected are laughable in an
equal degree. It may be urged that, to the grown-up spectator at least,
the sight of the little one crowned with the whelming headgear of his
sire is immeasurably more amusing than the other. Here the author
strikes one as proceeding rather hastily, as he seems to do also when
he assumes that an exceptionally big and an exceptionally little nose
are equally palpable examples of the laughable. This is, to say the
least, disputable. One can hardly think of a comedy turning on the
smallness of a person’s nose, as the _Cyrano de Bergerac_ of M. Rostand
turns on its bigness. But this objection need not, perhaps, be pressed.
Passing, then, to the explanation of his two examples offered by the
author, we are first of all struck by the apparent arbitrariness of
the supposition, that the movement of thought which he assumes should
in the one case take exactly the reverse direction of that taken in
the other. Seeing that both are instances of a grotesquely unsuitable
head-covering should one not expect the enjoyment of them to spring out
of a similar kind of mental activity? {11}
The author probably means to say that we tend to fix the attention
on the more dignified feature in each case, the man beneath the tiny
cap, and the man’s hat above the tiny head. But that is far from being
certain. And in any case there are good reasons against assuming a
“contrary motion” of thought here. Dr. Lipps will no doubt allow,
as a trained psychologist, that these intellectual movements are
subject to well-recognised laws. One deduction from these is that the
sight of a hat will suggest the idea of the human figure to which it
belongs much more certainly and more powerfully than the sight of the
figure will suggest the idea of its appropriate covering. I believe
that everybody’s experience will confirm this. A hat seen even in a
shop-window starts the impulse to think of some wearer; but who would
say that seeing a human head, say across the dinner-table or in an
adjoining stall at the theatre, prompts us to think of its proper
covering? Special circumstances, such as the presence of an exceptional
baldness appealing to pity, must be added before our thoughts flit to
the out-of-door receptacle. In other words, the whole interest and
significance of a hat lie in a reference to a wearer, but not _vice
versâ_.
We must, then, reject the idea of a double and opposed movement of
thought here. If any movement takes place it must be assumed to be in
each case a transition from the perception of the hat to the idea of
its customary and proper wearer.
Now, are we aware when we laugh at either of these odd sights of
carrying out this movement of thought? Keeping to the indisputable
case of the child’s head under or in the man’s hat, do we, before the
agreeable spasm seizes us, first mentally grasp the hat and then pass
to the idea of its rightful wearer? I, at least, cannot find this to
be true in {12} my own experience. But such inability may be due to the
absence of a sufficiently delicate introspection. Let us then try to
test the point in another way.
If the smile of amusement with which we greet this spectacle comes from
the dissolution of the idea of the adult male figure, we should expect
the enjoyment of the ludicrous aspect to be especially conspicuous when
the hat appears an instant before the child-wearer, and so thought is
compelled to travel in the required direction. Let us suppose that a
child in his nursery puts on his father’s hat and stands on a chair,
and that you enter the room and catch a glimpse of the hat first, say
above a piece of furniture, and for a brief moment expect to see an
adult beneath. No doubt you will be aware of a definite movement of
thought in the required direction and of the dissolution into nothing
of the expectant idea. But will the element of clear anticipation
and its annihilation intensify your feeling of the funniness of the
spectacle, or even make the funniness more patent? You would, no doubt,
in such a case, experience a little shock, the full excitement of
surprise, and that might add volume to the whole feeling of the moment.
You might, too, not improbably, laugh more heartily, for you would have
a sense of having been taken in, and there would be a side-current
of hilarity directed against yourself. But I venture to affirm that
the spectacle as such would not impress you as being one whit more
ludicrous when seen in this way, first the hat and then the wearer,
than if your eye had lighted on the two together.
What seems to happen when we are amused by this little comic scene
in the nursery? Do we not at a glance perceive a grotesque whole,
_viz._, a hat on the wrong head, and is not our amusement too
swiftly forthcoming to allow of our singling out a part of what is
seen and going through the {13} process of thought described by
the ingenious author of this theory? Science seems to bear out what
common observation discovers, for the newer psychology teaches that
in the first moment of perceiving an object we obtain not a distinct
apprehension of parts, but a vague apprehension of a whole into which
detail and definiteness only come later and gradually.
