ULTIMATE VALUE AND LIMITATIONS OF LAUGHTER.
Our study has taken us through various regions of research. In looking
for the germ of laughter we found ourselves in the wide and misty
plains of biological speculation. In tracing its development we took
a dip into the pleasant vales of child-psychology and anthropology,
and then tried to climb the winding paths of social evolution. Having
reached in this way the heights of modern civilisation, we made a
special investigation into the social organisation of laughter, as
represented in the art of comedy, and into the gradual appearance of
a new type of laughter, essentially individual and independent of the
social standard, to which is given the name of humour. Throughout this
voyage of discovery we have kept in view the question of the function
of the laughing spirit in the life of the individual and of the
community. It remains to determine this function more precisely.
In order to assign its proper place and its value to a large spiritual
tendency such as runs through human mirth, we must for a moment push
our investigation into a yet more difficult and obscure region, that
of philosophy. This is necessary for more than one reason. To begin,
we can hardly hope to reach a clear view of the worth of the laughing
impulse without the help of some clearly thought view of life as a
whole; and such a “Weltanschauung” {393} seems only to be attainable
at the level of philosophic reflection. There is, however, a second
reason for entering this more remote and private domain of knowledge.
Philosophy is a carrying forward to its highest point of development
of that individual criticism of life, with which, as we have seen,
the quieter tones of laughter associate themselves. It would thus
seem to be desirable to inquire how far along the road of philosophic
speculation this companionship of the mirthful spirit in her quieter
mood is possible. This inquiry may conveniently be pursued at once as
supplementary to our discussion of humour.
As pointed out in the chapter on the subject, reflective humour grows
out of a mutual approximation of two tendencies which seem to the
unexamining person to be directly antagonistic, namely, the wholly
serious turn for wise reflection and the playful bent towards laughter.
In philosophic humour, touched on in our survey of the laughable in
literature, this antagonism seems at first sight to be particularly
sharp. The plain man, to whom philosophic speculation presents itself
as something remote from all human interests as he conceives of them,
may well receive a shock when he hears that it holds potentialities
of a smile at least, if not of a laugh—for the person who engages in
the occupation, that is to say, and not merely for him who looks on.
It seems to be incumbent on us, therefore, to try to make this drawing
together of impulses which look so hostile a little more intelligible.
The humorist, as we have viewed him, is able through the development of
his individuality to detach himself from many of the common judgments
and much of the common laughter of the particular community of which
he is a member. He develops his own amusing mode of contemplation,
which involves a large substitution for the standards {394} of custom
and “common-sense,” of the ideal standards of reason. The habit of
philosophic thought may be said to complete this uplifting of the
individual to ideal heights, and its concomitant process, the expansion
of the view of the irrational, the essentially unfitting, the amusing.
A word must suffice to indicate the way in which it does this.
Philosophy, as we know, going boldly beyond the special sciences,
pushes on to a deeper knowledge of things, and of these in their
totality, of what we call the universe. In this effort it has to
envisage things in a way essentially different from that of everyday
observation. The modern philosopher may do his best to reach his
conception of the reality of things by a careful analysis of
experience; yet in the end his theory seems to have transformed our
familiar world beyond the possibility of recognition.
In this philosophic re-construction of the real world, man, his
relation to nature, and his history have to be re-considered. It
illustrates a powerful tendency to view human life and experience as
a phase of a larger cosmic movement determined by an ideal end. The
introduction of ideal conceptions, by lifting us above the actual,
seems to throw upon the latter an aspect of littleness, of futility,
of something like the dishonour of failure. The ideal requirement
proves hopelessly inapplicable to much, at least, of our everyday
world; so that, as long as we remain at its point of view, familiar
things—say the persons we happen to be thrown with, and a good deal
in ourselves, social experiments growing out of some passing trend of
“popular thought,” and even long periods of history—take on the aspect
of contradictions, of futile things that at least do not count, if they
do not actually delay the fruition of the ideal.
So, too, when philosophy becomes distinctly practical. {395} Whether
we take happiness or moral perfection or self-realisation as the
ideal end of men’s conduct, a large part of the conduct which unfolds
itself under our eyes, including much of our own, begins to look sadly
poor and shabby, as soon as we venture seriously to apply an ideal as
test. Much at least of what men praise as virtue shows itself to be
of doubtful value, and at any rate to have received a laudation quite
disproportionate to its true worth.
Lastly, this belittling effect of ideas on everyday realities is seen
when philosophy constructs for us the ideal type of human society, and
of that confederacy of civilised states of which, now and again, it has
had its dream. Under the searching rays of these ideal conceptions even
the “common-sense” to which “advanced” communities hold so tenaciously
may begin to look something compacted rather of darkness than of light.
The situation would seem to offer room for some of those modes of
transforming the aspects of things which we have found to be excitants
of laughter. If philosophic contemplation effects a reduction of
great things to littleness, of substances to illusory shadows, of the
elevated glories of men to the level of barely passable dignities,
it should, one may reason, help men to laugh. Yet the fact that a
philosopher has been known to the ages as the laughing one suggests
that mirth has not been a common characteristic of his kind.
In order to understand this, we must recall one or two facts. For one
thing, though seriousness _may_ combine with a taste for the laughable,
it is and remains fundamentally opposed to the playfulness of mirth.
Philosophers are serious persons: their constructive thought is of
the most arduous of human activities, and imposes on those who {396}
undertake it an exceptional amount of serious concentration. Little
wonder, then, if we so rarely find in them a marked fondness for the
playful. The great and ineradicable gravity of the philosopher has been
sufficiently illustrated in his theoretic treatment of our subject.
