LAUGHTER OF THE INDIVIDUAL: HUMOUR.
In the preceding chapter we have seen how the advance of civilisation
has tended to still the louder choral voice of laughter. Yet man’s best
friend is not of the sort to take an affront too seriously. Driven
out from the crowd, he has known how to disguise himself and to steal
back into the haunts of men, touching here and there a human spirit
and moving it to a quieter and perfectly safe enjoyment of things
laughable. This new endowment, this last inspiration of the mortal by
the god, is what we mean by Humour.
Perhaps hardly a word in the language—and it seems to be exclusively
an English word—would be harder to define with scientific precision
than this familiar one. It is often used with the greatest degree of
looseness, as when a man is endowed with humour because he laughs
readily.[256] Yet any one who takes pains in using words knows how far
this is from being accurate. A chronic garrulity of laughter, typified
in what Mr. Meredith calls the “hypergelast,” stands, indeed, in marked
contrast to what careful speech indicates by “humour”. As its etymology
might teach us, the term connotes, not so much the common endowment of
{298} “risibility,” as a certain kind of temperament, a complexion
of sentiment, nay, more, a mode of psychical organisation. We cannot,
therefore, think of the race as humorous, and should even find it
difficult to generalise the endowment so far as to speak of humorists
as a class. The humorous man or woman is so, primarily and essentially,
by the unpurchasable possession of an individual mind.
This fact of a quite peculiar mixture of elements in the humorous
person must never be lost sight of. It dooms this person to a
comparative solitude in the vocal expression of a feeling which is
primarily social and communicative. The idea of a large unison of
utterance among humorous persons is not entertainable. A man who has
developed his humorous bent will be thankful if he finds in his social
circle one or two who can understand, and, now and again, join in his
quiet chuckle.
Yet, though essentially in every individual case a unique blend
of elements, humour has certain common characteristics. What sort
of temperament and mind are we thinking of when we agree to call
Shakespeare, Cervantes, Goldsmith, Sterne, Lamb, Dickens, and George
Eliot humorists?
One thing we can say confidently, that it is wanting in certain
characteristics of the more diffused laughter. It is far removed from
the swift reflex gaiety of the child and the unthinking adult. Its
laughter is not only quieter but has a slower movement, and it is
charged with a deeper meaning. Again, its utterance differs in tone
from the old brutal and contemptuous shout. It voices itself in low and
almost tender tones. It is the laughter altogether farthest removed
from the standpoint of the interested person: there is in it nothing
of the crowing over the vanquished, hardly anything of a consciousness
of the {299} superiority to which the uplifting of laughter may at
the moment make valid claim. Hence, one may hesitate to apply the name
humorist to a writer in whose laughter—though it is commonly spoken of
as humour—a note of derisive contempt begins to grow prominent.
These contrasts point clearly enough to certain positive
characteristics of the moods of humour. A quiet survey of things, at
once playful and reflective; a mode of greeting amusing shows which
seems in its moderation to be both an indulgence in the sense of fun
and an expiation for the rudeness of such indulgence; an outward,
expansive movement of the spirits met and retarded by a cross-current
of something like kindly thoughtfulness; these clearly reveal
themselves as some of its dominant traits.
At first it seems impossible to view this subtle and complex mental
attitude as a development of the naïve and rather coarse merriment of
earlier times. Yet a slight examination of the choicest examples of
what the discerning call humour would suffice to show that it finds its
pasturage very much where the Greek or the mediæval populace found it.
Topsy-turvyness, especially when it involves the fall of things from
a height; stumbling and awkwardness of all kinds; human oddities when
they grow to provocative dimensions; all self-inflation with a view to
force a reluctant notice; the manifold masqueradings of mortals; the
unfitnesses of things to the demands of circumstances; extravagances,
perversities, and the multitudinous follies of men; these which move
the rough man to his unconsidered cachinnation move also the humorous
man to his slower and _sotto voce_ note.
As our great woman humorist has it: “Strange as the genealogy may
seem, the original parentage of that wonderful and delicious mixture
of fun, fancy, philosophy and {300} feeling, which constitutes modern
humour, was probably the cruel mockery of a savage at the writhings of
a suffering enemy—such is the tendency of things towards the better and
more beautiful!”[257]
In asserting that gentle humour has its descent from such an uncouth
ancestry, we must not be supposed to imply that its genesis has been
a sudden or a simple process. As has been suggested, the sentiment
is highly complex. It presupposes in its possessor the presence of a
particular assemblage of qualities which may be expected to be rare;
and a study of the development both of the individual and of the race
tells us that this grouping of qualities is, of all the products of
nature’s laboratory, one of the most delicate, one exacting from her a
very special effort of preparation.
Although humour is correctly described as a sentiment, its most
apparent, if not most important condition, is a development of
intelligence. It is plainly an example of what Mr. Meredith calls
“the laughter of the mind,” an expression which makes the large
presupposition that we have this mind. It thrives best at the level
of ideas. Yet the element of intellect which is vital to humour does
not imply subtlety of mind, still less the presence of ideas remote
from the plane of ordinary men’s understanding. What is needed is a
mind given to musing on what it observes—it may be that of a shrewd
housewife—having a sufficient life and independence of movement to rise
above the dull mechanical acceptance of things, to pierce these with
the ray of a fresh criticism.
The distinguishing intellectual element in humorous contemplation is
a larger development of that power of grasping things together, and
in their relations, which is at {301} the root of all the higher
perceptions of the laughable. More particularly, it is a mental habit
of projecting things against their backgrounds, of viewing them in
their complete settings—so far as this involves those relations of
contrariety which, as we have allowed, are of the essence of the
ludicrous, in the stricter sense of the term. This comprehension of
the setting is dependent on a process of _imaginative reflection_; for
the background which humour requires is not the same as the visible
background, but has, to a considerable extent, to be reinstated, or
rather to be constructed.
This introduction into humour of something in the nature of a thinking
process or reflection has this curious consequence, that it does not
merely play about the realm of the serious, as the earlier and simpler
laughter does, but comprehends, assimilates, and becomes toned down
into half-play by something of the weightier import of things, of their
value and their bearing on our welfare. This is the paradox, the secret
of the humour-loving soul, irritating at once to the merely serious
person and to the light-hearted trifler. In order to understand how
this is effected, we shall, as will be seen presently, need to look
at other elements besides the intellectual. Yet we shall do well to
note the fact that the possibility of this meeting of the playful and
the serious in the mood of humour has its intellectual condition in an
enlarged mental grasp of things.
Our analysis of the objects which entice the laugh from man has
suggested that the risible aspect nearly always coexists with other
aspects. The kind of physical defect which is amusing may also be
wrong æsthetically or hygienically, and so on of the rest. And though
writers from Aristotle to Bain have been careful to point out that the
laughable defect or degradation must in its magnitude be below the
threshold of the painfully ugly, the {302} blameworthy and so forth,
it is perfectly clear that given a quick and comprehensive perception,
and a turn for musing on what is perceived, the serious tendency in
that which amuses us will come into the margin of the field of vision.
In this way, in the case of those who have developed the requisite
combining organ, a kind of binocular mental vision has become possible.
We enjoy pensively the presentation of Don Quixote, of Uncle Toby,
and the other great humorous characters, just because we are in a
mood in which, while giving ourselves up to an amusing spectacle, we
nevertheless embrace in our reflective survey, and are affected by,
something of its deeper meaning.
A full account of the humorous way of regarding things would trace
out all the subtle interpenetrations of merry fooling and serious
inspection, of a light and merry fancy and a sober reason. A hint,
only, on their modes of combination, can be given here.