An _ensemble_, which can only be described as a whole made up of
ill-fitting parts, this seems to be the object on which our attention
is focussed when we laugh at the child under the needlessly capacious
hat. This intuition involves, no doubt, some rapid seizing of details:
but the attention to parts is not to separate objects, as the language
of Dr. Lipps suggests, but to related parts, to the hat as worn in
relation to the wearer.
This seems to be an adequate account of what takes place so far as it
is the palpable unfitness of dimensions which moves us to laughter. But
it may be urged, and rightly urged, that the laughable spectacle is
more than this, that what tickles us is the uncustomary and topsy-turvy
arrangement of things. And here, it may be said, there certainly
is implied a movement of thought, namely, to something outside the
spectacle, to what is customary and in order.
The supposition is a highly plausible one. Since, moreover, what we
perceive is a whole, it is reasonable to assume that if such a movement
occurs it must be, not, as Dr. Lipps supposes, from one part of it to
another, but from the present whole as oddly and wrongly composed to
some other whole as rightly composed. Do we not, it may be asked, here
carry out a process fairly well described in Schopenhauer’s theory of
the ludicrous, that is, conceive of “an incongruity between the real
object and its idea,” and so, by implication, go back to this idea?
{14}
To this I would reply that, so far as I can analyse my own mental state
at such a moment, I do not find the presence of any idea of another
and normal whole to be a necessary element in a full enjoyment of
the grotesque whole before my eyes. Such a second whole would, one
supposes, have to be either the same hat on the right head, or the same
head under its proper covering, and I find that I am perfectly well
able to enjoy the comedy of the child crowned with the tall hat without
making present to my mind either of these combinations.
Here, again, I think, a better scientific theory bears out the result
of one’s individual self-examination. Psychology has made it clear that
in recognising an object, say a weasel crossing the road on which we
are walking, we do not need to have present to our mind (in addition
to the perception of the object) a pictorial idea or image of a weasel
as formed from past observations. Owing to the organising of a certain
perceptual disposition—a readiness to see an object as a familiar one,
as of a particular “sort”—our mind instantly greets it as a weasel.
In other words, we recognise things by the help not of images present
to the mind at the moment, but of certain ingrained “apperceptive”
tendencies or attitudes. All the higher animals seem to share with
us this highly useful capability of immediate and instantaneous
recognition.
Now I take it that there is another side to these apperceptive
tendencies. Not only do they secure for us, without the necessity of
calling up distinct ideas, these instant recognitions of a sort of
thing, they enable us as well as intelligent animals mentally to reject
presentations which do not answer to “the sort of thing”. I can say
that this wax figure is not a man without having any distinct image
of the living man present to my consciousness. This ability {15} to
recognise what we see as not of a particular kind of thing, without
calling up a definite idea of this kind, extends to combinations and
arrangements of parts in a whole. When, after my servant has dusted my
books and rearranged them on the shelves, I instantly recognise that
they are wrongly placed, I may at the moment be quite unable to say
what the right arrangement was.[8]
According to my view, the perceptions of the laughable which Dr. Lipps
illustrates are instantaneous perceptions. As such, they may, and
commonly do, arise immediately, that is, without any reversion to the
idea of what is the customary or normal arrangement.
But the reader may urge with force that the enjoyment of this charming
bit of childish pretence involves more than a perception of the unusual
and the irregular. Do we not at least apprehend the fact that the hat
is not merely unfitting, and grotesquely wrong, but a usurpation of
the prerogative of the superior? Is not the behaviour of the child
so deliciously whimsical just because we fix the mental eye on this
element of make-believe? And if so, does not this imply that we have
present to the mind the proper belongings of the hat, _viz._, the
father’s head and figure?