In addition to this general reason, there are others and variable
ones, differing with the kind of philosophic creed adopted, and with
the temperamental attitude of the individual towards it. To begin with
differences of creed, we must remember that a philosopher’s doctrine,
while it may invest our common world and our common life with an aspect
of indignity, may at the same time reduce these to mere semblances by
setting them in contrast to the ideal region which it regards as the
sphere of the veritable realities. In this way, as in Plato’s Idealism,
we may see a quasi-religious tendency to lift men above the follies,
deceptions and seeming evils of the world to the sublime verities.
Such a doctrine, if consistently held, reserves but a small place for
laughter—save perhaps for the happy smile of release or escape. Plato,
the thinker of many moods, was able to adapt his doctrine to attitudes
widely different from the half-poetic, half-religious one to which on
the whole he leaned; and some of these proved to be compatible with a
delicate vein of mirth. Perhaps one may find in Plato a reflection of
the different attitudes of the gods—to communion with whom his spirit
aspired—towards luckless and erring mortals: the serene indifference
of those on the height, and a mild good-natured interest in what is
seen below, which lends itself to the softer kind of ironical banter.
What is told us of the laughter of the deities is always, perhaps,
a little difficult to reconcile with their remote altitude and the
detachment of spirit which seems proper to this; being, either in its
mocking virulence, or {397} in its good-natured familiarity, rather
too suggestive of a close attachment to our race; for which reason, by
the way, philosophers, if they wish to soar god-wards and still to keep
a laughing down-glance on their fellows, should beware lest they soar
too high.
How high-pitched speculation tends to silence laughter by withdrawing
the philosopher too far from the human scene may easily be seen by a
glance at the historical schools. The Stoic and the Epicurean alike,
widely dissimilar as were their views of the good and their moral
tempers, took into seclusion the philosophic life which Aristotle
had bidden them combine with a discreet participation in the social
life about them; seeking, each in his own manner, to realise its
self-sufficiency and its consolations. There, no doubt, they reflected
much on the follies of the unwise who remained in the crowd. Yet the
Stoical temper, with its striving after a passionless imperturbability,
excluded the idea of a laughing, quite as much as of a pitying, survey.
On the other hand, the Epicurean, though his theory of life accentuated
the value of the tranquil pleasures, did not apparently find in
his Garden a corner for the quiet amusement of a laughter-bringing
contemplation.
In this way philosophy, by substituting a new and ideal mode of
thought and life for the common mode, is apt to dismiss it as void
of significance and unreal, and so to be unable to laugh at ordinary
humanity just because it has ceased to be interested in it. Yet all
philosophising does not thus belittle the realm of reality, as common
men regard it. Philosophers have been known to regard as realities the
same particular things that Plato contemned as mere shadows, and to
reconstruct and to justify as rational what the plain man accepts as
his world. When {398} this goes so far as to insist on the goodness of
things human, and to say that the world as a whole is as perfect as it
can be, and thus in a new way, as it would seem, to break away from the
common view, it seriously threatens the _locus standi_ of the laugher.
Nothing, indeed, in the way of a theory of life would appear to be more
fatal to a mirthful temper of the mind than an out-and-out optimism.
At most, laughter would take on the aspect of the serene gaiety of
a happy and thoughtless girl; as it does, I suspect, in the case of
Abraham Tucker, for whom Sir Leslie Stephen claims the character
of a “metaphysical humorist”.[326] It is true, as I have elsewhere
shown,[327] that a genial and tolerant laughter may predispose a man,
should he begin to philosophise, to adopt an optimistic theory of the
world. Nevertheless, I believe that a firm grasp of such a theory would
tend to reduce very considerably the scope of his laughter. It is just
as well, perhaps, that R. L. Stevenson—whose predominant inclination to
a hopeful and cheerful view of things is clearly shown in his idea that
every man carries his ideal hidden away, as the Scotch boys used to
carry lanterns in a silent ecstasy—did not go farther than his letters
show him to have gone, along the path of philosophic construction.
If, on the other hand, the manner of philosophic speculation at once
accepts the common facts of life as real, and yet as inherently and
hopelessly bad, laughter is even more effectually excluded. There
may, it is true, be room in the pessimist’s creed for a grim irony,
of which, indeed, we find a trace now and again in the writings of
Schopenhauer and his followers; but for laughter pure and simple, or
even for laughter mellowed by the compassion which the {399} pessimist
bids us cultivate, there seems to be no breathing-space. The state of
things is too tragic to allow even of a smile.
It remains to determine the relation of one other tendency in this high
thinking to the possibilities of laughter. In philosophic scepticism,
with its insistence on the relativity of our knowledge and on the
impossibility of attaining to rational certainty, we seem to find
a denial of all philosophy rather than a particular species of it;
nevertheless, as the history of the subject shows, it is the outcome
of a distinct and recurrent attitude of the philosophic mind. Now
scepticism does undoubtedly seem to wear a rather malicious smile. This
smile may be said to express an amusement at the spectacle of illusions
pricked, which tells at least as much against the high-soaring thinker
as against the man of common day who relies on the intuitions of his
“common-sense”. The sceptic’s attitude leans, indeed, more towards that
of common-sense, in so far that, while destroying the hope of absolute
knowledge, it urges the _practical_ sufficiency of such conjectural
opinion as we are able to reach.
Scepticism thus introduces another standpoint for the laugher and adds
to the sum of laughable things. This is the standpoint of the practical
man and of what we call common-sense, so far as this is knowledge
shaped for the guidance of men in the ordinary affairs of life. This
common-sense, as its name plainly tells us, is essentially a social
phenomenon. Here, then, within the group of tendencies underlying
reflection—that is to say, the kind of intellectual activity which
marks the highest development of the individual point of view—we
encounter the contrast between this and the social point of view.
