LAUGHTER IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION.
In the two preceding chapters we have followed the earlier stages of
the development of laughter in the individual and have glanced at
its counterpart in the life of savage communities. If now we try to
push the psychological inquiry farther, and ask how the mirth of the
child develops into that complex sentiment which in these days we call
humour, we find ourselves forced to pause. One thing is clear, however.
No one of us would ever have acquired this valuable endowment but for
the educative action of that advanced stage of social culture which
is our intellectual and moral environment. It seems to follow that
we shall need to look for a moment at the movement of social culture
itself, to consider the impulse of laughter as one of the features in
the life of a community, and to inquire how it has become transformed,
almost beyond recognition, by the movement of social progress.
To attempt to give an exhaustive account of these social changes would
clearly lead us very far. It may be argued with force that every one of
the great directions of social evolution, such as that of intellectual
conceptions, of moral sentiments, of political and social liberty, of
wealth, of the differentiation of classes and ranks, has involved as
its effect some change in the intensity, the mode of distribution,
and the manner of expression in daily life and in {255} art, of the
laughing impulse. But we do not need to consider so deeply. It will
be enough if we briefly retrace those phases of social evolution
which appear to carry with them as their immediate accompaniments
considerable modifications of the mirthful spirit.
We must in this inquiry begin by defining the social aspect of
laughter. This was touched on in the last chapter in connection with
our study of the mirth of savages. We have now to examine it more
closely.
One of its most obvious characteristics is its contagiousness, already
referred to.[227] The potent appeal of laughter to a mechanical
imitativeness is significant in more ways than one. It suggests how
large a part of human hilarity is nothing but a kind of surface
resonance, as empty of ideas as the infectious yawn or cough. But
it suggests also that laughter is social in the sense that it is
essentially choral and so uniting. A gathering of yokels at a fair
laughing at a clown tends for the moment to become a coherent group;
and the habit of laughing together will tend to consolidate the group.
When the conjoint laughter is less automatic and issues from community
of ideas and sentiments, the contagious property still plays a part. It
is as if the swift response of others’ laughter, the drowning of one’s
own outburst in the general roar, effaced for the time the boundaries
of one’s personality. To rejoice together in the full utterance of the
laugh, though it moves us less deeply than to weep together, is perhaps
no less potent in cementing a lasting comradeship.
The social side of laughter comprehends, however, much more than this.
It is commonly recognised that the feeling expressed has something
human for its object. Now those {256} who directly or indirectly serve
as the butt are all the world over disposed, till the grace of a genial
tolerance has been added, to dislike and resent the part thrust on
them. So far, then, laughter would seem to be anti-social and dividing,
and, alas, the history of literature will furnish the student with
notable illustrations. Yet this hurtful edge in laughter becomes one
of its valuable social properties. As the despised Greenlanders may
teach us, laughter supplies a mode of punishment which combines with
effectiveness, economy and humanity, a good deal of enjoyment for the
onlookers. In all societies, if not exactly in the Greenland fashion,
it has been accorded an important place among the agencies which, by
castigating vices and follies, seek to lower their vitality.
The sharp edge of laughter represents, however, only one of its
effects on the sensibilities of the butt. Savage life has given us
illustrations, not only of its disagreeable consequences turned to
judicial purposes, but of its agreeable consequences in cajoling others
out of attitudes of hostility and stubbornness. This curious effect, as
it may seem, of a mode of treatment which is primarily hurtful is to be
explained in the main by its playful function. To substitute a joke for
argument or coercive pressure is, like tickling, to challenge to play,
and tends to call up the play-mood in the recipient of the challenge.
The mutual teasings of savages serve, as we have seen, as a training,
an ἄσκησις, in simple and estimable virtues, such as the maintenance
of good temper, toleration, and the setting of comradeship above one’s
private feelings.
One other social aspect of laughter illustrated by savage life needs to
be touched on. In the instinctive tendency of the savage to ridicule
the customs and ideas of outside folk we have one expression of the
self-protective attitude of a {257} community against insidious
outside influences. Just as the Hebrews ridiculed the religious ideas
of the worshippers of Baal and so helped to keep their national faith
intact, so these tribes low down in the culture scale have in their
laughter at what is foreign a prophylactic against any contamination
from outside peoples. No doubt this tendency in laughter will help to
preserve once useful tribal characters when altered circumstances,
introduced, for example, by the coming of the white man, require new
adaptations. In this we see the essentially conservative function of
laughter in the life of societies. On the other hand, as we have seen,
novelties in dress introduced by the white man may attract and delight.
In dealing with the connection between social progress and laughter, we
shall need to consider very carefully the attitude which the mirthful
spirit takes up towards social changes.
Now these aspects of laughter point, as we have seen, to a social
utility in laughter. As offspring of the play-impulse, it might,
indeed, be expected to share in those benefits which, as recent
research has made clear, belong to play. In our study of its
development and persistence in the life of progressive communities, we
shall have occasion to illustrate this utility much more fully. That
laughing is good, physically and morally, for its individual subjects
has become a commonplace, at least to the student of literature. Here
we shall be concerned with its distinctly social advantages, such
as the maintenance of customs which from the point of view of the
community, or of some class of the community, are to be regarded as
good, the keeping down of vices and follies, and the furtherance of
social co-operation.
The question how far this utility extends is one which cannot be
answered simply. It will be found that societies, {258} so far from
universally recognising laughter as a useful habit, have taken vast
pains to restrain it. Indeed, our study of the fortunes of mirth in
the advance of social life will show us that it has had throughout to
struggle for its existence.
From what has just been said it will be clear that we shall have to
consider the history of laughter and the movement of social evolution
as inter-connected. Not only does a change in ideas, sentiments or
institutions tend to modify the expression of the mirthful mood, there
is a reciprocal influence of laughter upon ideas, sentiments and
institutions. Such interaction holds good generally between amusements
and serious pursuits; the recreations of a community serve in important
ways to determine the measure of the vigour thrown into serious
activities. In the case of laughter this reciprocal influence is much
more marked, owing to the circumstance that mirth has been wont to play
about serious things, to make these the target for its finely tipped
shafts, now and again going so far as to shoot one into the midst of
the solemnities of social life.
In the savage tribe we find but little of class division. The
perception of what is unfit and the laughter which accompanies this
are directed, for the most part, to members of other communities. The
laughter is choral because it is that in which the whole tribe joins
or is prepared to join; but for that very reason it has a monotonous
sound. Some differentiation of groups within the community seems
necessary, not merely for the constitution of a society, but for the
free play of the laughing spirit. Diversity in thought and behaviour is
a main condition of the full flow of social gaiety.
The germ of such diversity is present in the lowest {259} conceivable
type of human community. The institution of male and female in which
Nature, as if to combine divine work with human, at once joins together
and puts asunder, has been with us from the beginnings of human
society; and it might be an amusing pastime to speculate how the males
of our ape-like ancestors first gurgled out their ridicule of female
inferiority, and how the females managed to use their first rudiment
of speech-power in turning the tables on their lords and masters. Some
differentiation of rank, too, must have been found in the simplest
human societies in the contrast between the old and the young, and the
closely connected opposition of the rulers and the ruled. But it would
be hazardous to reason that, in the early stages of social evolution,
much in the way of exchange of fun passed between those who were
presumably kept solemnly apart by the sense of their relative station.
It is only when we move on to a society with a considerable amount of
class differentiation that its relation to the nurture and distribution
of the spirit of mirth grows apparent. In glancing at these divisions
we may conveniently adopt M. Tarde’s expression, “social group”.