I readily agree that when we make our perceptions reflective, as we may
do, this idea is apt to emerge. As has been implied above, the sight
of the tall hat does tend to suggest the idea of its usual wearer, and
in lingering on this quaint bit of acting we may not improbably catch
ourselves imagining the hat on the right {16} head, especially as we
see that it is the child’s playful aim to personate the privileged
owner. And the same thing might occur in laughing at the father
topped with the small child’s hat; for the laugher, who would in this
case more probably be a child, might naturally enough reinstate in
imaginative thought the small child’s head to which the cap belongs.
This combination seems at least to be much more likely to recur to the
imagination than the other combination, which retaining the wearer
substitutes the idea of the right hat.
How far any distinct image of the hat thus mentally transferred to the
right wearer enters into the appreciation of this humorous spectacle,
it would be hard to say. Different minds may behave differently here.
Judging from my own experience I should say that at most only a vague
“schematic” outline of the proper arrangement presents itself to the
imagination. This seems to me to be what one might naturally expect.
Laughter, as I conceive of it, fastens upon something human. It is
the living wearer that is emphasised in the comical juxtaposition;
we more naturally describe it as the child wearing his father’s hat,
than as the father’s hat on the child. And for the comic effect it is
sufficient that we recognise the hat to be the father’s. This we can do
without mentally picturing the hat as worn by the father. The hat has
become a symbol, and means for us the man’s hat and the dignity which
belongs to this, though we may have at the time no mental image of it
as worn by its rightful possessor.
Our examination seems to show that this apparently simple example
of the laughable is very inadequately accounted for by supposing a
movement of mind from one presentation or idea to another which
contravenes and {17} nullifies the first. It may be added that, with
respect to what is certainly present to our consciousness, when we look
at this bit of child’s play we do not find the relation of part to
part to be merely one of contrariety. A curious fact, not as yet fully
studied by the psychologist, is what may be called the inter-diffusion
of characters between the several parts of a complex presentation.
The figure of a finely dressed lady in a gathering of poor people may
either throw the shabby look of the latter into greater relief by
contrast, or redeem it from its shabbiness by lending it some of its
own glory. The latter effect is favoured by a certain contemplative
attitude which disposes us to look at the whole as such, and with the
least amount of inspection of details and their relations. When we
regard the child in the big hat a semblance of the dignity which lies
in the meaning of the latter is transferred to the small head; and the
mental seizure of this transferred look of dignity by the spectator is
essential to a full enjoyment of the show as a bit of make-believe, of
innocent hypocrisy. Similarly, if we are disposed to laugh, a little
contemptuously, at the man in the child’s hat, it is because the hat
throws for half a moment over the heavy and lined face something of the
fresh sweet look of infancy.[9]
It has seemed worth while to examine at some length the attempt of
Dr. Lipps to deal with a simple instance of the laughable because, in
spite of a recognisable effort to connect theory with concrete facts,
it illustrates the common tendency to adapt the facts to the theory;
and, further, the no less common tendency to overlook the rich variety
of experience {18} which our laughter covers, the multiplicity of the
sources of our merriment and the way in which these may co-operate
in the enjoyable contemplation of a ludicrous object. As we shall
see, theories of the ludicrous have again and again broken down from
attempting to find one uniform cause in a domain where the operation of
“Plurality of Causes” is particularly well marked.
It may be added that such theories, even if they were not one-sided and
forced accounts of the sources of our merriment, would still suffer
from one fatal defect: as Lotze says of Kant’s doctrine,[10] they make
no attempt to show why the dissolved expectation or the failure to
subsume a presentation under an idea should make us _laugh_, rather
than, let us say, cough or sigh. Lotze, besides being a psychologist,
was a physiologist, and it may be added, a humorist in a quiet way, and
the reader of his lines who may have had the privilege of knowing him
will see again the ironical little pout and the merry twinkle of the
dark eye behind the words.