So far as we are able in our philosophic moments to “see the fun of
it,” as R. {400} L. Stevenson says apropos of a modern philosopher,
we join the choir of common-sense laughers—the laughing realists as
distinguished from the laughing idealists.[328] From their point of
view, as the history of comedy plainly illustrates, all highly abstract
speculation looks amusing because of its quaint remoteness from their
familiar realities and interests; because, too, of a keen suspicion of
its being a vain attempt to soar above the heads of common mortals. To
pull down the speculative soarer to his proper footing on our humble
earthcrust is always a gratifying occupation to the lovers of mirth.
Even the soarers themselves will sometimes give one another a kick
downwards, the man of science loving to have his joke at the expense
of the unverifiable conceptions of the metaphysician, and the latter
being sometimes lucky enough to turn the tables by showing how physical
science itself may, by its abstract methods, manage to strip material
things, the properties and laws of which it sets out to explain, of the
last shreds of reality.[329]
A word may serve to define the relation of philosophic humour to the
tendencies just indicated. Humour, we have found, is characterised by
an inclination to reflect, and to take the large views of things which
embrace relations; further, by a mirthful caprice of fancy in choosing
for play-ground the confines of issues felt all the time to be serious.
It grows distinctly philosophic when, as in Jean Paul or his disciple,
Carlyle, the contemplation of things breaks through the limitations of
the viewer’s particular world-corner, surmounts “relative” points of
view, and regards humanity as a whole, with oneself projected into the
spectacle, as nearly as possible as disinterested spectator. {401}
We need not look for the philosophic humorist among zealous adherents
of the schools. In these, as elsewhere, a fervid devotion tends,
through its narrowing effect on ideas and its rigid fixation of the
point of view, to shut out humour, which even in its most serious vein
loves an ample reserve of space for free wanderings in search of new
aspects of things. The humorist is much more likely to be found among
students of philosophy who retain a measure of scholarly impartiality
in relation to the competing creeds.
A full development of humour in the philosopher seems to be impossible,
save where the amusing aspects of speculative soaring are dimly
recognised. This may come through a study of the history of the
subject; for it is hard not to smile at the spectacle of a man
refurbishing and possibly adding a new handle to one of the “systems”
which have had their day (and more, perhaps) and undertaking once
more to use it as a deadly weapon against the adversary. A dash
of the sceptical spirit, also an ability now and again to see the
pretentiousness of it all, would appear to be needful for a large
humorous enjoyment. One should have, too, at least a side-glance for
the fun of the proceeding when the human pygmy tries the giant’s stride
by offering us a definition of the absolute.
It would seem, then, as if the philosophic humorist needed to combine
two opposed points of view; that of the thinker who criticises actual
life in the light of ideas, and that of the practical man who takes his
stand on the fact of primal human needs and seeks an interpretation of
things which will satisfy these. He should be able to soar with the
Platonist to the realm of Ideas, so as to enjoy the droll aspect which
men’s behaviour assumes as soon as a glimmer of light is made to fall
on it from the Universal Forms; {402} and he should be no less capable
of taking up the standpoint of everyday reality and common-sense, so
far as to discern the element of a practical irrationality which lurks
in any undue insistence on these Ideas.
This combination in philosophic humour of two opposed tendencies is
illustrated in its attitude towards the question of the worth of life.
Since a humorist is characterised by a certain depth and range of
sympathy, he is not likely to accept the optimist’s easy way of getting
rid of the sufferings of humanity. At this point, at least, he will
be alive to the obstinate and inexpugnable reality of our concrete
experiences. Yet, just because he insists on never losing his hold on
his buoyant laughter, he will not sink into the pessimists depths of
complaint. He will see that even the large spectacle of human struggle,
in which there is much to sadden a compassionate heart, begins to wear
the shimmer of a smile as soon as we envisage it as a sort of game
played by destiny against our race. Just as a glimpse of the provoking,
almost malicious aspects of the circumstances which irritate us in our
smaller world may stifle the rising imprecation, by bringing up a smile
or even a _sotto voce_ laugh; so, when a philosophic humorist looks out
upon the larger human scene, he may find the starting sigh checked by a
glance at the playful irony of things. The reflective mind will indeed
readily find in the scheme of the world traces of an impish spirit that
must have its practical joke, cost what it may. With a fair appearance
of wise purpose, the destinies have contrived to combine just the
amount of bungling needed to convey an intention of playful though
slightly malicious teasing.
Thus, in the final evaluation of the world, humour may find its place.
Perhaps it is not too much to say that the {403} last word on man and
his destiny leaves an opening for the humorous smile. So quaintly do
the rational and the irrational elements seem to be interwoven in the
structure of our world, that a humorist, for whom, as we have seen,
the spectacle must always count as much, might almost construct a new
Theodicy and say: “The world is at least the best possible for amusing
contemplation”.[330]
We have spoken of philosophy as hovering aloof from our common life,
and this idea might seem to exclude all possibility of a utility in
the exercise of a philosophic humour. Yet even when men philosophise
and so appear to erect about them a new cosmos, they remain in their
human world and are doing something towards shaping their relations to
it; so that, after all, we may not unreasonably look here, too, for
some self-corrective function in laughter, some aid rendered by it to
that adjustment of the self to its surroundings, which is enforced
on us all—the exalted thinker no less, let us say, than his faithful
quadruped, whose world his master’s strange habits make sadly complex.