Such a group may be either a class, the members of which have like
functions and a common character connected with these, such as priests
and traders; or it may be a set constituted merely by community
of knowledge and taste, as the members of a society standing on a
particular level of culture. Although this double way of dividing
social groups necessarily leads to overlapping, it seems desirable to
adopt it here, so as to give an adequate account of the relation of
group-formation to the particular directions of social laughter.
The development of distinct groups within a community influences the
behaviour of the laughing impulse, first of {260} all, by introducing
diversity of occupations, abilities and intelligence. In this way it
enlarges the field for those relative judgments about competence and
fitness with which, as savage laughter illustrates, simple forms of
mirth have so much to do. Thus, the establishment of distinctions of
employment and mode of life between the sexes has contributed copiously
to that mirthful quizzing of each by the other which seems to have
been a prime ingredient in human jocosity from the lowest stages
of culture. The slightly malicious laughter of the male at female
incompetence, which is seen in the schoolboy’s treatment of his sister,
is illustrated throughout the course of literature. And good examples
are not wanting of a turning of the tables by the female on the male.
The story of King Alfred’s misadventure with the cakes—of which we have
found the counterpart in savage life—is an example of the more shrewish
criticism of the male ignoramus by the female expert. When the sense of
injury is less keen, and the impression of the folly of the performance
fills the soul, the shrewish note is apt to fall to the genial pitch of
laughter. The differentiation of industrial and other employments, such
as those of countryman and townsman, of landsman and seaman, of soldier
and civilian, serve to develop new centres of concerted laughter, and
new points of attack.
The formation of social groups further enlarges the material and the
opportunities for laughter by introducing noticeable and impressive
differences of behaviour, dress and speech. In this way the field
of the odd, the absurd, that which contradicts our own customs and
standards, has been made wide and fertile. A mere difference of
locality may suffice to generate such differences. Not so many years
ago, one could hear in the West of England the {261} jibes which the
people in one small town or district were wont to hurl at those in
another. We read that in the Middle Ages, when local differences of
dress and speech were so much more marked than now, satires on people
of particular localities were not uncommon—though probably much more
than a perception of the laughably odd was involved in these rather
fierce derisions.[228]
The immediate utility of this mirthful quizzing of other sets would,
like that carried out by one savage tribe on another, consist in the
preservation of the characteristics of one’s own set. But the play of
laughter about class-distinctions illustrates another of its benefits.
When one set gets used to the distinctive ways of another, it tends to
regard them as right and proper for the latter; and it may carry its
regard for their propriety so far as to support the inner sentiment of
the other group by deriding those members who do not conform to their
group-customs. Distinctive customs have been conserved not only—to
adopt ethical terms having a somewhat different meaning—by “internal
sanctions” in the shape of serious penalties as well as ridicule
administered by fellow-members of the set, but by “external sanctions”
in the shape of outside mockery. The imposing soldierly attitude has
perhaps been kept up quite as much by the merry quizzing of civilians
as by any military discipline and _esprit de corps_. A poor tottering
hero in uniform could, one opines, never have escaped the eye of
citizens lying in wait for the laughable.
The finer opportunities for this mirthful screwing up of men of
other groups to their proper moral height would occur when the
peculiarities of the mode of life imposed a special rule of behaviour,
and, particularly, when this rule was a severe one. The hollow hero,
trying to hide the {262} poverty of his courage in braggadocio, has
been a favourite figure in comic literature, classic and modern. A
notable illustration of this situation is the laughter heaped on the
clergy by the people during the Middle Ages. The caricatures of the
monk—representing him, for instance, as a Reynard in the pulpit with a
cock below for clerk, and the many _Contes_ which exposed his cunningly
contrived immoralities, and frequently visited them with well-merited
chastisement, show pretty plainly that the popular laughter in this
case had in it something of hate and contempt, and was directed in
part to the exposure and punishment of the celibate class. This may be
asserted, even though it must not be forgotten that in these _Contes_
the holy man by no means infrequently emerges from his dangerous
experiment unscathed: a fact which suggests that in the popular
sentiment there lurked, not merely something of the child’s mirthful
wonder at daring cunning, but a certain sympathetic tolerance for a
caste, on the shoulders of which was laid a somewhat weighty yoke. The
mental attitude of the narrator rather suggests here and there that of
an easy-going Englishman when confronted with the spectacle, say of a
drunken sailor or soldier.[229]
Another class having high pretensions, which has come in for much of
the “screwing-up” kind of laughter, is the physician. Next to the
healer of the soul, he undertakes the most for mortals. In _Gil Blas_,
in the comedies of Molière, and in other works, we may see how his
ancient methods and his pedantries were apt to affect the intelligent
layman with mirthful ridicule. {263}
So far nothing has been said of the rank of the groups thus formed.
The differentiating of a higher from a lower caste, with more or less
of authority on one side and subserviance on the other, will turn out
to be the most important feature in social grouping in its bearing on
the calling forth of social laughter. As we have seen, our merriment
has much to do with dignities, with the claims on our respect made
by things above us; while, on the other hand, the contemptuous laugh
which has had volume and duration implies a relation of superior
and inferior—if only the fugitive one created by the situation of
quizzer. All stages of group-formation seem to involve something of
this distinction between an upper and a lower class. The simplest
conceivable structure of society includes a head and ruler of family,
clan or tribe, and subjects. Hence, the vast significance of social
grouping as a condition of choral laughter.
How far persons in positions of authority have gratified their sense
of superiority by derisive laughter at those below them, it would, of
course, be hard to say. When power is real and absolute there are other
ways of expressing contempt. Literature undoubtedly furnishes examples
of the ridicule by the social superior of the ways of a lower class,
as in the Provençal poem of Bertran de Born (_c._ 1180) in which the
villains are treated contemptuously. Yet the larger part of literature,
not being produced for a ruling caste, does not throw much light on
this subject.[230] One can only infer with some probability, from
the relations of parents and adults, generally, to children, and of
white {264} masters to their coloured slaves, that power has always
been tempered by some admixture of good-nature, which composition has
produced a certain amount of playful jocosity, at once corrective and
cementing.
The derisive laughter of the superior is particularly loud in certain
cases where the authority is not so real as it might be. Man’s ridicule
of his not too obedient spouse may be said almost to shriek adown the
ages. We may read in papyri of Egypt of the fourteenth or thirteenth
century B.C. of the misfortunes of a husband, named Anoupou.[231]
The Greek comedians thought no abuse of the sex too bitter or too
coarse.[232] In Latin literature we have satirical portraits of
different types of women, drawn under the figures of various brutes, a
fox, a mare, etc.[233] In mediæval society, the low opinion of women
entertained by their lords is illustrated in the firm persuasion that
the only way to treat them was to beat them—watching them was quite
vain—so that they might be occupied all the day with crying.[234]
Sometimes, as in the _Arabian Nights_, this contempt takes the form
of bitter denunciation; but, for the most part, it has laughed in the
brighter key of comedy. Even the satire here is wont to lose all trace
of savageness, and to assume the tone of a good-natured acceptance of
the incurable.
While the formation of social ranks has thus secured a wide range
for supercilious mocking of inferiors, it has guaranteed these ample
opportunity of avenging themselves by laughter at the expense of the
authorities.