We have agreed that the discourser on the comic, however gravely
philosophic he desires to be, must touch both finely and
comprehensively the common experiences of mankind. Yet it may well be
thought, in the light of the attempts made in the past, that this is
demanding too much. The relish for things which feed our laughter is as
we know a very variable endowment. As the Master tells us, “A jest’s
prosperity lies in the ear of him that hears it more than in the tongue
of him that makes it”. The facetiæ of earlier ages fall on modern
ears with a sound as dull as that of an unstrung drum. It may well be
that persons who pass a large number of their hours {19} in abstruse
reflection grow incapable of enjoying many of the commoner varieties
of laughter. Their capability of lapsing into the jocose vein becomes
greatly restricted and may take directions that seem out-of-the-way
to the more habitual laugher. Schopenhauer’s funny little attempt
to extract a joke out of the meeting of the tangent and the circle
seems to be a case in point. On reading some of the definitions of
the ludicrous contributed by the fertile German mind, one is forced
to conclude that the writers had their own peculiar, esoteric modes
of laughter. When, for example, Herr St. Schütze, whose “attempt at a
theory of the Comic” is pronounced by the renowned Th. Vischer to be
“excellent” (vorzüglich), proceeds to define his subject in this way:
“The comic is a perception or idea, which after some moments excites
the obscure feeling that nature carries on a merry game with man while
he thinks himself free to act, in which game the circumscribed liberty
of man is mocked (verspottet) by a reference to a higher liberty,”[11]
one seems to measure the scope of the worthy writer’s sense of fun.
That the irony of things in their relation to our desires and aims
has its amusing aspect is certain: but who that knows anything of the
diversified forms of human mirth could ever think of trying to drag all
of them under so narrow a rubric?
A vivid perception of the variability of the sense of the laughable
in man, of the modification, in the case of individuals and of races,
of the range of its play, and of the standards to which it subjects
itself, by a thousand unknown influences of temperament and habits
of life, may well repel not merely the philosophic recluse who can
hardly be expected perhaps to have followed far the many wild {20}
excursions of the laughing impulse, but others as well. Have we not, it
may be asked, in the appreciation of what is funny or laughable a mode
of sensibility pre-eminently erratic, knowing no law, and incapable
therefore of being understood? Do not the more grotesque attempts to
frame theories of the subject seem to mock the search for law where no
law is?
The difficulty may be admitted whilst the practical conclusion drawn
is rejected. Certainly no thinker will succeed in throwing light on
the dark problem who does not strenuously fight against the narrowing
influences of his “subjectivity,” who does not make a serious effort
to get outside the bounds of his personal preferences, and to compass
in large vision the far-ranging play of the mirthful spirit, and
the endless differencing of its manifestations. But if a man can
only succeed in doing this without losing his head in the somewhat
rollicking scene, there is nothing that need repel him from the task;
for reason assures us that here too, just as in other domains of human
experience where things looked capricious and lawless enough at the
outset, order and law will gradually disclose themselves.
A serious inquiry into the subject, such as we propose to make, must,
it is evident, start from this scientific presupposition. We take the
language of everyday life to imply that human laughter, notwithstanding
its variability, its seeming caprices, is subject to law. We speak
of an objective region of “the laughable,” that is of objects and
relations of objects which are fitted and which tend to excite laughter
in us all alike. It will be one of our chief problems to determine
the characteristics of this field of the laughable, and to define its
boundaries.
But a serious inquiry will take us farther than this. While we do well
to insist that the lightness and {21} capriciousness of movement, the
swift unpredictable coming and going, are of the essence of laughter,
it will be one main object of this inquiry to show how our mirthful
explosions, our sportive railleries, are attached at their very roots
to our serious interests. Laughter, looked at from this point of view,
has its significance as a function of the human organism, and as
spreading its benefits over all the paths of life. We must probe this
value of our laughing moments if we are to treat the subject adequately.
In thus proposing to give to laughter a purpose in the scheme of human
life, one must face the risk of offending its friends yet more deeply.