The first service of such a philosophic humour is to complete the
process of a laughing self-correction. It is only when we rise to the
higher point of view of a philosophic reflection and see our own figure
projected into the larger whole, that we are able to estimate ourselves
and our concerns with some approximation to justness. As we look down
the vast time perspective we first fully discern our flitting part in
the world. And the glimpse of the dwarfed figure we cut in the vast
assemblage of things, followed by the reflection how well it can work
out its {404} hidden purpose whether or not we happen to be on the
scene, may suffice fully to reveal to us the absurdity in the crude
exaggerations of our dignity, of our usefulness and of our troubles,
and bring to the lips the corrective smile, even if it fail to evoke
the yet more valuable self-purifying laugh.
A like helpfulness is brought us by philosophic humour when we
contemplate the whole human lot. In estimating our world as a
dwelling-place for man, there is surely room for the exaggeration
which comes from a natural indignation at what hurts us, or from a
natural impatience at being able to do so little to better our estate.
Similarly, when we undertake to pronounce on the moral worth of our
species. It is, after all, our world, and, so far as we know, our
only one; and a side-glance at the requirements of a practical wisdom
may suffice to bring the smile which instantly corrects a disposition
to decry it overmuch. Such a glance may save us alike from the
sentimentalities of the cultivator of _Weltschmerz_, from the foolish
bitterness of the misanthrope, and from the sadly unbecoming vanity
of the “philosopher” who teaches that the world and the institutions
of human society exist for the sake of the man of genius. A friend
of Carlyle tells me that the gloomy sage would sometimes, after
pouring out one of his long and savage tirades against things in
general, suddenly hold breath, and then let himself be swiftly borne
downwards to more familiar levels on the rapid of a huge laugh, almost
as voluminous, perhaps, as that of Teufelsdröckh, which he has so
vividly described for us. In this way, one conjectures, there came to
him a moment of perfect lucidity, in which he saw the absurdity of
the overstrained attitude likely to be produced by undue violence of
emotion, aided by an irrepressible turn for preaching to one’s fellows;
{405} a moment when, perhaps, the stubborn realities, which his
words had made a show of demolishing, were seen securely standing and
ironically smiling at his impotent rage.
In the foregoing account of laughter and its uses, we have sharply
separated the individual from the social point of view. Fifty years
ago, such a distinction would have required no justification. It
seems, however, just now to be the fashion to think of the individual
as merely an anatomical detail, too small to be really distinguished,
of the “social organism,” and of his part on the earthly scene as
consisting merely in making a small contribution, which at its best is
a negligible quantity, to the efficiency of this organism.
This is not the place to argue so serious a matter. At the risk of
appearing unfashionable, one may venture to keep to the old notion that
in counting human values we must assign a high one to individuality;
that, for the sake of the community itself, a proper freedom for
the full development of a man’s own mind, tastes, and character, is
something which should be secured even at great cost; and that, were
this not so, society’s claims on the individual have well-defined
limits, beyond which every man has the right, and owes it to himself
as a primal duty, to develop himself in the way which his natural
inclinations enlightened by reflection may suggest to him. To insist
further on this point would almost be to cast a slur on our literature,
which contains some of the masterly pleadings for individual liberty.
This freedom for individual self-development clearly includes a
perfect right to form one’s own view of one’s world, and to derive
as much amusement as one can from a humorous contemplation of it.
It could only be something akin to an awe-struck flunkeyism which
would make a {406} person hesitate here. To one who has cultivated
the requisite observation and taste in the fellowship of one or two
congenial friends, the following of the tortuous movements of the
laughable in all domains of human industry and of human indolence is
one of the crowning felicities of life: the fun is always old in its
essence, wherefore we respond so quickly; yet it is always new in its
embodiments, wherefore we go on relishing it with an unabated keenness.
The indulgence in this mode of amusing contemplation is, I readily
grant, in a sense anti-social, that is to say, opposed to what the
laugher’s community at the moment accepts as fitting and as good. When
a tranquil observer of his social world laughs at the pretences, at
the futilities, or it may be at the vagaries of its high dignitaries,
he may not improbably feel half-terrified at the sound of his laugh;
so firmly has our early schooling set in us a tendency to regard as
insolent upstarts all small things when they challenge big ones:
whether a “cheeky” schoolboy standing up to his big senior, or a small
country confronting a big one, or a “petty” anti-war minority facing
a “practically unanimous” people. Insolence it may be, yet perhaps to
the eye of reason not more contemptible than the genuine ὕβρις in which
great things are wont to indulge freely as well within their right. It
is indisputable, as urged above, that the verdicts of the many, when
they appear to fix the permanent demands of social life, or to store
away some of the precious fruit of experience slowly maturing with
the ages, are entitled to respect; and a wise man will not hastily
dismiss any popular opinion which promises to have persistence. On the
other hand, it is no less clear that the views of minorities—whether
singular or plural in number—are exposed to special risks of their
own. Yet this, and more, does not affect the contention that popular
opinion, just because it is {407} popular, is almost completely
relieved of that necessity of finding reasons for its assertions which
presses heavily upon a minority; and, what is more serious, is subject
to various and potent influences which are just as likely to lead
to error as to truth. An opinion which may be seen to result from a
mental process palpably warped by prejudice does not grow valid merely
by multiplying the number of those who adopt it; for the increase may
easily be the result, either of the simultaneous working of a like
prejudice, or of the contagion which propagates psychical states, as
well as physical, among perfectly inert members of a crowd.