A finer appreciation of contrasts, and of relations generally, will
often serve to enrich the impression given by a palpable instance of
the laughable. A small plump child falls on the floor with sonorous
effect: the sudden flopping down is fraught with entertainment for
all men. The observer who can contemplate thoughtfully, enjoys the
fall also, but more quietly and with a larger process of mental
assimilation. His mind discerns in the trivial incident such things,
perhaps, as the compact sturdiness of nature re-establishing itself
by vigorous efforts duly announced by grunts, and the harmlessness of
falls when bones and joints are young, as compared with those of the
old, of which in many respects the child’s fall may remind him. It is
a train of ideas of this kind, though only half-consciously pursued,
which gives to the thumping fall much of its value for the humorous
observer. {303}
Again, the development of the intelligence to a large and varied
activity will, by quickening the faculty of seizing relations, open up
new and spacious fields for the humorist’s quiet contemplation. To one
bringing a mental eye focussed for the amusing juxtaposition, and a
temper disposed to muse on what he sees, how much of the entertaining
may reveal itself in common sights, such as that of a thin wheezy man
joining in shouts of a full-blooded Jingo crowd, or that of a woman,
whose head has just been pommelled by her rightful lord, turning
upon and “slanging” the bystander who has foolishly tried to curb an
excessive assertion of marital rights.[258] The possession of ideas,
again, will help a man at once sympathetically to realise and to
transcend limited points of view when they come into collision, and so
to gather much ruminating amusement. How large a scope, for example,
for such quiet entertainment opens up in the rejoinder of Mrs. Flynn,
an Irish lady who had been brought before a magistrate for assaulting
her husband, and commiserated by that compassionate functionary on
her sad plight with one eye closed and the head bandaged: “Och, yer
worship, just wait till yez see Flynn”. The recognition of the real
proportions of a zest for battle and a taste for compassion in the
stalwart Irish dame, unsuspected by kindly magistrates, at once gives
us the point of view for a half-serious, half-amusing contemplation of
human relations.
As these illustrations suggest, the point of view of the humorous
observer is not a fixed one. Sometimes the freshness, the sense of
liberation from the stupidly commonplace, will come by applying a
rational idea to things which are not accustomed to the treatment. At
other times, when the intelligence happens to be more sprightly, the
new point of {304} view is reached by a flight of fancy which loves
to perch itself on some outlook far from that of a rational criticism.
The humorous sort of mind delights in the play of inverting ordinary
arrangements, say, of making man and beast, father and son, exchange
places, or, as in Lewis Carroll’s delightful instance of an ideal
experiment, of putting the sane people in asylums and allowing the
lunatics to go at large.[259]
It follows that humorous contemplation will have many shades of
seriousness. In some instances, the proportion of the rational element
leads us to speak of it as wisdom laughing,—“ridentem dicere verum”;
in others, in which the predominance of a capricious fancy brings the
expression near that of sportive wit, to describe it rather as laughter
sobered by a word of wisdom. Yet it may be said that in every state
which we describe as one of humorous enjoyment the rational element
itself, affected by its alliance, puts on a half-festive attire, so
that after all the whole mind may be said to join in the play.[260]
The humorous state is, however, much more than a peculiar modification
of the processes of intelligence. It cannot be constituted by a
mere train of cold perceptions and ideas. It means that the whole
consciousness is for the time modified by the taking on of a new
attitude or mood. The play of young fancy about the grave elderly form
of reason, which is half-coaxed to play too, comes from this new tone
of the whole mind.
This mental tone involves a peculiar modification of the conative
processes. All laughing scrutiny of things, as a play-attitude, is
a sort of relaxation of the set concentration {305} of a conative
purpose. Whenever we laugh, if it be only with a child at the
jocosities of a clown, we are freed from the constraining force of the
practical and even of the theoretical interests which commonly hold and
confine our minds when we observe closely. In such moments we abandon
ourselves to the tickling play of the object on our perceptions and
ideational tendencies. In humour this self-abandonment takes on a shade
of seriousness, not because the relaxation of the conative effort is
less complete, but because the self-abandonment is that of a mind so
habitually reflective that, even when it is at play, it does not wholly
lose sight of the serious import of the thoughts which minister to its
entertainment; because it dimly recognises the worth of the standard
ideas, by the lightest allusion to which it is able to indulge in a
playful criticism of what is presented.
The deeper secret of the mood of humour, however, lies in a peculiar
modification of the feeling-tone of consciousness. In this, it is at
once evident, we have to do with a special example of complexity.
The laughter tinged with something akin to sadness is a mixture of
feeling-tones; of tones, too, which seem directly opposed and likely to
be mutually repugnant.
The gaiety of laughter begins to be complicated with an undertone by
the half-intrusion into consciousness of the serious import of things.
To be aware, however indistinctly, that the world has its serious
side, is to lose the child’s note of pure mirth, is to have a touch of
sadness added to our laughter.
The more serious complication comes, however, when the regrettable side
of the laughable object makes itself felt. The effect of this on the
humorous person has nothing in common with that of the exhibition of
folly on {306} the contemptuous person. It is the very opposite to the
feeling of one who rejoices in another’s discomfiture as such. It is
a sense of the implicated “pity of it”. A person completely humorous
is essentially sympathetic, skilled in the humane art of transporting
himself to others’ standpoints, of comprehending men’s doings and words
in the warm light thrown by the human affections. By some, indeed,
sympathy is regarded as the great distinguishing characteristic of
humour.[261] But it seems well to add that it is the infusion of a
proportionate amount of the sympathetic into our blithe survey of
things which carries us far in the path of humorous appreciation. A
sympathy of a step too quick for the sense of fun to keep abreast in
friendly comradeship will, as Flaubert says happened in his case in
later life,[262] make an end of laughter.
It is but a step from this recognition of the regrettableness of what
amuses us to a discernment of what, in its turn, tones down the sadness
of regret, of the fine threads which attach the laughable defect to
elements of real worth. Humour, of the richer kinds at least, certainly
includes something of consideration, of a detection, in the laughable
quality or its attachments, of suggestions of what is estimable and
lovable.
The disposition to think well of what amuses us may come in the first
instance from an impulse of gratitude. So ready are we in general to
acknowledge another’s entertainment of us that, even when the pleasure
bestowed is known to have been given quite unwittingly, we cannot quite
check the impulse to tender thanks. {307}
Again, that which amuses us will often, when thoughtfully considered,
show itself to be bound up with what is really estimable. It is
exaggerations of good qualities which are so amusing, especially
when through sheer obstinacy they tend to become the whole man, and
to provoke while they entertain. Comedy will sometimes—in the figure
of Molière’s Alceste, for example—exhibit to us this clinging of the
laughable to the skirts of excellence. But it is only to the more
reflective mood of humour, to which comedy, as we shall see, does not
appeal, that this coexistence of the quality and its defects, fully
discloses itself.
Sometimes, too, even though we fail to discern its partial redemption
through an organic connection with a worthy trait, a laughable defect
may take on the appearance of a condonable and almost lovable blemish
of character. Thus it is with the small imperfections seen in men
recognised to be substantially good, imperfections which bring them
nearer to us and so make them comprehensible. Thus, too, is it with the
ignorances and simplicities of children, which, even while they bring
the smile, disclose their worth as pure expressions of child-nature.
By speaking of a sentiment of humour we imply that the kindly feeling
somehow combines with the gaiety of laughter in a new type of emotional
consciousness. This combination, again, seems to involve a simultaneous
presence in consciousness of the two elements, and not merely a rapid
alternation of two phases of feeling. It is this simultaneous rise and
partial fusion of a gay and a sad tone of feeling which differentiates
humour proper from the feeling of ages to which the proximity of the
laughable and the pathetic in things was familiar enough, as we may
see, for example, from Pope’s lines on Addison:— {308}
Who but must laugh if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?
Again, as a harmonious blending of elements the sentiment of humour
contrasts with that mere mixture of pleasurable and painful ingredients
which Plato thought he detected in all laughter.[263]
The psychology of the emotions is still in a backward state, and we
know very little about the laws of their fusion.[264] One or two points
may, however, be touched on.
It must be remembered that two feelings simultaneously excited may
clash and refuse to combine in a peaceful whole. This commonly happens,
indeed, when they are repugnant in kind, _e.g._, pride and tenderness,
and when both are powerfully excited. Emotional fusion means that this
repugnance is somehow overcome, that the constituent emotive processes
combine in some new current of consciousness. Not that the elements
need be wholly submerged in the product; they may remain as tones
remain in a chord, half-disclosed, though profoundly modified by their
concomitants. Such a state of partial fusion may be illustrated in our
moods of memory, in which delight in the recovery of lost experiences
is tempered with regret.
The conditions of such a peaceful, harmonious confluence of dissimilar
feelings are various. The effect may be furthered by the presence of
points of affinity among the elements; whence the sentiments which
dignify their objects, such as love and admiration, readily combine.