How soon in man’s history any such laughter became {265} possible, it
would be hard to say. In the simpler types of community, the severe
restraints laid on youths by the men of the tribe must, one supposes,
have been fatal to any indulgence by sons in laughter at the expense of
fathers, such as is illustrated in comedy both ancient and modern. The
penalties attached to breach of ceremonial rule must have stifled any
impulse of laughter, if it happened to arise. It is said that when the
chief of a certain tribe chanced to stumble, his subjects were bound to
pretend to stumble in order to cover up his defect.[235] The utility of
this quaint custom may have lain in its effectual suppression of the
risible impulse. This theory, however, postulates a kind of courtier
widely removed from the modern, of whom it seems safe to say that
he might be trusted to see stumblings and worse without feeling an
over-mastering temptation to laugh.
One can only conjecture that men began to discern and enjoy the amusing
side of authority and its solemn ways of asserting itself, in their
free moments, at a safe distance from tell-tale eyes.
What is known of the hard-worked slave of antiquity is suggestive not
merely of play after toil, but of a safe turning on task-masters.
When, as we read, the Egyptian workman got fun “out of the smallest
incident in the day’s work—an awkward apprentice cutting his finger,
a comrade sleeping over his task whom the overseer lashes to awaken
him,” and so forth, did not something of a spirit of malicious crowing
over the overseer express itself too? The analogy of the judiciously
half-smothered laughter of the English schoolboy in playground or
dormitory suggests the answer. We must not wonder if these dangerous
excursions of the spirit of fun have failed to be recorded. {266}
Still more significant is another picture from the same hand,
representing a tussle between overseer and workmen in which “the stick
vainly interferes,” so that “at least an hour elapses before quiet
is re-established”.[236] This looks like the rollicking laughter of
schoolboys at the spectacle of an orderly ceremony suddenly turned
to disorder. The interpretation is borne out by the fact that these
same Egyptians were able to enter into the fun of a loss of dignity
in a solemn function, for example, the upsetting by a collision of
the richly supplied table in the funereal boat, and the falling
of a mummy on a priest during the ceremony of conveying it to its
resting-place.[237]
The return of contemptuous laughter from the slave to his master
was certainly allowed to some extent among the Romans. It became a
well-recognised privilege during one of the chief annual festivals
(Saturnalia). The slaves in the plays of Plautus treat the tyranny
under which they live “in a spirit of gay bravado”.[238] Nor need
we be surprised at these liberties if we remember that the modern
schoolmaster must almost be perfect if he does not find it expedient,
not merely to permit his pupils _desipere in loco_, but to allow them
now and again to have a mild joke at his expense. The cajoling by
means of jokes, which Miss Kingsley found so serviceable for managing
the West African, may of course stop short of this, and its virtue
lie in the substitution of a light, laughing treatment for bullying.
Yet genial laughter, when the contempt has been vaporised out of it,
necessarily tends at the moment to a levelling of planes, as is seen
in the immediate assertion of {267} the right of reciprocity. This is
perhaps the main reason why the schoolmaster is, in general, chary of
introducing the method of jocosity. His laughter is apt to sound as if
it held some of the gritty deposit of contempt.
The really delightful illustration of the turning of the tables on
masters by those in subjection is to be found in woman’s retort on
man’s contemptuous treatment. She has again and again managed to outwit
him, as we have found him dolefully admitting, and has had her full
laugh at his cumbrous attempts to manage her. The mediæval _fabliaux_
are certainly disposed to award success in strategy to her, rather
than to her lord. Her ways of befooling him, too, have often been so
simple—as when she persuades him that he has been dreaming what he
fancies he has observed—that the poor dupe ought, one supposes, to have
died of chagrin. And, when there has been a call for the finer sort of
manœuvring, she wins the unprejudiced reader to her side by displaying
an admirable ingenuity and subtlety of invention, qualities which Mr.
Herbert Spencer would probably regard as secondary sexual characters
evolved during ages of marital tyranny. Of her modes of turning on
him in these latter days there is no need to speak. The shout of
contemptuous laughter seems to have passed from the one side of the
eternal fray to the other. But this hardly belongs to the present
division of our subject.
It may be added that the laughter of the laity at the clergy
illustrates, in addition to the impulse already dealt with, the itching
of spirited mortals to turn on oppressors. The denunciations and
anathemas of this class, backed, as they asseverate, by supernatural
sanctions, have always been trying to untamed men and women. And the
appetite of our ancestors for stories disgraceful to monks and priests
drew some of its keenness from this rebelliousness of {268} the
natural man against spiritual tyrannies. Here is an illustration of the
feminine retort: A woman was chatting with a gossip of hers in church:
bidden by the preaching friar to hold her peace she exclaimed, “I
wonder which babbles most of the two?”[239]
Still another variety of social laughter springs out of this
distinction of superior and inferior groups. The impulse of exalted
persons to assert themselves and to strike their inferiors with
awe—an impulse by the way which the peacock and other birds will
betray in the presence of their inferior, man—is apt to be disallowed
by those for whom the display is intended. It is one thing, they
feel, to acknowledge true authority, another to bow down to the
exaggeration of its claim, to the boastful exhibition of power and
rank. Hence, perhaps, some of the quickness of the mirthful eye
for the entertainment latent in all braggadocio. The soldier who
needlessly emphasises the fact that he possesses the height and spirit
of his calling by strutting, by imposing vociferation and the rest,
has probably always been a source of comic merriment, as the _Miles
gloriosus_ of Plautus and the Bobadil of Ben Jonson may remind us.
It will be evident that all this laughter of inferiors at superiors,
whether these are so really or merely in their own opinion, must, so
far as it has got home, have had a valuable corrective function. If
the derision of the lord helps to keep in place his inferior dame or
vassal, much more does the laughter of his inferior serve to hold him
to what befits his rank. _Noblesse oblige_ is a rule largely maintained
by the demands of those below who are expected to pay homage. These,
as we know, have been much employed in claiming modest rights from
their “betters”. The curbing of a king’s tyrannies may have required
a rebellion {269} of his barons, or a riot of his people: yet a good
deal of checking of tyrannic propensities has been carried out by
the unalarming expedient of ridicule. Even in a free and enlightened
country we may observe in officials a tendency now and again to inflate
their dignity unduly; so that one infers that the restraining force of
the laughter of inferiors still counts.
The results of this spirited turning of the worm have been
considerable. The impish spirit of mirth has taken up its abode with
the common people, and instructed them in the rich sources of the
laughable which lie in all rank and dignity. On the other hand, the
“high and mighty” have, from a true instinct of self-preservation,
waged fierce war with this irreverent attitude of the multitude. The
struggles between the two will be spoken of presently.
The scope for laughter which, given the disposition, these divisions
of group and of rank bring with them is further widened by the vital
circumstance that, as groups in the same community, they have to
enter into various relations with one another. A judicious mixture of
opposition and harmony of interest seems to be most favourable to a
rich production of mirth. This is illustrated even in such masterful
relations as that of the overseer and the commanding officer, who may
find that the compulsion of the rod is inadequate to the extraction
of the required amount of work, and so have to cast about for other
instruments.
The good effect of a skilful use of the cajoling laugh has already
been illustrated. It is seen with particular clearness in the relation
of husband and wife; for the fun of the situation is that, in spite
of profound differences of taste and inclination and of a sharp
antagonism, the necessity of {270} common interests and ends holds
them together in daily association. This necessity, ever present to the
wiser of them, has tempered the contempt and forced the derider to at
least a pretence of good humour. The same may be said of the relation
of the sexes in general. The quality and range of the fun which is wont
to lighten a talk between a young man and a young woman on a first
introduction are pretty closely determined by the consciousness of
sexual relation on either side. Shyness, a disposition to regard the
other suspiciously as opponent, together with the instinct to please
and win admiration, and the desire to strike on points of sympathy—all
this helps to bring about, and is reflected in the peculiar wrigglings
in which the mirthful spirit expresses itself on such an occasion.