At the risk of appearing insolent, then, one must urge that the
individual and the society have their reciprocal claims. The most
extravagant adulator of his community would, perhaps, allow that she
has her favourites, and that some of the obscure “Judes” have no
particular reason for bearing her affection. The limbs of the body
politic which find themselves emaciated by under-feeding, while the
belly is bloated with over-feeding, may perhaps be forgiven for not
joining in the pæans on the glories of the social organism. Yet one
need not urge this line of remark. Little chance, alas, of our Judes or
our starvelings betaking themselves to a laughter which even approaches
that with which we are now dealing. Those who would enter the gateway
of this haunt of quiet amusement must leave outside all grudging and
sense of failure. Happy he who having played the social game and lost
can, with a merry shrug of the shoulders, and at least half a laugh,
betake himself to such a calm retreat. He will find one into which the
garden of Epicurus may be said to open, where he can gather about him,
at any rate, the congenial friends who are always ready to hold sweet
discourse with him through their books; patient friends whom he cannot
offend by an {408} unwise interruption, though unhappily they are out
of reach of the gratitude which he would fain tender them. Here he may
now and again glance through the loopholes in the wall and see each new
day enough of the drolleries of the social scene to deepen his content.
The evolutionist has accustomed us to the idea of the survival of
the socially fit, and the elimination of the socially unfit sort of
person. But more forces are at work in the world than our men of
science dream of. There is, oddly enough, a force which favours the
survival of the unfit, widely different from that supplied by others’
preservative benevolence: the impulse to adapt one’s environment to the
peculiarities of one’s organism by turning the world into a plaything.
How many men in one of the highly civilised communities of to-day may
have learned to keep their heads above the water by the practice of
a gentle laughter, no one knows or will ever know. It is enough to
say that there are such, and that after fully cultivating their gift
of humour they have found a world worth coming back to, with their
part in which they will be perfectly contented. Some of these, who
would probably be called social failures by the faithful adherent to
conventional standards, have been known to me, and have been reckoned
among the most delightful of my companions and most valued of my
friends. Society’s neglect of them, or their neglect of society, has
at least permitted them to develop the gift of a wise and entertaining
discourse.
I am far from suggesting, however, that this gay solitude—_à deux_,
or _à peu de gens_—is only for the social failure. Even in our
much-extolled age a philosopher will sometimes be found who is perverse
enough to hold with Plato that the mass of society are wrongheaded, and
that he will best consult his well-being by seeking a wall for shelter
from the {409} hurricane of wind and dust. Such an one may do worse
than betake himself to our retreat. And a wise man who, like Montaigne,
feels that he has lived “enough for others” and desires to “live out
the small remnant of life” for himself may appropriately draw towards
its entrance, not minding the shouts of “Old fogey!” which come from
behind. Nay, more, as already hinted, a man who feels that his place
is in the world may be advised now and again to enter the retreat, if
haply he may find admission as a guest.
It may, however, be objected that even when a man thus detaches himself
as spectator from his society he perforce remains at the social point
of view in this sense, that the critical inspection which brings the
coveted laugh involves a reference to an ideal community. The objector
might find colour for his statement in the fact that it is Frenchmen,
that is to say, members of the most sociable of modern races, who have
chiefly dwelt on the delights of retirement from the crowd. I am not
greatly concerned to dispute with such an objector; it is enough for
my purpose to say that the point of view of our supposed contemplator
is far-removed from that habitually adopted in any community which
one could instance. As such, it stands clearly enough marked off as
individualistic. To this it may be added that in that kind of laughter
at the social spectacle which presupposes philosophic reflection, the
point of view is no longer in any sense that of a particular community:
it has become that of a human being, and so a citizen of that system of
communities which composes the civilised world.
I do not doubt that during this laughing contemplation of the social
whole, of which at the moment he is not serious enough to regard
himself as a part, the individual will feel society pulling at his
heels. The detachment {410} from his community, though it fall far
short of the abandonment of the recluse, will, as already hinted, be
felt to be a revolt. When, glancing back at the crowd wreathing itself
in a dust-cloud, he laughs with his large laugh free from rancour, he
may catch a glimpse of the absurdity of his critical performances.
Here, again, we meet the final contradiction between ideal conceptions
and obdurate everyday facts. It is a droll encounter when the foot of
pure intellect, just as it is parting from the solid earth, strikes
against the sturdy frame of philistine common-sense, of “that which
subdues us all,” philosophers included. The individualism of the point
of view in a laughing contemplation of one’s social world is only
surmounted when a large philosophic humour thus draws the laughers self
into the amusing scene.
We may now better define the attitude of the humorist in its relation
to that of the comedian and of the satirist. The comic spirit, placing
itself at the social point of view, projects as laughable show an
eccentric individual, or group of individuals. Satire, when it attacks
the manners of an age, may be said to project the society, turning it
into an object of derision. Humour, as we have seen, sometimes does
the like, though in its laughter at the social scene it is neither
passionately vindictive nor concerned with the practical problem
of reforming a world. To this may be now added that as a sentiment
nourished by sympathy it tends, when something of philosophic width of
contemplation is reached, to combine the social and the individual mode
of projection by taking up the self into the spectacle of the whole.
* * * * *
Enough has been said, perhaps, on the developments of individual
laughter. Its point of view seems on inquiry {411} to justify itself
as a distinct and a legitimate one. With some idea of the ways of this,
as well as of the larger laughter of societies and groups, we should be
able to form an estimate of the final significance and utility of the
laughing impulse.
Laughter, born of play, has been seen above to possess a social
character. Throughout the evolution of communities, from the first
savage-like tribes upwards, we have observed it taking a considerable
part in the common life, helping to smooth over difficulties of
intercourse, to maintain what is valued, and to correct defects. It
remains to ask under this head, what is its whole value to-day as a
social force, and what indications of the future can be discovered in
the tendencies which we note in its later social developments.