This holds good to some extent of the constituents of humour, since
amusement and something like tender regard for him who amuses us are
plainly allied. Yet this {309} consideration does not seem to help us
in understanding how the two polar moods of hilarity and sadness should
be able to combine.
We may be helped here by setting out from the fact of a simultaneous
appeal to the dissimilar feelings by the same presentation. When this
occurs again and again, it is probable that organic modifications may
be effected by the simultaneous action of the double stimulus. Nobody
begins by feeling amused and sorry at the same moment. The boy and the
savage may have a moment of mild pity for an ugly piece of deformity;
but this moment comes after the laughing is over. The co-presentation
of the sad and the amusing had, we may be sure, to be repeated during
many generations of men before the two currents could join in one
smooth flow.
Those who find the core of an emotion in a widely diffused organic
process may reason that such repetitions of a complex emotional
stimulation may modify the nervous system in some way, so as to allow
of the combination of some parts at least of the bodily resonances
characteristic of the emotional constituents. For one thing, the fact,
already alluded to, that there is a certain community of physiological
process in the case of laughter and of the expression of grief, may
help us, to some extent, to understand the combination.[265] Yet
mutual inhibition by the two sets of organic processes involved seems
to be the principal agency in the case. The more energetic movements
of laughter are without doubt restrained by an admixture of sympathy.
Perhaps if we understood the physics of organic processes, we might
speak here of an “interference,” or, at least, of some antagonistic
action between the motor-impulses of the laugh and of the sigh. {310}
One other condition seems to be important. Where emotions are widely
dissimilar and likely to be antagonistic, it is necessary that they
should not both be excited in a high degree. We may succeed in getting
a blend between a gentle laugh and a mild pity, though certainly not
between a state of mirthful excitement and one of deep compassion. The
moods of humour run in low keys, laughter and kindly sentiment being
each toned down as if for smoother confluence. This need of a reduction
of the force of consorting emotions may, too, find its explanation in
the conditions of the organic processes which have to be combined.
This does not imply, however, that the two feelings which unite in
humour are of equal strength. As hinted above, humour seems always,
even when an almost poignant sadness pierces it, to maintain itself at
the level of a quiet enjoyment. It answers to the mood which has been
called the luxury of pity, in which the sense of pain has shrunk away
to a scarcely heard over-tone, while the ground-tone of alleviating
tenderness sounds out clear and full.
This analysis may help us to understand why Mr. Meredith has called
the laughter of Shakespeare and Cervantes “the richer laugh of heart
and mind in one”.[266] It may help us, too, to interpret some things
said by the German metaphysicians about laughter. Kant, for instance,
redeems the poverty of his general theory by a memorable passage on
the amusing aspect of a naïveté of behaviour which does not know how
to hide itself. He allows that in this case there is mingled with
the laughter—which he supposes to arise from an annihilation of the
expectation of the customary—something of earnestness and of respect,
as we reflect that what is infinitely better than accepted codes
of manners (Sitte), namely, purity of natural {311} disposition
(Denkungsart), is not wholly extinguished in human nature.[267]
Our analysis of humour may help us to understand some well-recognised
facts. It teaches us that a sentiment, at once complex and implying
a mature reflection, must not be looked for in the young; it is the
prerogative of the years which have hoarded experiences and learned to
reflect. Nor, as implied in what was said above, is it to be sought
for in the youth of the world. That humour is—in its clearest and
fullest utterance at least—the possession of modern times, the period
ushered in by the appearance of the great trio, Rabelais, Cervantes and
Shakespeare, is explained by saying that, like music, it fits itself
into the ways of our new spirit.
The apprehension of this complex basis of humour helps us, further,
to understand somewhat the curious variations of the attitude among
races and peoples. There are regions of civilisation where, so far as
literary expression gives us the key, laughter seems to remain at, or
at most only a little above, the level of the child’s simple merriment.
This appears to be true of certain portions of the East, where a
considerable love of fun coexists with a predominant gravity of mind
without interpenetration, almost without contact.[268] Among certain
races of Southern Europe, too, which have produced a rich literature of
amusement, the blending of the serious and the playful, which is of the
essence of humour seems to be but very imperfectly reached. The gaiety
of the mediæval _Conte_ is the gaiety of the Frenchman who, {312} in
spite of one or two literary exceptions, likes to keep his thinking
and his mirth distinct, in their original purity and _netteté_.[269]
Frenchmen, such as M. Taine and M. Scherer, have fully recognised the
fact that what we mean by humour is a product of the _triste nord_.
What racial characteristics have served to further its growth in this
region, it may not be easy to say. Perhaps, the closest approximation
to an explanation may be found in the hypothesis that a vigorous germ
of laughter fertilised by a disposition to brooding melancholy always
tends to generate something of the nature of humour; and that, as we
shall presently see, utility does something for its preservation.
The consideration of the complexity of the sentiment may throw
light, further, on its modifications among the peoples which are
correctly spoken of as endowed with it. These differences are roughly
accounted for by saying that the proportions of gravity and gaiety,
of serious reflection and playful fancy vary indefinitely. They are
certainly different, let us say, in the case of the Englishman, the
American, the Scotchman and the Irishman. Yet this consideration does
not account for all the dissimilarity. Since humour is playfulness
modified by the whole serious temper of a man, we should expect it to
differentiate itself into many shades according to the trend of the
ideas, interests, impulses and the rest which distinguishes one sort
of mind or character from another. We can only fully understand the
contrast between American and English, or between Irish and Scotch,
humour, when we understand the differences {313} of character. An
amusing Irish or Scotch story, one, that is to say, which is produced
for home-consumption, seems to be redolent of the whole temperament,
mind and character of the people. It is this complexity of the
sentiment which makes the amiable effort to illustrate the humour of
other peoples by published selections a pathetic futility. How can
one expect, for example, the ordinary Englishman to get into touch
with that fine product of child’s fun, quick fancy, alert sympathy,
open-heartedness, and a deep brooding sentiment which meets him in the
humour of the Irishman? It is enough to remember how he is wont to
laugh his superior laugh at an Irish bull, as if this were necessarily
an unconscious “howler,” whereas it may be, in reality, a charming
expression of a most amiable trait of character.[270]
A due recognition of the complexity of the sentiment discloses to us a
point of capital importance: humour, in the sense of a perfect fusion
of play and gravity, of the aggressiveness of laughter and kindly
consideration, is, as already hinted, pre-eminently an endowment of
individuals rather than of races. It presupposes a basis of temperament
which, though it may be favoured by certain racial characters, is only
realised where nature hits upon a particular proportion among the
elements by the mixing of which she produces an individual; and so nice
an operation is this mixture, that humour, of the full rich quality at
least, is perhaps less frequently handed down from parent to child than
specific forms of talent.
The old writers treated humour by help of their general {314}
theory of temperaments as compounded of certain physical elements.
The learned Burton, for instance, in the chapter already quoted,
discourses agreeably of pleasant vapours which break from the heart,
and thinks that these may explain why the melancholy are witty, as
Aristotle suggested. The passage is valuable as indicating that
antiquity recognised the connection between laughter and the melancholy
disposition. Modern testimony might be added. Thus Savage Landor
remarks that genuine humour, as well as true wit, requires a sound and
capacious mind, which is always a grave one;[271] and Tennyson notes
that humour “is generally most fruitful in the highest and most solemn
human spirits”.[272]
The need of this deep and massive seriousness, if not of a marked
tendency to sombre reflection, seems to be borne out by what we know
of the great humorists. Sainte-Beuve regards Rabelais, who was a grave
doctor, and who worthily represented in his public lectures at Lyons
“the majesty of science,” as writing with the quite serious purpose of
throwing out in advance certain ideas of deep import (_de grand sens_)
“dans un rire immense”. Much the same is true of Cervantes, who is
said—though the assertion has been challenged—to have conceived of his
delightful romance in the dreary surroundings of a sponging-house.[273]
The germination of a mirthful sense in the soil of a serious character
has been noted, indeed, in the case of some who represent the lighter
moods of comedy—a fact which points to the more general relation of
laughter to seriousness spoken of in an earlier chapter. Thus {315}
Sainte-Beuve, writing of Molière, says that he was called “the
contemplative”; and was wont to be taken with sadness (_tristesse_) and
melancholy when he was alone.[274] Victor Hugo has somewhere spoken of
him as “ce moqueur pensif comme un apôtre”. It was remarked of Sheridan
and other dealers in the mirthful by those who knew them that they
seldom even smiled.