One of the best examples of the combined effect of hostility and a
desire to agree is to be found in the humours of the market place. The
relation of buyer and seller seems to be pregnant with opportunities
for merry fooling on either side. The direct and sharply felt
opposition of interest is apt to beget a good deal of the rough sort of
“taking down”. Not only will the tongue be stirred to derisive attack,
the situation may even beget retaliations in the shape of practical
jokes. The merchant, as the expert, has always had the upper hand
in the contest of wits. His customer has had to find consolation in
satires on the cheat, such as those which were common in the Middle
Ages.[240] On the other hand, the need of coming to an agreement
has served to bring into the haggling process a good deal of the
conciliative kind of laughter. The vendor has always known the value
of good-natured banter as an instrument {271} of persuasion. This
overflow of the spirit of fun into the channels of serious business
may still be seen as a faint survival in front of a cheap-Jack’s van.
George Eliot has given us a charming picture of the play of this spirit
in the south in her chapter on “The Peasants’ Fair” in _Romola_.
The same intrusion of fun as an auxiliary into the business relations
of groups is seen in many other cases where opposition has to be toned
down and a _modus vivendi_ arrived at, as in that of opposed political
parties, religious bodies and the like. The appearance of the laughing
imp, if only he behaves himself, in these rather warm encounters of
groups serves to cool the atmosphere and to temper animosity by at
least a momentary experience of genial contact. It does much, indeed,
to tone down the uneasy and half-suspicious attitude which members of
any group are apt to take up on first having to do with those of a
strange group, especially one of higher rank.
We may now summarise the chief social utilities of the reciprocal
laughter of classes at the ways of other classes. In the first place,
it helps, like the laughter of the savage tribe at the ways of other
tribes, to counteract any tendency to imitate the manners and customs
of foreign groups. What we have laughed at, we are not likely to adopt.
This is the self-protective function of laughter. To laugh at the ways
of another group is, moreover, in most cases at least, to indulge in a
feeling of our own superiority; and this attitude would have a further
conservative tendency, especially when it is the laugh of the expert in
his own department at the outside ignoramus.
Let us now glance at the effect on the group whose ways are being
laughed at. To be the object of another set’s ridicule, especially when
we have the right of retort, so far from necessarily weakening our
hold on that which is {272} ridiculed may strengthen it. When we are
strongly attached, others’ laughter may make us cling the more firmly
to what we cherish. Laughter in this case is, indeed, as we have seen,
an excellent training in a good-natured suffering of others’ ridicule,
a training which has in it the virtue of a moral tonic.
Yet this inter-groupal laughter is not wholly subservient to the
maintenance of characteristic differences. In all the higher forms of
society, at least, such ridicule has an assimilative action as well.
It manages to some extent, by inducing self-criticism, to get rid of
useless excrescences. Thus, it helps to keep down class-vanity, the
professional narrowness which cries, “There’s nothing like leather!”
a narrowness which is so delightfully satirised by Molière in the
wranglings of M. Jourdain’s professors.
The correction of this exclusive feeling of self-importance of a group
by outside laughter has always been at work, helping to keep groups in
friendly touch, and hindering the sectional or professional _esprit de
corps_ from overpowering the larger social consciousness which we call
national sentiment, and the common-sense of the community. Of this last
more will be said presently.
So far, we have illustrated the bearing on the ways of laughter of what
may be called the structural features of societies. There has been no
reference to the effects of social movements, of all that is meant by
the successive changes of fashion in manners, dress and so forth, and
of those more persistent movements which make up what we call social
progress. The least reflection will show that in this continual flux
of things social, the unceasing modifications of the head-covering and
the rest, and the trampling down of old beliefs and institutions by the
resistless “march of intellect,” we have at least as large a field for
the gambols {273} of the laughing spirit as in the distinctions and
oddly combined relations of classes.
We may best begin by referring to the movements of fashion. These may
be defined as changes in dress, manners and so forth, which are marked
off from the improvements entering into progress by two circumstances:
(1) that they are capricious, not the products of a rational choice of
the best; and (2) that they are of comparatively short duration. When
we call a mode of doing a thing a fashion, we imply, quite unknowingly
perhaps, that it has not the cachet of a change for the better, and
that as such it has no security of tenure.
A fashion differs from a custom in being essentially communicable
from one group to another, and even from one nation to another. Its
development thus belongs to a comparatively late period of social
evolution. Its hold on men and women is explained by the fact that it
appeals to two of their strongest instincts, the craving for novelty
and the impulse to imitate superiors.
Keeping to the intra-national diffusion of manners, we note that
the movement of fashion is normally from the highest rank or ranks
downwards. This movement may well have commenced far back in the
evolution of communities where class-distinctions were rigorously
enforced. The attitude of reverence towards superiors has for its
psychological concomitant the impulse to imitate. Just as children
will copy the voice and gestures of one whom they look up to, so
savages will copy the ways of Europeans who manage to make themselves
respected. In the ceremonies of primitive tribes and even of highly
complex societies, _e.g._, church ritual, a good deal of scope is
offered for this flattery of imitation. We may infer, indeed, that the
impulse to adopt the ways of exalted personages must always have {274}
been at work. In the earlier stages of human history this impulse
was checked by the force of custom and of law, _e.g._, sumptuary
laws. This imitation from below must strike at the root of those
external differences, such as style of dress, between group and group,
observance of which has helped greatly to maintain class-distinctions.
It could only have made way against these barriers gradually. So
difficult, in sooth, does the feat appear to be, that Mr. Herbert
Spencer suggests that fashion, as the imitation of those of high rank
and authority, began in a change of custom; as in the rule already
alluded to that when the king slipped the onlooking courtiers should at
once imitate his awkwardness.
It is probable that the imitation of what is distinctive and fixed in
the costume and manners of the higher class preceded by some interval
the imitation of the changes we call fashion. How the two are connected
does not seem to be quite clear. Did the rulers and those immediately
about them, piqued at the adoption of their ways by the vulgar, try
to steal a march on imitation by changing their customs? To judge
from what takes place to-day, one would answer “yes”. I am told that
ladies strongly object to go on wearing a fashionable hat as soon as
it becomes generally worn by factory girls, or other inferior group.
However this be, it seems certain that the “leaders of society,” while
they reserve for special ceremonial occasions a distinctive dress,
mode of speech and the rest, choose to alter these from time to time
for other purposes. Such alterations may be the result of the caprices
of a “leader,” guided by some inventor, or they may take the form of
an assimilation of a foreign mode. Lastly, the leaders may include
others besides the Court people: the universities are accredited
with the origination of many of the pretty bits of slang, the use of
{275} which is supposed to betoken a certain social altitude and
“up-to-dateness”.
In the midst of these changes of fashion something of custom may be
seen still to persist. Taking the dress of woman to-day, we note that
in spite of experiments like those of the Bloomers, skirts continue to
be a permanent feature in female attire. Fashions in respect of width,
and even of length, may come and go, but the skirt as skirt seems to go
on for ever.
Even when the impulse to adopt the dress and behaviour of the upper
class was allowed a certain play, it was probably long before it acted
on all ranks. Each rank, whilst keen in its imitation of the ways of
the class above it, would naturally resist any further descent of the
imitative movement.