These questions appear to be best approached by a reference to the
results of our study of comedy. This, in its higher forms, has shown
itself to be the clear expression of the attitude of a community,
when it would laugh away something in its members which it sees to be
unfitting, though it may not regard it as serious enough to call for a
more violent mode of ejection. That which is thus lightly dismissed is
always something which looks anti-social, whether or not it takes on
for moral reflection the aspect of a vice.
A common tendency among writers on comedy is to claim for it the
value of a moral purgative, to attribute to it the power of effecting
directly a process of self-correction in the spectator. Even Congreve
and Vanbrugh, in their defence of their plays against Jeremy Collier,
pretended that they were reformers of the world.
This agreeable supposition will not, one fears, bear critical
inspection. One objection, just touched on, is that comedy {412} does
not deal a blow straight at the immoral, as the language of Aristotle
and of some of his citers appears to suggest. This circumstance seems
to stand seriously in the way of its effecting a moral purification.
Nor does the holding up to merry contemplation of the tendency of
men to stray too far from the customary social type, imply a serious
purpose of correction behind. Though she may wear a shrewishly
corrective expression, the Comic Muse is at heart too gay to insist
on any direct instruction of her audience. A glance at her stern-eyed
sister, Satire, will convince us of this. On the other side, we meet
with another and more fatal objection: the mental pose of the spectator
at the comic show makes it extremely unlikely that he should at the
moment apply the object-lesson so as to discern the laughable side of
his own shortcomings. One remembers here that a man is all too slow in
making such a self-application even in the serious surroundings of a
church, where a remark, pointed perhaps with a significant turn of the
finger (I speak of ruder times), is recognised by all but himself as
specially aimed at him; and if so, how can we expect a spectator at a
comedy, in the playful mood which has no room for any serious thought,
to rub in the moral medicament supplied him?
Such purification as is possible can, it is plain, be only indirect.
When Lessing writes “the whole of morality has no more powerful and
effective _preservative_ than the laughable” he seems to imply this
indirectness. So far as the provocative lurks in the immoral, we can
say that our laughter at the comic exhibition may serve as a useful
prophylactic. By tracing out, with the guidance of the comic poet,
the unsuspected developments and effects of a failing, we may be
furthering our moral salvation through the setting up of a new internal
safeguard. If the tendencies should {413} later on thrust up their
ugly forms in ourselves, the fact of our having laughed at them may
make a considerable difference in the swiftness and energy of the
movement of repression. The fear of becoming ridiculous, which grows
better defined and so more serviceable in one who has made acquaintance
with comedy, is a valuable side-support of what we call moderation and
reasonableness in men; and comedy is entitled to her modest meed as one
of our health-preservers.
Yet we may easily go wrong here, doing an offence to our gay
enchantress by taking her words too seriously. She looks, at any
rate, as if she wanted much more to please us than to improve us. In
considering her aim one is reminded, through a relation of contrast, of
what Aristotle said about the connection between pleasure and virtue.
The good man, he tells us, though aiming at virtue, will be the more
satisfied if pleasure comes by the way, giving a kind of unexpected
finish to the virtuous achievement. The art of comedy merely reverses
the order: she aims directly at pleasure, but is far too good-natured
and too wise to object to furthering virtue if this comes as a
collateral result of her entertainment.[331]
The comedy, at once wise and gay, of a past age seems to have parted
from us; and one would look in vain to newer developments of the art
for any considerable instruction in the lesser social obligations. Nor
is the corrective function of a large communal laughter likely to be
carried on by such new forms of art as our “social satire,” in so far
as these can be said to keep at the point of view of the good sense of
a community. The tendency to-day seems to be rather to force a laugh
from us at some bizarre extravagance of manners, which we could never
{414} think of as a possibility for ourselves; or, on the other hand,
to bring us near a cynical point of view, at which the current of our
laughter becomes shallow and slightly acidulated, a point of view which
has little, if any, promise of a moral stiffening of the self against
insidious attack.
In spite of this, laughter, or the potentiality of it, remains a social
force. A measure of faith enables one to believe that even a political
leader is sometimes checked by the fear of laughter—on the other
side. It is probable that the men of good sense in every community
are kept right more than they know by the faintly heard echo of the
“dread laugh”. If there is a danger just now of a conspiracy between
a half-affected over-seriousness on the one side and an ignorant
pretentiousness on the other, in order to banish the full genial laugh
of other days, we may be allowed to pray fervently for its failure.
We have seen a tendency to claim too much in the way of serious
function for the laughter of comedy. This desire to emphasise its
practical utility, which is to be looked for perhaps in a people too
pragmatic to seize the value of light things, is illustrated in a
curious and mostly forgotten dispute as to the fitness of ridicule
to be a test of truth. The debate was opened by Shaftesbury, who
maintained its fitness, and was carried on by Warburton, Karnes and
others. Much of it reads quaintly naïve to-day. Shaftesbury’s paradox
almost sounds like a malicious attempt to caricature the theory of
Prof. W. James, referred to in an earlier chapter of this work. To
suggest that we know a piece of folly, say that of Malvolio, to be
folly because we laugh at it, is surely to be thrusting on our laughter
a dignity which is quite unmerited, and, one may add, does not become
it. This point was not held to in the discussion, which, as I have
{415} shown elsewhere, soon became a contest about the rights and the
restraints of laughter.[332]
There is a like risk of exaggerating the useful function in estimating
the service of laughter to the individual. No deep penetration of mind
is needed for perceiving that a lively sensibility to the touch of the
ludicrous will expose a man to considerable loss. To all of us, so far
as we have to live in the world and consort with those who, being both
solemn and dull, are likely to take offence, if not with those who,
like Mr. Meredith’s entertaining ladies, cultivate the fine shades, a
quick eye for drolleries is likely to bring situations of danger. This
drawback must be considered in appraising the total value of laughter
to a man.