It is easy to see that the transformation of laughter which we find
in humour will carry with it a large modification of the range of
enjoyment. While, as has been admitted, the changes of feeling and
mental attitude involved will tend to restrain the earlier reckless
merriment, they will also add vast regions to the territory of the
amusing.
With regard to restriction, one must protest against the common
misapprehension, that the development of humour spoils the taste for
simple modes of mirth. I have known sad-looking humorists who were well
endowed with the valuable capability of joining in children’s fun. What
humour does undoubtedly restrain is any tendency in laughter which
smacks of the brute and the bully in man.
On the other hand, the field of objects over which humour wanders
bee-like gathering its honey is vastly greater than any region known
to the rougher and more brutal merriment. The introduction of a
reflective element and of higher points of view expands the horizon to
an incalculable extent.
This change in point of view means at once that we penetrate below
the surface of things, reaching the half-veiled realities, and that
we envisage them in a network of relations. The former is illustrated
in the humorist’s finer contemplation of behaviour as a revelation
of character. {316} An amplitude of enjoyment is secured by the
circumstance that, even in the case of the self-vigilant, intellectual
and moral weaknesses have a way of peeping out which is most convenient
for a humorous onlooker who has his mental eye duly accommodated.
When, for example, a young teacher, asked by an examiner to explain
“congenital tendency,” wrote, “It is the tendency to be congenial and
pleasant: children vary in this characteristic,” the entertainment
of the error for the reader lay in the naïve disclosure of the
preoccupation of the writer’s mind with the chequered fortunes of her
profession. Or again, when another candidate from the same class,
in describing the qualifications of a teacher, wrote: “He should be
as intimately acquainted with the workings of a child’s mind as the
engine-driver is with the engine,” the fun of the comparison for the
reader came from the detection of an unscientific habit of mind,
natural enough in an over-zealous worker, intruding, unobserved, into
theoretic reflection.
These innocent self-revelations meet the watchful eye of the humorist
everywhere in the haunts of men. They lie like hoar frost in the sun
on his surroundings, on which he unwittingly casts a reflection of
the habits of his mind and of the directions of his taste; as when
in a large town bizarre juxtapositions of the vulgar heroic strike
the observer’s eye in the names of streets, or of loose engines on a
railway.
To this finer penetration the humorous faculty adds a vision for
relations which distinguishes the higher kind of judgment. What we call
the ludicrous in character is, indeed, always to some extent a matter
of relations. As implied above, it is the view of some trait set in
a particular milieu which brings the smile. The hidden weakness may
entertain because of its juxtaposition with something that {317} is
worthy, or at least has an appearance of worth. In a certain kind of
impulsive person, for example, there discloses itself to the humorous
eye an almost admirable consistency in the recurring inconsistencies;
while, on the other hand, in another sort of character, that eye will
rather spy an inconsistency within the limits of a quality, as when
a person, on the whole generous, lapses into a kind of niggardliness
in certain small particulars of expenditure, as if to show that even
a moral quality, firmly planted, needs the sunlight of intelligence.
In many cases the entertainment in observing character comes, not so
much through a perception of the juxtaposition of something worthy and
something slightly unworthy, as through a detection of some discrepancy
between the character and the _rôle_ assumed at the moment, as when
a self-assertive sense of justice, in “a child of larger growth,”
reveals itself in the quaint exaggeration of doing more than justice to
oneself. No better terrain, indeed, for a chase after the imperfectly
masked will be found than that of the manners of persons who are quite
above suspicion of serious fault. Perhaps it is a certain kind of woman
who shows the greatest skill in this humorous reading of character,
as when she sets herself to decipher the palimpsest of manners in one
educated rather late in life, detecting traces of the earlier cramped
hand below the thin caligraphy of a later culture.
To a finer perception of relations, again, must we ascribe the
readiness to enjoy the large and variegated presentment of
unsuitabilities of men to their circumstances. The situations in which
the merry god, who seems to arrange the puppet show, often chooses to
place us are pregnant of ironical suggestion to the contemplative eye
of humour. The necessity of confronting what nature never intended
{318} that we should confront makes us an amusing spectacle to the
twinkling eyes above us. How delightful for example is the variety of
social juxtaposition which brings embarrassment to the encounterers.
When it is not accident but a man’s foolish impulse, unmindful of
limitations of capability, which pushes him into the awkward situation,
as when his civility plunges him into discourse in a foreign language
with a fellow-traveller, or when the most undecided of men attempts
to make a proposal of marriage, the value of the situation for the
humorous observer is greatly enhanced.
As with the topsy-turvyness of momentary situation, so with more
permanent incongruities between character and surroundings. In this
case a more special gift of humorous insight is needed; for to the many
what lasts grows seemingly right by its mere durability. You may make
a highly unsuitable person a bishop, or the editor of a comic journal,
and you will find that, for most onlookers, time will soon begin to
invest the position with a sort of suitability. Even an ill-matched
connubial pair will take on something of mutual appropriateness through
this influence of the customary on human judgments. But the eye of the
humorous onlooker, guided by ideas, entertains itself with stripping
off the trappings of convention and use.
This humorous quizzing of the characters and of the revealed mental
processes of those about us has grown, in the case of a few, into a
chief pastime. The development in these days of a keener interest in
character, which is partly reflected in, partly the product of, modern
fiction, has led these few to something like a sustained and methodical
survey of their acquaintances and their friends, in which the quiet
laughter of the humorist may find ample room. A part of the temperate
mirth in this case springs out of the delightful surprises—the result
of the complexity of organic {319} products and of the limitations
of our powers of prediction. The appearance of a moral metamorphosis
when a man comes under the influence of some new force, say a wife, or
the invasion of his social world by a war-craze, may amuse a humorous
observer much as the semblance of a physical transformation amuses
him. In this habitual contemplation by a humorous person of those
he knows, there is, evidently, a blending of amusement with kindly
interest. That is, indeed, the note of much of the “psychologising” at
which many, instructed by the best fiction, now try their hand. The
combination of the playful with the respectful attitude is nowhere
more plainly seen than in our new estimates of diversity of character
and of individuality. The contemplation of the result of some new
experiment of nature in the variation of the human type, will always
bring something of the gaiety which is provoked by the sight of a fresh
oddity; yet our new regard for individuality, as discriminated from
eccentricity, brings down the mirthful utterance to the low tones of
humour.
There is another way in which the development of the humorous faculty
enlarges the sphere of the risible. In the simple nature of children
and uncultured adults, fun and seriousness tend to dwell apart. The
introduction of a serious element into the mood of amusement, which
is at the basis of humour, makes a breach in the dividing wall. As a
consequence, the humorist, though a profoundly serious person, will
show a readiness in the midst of grave occupations to digress for a
moment at the prick of some ludicrous suggestion. Good talkers and
letter-writers, including women with the quick ear for the bubblings of
fun, are thus given to momentary interruptions of serious discourse by
side-glances at amusing aspects, and many persons who take themselves
to be humorists are apt to be shocked at {320} the proceeding. Yet, in
truth, the extent to which a man succeeds in making laughter permeate
the sphere of the serious, without loosening its deep-laid foundation
of gravity, is one of the best measures of the vitality of his humour.
It is this resolute yet perfectly respectful invasion of the domain of
the serious by humour which has made a good deal of modern literature
possible. Of this, more anon: it may suffice for the present to call
attention to a work of a friend of mine dealing with a subject which
might well seem to be dismally serious—logic itself, a work which
attempts with conspicuous success, while maintaining the dignity of the
science, to relieve its heaviness by a good number of amusing remarks
and illustrations.[275]
Yet the expansion of the range of enjoyment when mindless mirth gives
place to humour is not wholly due to the absorption of a serious
element. One chief limitation of the more common kind of laughter
arises from the circumstance that it is apt to be disagreeable to the
person who is its object. This dislike, again, is due, as we have seen,
to a natural feeling of resentment at being taken down and treated as
an inferior. So long as the laughter retains a distinct vibration of
the old note of contempt, we must resist it; but when it grows mellow
and kindly we are ready to withdraw the objection. There is nothing
so terrible in having fun poked at our foibles, or even at our petty
misfortunes, so long as we know that a friendly face is hiding behind
the laughing mask. If a person only gives the assurance in his way of
laughing that contempt is drowned in a more genial sentiment, he may
laugh at his children, aye at his parents, too, even when they grow old
and infirm. Nor is a previous knowledge of friendly disposition always
needed. There are a few whose mellow {321} laughter will instantly
disarm resistance in a stranger—in the street boy, for example, though
he has the double sensitiveness of the poor and of the young.