In this descent of fashion from higher to lower ranks we see a mutual
modification of fashion and permanent custom. In some cases imitation
from below may be stopped pretty early through lack of means for giving
effect to it. The joy of wearing pearls, or other precious stones in
fashion at the moment, is denied the young seamstress. Yet there are
solaces here in the shape of “imitations”. Again, the lower middle
class, not to speak of the cottagers, are, for obvious reasons, not
likely to be affected by a craze for the Queen Anne style in domestic
architecture. Even in the case of dress, fine limitations which
the “mere male” might find it hard to define, seem to be imposed,
for example, on the architecture of the hat, when a new style is
assimilated by lower ranks. Here, again, fashion is clearly restrained
by class-custom. Ideas of neatness, of an unaggressive quietness appear
to be valued, in theory at least, in milliners, domestic servants, and
others who minister to the wants of the titled and the wealthy. The
very {276} expression “the fashionable world” implies that the full
magnificence and luxury of fashion is a monopoly.
The imitation of the manners of high life by the middle class is in
most cases a pretty clear acknowledgment of a superior social quality.
One of the most amusing examples of this thinly-veiled snobbism is
the elevated hand-shake lately in vogue. A fashion like this easily
reaches the eye of the vulgar, focussed for the first appearance of
a new characteristic of “high life,” by way of the theatre or of the
illustrated paper. A point worth noting here is the exaggeration of
what the imitators regard as of the essence of the new “mode”. It would
be curious to hear what symbolism (if any) those who appeared so eager
to get the hand-shake up to the level of the eyes assigned to this
fashionable rite.
This eager and almost simian mimicry of the ways of society’s leaders
must, it is evident, tend to the obliteration of recognisable
class-distinctions in ordinary life. We only need to compare the
spectacle of a crowd in London to-day with that of a mediæval city
crowd, as represented in a drawing of the time, to see what a
depressing amount of assimilation in dress the forces of fashion have
brought about.
The connections between these movements of fashion and the spirit of
laughter are numerous and pretty obvious. Even the primal movement,
the adoption of a fashion by the head of a community from abroad,
offers a rich spectacle for those who lie in wait for the coming of the
ludicrous. How finely the folly that lurks in a slavish submission to
fashion grins out at us from the story of those New Zealand chiefs who,
goaded by the fashion set by others of giving great feasts, would often
push their feast-givings to the point of causing a famine among their
peoples![241] The following {277} of a foreign fashion by a court has
in it, moreover, always something to prick the spirit of malicious
laughter in the subjects. Not so terribly long since, the importation
of customs from one European court to another, and a reciprocation of
the loan, by way of family connections, was the subject of a rather
malicious laughter in each of the countries affected.
It is, however, in the downward rush of fashion from rank to rank, and
the incidents which attend it, that the seeker for the laughable will
find his satisfaction. The eagerness of persons to be in the van of
the movement will of itself produce a crop of ludicrous aspects: for
the first sudden appearance of a large and capturing novelty, say in
a high-branded bonnet or manner of speech, brings to us something of
the delightful gaiety which the sight of the clown brings to a child.
It is a huge folly, which we greet with the full, unthinking roar of
hilarity. Never, indeed, does the inherent non-rationality of a large
part of human behaviour reveal itself so directly and so unmistakably
as when a fashion which has reigned long enough to become accepted
as right is thus rudely thrust aside in favour of an interloper:
whence the laughing contempt poured on new fashions by comic poets and
satirists.[242]
Nor is this all, or the best. The behaviour of the ardent aspirant
has its absurd aspect even for dull souls. The form of self-assertion
which consists in stepping out of one’s rank is always viewed by
those of the deserted rank with an acidulated amusement; and those
who are too manifestly eager to appropriate a new fashion are wont to
be regarded as persons who are trying to get above their set. If the
{278} fashionable cosmetic is laid on thickly, as it pretty certainly
will be by those seized with the more vulgar form of social ambition,
the fun will wax still greater. The display in this case adds to the
delightful transformation of the clown a touch of the bombast of the
mountebank.
New possibilities of mirth arise out of the collision between the
imitative impulse to be fashionable, and respect for the customs of
one’s group. An exaggeration of something in dress or speech which
savours of an attempt to break through class-barriers cannot but amuse
the onlooker disposed to mirth. Middle-class house-wives are, one
hears, wont to enliven the dulness of their Sunday afternoons by a
stealthy quizzing of their “maids” as they set out for their parade.
The maid’s village acquaintance—if it could succeed in stifling envious
admiration—would doubtless draw a more rollicking enjoyment from the
spectacle. In general, any appearance of craning one’s neck so as to
overtop one’s set is greeted by a slightly malicious laughter; and
the bold donning of fashionable array is the most easily recognisable
manifestation of the craning impulse. For a more purely disinterested
spectator, too, the situation has its entertaining drollness. The
struggle in the panting bosom of a young woman, whether of white
or of coloured race, as the passionate longing for some bewitching
novelty—recommended, too, by the lead of her superiors—is sharply
confronted with the sense of what befits her, and possibly a vague fear
of being plunged by a fiery zeal into the morass of the laughable, has
its comic pathos for the instructed eye.
One further contribution to the fun of the world made by this hot
eagerness to pay homage to rank is perhaps worth a reference. Like the
verbal kind, the flattery of imitation is often visibly hollow. When
the soul of man or woman is held captive by the necessity of doing
what is done by {279} others—especially by others higher up—there is
no room for thought of sincerity: whence, among many results, this
one, that for him who can be pure spectator responsive to the amusing
aspects of things, the spectacle of a great national demonstration of
loyalty cannot fail to have its diverting aspect.
No doubt the pushing worshippers of fashion, if they only wait long
enough, get their chance of laughing back. As soon as the new thing, so
charged with rollicking gaiety at first, settles down to a commonplace
habit, there comes the moment for ridiculing the belated imitator. That
popular figure on the stage, the “old dowdy,” is commonly represented
as ridiculously behind the times in respect of attire. Yet the range of
jocosity inspired by respect for mere newness, on the value of which
reason has had nothing to say, is evidently limited.
We may now turn to those deeper currents of change which together make
up social progress; including all distinct advance from lower to higher
forms of intelligence, sentiment and character, as well as from lower
to higher types of social life; and, along with these, the growth of
institutions in which these changes express themselves.
We may assume that these progressive changes arise, either from the
adoption of the products of superior mental capacity appearing in
individuals who are members of the community, or from the propagation
of ideas, inventions, institutions from one country to another.
To say precisely how the production and circulation of a social
improvement takes place is not easy. Men of imaginative minds, with an
exceptionally large mechanical, legislative, or other insight, or with
a fine feeling for the subtle things of beauty or of the moral order,
there must be. Against all attempted innovation, however, whether {280}
from within or from without, the attitude of conservatism sets itself
as a serious obstacle. Here, too, we seem to perceive the charm and
influence of rank. It is only when some recognised authority proclaims
the value of the new discovery that the multitude, which was perhaps a
moment before doing its best to trample on it, turns deferentially and
kneels. The free adoption of it as true or as good commonly follows
much later.
A startlingly new idea, whether in science, religion, or the utilities
of life, finds in its intrinsic reasonableness no defence against the
attacks of malicious mirth. The ordinary mind when it laughs, just as
when it is serious, judges things by the standard of what is customary.