With respect to its function as aiding the individual in a healthy
self-correction, enough has been said. It is, in truth, no small
advantage to be able to blow away some carking care with a good
explosion of mirth. And if the world is much with us, we shall be
likely to need laughter now and again as a protection from contact
with much that is silly and much that is unwholesome. Yet, in this
case, too, the chief value seems to reside in its immediate result, the
gladdening and refreshing influence on the laugher, which has in it a
virtue at once conciliatory and consolatory. This it is which makes
it so good to step aside now and again from the throng, in which we
too may have to “wink and sweat,” so as to secure the gleeful pastime
of turning our tiresome world for the nonce into an entertaining
spectacle; amusing ourselves, not merely as {416} Aristotle
teaches,[333] in order that we may be serious, but because our chosen
form of amusement has its own value and excellence.
It is one thing to assign to laughter a definite ethical or logical
function, another to ask whether it has its place among the
worthier human qualities. We have seen how some have denounced it,
indiscriminately as it would seem, as a thing irreverent if not
unclean. That view does not come further into the present discussion.
We have only to ask what kind of dignity it has.
It is assumed here that we exclude the more malignant and the coarser
sorts of laughter. A considerable capacity for the pure mirth which the
child loves—and comedy may be said to provide for the man who keeps
something of the child in him—supplemented by a turn for the humorous
contemplation of things is, I venture to think, not merely compatible
with the recognised virtues, but, in itself and in the tendencies which
it implies, among the human excellences. This is certainly suggested
by the saying of Carlyle: “No man who has once heartily and wholly
laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad”.[334] We may not be
able to rise to the point of view of R. L. Stevenson, when he wrote,
“As laborare so joculari est orare;”[335] yet we may be inclined to
think that it is impossible to construct the idea of a man who can be
described as decently complete without endowing him with a measure of
humour. Whatever our view of the “Good,” reasonable men of all schools
appear to allow some value to a capacity for pleasure, especially the
social pleasures, among which laughter, even when it seems to retire
into solitude, always keeps a high place. On its intellectual side,
again, as the {417} play of mind, the mirthful disposition has an
intimate relation to such valuable qualities as quickness of insight
and versatility.[336] In the light entertaining form of witty talk it
takes on a social quality of no mean value.
Best of all, laughter of the genial sort carries with it, and helps
to develop, kindly feeling and the desire to please. It is too often
forgotten that a mirthful spirit, though it may offend, is a large
source of joy to others. He who produces a laugh of pure gladness
brightens the world for those who hear him. Fertility in jests may
qualify a man to become one of the human benefactors; and it has been
claimed for Falstaff, with some reason, that he “has done an immense
deal to alleviate misery and promote positive happiness”.[337] It is
this implied wish to entertain which gives to laughter much of its
value as an educator of the sympathies. Nothing, indeed, seems to
promote sympathy more than the practice of laughing together. Family
affection grows in a new way when a reasonable freedom is allowed to
laugh at one another’s mishaps and blunders. One reason for this,
perhaps, is that the consciousness of our having laughed at our friends
and been laughed at by them, without injury to friendship, gives us
the highest sense of the security of our attachments. When a friend
laughs “as love does laugh”—to quote Mr. Meredith’s Rosamund—with the
laugh which only half-hides a kindly sentiment, say, a wish to help
you to laugh away what will vex or harm you, it binds hearts yet more
securely. Even our comparatively solitary laughter at things, when
no appreciative sharer is at hand, {418} may, if only it has the
tolerant good-natured tone, connect itself with and bring into play the
sympathetic side of us.
If there is in laughter this element of a deeper humanity, we shall do
well to view jealously any undue imposition of restraints. The history
of popular mirth points to the dangers of this.
That some regulation of the impulse, both external by social pressure
and internal by a man’s own self-restraint, is required, does not
need to be argued. The laughing impulse, when unchecked, has taken
on ugly and deadly forms. If men have endowed their deities with
mirth they have also endowed their fiends. Society is right in her
intuitive feeling that an unbridled laughter threatens her order and
her laws. Specific injuries done by ribald jests, _e.g._, to religious
convictions, may have to be dealt with by the magistrate. This all
men know, as also that society acts wisely when she seeks to maintain
the dignity of social converse by putting down with a gentler hand
all unworthy and unbecoming laughter, and to observe vigilantly the
“hypergelast”—a species that includes others besides Aristotle’s low
jesters (βωμόλοχοι)—who, if he does not, either maliciously, or through
sheer heaviness and awkwardness of gait, kick sharply against some
sensitive place, will at least weary decent men with all the weariness
of the bore and something more.