From this frank acceptance of others’ overtures of a friendly laughter
to the practice of a humorous self-criticism, there would seem to
be but a step. If humour always involves some degree of sympathetic
self-projection into the object of contemplation, it should not
be difficult to turn the humorous glance upon one’s own foibles.
Self-inspection is a thing of various kinds, and there are varieties
of it (for example, the performances of the “moi spectateur” in
the case of that curious young lady, Marie Bashkirtseff) which are
removed by the amplitude of the sky from humorous self-quizzing. The
last is perhaps the most rarely practised. Before he can accomplish
it, a person must not only have developed a “higher ego” capable of
criticism in the light of ideas, but have learned to see himself as
others—especially humorous onlookers—see him, a feat hardly less
difficult than that of getting a glimpse of the crown of one’s head.
That the doings of the lower ego, or rather cluster of egos, are
fitted to afford an ample supply of the amusing goes without saying.
Human nature is so oddly compounded, even in the best of us, that it
only needs the clear vision to detect incongruity and the masking of
the real. Thus, it is frequently easy to spy the stealthy advances of
rudimentary tendencies which seem hardly to belong to us, and which we
are disposed to disown; still more frequently, to light on a whole crop
of little inconsequences which are due to the complexity of our soul’s
workings, and to the irremovable circumstance that, however predominant
some better part of us seems to be for the moment, the suppressed
forces turn out to be only half-suppressed. It is well when such {322}
self-scrutiny can be carried on without any risk of encountering forms
of ugliness and of ill omen, which would make speedy end of the amusing
exercise.
The quiet fun that may be enjoyed by occasional glances at ourselves
is so palpable, that it hardly seems conceivable how any true humorist
should fail to pluck the tempting fruit. Yet when one finds a man who
is wholly incapable of accepting another’s playful laughter, it seems
a fair inference that he will be found lacking in the disposition to
amuse himself with conning his own doings. The resentment which a
distinguished purveyor of mirthful entertainment will sometimes exhibit
at being treated with a humorous freedom, say by a lady interviewer
whose overtures have been rejected with needless emphasis, suggests
that a mind may train itself in the detection of the ludicrous in the
larger show outside, and yet remain blind to all the comic aspects of
the microcosm within. Perhaps every humorous contemplator of things has
some “blind spot,” of the existence of which he is just as ignorant as
of his retinal blind-spot; and if this failure of sensibility chances
to render invisible the whole of the humorist’s own behaviour, the
contraction of the field of vision is certainly a considerable one.
We have seen that the earlier forms of human laughter have their uses
as contributing to the stability or the improvement of a society or
social group. When, however, we turn to the milder and more complex
sentiment of humour we appear to lose these social benefits. As has
been implied, the development of the sense of humour in any vigorous
and fruitful form is a rarity, so much so as to condemn its possessor
in a large measure to a solitary kind of satisfaction. The change may
be expected to effect a transformation of the serviceable function of
laughter, to {323} make it, in the main, a thing wholesome, refreshing
and edifying of character, to the individual himself.
It is true, no doubt, that a refined humour is capable of being turned
at times to the same social uses as its ancestor, the elemental
laughter of the people. One may see, in the journalism and literature
of the hour, foibles, exaggerations and other amusing things dealt
with in a humorous or quasi-humorous temper. The gentleness to which
humour inclines allows, indeed, of attacks on parties, schools and
personalities which would otherwise run the risk of being condemned as
“bad form”. Yet something of a serious practical purpose, namely, to
hold up to ridicule, can always be detected in this kind of writing:
whence it is correctly designated, not as humour, but as “social
satire”.
On the other hand, the moods of humour are admirably fitted for that
_indirect_ adaptation of the individual to social conditions which we
call self-criticism. This humorous self-quizzing may be started by the
spectacle of comedy, as Lessing and others suggest; yet this, as we
shall see later, is not to be counted on. If a man wants promptly to
detect the first flecks of dust on the bright surface of character, he
must be habitually ready to note this surface.
This office of humour in helping us to nip evil tendencies in the bud
may be viewed, in part, as the vicarious discharge by the critical self
of the restraining function of the community on the individual. None of
us can safely wander far and long from the point of wholesome contact
with the community, that is to say, with the good sense and the right
feeling embodied in a community. To master the not too easy art of
seeing ourselves as others—for whose judgment we should care—see us is
surely {324} eminently fitting for those who desire to laugh at what
is objectively laughable.
Nevertheless, it must not be supposed that in such private
self-correction we are always at the social point of view. Humour is
the outgrowth of a pronounced individuality; its possession seems
always to imply that a person forms his own ideas of the value of
things, guided of course by the world’s teachers, but caring little
whether his views agree with those which happen to obtain in his
community at the moment. Here, again, in the high service rendered by
a vigilant humour, we find the work of reflection carried out by the
help of ideas or ideal conceptions, which are in part a product of
the individual mind. The laughing rebuke administered to some folly,
which lifts its head once more after many repressive blows, comes from
the ideal self; which, though it must have nourished itself in some
“communion of saints,” becomes in the end free and self-legislative.
“Correction” seems too strong a word to use for this prophylactic
function; for, as we have seen, humour does not readily lend itself as
an instrument to serious purposes. What the habit of a quick humorous
perception does for its subject here is best described, perhaps, as
the fostering of a pure and wholesome atmosphere in the soul, in which
disease-germs must perforce die of inanition.
We may now turn to those uses of humour, into the conception of which
the thought of a practical aim can hardly intrude. Humour as amusement
is something agreeable and cheering. It has the refreshing properties
of primitive laughter and much more; for, as a mood that feeds itself
on reflective contemplation, it is consolatory and sustaining in a way
in which mere gaiety, even when it persists as a temper of mind, cannot
be. Apropos of Voltaire’s saying that heaven had given us two things to
counterbalance the many {325} miseries of life, hope and sleep, Kant
remarks: “He could have added laughter, if the means of exciting it in
reasonable men were only as easily attainable, and the requisite wit or
originality of humour were not so rare” (as some other endowments).[276]
When the humorous bent is lively and “original,” it will stand its
possessor in good stead in more than one way, amid the toilings and
moilings of life. Seeing that laughter is always in a measure a
throwing aside of serious pressure, we should expect it to come to
our aid in the workaday hours. But it is only when the eye for the
sparkling of fun in things has been instructed by humorous reflection
that the alleviating service of mind-play is fully realised.
For one thing, the possession of a large humorous insight will
greatly extend the scope of the conciliative function of laughter.
All cajoling must be good-natured, or at least conceal the sting
of laughter; but the finer disarming of men by banter requires the
reflective penetration of the humorist. One may easily see this in the
art of conciliating opponents, political and other. The winning force
of a manifested good-nature will sometimes act on those who are far
from appreciating the play of mind involved. The _gêne_ introduced
by an awkward situation,[277] the tendencies that make for loss of
interest, for weariness, for a falling away from a perfect sympathetic
touch, in all human relations—these things find their most effective
counteractive in occasional intrusions of the humorous spirit. I think
here of one no longer among us, with whom I once had the privilege of
co-operating in a long and difficult piece of public business; and of
how all weariness was kept out of {326} sight by laughing side-glances
at threatening absurdities, frequent enough to have suggested a
premeditated plan had they not been so delightfully spontaneous.
Perhaps, the stoutest obstacle to the smooth flow of social intercourse
is the tendency in men to lay stress on their personal importance.