What violently jars with this is viewed as legitimate game for
ridicule. The history of ideas and of the social movements growing out
of them is one long illustration of this truth. The idea of a larger
freedom and higher functions for women was treated by the theatre of
ancient Greece as matter for wild hilarity. The idea came up again and
again after this, thanks to the zeal and courage of isolated advocates.
But it continued to excite the loud laughter of the crowd. And less
than half a century ago, when J. S. Mill advocated the spiritual and
legal emancipation of women, the response was at first largely an
expression of amusement. Only to-day is a part of the civilised world
beginning to recognise the naturalness and fitness of the idea that
women should have their share, both in the intellectual gains of the
more advanced education, and in the larger work of the world.
We may see by this illustration how mighty a force every new idea of
a large revolutionary character has to meet and to overcome. Darwin’s
idea of the evolution of man seemed in the sixties to the mass of
Englishmen, including a bishop {281} of Oxford and many another high
up in the scale of intellectual culture, very much as some of the
teachings of our missionaries strike a keen-witted savage. The figure
of the monkey, which is, by the way, one of the oldest symbols of
caricature, rendered excellent service to those who, naturally enough,
greeted the proposed topsy-turvyness of Darwinism with boisterous
cachinnations.
It is much the same with the attitude of the crowd towards the
first use of practical inventions. Much merriment accompanied the
introduction from abroad by the gallants of the Restoration of
so simple an innovation as the use of the fork[243]—a fact to be
remembered by the English tourist abroad when he is disposed to laugh
at the sight of a too lavish use of the knife. In such cases, the first
adopters of the novelty are laughed at very much as in the case of a
new fashion. The absurdity of the adoption in either case turns on the
delightful freshness and the glorious irregularity of the proceeding.
On the other hand, we meet here, too, with a recoil of laughter upon
the laugher. Though a respect for the customary prompts us at first
to ridicule any sudden and impressive change in ideas or habits
of life, yet, when the change is in a fair way of becoming fixed,
the same feeling will urge us to make merry over those who show an
obstinate prejudice in favour of the old. Laughter finds one of its
chief functions in ridiculing worn-out ideas, beliefs that have been
proved illusory, and discarded habits of life. Nowhere, perhaps, is the
elation of mirth more distinctly audible than in this ridicule by an
advancing age of survivals of the discarded ways of its predecessors.
Art gives us many examples of this merriment over what is decaying and
growing effete. Every age of stir and {282} commotion has probably
had its satirical literature, striking with boisterous mirth at the
disappearing phantoms. The broad and genial comedy of Aristophanes
pushed against the tottering mythology of his time, and the fall evoked
a large outflow of mirth. The great work of Cervantes and the satires
(pasquins) of the same period poked fun at the sentimental clinging to
the decaying order of chivalry and feudalism.[244]
Merry-making over the death of outworn ideas and institutions has
frequently been reinforced by the deep and refreshing expiration which
accompanies relief from pressure. This elemental form of laughter
has entered into all those happy moments of national life when the
whole people has become closely united in a joyous self-abandonment.
Plautus, the comedian of the people, reflects in his broad merriment
the rebound of the spirit after the second Punic War from a long
continued state of tension, and the craving of the masses for a more
unrestrained enjoyment of the pleasures of life.[245] The popular art
of the Middle Ages, in which the demons seem to play the harmless part
of the policeman in a modern pantomime, illustrates the rebound from
an oppressive superstition. A like relief of tension and outburst of
pent-up spirits are recognisable in the literature of the Reformation
and of the English Restoration.
The same exhilarant aspect of the vanishing of the outworn moves us
in a quieter way when we ridicule the survivals of customs and rites
which have lost their significance. This form of hilarious enjoyment,
which implies a piercing through of appearances and a searching into
meanings, will be more fully considered later on.
It seems to follow from what has been said that laughter {283}
reacts in a double manner upon changes of social habit. First of all,
it resists the wildness of the craving for the new (neomania). As
schoolboys are wont to treat a newcomer, it applies its lash vigorously
to a proposed innovation, in order to see what “stuff” it is made of,
and whether it can justify its existence. In this way it moderates the
pace of the movement of change. On the other hand, it completes the
process of throwing off an outworn habit by giving it, so to speak,
the _coup de grâce_. It thus combines the service rendered to a herd
of sheep on the march by the shepherd who walks in front, with that
rendered by the sheep-dog which runs back again and again to the
laggards. It seems to be enforcing Goethe’s maxim:—
“Ohne Hast
Aber ohne Rast.”
We may now glance at some of the workings of this complex movement
of social progress on the formation of social sets, and on their
reciprocal attitudes.
It is evident that, by introducing much more subdivision of employment
and exclusive knowledge of experts, progress will tend to widen the
area of mutual quizzing and chaffing, already dealt with. It is of more
importance to point out that the advance of a community in knowledge
and culture will lead to the formation of new groups involving certain
differences of rank. The importance of this kind of group-division
shows itself in classic comedy. Juvenal expresses the lively contempt
of the urban citizen for his provincial inferior,[246] and our own
comedy of the Restoration, taking town life as its standard, pours
ridicule on the country gentry.[247] It is illustrated also in the
relation of the clergy {284} as the learned class, to the ignorant
laity. As the _contes_ amusingly suggest, a large part of the authority
of the clergy during the Dark Ages rested on this intellectual
superiority. If we view culture widely we may speak of an indefinite
number of levels composing a scale of intellectual dignity. These
levels are commonly supposed to coincide with such groups as the
professional class, the man of business (Kaufman), and the lower
class. But no such coincidence can be assumed when once education has
become a common possession. A large portion of our “upper” class—which
is determined no longer by descent but to a considerable extent by
wealth—is neither cultured nor even well-informed. A clerk will often
be found to have more general knowledge and literary taste than his
well-dressed employer, and a working man, in spite of the limitations
of poverty, may know more about such subjects as philosophy and history
than the great majority of the middle class. We see then that the
strata representing gradations of culture are largely independent of
commonly recognised divisions. These older distinctions may, indeed,
be very much toned down by the culture-movement. The ancient line of
division between the superior man and his inferior spouse has been half
effaced by the admission of women into the higher culture circle. The
culture divisions are real social groups, each being bound together by
a large community of ideas, tastes and interests; and their importance
in the system of social grouping tends to increase.
The development of culture groups introduces a new and important change
in the standards of fitness, to which laughter is, so to speak, tied.
When superiority is lacking in a clearly recognisable basis of reason,
its ridicule of inferiors can only have its source in a pride which
may be, and often is, of the most foolish. When, however, it resides
{285} in the possession of greater spiritual wealth, more refined
ideas and a more acute sense of the fitting, the laughter itself
shows a finer quality. It is less boisterous, more discerning, and
more penetrating. As such, we need not wonder that, though it is felt
to be irritating, it is not understood. The _nouveau riche_, whose
vulgarity reveals itself as soon as he appears in a society having
refined manners, may wince under the half-repressed smile, though he
seems for the most part well protected by an insensitive tegument. As
Schopenhauer has observed, the man of mediocre intelligence very much
dislikes encountering his intellectual superior; and it so happens, for
the gratification of merry onlookers, perhaps, that social ambition not
infrequently precipitates its possessor into a sharp encounter with
those who have a whole world of ideas of which he knows nothing.
Not but that the inferior here, too, may now and again have his chance
of laughing back. The possession of ideas and of an exacting taste
is apt to appear affected to one wanting in them. Midas, accustomed
to measure values by incomes, and to identify intelligence with the
cleverness of the money-maker, not unnaturally regards a habit of
appealing to ideas as an eccentric superfluity; and so laughter may
come consolingly to him who is utterly beaten in the encounter of wits.