To these laughter is so precious and sufficing a good in itself, that
to propose to connect it with some extrinsic and serious purpose
looks like robbing it of its delicious freeness and enslaving it to
its traditional foe, excess of seriousness. To these objectors it may
suffice to say at the present stage that their apprehension appears to
me to be groundless. To laugh away the spare moments will continue to
be to the laughter-loving the same delightful pastime even should we
succeed in showing that it brings other blessings in its train. On the
other hand, to show that it does bring these blessings may turn out
to be a handy _argumentum ad hominem_ in meeting the attacks of the
laughter-hater. He could not, one supposes, give himself quite so much
of the look of flouted virtue if we could convince him that laughter,
when perfect freedom is guaranteed it in its own legitimate territory,
will unasked, and, indeed, unwittingly, throw refreshing and healing
drops on the dry pastures of life. Perhaps some thought of these
benefits was present to the Greek philosopher—the very same who was
for banishing Homer and other poets from his ideal commonwealth—when
he uttered the pretty conceit that {22} the Graces in searching for a
temple which would not fall, found the soul of Aristophanes.
Our subject is a large one, and we must endeavour to keep all parts of
it steadily in view. To begin with, we will try to avoid the error of
those who in their subtle disquisitions on the comic idea forgot that
laughter is a bodily act, and not fear to allude to such unmetaphysical
entities as lung and diaphragm, where they seem to be a central fact in
the situation. A careful examination of the very peculiar behaviour of
our respiratory and other organs when the feeling of the comic seizes
us, seems to belong to a scientific investigation of the subject.
Indeed, it appears to me that in trying to get at the meaning of these
gentle and enjoyable shakings of the mind, we shall do well to start,
so to speak, with the bodily shakings, which are, to say the least,
much more accessible to study.
Further, it seems desirable to study the utterances of the spirit of
fun through the whole gamut of its expression. The _gros rire_, the
cacophonous guffaw, must not be regarded as too vulgar to be admitted
here. The attempts in the past to build up a theory of the ludicrous
have commonly failed through a fastidious and highly artificial
restriction of the laughable attribute to the field of wit and refined
humour which the cultivated man is in the habit of enjoying.
Nor is this all. It may possibly be found that no satisfactory
explanation of our enjoyment of the laughable is obtainable without
taking a glance at forms of mirth which have preceded it. Among the
strange things said about laughter is surely the sentence of Bacon:
“In laughing there ever precedeth a conceit of something ridiculous,
and therefore it is proper to man”. That the father of the inductive
philosophy should have approached the subject in this way {23} is one
of the ironies that meet us in these discussions; for, allowing that he
is right as to his fact that only man laughs, we must surely recognise
that his reason is hopelessly weak. The conceit which Bacon here
talks about is, we all know, by no means a universal accompaniment of
laughter; and, what is more important, even when it occurs it is wont
to grow distinct rather in the form of an afterthought than in that of
an antecedent. Among all things human, surely laughter ought least of
all to be afraid of recognising its humble kinsfolk.
The importance of thus sweeping into our scientific net specimens of
all grades of laughter will be seen when it is recognised that the one
promising way of dealing with this subject is to trace its development
from its earliest and crudest forms. If we begin at the top of the
evolutional scheme, and take no account of the lower grades, we are
very likely to fail to penetrate to the core of the laughable, as
so many of our predecessors have failed. But if we will only stoop
to consider its manifestations at the lowest discoverable levels,
and then confine ourselves to the more modest problem: How did the
first laughter, mindless as it may well seem to us, get developed and
differentiated into the variety of forms which make up the humorous
experience of civilised man? we may win a modest success.
It will be evident that any attempt to pursue this line of inquiry
will have to take note, not only of facts obtainable from the realm of
primitive laughter as represented by infancy and the savage state, but
of those social forces which have had so much to do with shaping the
manifestations of mirth. The common directions of our laughter attest
its social character and illustrate how it has insinuated itself into
the many movements of social life.
For a like reason we shall need to discuss to some extent {24} the
place of laughter in Art, and the treatment of the sources of merriment
by the comedian.
Lastly, this larger consideration of the subject will, we shall
probably find, take us to an examination of certain ethical or
practical questions, _viz._, the value which is to be assigned to the
laughing propensity, and the proper limits to be set to its indulgence.
The subject so conceived is a large and complex one, and it will be
hard to deal with it at once thoughtfully and familiarly, with the
genuine ring of laughter ever present to the ear. The present writer
will account himself happy if, in a line where so many appear to have
missed success, he attain to a moderate measure of it. {25}