The superior airs, which seem with some to be as much _de rigueur_ as
their correct attire, are sadly inimical to companionship, whether the
would-be companion be a man’s wife or a contributor to his journal. The
one sure safeguard against the stupid clogging of the social wheels,
which this chronic stiffening of the figure introduces, is the gift
of a lively humour, whose alert eye would at once note a possible
laughableness of deportment for onlookers. One may see this function
of humour illustrated in that instinctive readiness of one who has had
a perfect social training to dismiss laughingly from conversation the
first appearance of an allusion to himself and his claims.
In all this, though there may be no conscious aiming at an end, social
utility is not wholly wanting. Yet just because it is an individual
temper, humour confers its chief benefits on its possessor in the
privacy of life. Its solacings and its refreshings come to him through
the channel of a new and genial manner of reflecting on his mishaps and
his troubles.
Most men who have developed any appreciable fund of humour must know
how the petty annoyances of life can be laughed away, almost as soon
as they are seen advancing. When, for example, your lost pencil is
discovered in its hiding-place between the leaves of a rarely consulted
book; or, on the other hand, after endowing it with various sorts of
mischievous flight, you perceive it lying close by you on the desk,
where it has been dutifully {327} complying with its proper law of
inertia; you may snatch a compensating laugh from a moment’s reflection
on the small ironies of things, or on the vast wastefulness of the
world in the matter of hypotheses. Your vexation at the children who
are at play in the road in front of your bicycle and refuse to retire
till your bell rings a third time, instantly gives way to an agreeable
smile as you sympathetically shift the point of view by recalling the
fact that they are on their proper playground. The dreary ugliness of a
London street in winter will now and again be lit up as with sunshine
for you if your eye is focussed for the amusing, as when the driver
of a slow van goes on nodding in blissful ignorance, while the driver
of your ’bus behind, justly proud of his vehicle’s speed, pelts him
mercilessly with the most awakening of epithets.
It is much the same with the small vexations inflicted by our social
world. We may no doubt feel hurt just for a moment when, at a concert,
we see a big hat thrust itself betwixt our eyes and a face which has
held them captive, wearing a look of the tragic muse as it leans
yearningly over the violin from which it seems, like a mother’s face,
to draw the sobbing tones. Yet, even as the nerve smarts, we may
half-seize the glorious absurdity of the hat and its bobbings. Or,
again, when an untimely call interrupts some bit of nice thinking and
leaves the nerves tingling, we may smile for a moment as we catch a
glimpse of the simple faith of the visitor in the supreme importance
of the cause he pleads, a glimpse sufficient to make us half-aware of
a like “subjectivity” in our own estimation of selected tasks. Social
bores are vexations which, perhaps, ought not to be called petty.
Humorous persons, one suspects, are specially exposed to their attacks,
since they are a tolerant folk, preferring on the whole to suffer
rather than to hurt others. {328} But here, also, the humorous have
their remedies. It suffices, for example, to reflect for a short moment
on the droll pathos of the circumstance that persons, between whom and
ourselves we find no attaching sympathies, should select us for their
importunate attentions. Even when the destinies throw us together with
men and women from whom we instinctively recoil, as from creatures of a
species at once closely akin to ours yet sundered from us by impassable
boundaries, a reflective humour may devise alleviations. The aggressive
self-assertion of a plutocrat, with his “buy-you-up” sort of stare, and
the rest, may wound for half a moment; but a laughing solace comes on
the heels of worry; for there is a quiet pleasure in looking back and
discovering the clumsy construction of the vulgar “snub;” and in any
case a playful half-glance at higher measures of worth restores the
equanimity.
Even greater troubles may, to the trained humorist, disclose amusing
aspects or accompaniments, so that refreshment reaches us even while
the blow still hurts. The relieving smile may come by way of a playful
contemplation of ourselves as pitted against our mighty superior,
circumstance; for it is possible to find something amusing, as well
as irritating, in the ironies of destiny. The idea of a struggle
with fate, which gives the zest of life to brave hearts, helps, too,
to bring the reflective mind back to the play-mood. The readers of
Miss Kingsley’s _Travels_ need not to be reminded of the fecundity
of amusing reflection which her humour showed in circumstances which
would have depressed many a man.[278] It was with a like readiness to
smile that Goldsmith’s genial spirit faced the blows of destiny, giving
back, as his biographer has it, in cheerful {329} humour or whimsical
warning what it received in mortification or grief. In his celebrated
character, Mark Tapley, Dickens has no doubt illustrated how in the
rough waters of his youth he learned to draw humorous entertainment
from massive troubles. It is this playful shimmer of a light thrown by
an entertaining idea on the surface of a misfortune which rids it of
the worst of its gloom.
By a line of humorous reflection already suggested, we may in all
cases of worry and moral disturbance reach the consolatory idea that
the trouble has, in the first view of it, been grossly exaggerated. At
the moment when the sensitive tissue is lacerated the shock of pain
blinds us to dimensions; our disappointment fills the outlook, like a
thunder-storm. The healthy nervous organism will show its vitality in
the rapidity of the recuperative process; and this is often effected
by a quick turning of the thoughts to other and brighter parts of
the scene which the trouble has for a moment blotted out, and to the
proportions of the one to the other. A trouble—like the all-enveloping
thunder-storm—begins to retire almost smilingly as soon as we discern
its boundaries.
In much of this alleviating service of humour the laugh which liberates
us from the thraldom of the momentary is a laugh at ourselves. Indeed,
one may safely say that the benefits here alluded to presuppose a
habit of reflective self-quizzing. The blessed relief comes from the
discernment of a preposterousness in the forcing of our claims, of a
folly in yielding to the currents of sentiment which diffuse their
mists over the realm of reality. The coming of the smile announces a
shifting of the point of view; the mal-adjustment, which a moment ago
seemed to be wholly on the side of our world, showing itself now to be
on our side as well. {330}
How far humour will help a man in throwing off troubles one cannot say.
Even when the flash of bright reflection fails to dispel the darkness,
it may secure a valuable moment of respite. When the trouble has real
magnitude, the dismissive smile grows hard for all save the elect. Few
of us, perhaps, could rise to the height of serene irony attained by a
German musician whose wife had eloped with his master.[279] Many might
be disposed to think that the woman who, after nursing her husband
through a fatal illness, remarked that it was only a sense of humour
which had kept her from failing, was less than human. Yet it is highly
risky to infer, from the fact of an intrusion of the humorous temper
into calamity, the existence of a low degree of moral sensibility. It
may rather be that those who suffer most are beholden in an exceptional
degree to this kind solacer of men’s woes.
This service of humour, at once consolatory to suffering and corrective
of one-sidedness of view, is perfected by a development of that larger
comprehensive vision which is reached when the standpoint of egoism
is transcended. Even the beginning of humour implies some getting
away from the point of view of the individual, so far as to gain a
momentary comprehension of others’ points of view. The great educative
value of being laughed at is that it compels attention to the fact of
a multiplicity of such points. How good a lesson, one thinks, it must
have been for the Scotch professor to hear his disgusted caddie remark:
“Anybody can teach Greek, but gowf needs a heid”.
There remains for brief illustration another service which humour
renders its possessor, though in truth it may turn out to be only a
further development of the one just dealt {331} with. Laughter at
things, being primarily an accompaniment of observation, remains in its
highest forms chiefly an amusement at outside spectacles. The resources
of a mature faculty of humour may lend themselves to the end of an
enjoyable contemplation of one’s social world, both in its parts and
as a whole. The value of humour to the individual can, indeed, only be
rightly measured when the large possibilities of entertainment which
lie in criticising one’s surroundings are borne in mind.
The enjoyment which a humorous observer is able to gather from the
contemplation of the social scene implies that he make his own
standpoint, that he avoid the more turbulent part of the social world
and seek the quiet backwaters where he can survey things in the calm
light of ideas. One who lives wholly in the giddy throng will never
be able to see things in the perspective which humorous appreciation
requires. Nor is this all; if he live, move and have his being in the
commotion, he will be forced to repress mirthful impulses and to show
the hurrying figures about him a certain respect, since any generous
indulgence in the joys of laughter would be likely to bring him into
unpleasant collisions.