The “common-sense” of the average Briton scores many a loud laugh in
its confident self-assertion against any proposed introduction of ideas
into the sphere of practical affairs.
A further effect of the movement of culture on group-formation is seen
in the divisions into sects, a phenomenon which seems to be conspicuous
in the communities built up by our race. This tendency to a minute
subdivision of religious, political and other bodies introduces a new
kind of relation. We cannot well say that one section surpasses {286}
its rivals in intelligence. This may or may not be the case, but the
rules of the social game require us to leave the question open. On the
other hand, this differentiation of organised opinion into a number of
particular creeds or “views,” the shade of opinion being often fine,
leads to a new bifurcation of “higher” and “lower” groups. The “higher”
here is the mass or majority which naturally laughs at tiny minorities
as faddists and cranks. Yet again, the fine impartiality of the god
of laughter, to whom, since mankind for the greater part is other
than wise, the difference of the many and the few may hardly count,
occasionally gives the despised minority its chance; for minorities do
sometimes represent ideas which are born for sovereignty.
While the progress of a nation in ideas and institutions thus serves in
a manner to multiply groups, and so to introduce new opportunities for
the indulgence of group attack and retaliation, it tends on the whole
to break down their barriers. It does this by means of the pulpit, the
press, and the educational agencies which help to circulate new ideas
through all classes. These conduce, both directly and indirectly, to
a certain assimilation of groups; and assimilative action is going
on rapidly to-day. Yet, as we have seen, it leaves ample room for
different grades of culture, since natural differences of coarseness
and fineness in the intellectual fibre will always secure the broad
contrast of the cultured and the uncultured.
The spread of knowledge and culture through all classes acts indirectly
on group-distinctions by throwing open the occupations of one class to
members of others, and more particularly of “lower” ones. The workman’s
son who has a brain and cultivates it may, as we are often told, find
his way to the university and take his place unchallenged {287} among
the lawyers, the doctors, or the exalted “dons” themselves.
Now all sudden changes in class, especially such as involve elevation,
are apt to appear laughable. Even when promotion comes by royal favour,
we feel the leap into a higher sphere to be anomalous, and are wont to
examine the grounds of the new title with some care. The conservative
instincts of men oppose themselves laughingly to the appearance of
new dignitaries very much as they oppose themselves to the appearance
of new ideas, and some temporary unfitness in the person for his new
social niche is to be expected. In the comedy of the Restoration, we
are told, “no measure is kept in pouring contempt on the mushroom
growths of yesterday, the knights of recent creation”.[248]
Something of this impression of the incongruously new is produced for
a moment even in the case of a well-earned rise in the social scale.
The young aspirant’s family and connections, living on in the less
brilliant light, will perforce laugh, though perhaps with something of
sympathetic admiration, at the oddity of the sudden elevation; and the
rising young man will be singularly fortunate if he does not now and
again betray an amusing unfamiliarity with the ways of the company he
has joined.
Yet the confusion of ranks due to the universalising of education is
small and unimpressive when compared with that arising from another
cause. The great destroyer of fixed class-boundaries is the force which
tends to transmute a community into a plutocracy. This tendency may, no
doubt, illustrate in a measure the effect of a diffused education; for
the successful fortune-builder will sometimes have attained success by
scientific knowledge skilfully {288} applied. Yet the presence—or the
absence—of other qualities than the intellectual seems to have much to
do in these days with sudden elevations in the plutocratic scale.
As the comedy of Molière may tell us, the spectacle of a man standing
at the foot of the social ladder and looking up wistfully at its
higher region has something entertaining in it both for those on his
actual level and for those on the level of his ambition. Later, when
the wistful glance is followed by actual climbing, the unrehearsed
performances may grow mirth-provoking even to the point of tearful
mistiness. Nor does the attainment of the goal make an end of the fun,
since the maintenance of a decorous equilibrium at the new altitude may
turn out to be even more precarious than the climbing, especially when
relatives and other accidents of the humbler state persist in their
attachment.
On the other hand, these climbings exhibit much in the way of amusing
imposture; for men, as Schopenhauer tells us, have been known to push
their way, unqualified and impious, even into literary circles, and
snatch a kind of reflected distinction by the use of arts at once
ancient and vulgar.
The spectacle of changing one’s class exhibits the amusing aspect of
fraud in another way. When leaders high up in “society” pay homage to
the deity of the climbing money-maker by betaking themselves to trade
under assumed names, the mirth of Midas and of his whole despised caste
may find its opportune vent.
We may now briefly indicate the general effect of the social movements
just sketched upon the quality and the mode of distribution of the
hilarious moods of a people.
(_a_) To begin with, the advance and wider spread of the wave of
culture will clearly tend to effect a general raising {289} of the
standard of taste, and to develop an appreciation of the quality of
the ludicrous. This result, though effected in part by the development
of art and the extension of its educative influence, is in the main
the direct outcome of intellectual progress and of that increase in
refinement of feeling which seems to depend on this progress. One
may describe this change by saying that the standard of ideas tends
gradually to gain ground, hemming in if not narrowing that of custom.
The primal laugh, void of intellectual content, becomes less general,
the laugh of the mind more frequent. This effect of an introduction
of ideas holds good in the case of members of all classes in so far
as they enter into the higher culture group. In this way particular
standards of locality and of social group begin to count less in our
laughter.
This effect of expansion of the intellectual view is reflected in all
the more refined varieties of comic art. Any manifest insistence on
dignity of rank, more especially when the group is not of imposing
aspect, whether the _petite noblesse_ in a small “Residency” town on
the Continent or the families which compose “Society” in an obscure
town in England, is felt to be on the verge of the ludicrous. On the
other hand, a magnifying of the dignity of a person or a class by those
below, when accompanied by a cringing demeanour, is apt to take on the
amusing aspect of flunkeyism, the due appreciation of which presupposes
a certain maturity of the laughter of the mind.
The general tendency of this advance of ideas is as yet very
imperfectly realised. The march of mind, like some military marches,
is not quite so uniformly triumphant as it is wont to be represented.
A considerable part of the laughter among what are called the educated
classes is still {290} but little influenced by the finer and deeper
perception of ludicrous quality; while, as for the uneducated majority
of all social grades, it would be hard to find in their mirth any
distinct traces of a deposit from the advance of the culture-stream.
One might venture on the supposition that the appreciation of the
ludicrous shown to-day by the frequenters of a “high class” Music
Hall in London is, both as to its intellectual penetration and as
to its refinement of feeling, but little, if anything, above that
of a mediæval crowd which gathered to see and hear the jokes of the
_jongleur_. So slow a process is the infiltration of refining influence
from the higher strata of culture downwards.
(_b_) This change in the quality of social laughter through an
infusion of ideas has undoubtedly been accompanied by a change in its
quantity, as seen in a decline of the older, voluminous merriment of
the people. This fall in the collective outburst, already touched on,
and recognised by all students of the past, is largely due to a toning
down of the simpler and heartier utterances of the common people. This
change is so important as to call for a short investigation.