That there is much in the social spectacle which falls only to the
eye of one half-retired is certain. The vagaries of “society,” in the
conventional sense of the term, are one of the traditional matters of
laughter; our comic journals have enlightened even dull minds on this
point. It is pleasant to a humorous contemplation to note the high
pretensions of the “fine world”; how naïvely, for instance, it assumes
that it holds all the men of brains and all the good talkers in its
service;[280] pleasant, that is {332} to say, to one who bears in mind
some of the characteristics of this world, such as a certain emptiness
in the matter of ideas, together with something of the readiness of
a certain kind of dog to follow any self-appointed leader, and an
amiable impartiality in crowning any sort of “hero” that happens to be
trumpeted, whether potentate from the East or showman from the West. It
is entertaining, too, to note how enclosed it remains within its purely
arbitrary standards, being rather shocked, for example, to find when it
travels that there can be such a thing as “society” in Italy which is
not a “dining society”. This, and much more, will often draw the eye of
humour, oddly enough, in the same direction as that of an awe-struck
flunkeyism.
It is an agreeable pastime, too, for our half-retired observer to
watch the fierce struggles of men and women in these days to gain a
footing within the charmed circle. Here, surely, the gyrations of the
moral figure reach the height of absurdity. Nowhere does there seem
to reflection to be quite such a disproportion between effort and its
doubtful reward as in these labours of the hot and panting to win a
footing on the fashionable terrain.
What makes the scene the more pathetically droll is that success never
seems to satisfy; the necessity of getting in is followed by a no less
dire necessity of keeping oneself visible in the tightly-packed crowd.
The sensitiveness of men of high position to the least sign of neglect
in their goddess is something that cannot fail to tickle a humorous
fancy. It is said that high officials once passed unhappy days and
nights waiting for an invitation to dinner. The occasion was a national
festival, when some inventive dames, taking themselves apparently
quite seriously as representative women of the age, proceeded each to
invite a representative male. So do the gods give {333} us harvest of
laughter by sowing vanity with its small spitefulnesses in the minds of
men, and setting “society” to lure them to her thraldom.
To the dispassionate eye of reason, no “society” which is founded on
birth or on a mixed basis of birth and wealth has seemed quite worthy
of this servile attitude. Certainly in these days, when, as the Berlin
Hofschneider is said to have observed to Prince Bismarck at the Opera
Ball, society is rather mixed (_ein bischen gemischt_), rational men
might be expected to leave this kind of homage to the weak-minded. No
doubt men of mind caught in the snare have been ready to admit this;
yet it may be questioned whether, when they set down their endurance
of the boredom of the diner-out to the social ambition of their wives,
they evade the laughter of the gods.
Pity may find a place at the side of laughter when she visits these
absurd scenes. A peep behind the masks will, it has been said, show
here, too, the thinnest pretence of gaiety. Dull with something of the
dulness of death are many of the older faces, even when they force
themselves to produce grimaces and spasmodic cacklings, thin and anæmic
like themselves. It looks as if it were a dram of excitement, and not
pleasure, which these loyal worshippers of society are seeking; only to
find, perhaps, that the hope of excitement itself has grown illusory.
Yet, in speaking of the entertaining aspects of the social spectacle,
one need not confine oneself to the fashionable scene. “Society,”
charmingly irrational as she is, has no monopoly in the matter of the
incongruities. The doings of the Great Middle Class and even of the
Masses have their amusing aspects for the unprejudiced eye. All phases
of social life, indeed, may yield rich entertainment to one who has the
mental vision justly accommodated. {334}
What first strikes the eye here, perhaps, is the fine display of
human oddities. The newspaper, fully alive to the value of things
new, gives welcome to the self-revelations of human folly, perverted
ingenuity, and uncontrollable vanity. The struggle for its coveted
column seems hardly less violent than that for the fashionable
gathering. Apparently, the supreme necessity is to show yourself,
to win the pestered and rather jaded eye of a crowd, if only for an
instant. Many and wonderful are the movements and sounds to which
children, feeling themselves overlooked, have been known to resort in
order to compel notice: yet the frantic efforts of men and women to
advertise themselves to the public eye are, surely, not less numerous
or less strange. Even when they have left the social scene these
self-advertisers will sometimes still try to seize your eye by sending
you an autobiography, consisting largely, it may be, of an account of
all the dinner parties attended—a priceless thing for the historian,
perhaps, if only the writer had happened to be a politician.
The vanity in this self-advertisement does not always lie on the
surface, a partial self-blinding being of the humour of it. A person
may be pushed on to the advocacy of a bottomless craze by a belief in a
special mission so earnest, as completely to hide from him the inflated
self-estimation which lurks in the attitude; and the recognition, by
the quiet onlooker, of this malicious way of Nature’s, in hiding from
men so large a part of their own motives, draws back the corners of the
mouth yet farther.
The absurdity of this forcing of oneself on the notice of the public,
like that of pushing one’s way into “society,” grows clearer when we
reflect on the real value of the object of pursuit. It is the fashion
just now to deify public opinion. Yet spite of the classical dictum,
it is not always {335} flattering to the deity to identify the two
voices. A modern democratic society is apt to exhibit very much the
same plasticity to the hand of the crafty moulder as that on which
the wise Greek sprinkled his dainty irony. To be able to see through
the pretty pretence that the demos “forms” its opinions, and that its
verdicts on statesmen, generals and other notabilities are consequently
sacred, is to have one chief qualification for enjoying the fun of the
show. How entertaining, for instance, is the proceeding when an editor
invites a census of opinion on books, or other things which postulate
some discernment. In this case, too, the humour of it lies in the
circumstance that the good people who are lured into the trap honestly
think that they are giving their own individual judgments. Still more
delightful do these performances become when an editor, with his
sense of the value of names fully awake, applies to celebrities, and
entertains us, say, with a church dignitary’s conception of the ideal
Music Hall, or with a popular jockey’s views on the proper dimensions
of a scientific manual.
These exhibitions of authority for the guidance of the public
sufficiently testify to its docility before any kind of proffered
leadership. The very bigness of the modern demos, assisted by its “holy
simplicity” of mind, lays it open to the wiles of the charlatan. How
can one expect the worthy tradesman reading in the solitude of his
back parlour to gauge the authority of his newspaper guide? It is more
than he can do, perhaps, to take the measure of his Sunday instructor.
He who reflects thus will find much to entertain him in the way of
make-believe, when he examines the foundations of imposing reputations,
or of the proud boast of political leaders that they carry “the
Country” with them.
The newspaper, highly respectable institution as it {336} undoubtedly
is, entertains those in search of humorous enjoyment in other ways too.
Its very standpoint as issuer of news leads to an amusing exaggeration
of the importance of anything which happens to thrust its head up at
the moment. An idea, aye and a fallacy too, old as the ages, will
secure attention if only somebody with a name happen to bring it up
anew. Whence comes the neomania which we see on all hands, the absurd
exaltation of the latest novel and the rest. Yet more exhilarating to
humorous inspection is the naïve assumption of the newspaper and its
clients that everything happens in order to furnish them with news.
I remember a paper, not of a low class, seriously contending, when a
disagreeable _cause célèbre_ had to be re-tried, that, since everybody
had made up his mind on the case, a new trial was most regrettable.
The frank suggestion that the proceedings of our law courts have their
final cause in the satisfaction of a craving for news in readers of
journals was, doubtless, an editorial slip; yet the assumption is often
discoverable to a penetrating eye. The point of view reminds one of the
joyous antics of the Italian children who follow the cavalcade of the
diligence and its “supplements” as it descends southwards to the level
of the olive-groves, sure in their glee that the rattling procession,
and the “soldi” too, have come for their delight. In view of the
entertainment afforded by the press in these days, one may sometimes
wonder whether the expression “comic journal” is not growing into a
pleonasm.
Humour will keep at our elbow, too, if we push deeper, and, lifting
the wrappings of convention, insist on seeing the realities. The
involutions of public utterance when, say, a dubious appointment has
to be defended, are in themselves no less entertaining an exhibition
of naïveté disclosed through elaborate wrappings than the romancings
of a {337} naughty child beating about for an excuse. No kind of
spectacle, perhaps, is more uplifting to a spirit given to the right
sort of reflection, none too which has a larger promise of unwearying
variation, than the wrigglings of the human mind when tangled in
awkward appearances, and forced to find something which looks like a
way of logical escape.