In simpler types of society, the more hearty and voluminous laughter
probably came from the lowest strata. It is enough to recall the mirth
of the Egyptian and the Roman slave. Later on, the large scope for
indulgence in laughter was supplied by an _organisation_ of mirth in
the shape of shows and other popular entertainments. There was possibly
the germ of such an organisation in the annual celebration “in honour
of the most jocund god of laughter” referred to by Apuleius.[249] One
may instance the merry-makings at the harvest and vintage festivals
out of {291} which Greek comedy took its rise, and the rollicking fun
of the multitude at fairs and festivals during the Middle Ages. That
the people were the true experts in the secrets of laughter is further
suggested by the fact that slaves, both Greek and Roman, were selected
as jesters and wits by well-to-do people. The fools kept by Orientals
were probably from the same class.[250] The later “fools” of European
courts were drawn from the simple folk.
The characteristics of this early type of popular mirth can be summed
up in the word childishness. The slave or other oppressed worker
could without effort throw off ideas of toil and chastisement in his
play hour. Towards his master and his treatment of him, his attitude
seems to have been on the whole the resignation of a life-long habit.
He might, not improbably, enjoy a quiet joke at the expense of his
overseer, but he seems to have entertained towards him none of the
deeper animosity.
This naïve form of popular laughter gave way to a less childish type
when “the common people” began to include a goodly number of free-men
who were able to form opinions of their own, and bold enough to
assert the right of expressing these. It follows from what has been
said above that the newly gained freedom would naturally give rise to
some laughter-bringing criticism of authorities. This tendency of the
mirthful mood of the crowd was instantly perceived by the authorities
who waged war against it, using the weapons of a repressive censorship.
We have an example of this censorship in the police regulations which
hampered the introduction of comedy from Athens into Rome. It was
required by the authorities that the scene of the play should always
be laid outside Rome as if to guard against a direct attack on Roman
{292} institutions and persons.[251] A like hostility to the pranks of
a free and quite unfastidious mirth was shown by the mediæval church.
This may well have been in part the outcome of honest moral reprobation
of the scurrilities of the songs, the _contes_ and the rest. Yet it
looks as if the prohibitory enactments originated for the most part in
the alarm of the ecclesiastics for the security of their hold on the
mind of the people.
It was not, however, an easy matter to silence popular laughter when
this had once heard itself and recognised its force. Aristophanes
and his laughing public were, for a time at least, stronger than
the demagogue whom they ridiculed. No doubt the civil and the
ecclesiastical power have again and again succeeded in half-stifling
for a time the ruder sort of laughter. Yet the complete suffocation
of it in free communities has proved to be impossible. In the Middle
Ages, we are told, the atmosphere of fun would rise now and again to a
kindling heat, so that holy men themselves would join in the not too
decent songs.[252] The modern history of Political Satire abundantly
illustrates the force of popular laughter. Thus, in the Stuart period,
satires were produced which were a popular protest against the
grievance of monopolies.[253] How firmly it maintained its ground is
illustrated by the fact that the politicians, when they have failed
to oust it from the stage, have endeavoured to turn it to their own
ends.[254] If the more scurrilous sort has now been driven from the
stage, political caricature {293} flourishes vigorously and has dared
to attack royalty itself within a measurable period.[255]
The people has undoubtedly been the upholder of the wholesome custom of
mirth. Taking the peasantry, the workmen, and the lower middle class as
representing the “people” of to-day, one has to confess that its merry
note seems to have been lost. The reservoir which in the past supplied
the stream of national gaiety has certainly fallen and threatens even
to dry up. But of this more by-and-by.
(_c_) As a last effect needing to be emphasised here, we have
underlying the laughter of a people a curiously composite attitude.
By this I mean an agglomeration of mental tendencies involving
different _manières de voir_, and different standards of the fit and,
consequently, of the laughable.
In the preceding chapter we saw how the choral laughter of the savage
followed the directions of the self-conservative tendencies of his
tribe. This unconscious self-adaptation of the mirthful mood to
the ends of the tribal life has persisted through all the changes
introduced by the play of fashion and by the movements of social
evolution. We of to-day who travel so much more than our ancestors in
foreign lands, and may even learn to speak their languages, retain the
tendency to resist the importation of what strikes us as un-English. In
certain seasons, say when the war-temper heats the blood and foreigners
criticise, this feeling for what is national grows distinct and vivid,
and reflects itself unmistakably in the manifestations of such mirth as
seems to be compatible with the mood of the hour.
This point of view of the tribe has always coexisted with {294} the
narrower and more relative one of the group, illustrated above, though
it has in ordinary circumstances been less prominent in men’s mirthful
utterances. The mediæval laughter at the priest, one may conjecture,
was now and again directed from the national or patriotic point of
view, as the people began to discern in him the servant of a foreign
power.
Not only so, but in much of a people’s laughter at what it deems the
“absurd”—the laughter of “common-sense,” as we may call it—it is the
point of view of the tribe or society which is still adopted: and
this holds good of the larger part, at least, of a community in the
van of the march of civilisation. When we smile at what appears to us
a far-fetched view, or a quaint habit of life, we are really guided
by the standard, “what people round about us say and do and expect
us to say and do”. This contented reference to a vaguely formulated
custom, without any scrutiny of its inherent reasonableness, holds
good, indeed, of the judgments passed by ordinary men on the laughable
aspects of the immoral. Promptness in paying one’s debts, for example,
will for most men wear a reasonable or a foolish aspect according
to the custom of their tribe—though here two class-standards make
themselves distinctly felt; and so the laugh may be turned, as the
custom changes, from him whose tardiness in discharging liabilities
suggests straitened means otherwise carefully concealed, to him who
displays an ungentlemanly haste in matters of a contemptible smallness.
It seems to follow that the adjustments of laughter to more universal
norms, to ideas of an inherent fitness in things, are a kind of
artificial addition to deeper and more instinctive tendencies. The
ordinary man, even when he enjoys the spectacle of some laughable folly
or vice, {295} hardly transcends the point of view of custom, from
which what all men do is seen to be right. It is only when a higher
culture has made apparent the universality of the laughable, as of
its opposite the reasonable, that a conscious resort to ideas becomes
frequent. This clarifying of our laughter by the infusion of ideas is,
in a special manner, the work of experts, namely, the moralist, the
literary critic, and, most of all, the artist whose business it is to
illumine the domain of the ludicrous. This function of art will form
the subject of a later chapter.
* * * * *
In this chapter we have dealt merely with what I have called choral
laughter, that of groups, smaller or larger. There is, however, another
kind, the private laughter of the individual when alone, or in the
company of sympathetic friends. This also has its pre-conditions in the
processes of social evolution just touched upon.
Such independent laughter would, it is evident, be impossible in
the lowest stages of this evolution. In the savage or quasi-savage
state an oddly constituted member of a tribe—if such a being were
possible—liable to be seized with a spasm of ridicule at the
absurdities of tribal ceremonies would certainly encounter serious
risks. It has needed ages of social progress to establish the
conditions of a safe individual liberty in the indulgence of the jocose
temper.
This freedom in choosing one’s own modes of laughter has gradually
asserted itself as a part of all that we mean by individual liberty.
Perhaps, indeed, it may be regarded as the highest phase and completion
of this liberty.
This is not the place for a full inquiry into the complex conditions on
which the development of a freer individual laughter depends. It may
be enough to point to the need {296} of an advance in ideas and the
capability, among the few at least, to form individual judgments, which
this advance implies. A man who would laugh his own laugh must begin by
developing his own perceptions and ideas.
A fuller understanding of the pre-conditions of an independent
laughter will only be possible to one who has carefully examined its
characteristics. In the following chapter I propose to analyse that
variety of the laughing temper which seems in a peculiar way to be
an attribute of the developed individual. This attribute is what is
specially designated in these days by the term humour.
{297}