As all who read are aware, the vagaries of “society” and the drolleries
of public life are no new spectacle. Other times and patterns of
society have had their entertaining aspects fixed for us by the
half-retired chronicler. Yet there is much to suggest that the social
scene of to-day bears the palm, as illustrator of the volume and the
many-sidedness of the laughable. The bigness of our social scheme, its
instability and “go-aheadness,” its reckless activity—these and other
features, aided by the eagerness of people to gain publicity for their
doings and a corresponding readiness of journals to accord it, appear
to secure for the quiet onlooker to-day the enjoyment of an exuberant
crop of personal oddities, pushful pretences, disparities between
position and qualification, and the other amusing features of the
social scene.
Much of the drollery of the social spectacle here touched on may be
enjoyed with a certain detachment, and even with a _soupçon_ of the
malice which characterises the laughter of those outside the social
group, within which the merry showman is erecting his stage. The
kindlier note of humour enters here only as a subordinate element,
as a good-natured toleration of folly, supported by a more or less
distinct comprehension of it under the head of worthy qualities
sadly perverted. It must be otherwise if the bizarre and provocative
spectacle of folly’s head obtrudes itself into a season of national
storm and stress, say of war-commotion, {338} when the observer of
things cannot, unless he be an unsocial cynic, any longer consent to
be detached. The very possibility of a laugh, or even of a smile,
might seem to be excluded as a desecration. If it is possible, it
can only be through the discovery of a _modus vivendi_ between the
mirthful impulse and some of the deepest and most absorbing of our
feelings and impulses. Our analysis of humour has prepared us for a
considerable penetration of the mellowed kind of mirth into the heart
of the serious, for a fine and rapid detection by the practised eye of
amusing aspects of situations and experiences which appeal directly and
powerfully to the acuter feelings and to the sterner attitudes. We may,
perhaps, find the crowning illustration of this interpenetration of
the serious and the playful in the possibility of a humorous glance at
things which must stir the heart-depths of every true citizen.
The truth, that a state of war will develop in citizens much that is
good and admirable, has, perhaps, been sufficiently recognised; while,
on the other hand, its ravages and its sufferings have been a frequent
theme of the eloquent lip and pen. Less attention has, for pretty
obvious reasons, been paid to those aspects and accompaniments of the
state which seem to some, when regarded from the point of view of the
normal type of consciousness, to illustrate human folly in one of its
larger manifestations. These aspects which, when seen if only for an
instant by the qualified observer, must entertain, may be said to grow
in distinctness as a community rises in the scale of civilisation.
Since, moreover, the humorous person has trained himself in the swift
detection of the accompaniments and the relations of the objects which
he inspects, and has a habit of looking at the neglected sides of
things, it may be expected that he will be found now and again among
those who in the troubled {339} atmosphere preserve something of the
faculty of clear observation.
The fundamental factor in the situation for a humorous observer is the
temporary hypertrophy of the most powerful of man’s instincts, having
its roots deeply seated in the primal impulse of self-conservation,
appearing in the organic _milieu_ of a higher type of social
consciousness with its fixed habits of estimating and judging things.
The state of hypertrophy gives rise to a group of extravagances which
have something of the dimensions of a burlesque. The many expansions of
the boastful, self-sufficing temper, the exaggerated forms of hatred,
with its brood of suspicions, denunciations and vilifications, the
swollen dimensions of credulity, and of a correlative incredulity, with
regard to things which touch the patriotic passion—this and much more
is probably an inseparable accompaniment of the national psychosis,
certainly so if the dignity of “our cause” is challenged, whether from
within or from without.
In these larger manifestations of the war-temper such organic _milieu_
as the surviving normal consciousness can supply takes but a small
part. What movements of intelligence are observable are pretty plainly
of an intelligence subjugated by the dominant passion, and made to work
for it by foraging far and wide for food-stuffs to satisfy its appetite
for provocatives and solaces.
Yet this is but a small part of the humorous aspect of the situation.
It is the collision between the new temper and the habit of feeling
and judging nursed into vigour and endurance by a long course of
civilisation which introduces the really amusing feature. For the
quaint thing is that drowsy intelligence will now and again try to
sit up and give a nudge to its rather noisy bed-fellow. It is the
juxtaposition and interaction of two tendencies of widely removed
{340} moral levels, and quite disproportionate in their strength
which supplies the rich variety of the entertaining. In this way, for
example, we obtain the droll spectacle of an over-confident advocate
of the cause suddenly brought to silence by a foggy suspicion that his
hearer is not responsive enough, a suspicion which instantly brings to
light the residuum of the normal man’s desire for others’ support. Or
again, the powerful impulse to belittle the enemy—older than the age of
Goliath—may, when it runs away with a patriot, carry him to the point
from which he dimly discerns the edge of a dialectic precipice, the
fatal concession that victory is robbed of all its glory. Or the fancy
portrait of the enemy—preferred to a study from life because it is so
dear to the war-temper—may bring its possessor into the quandary that
he finds himself quite incapable of carrying out the necessary business
of understanding that enemy’s aims and methods.
A slight examination will show that the spectacle will illustrate most
of the forms of the laughable recognised in a previous chapter. The
whole situation may tend to assume the look of a big “mess,” from which
the participators vainly seek to extricate themselves. The high-strung
emotional and conative attitude is certain to lead to futilities, as
when confident predictions strike against the hard substance of fact.
The situation will, further, be prolific of contradictions, including,
not only the fundamental one already dealt with, but the discrepancies
of statement which arise as the ratio of the intensities of the normal
and the abnormal varies within the limits indicated above.
That the psychological situation will give rise to a large display
of pretence, has been already suggested. The survival of a partially
stupefied intelligence in the bellicose patriot will, indeed, be
chiefly manifested in the somewhat {341} onerous task of covering the
unsightly faces of things with veils, bespangled ones if possible, in
dignifiying the aims and the methods of the war. These efforts will
plainly show themselves, to calm observation, for the most part, at
least, not as conscious hypocrisies, but as self-deceptions following
from the interaction of the two selves so strangely forced to consort.
It is hardly needful to say that disorder, topsy-turvyness, confusions
of _rôle_, and, generally, inversions of normal relations, form an
essential feature of the spectacle. A world so altered from the
normal pattern that men given to a golden silence take to a speech
which is hardly silver; that “leaders” assume the droll aspect of
shepherds forced onwards by unruly flocks; that a certain kind of moral
inconsistency appears to have won its place among the virtues; and
that those versed in the divine have to assume the inverted part of
justifying the ways of men to God, cannot fail to look disordered to a
calm eye trained by the orderly. There would seem to be no room in such
a scene, where men are wont to divest themselves of their individual
characteristics, for a display of personal oddity. Yet a closer
observation will show that, in spite of the powerful tendencies which
make for uniformity of behaviour, shreds of individuality survive. The
prevailing temper seizes on men, as a fever seizes on them, according
to their individual constitutions; and one may watch the process of
assimilation of parties, sects, and individuals to the type of the
hour, much as a shrewd physician might watch the quaint modifications
of a malady in a case of strongly marked family or individual
peculiarities.
It was said above that the possibility of this humorous observation
implied the discovery of a _modus vivendi_ with the serious and more
sensitive part of us. This means that {342} the observation can be
no quiet, prolonged pastime, but must rather resemble the momentary
intuitions of the amusing side of things, which help us when we
battle with life’s worries and encounter its greater troubles. Such
appreciation of the laughable as is possible in the case is rightly
called humorous when it accompanies a complex serious attitude which,
on the one hand, discerns both the hurtfulness and the pitifulness of
the folly that brings the smile, and on the other, makes an effort to
hold fast to that which repels and to descry estimable qualities hidden
away under it. The smile will bring a momentary relaxation of strain,
as in other cases where mental and moral tension is high. The humorist
will suffer it to steal upon him because reflection enables him, in a
sense, to comprehend, by recalling, for example, what Plato, Montaigne
and others tell us as to what is likely to happen when men are captured
by a crowd. He will be more inclined to be tolerant, if history comes
to his aid, as the history of a patient may come to that of an anxious
physician, assuring him of recovery and resumption of normal functions;
still more, if a time of civic division, lacerating to the social part
of him, has brought him near men and women whose gentleness seems to
sweeten the ferment of the hour, and whose faces will henceforth appear
to him in comforting vision—earth’s angel faces whose smile comes not
with the brightening morn but with the deepening blackness of night.
{343}