Yet it is well to bear in mind that such imposition of restraint by
external authority should be also self-restraining. If laughter has
its uses, not only for him who laughs but for him who is laughed at,
these should be borne in mind in determining the amount of restriction
desirable. This wise caution is especially needed when the laughter
which authority seeks to repress is likely to be directed against
itself. It would never do, for example, if the fine world {419} were
at liberty to put down satires on its vulnerable manners. Divines of
the solemnity of Barrow and Warburton might do much harm, if they
could succeed in silencing the ridicule of the half-believers and the
sceptics. Those in authority have a special reason for remembering
here the maxim “noblesse oblige”; and even should they be lacking
in a wise care for the well-being of the commonwealth, a measure
of shrewdness will advise them that they will do well to pass a
self-denying ordinance. Let them not be more afraid of laughter than
their predecessors, but rather welcome it, not merely as a symptom
of vitality in those who indulge in it, but as a sign of alertness
in citizens against surprise by stealthy-footed evil. Perhaps when
the story of the modern “emancipation of women” comes to be written,
it will be found that the most helpful feature of the movement was
the laughing criticism poured upon it; a criticism which seems not
unnatural when one remembers how many times before men have laughed
at something like it; and not so unreasonable to one who perceives
the droll aspects of the spectacle of a sex setting about to assert
itself chiefly by aping the ways of the rival sex. A statesman, having
a large majority behind him, would probably best show his wisdom by
discouraging the laughter of his own side and instructing it how to
welcome that of the despised minority. Yet the quaint look of such a
suggestion reminds one that the idea of adding wisdom to statesmanship
is as far from realisation to-day as in the time of the Greek
philosophers.
I have spoken of a community’s self-restraint in relation to the
laughter of its individual members. Of the duty of controlling its
own mirth in view of the feelings of other peoples who seem to have a
right to their slices of the planet there should be no need to speak.
It may be enough to hint {420} that a comic journal will do well, when
touching on international matters of some delicacy, to exclude from
its drawings irritating details, such as the figure of a monkey; not
only lest the foreigner consider himself to be insulted, but lest one
of the very gentlemen for whom it writes, stung in some old-fashioned
impulse of chivalry, feel tempted to give a too violent expression to
his indignation.
Of the control of laughter as a part of the self-government of a wise
man, little need be said. A keen relish for jokes, especially one’s
own, may entangle the feet even of a kind-hearted man in a mesh of
cruel consequences. The witty have been found to be trying to their
families, so importunate is the appetite of wit in its demand for
regularity of meals. There are the duplicities of laughter which may
sometimes impose even on one who is in general a kindly laugher, the
note of malice stealing in unnoticed. It is only when the lively
tendency to mirthful utterance is found in a sympathetic nature, side
by side with a cultured susceptibility to the pain of giving pain, that
an adequate self-regulation may be counted on. Each of us, perhaps, has
known of one man, at least, deserving to be called a laugher in whose
mirthful utterances one would look in vain for a trace of malice, and
who seemed never to be surprised by the temptation to risk a touch
on sore places. I cannot but recall here one already alluded to—one
who seemed to embody the ideal of his teacher Aristotle not only as
the just man, who of set purpose acts justly, but as the refined and
gentlemanly man who regulates his wit, being as it were a law to
himself—from behind whose wistful eyes a laugh seemed always ready
to break. If one knows of no such kindly laugher, one may study the
characteristics of the species in the _Essays of Elia_.
A perfect self-control in the matter of laughter {421} pre-supposes
much more than a dread of inflicting pain upon the hearer, whether he
be the object of the laughter or ready to identify himself with that
object. It calls for a fine sense of the seemly, of what is fair. It
is not too much to ask of one whose _rôle_ is the detection of the
unseemly in others that he should himself avoid unseemliness. He will
do well to remember that nothing is worse than a jibe at the wrong
moment:—
Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est.
When serious things are being discussed the attempt to hide poverty
of argument under what might flatteringly be called an “argumentum ad
risum” is one of the actions which belittle men.
The wariness proper to one who bears so keen-edged a weapon will go
farther and prompt him to ask whether the thing which entertains the
eye is meet for laughter. For example, our poor language being what
it is, the use of a form of words which may be shown by another’s
elaborate dissection to hide under its plain meaning a second meaning
derogatory to the speaker, does not, perhaps, make the latter quite
legitimate quarry for the former’s ridicule. It needs a fine sense of
justice to detect the line which divides what is fair from what is
unfair in such a case.
A perfectly wise direction of laughter will call for other fine
discriminations. A word or action may be quite proper game for laughter
when it smacks of conceit, though but for this it should have been
passed by. So rampant indeed is conceit among men, so noxious is it,
and so low a degree of sensitiveness in the moral integument does it
connote, that even the discreet laugher may allow himself unstinted
indulgence in view of one of its unmistakable eruptions. On the other
hand, a sense of the true values of things will {422} lead the wise
to abstain from laughter where some manifestation of the beast in man
obtrudes itself and requires a less gentle mode of expulsion.
Nor will a good man’s self-regulation cease when there are no hearers.
He will see how the habit of a reckless mirth may have a bad reflex
effect on his own nature; how, for example, it may rob him in one
moment of the perfection of an old reverence for something beautiful;
how, instead of sweetening the fountains of affection, it may introduce
a drop of bitterness; how it may smuggle in something of that pride and
that contempt which dissociate men.
I have here emphasised the higher moral reasons which will urge the
good man to restrain his laughter. One might add certain prudential
reasons. If, as has been maintained here, laughter is an escape from
the normal, serious attitude which living well imposes on us, its wise
cultivation means that we keep it within limits. Only where there is
a real earnestness and good feeling at bottom, will our laughter be
in the full sense that of the mind and the heart. To laugh in this
full way at a collapse of dignity means that we retain a respect for
the true dignities. If the laugh grows too frequent and habitual this
respect will be undermined, and, as one result of this moral loss,
our laughter itself will shrink into something void of meaning and
mechanical. The perpetual giggler, to whom nothing is sacred, never
knows the flavour of a good laugh.
The impulse to laugh will always take its complexion from the moral
nidus in which it germinates; and the good man, tender, and mindful
of the dues of reverence, ennobles the mirthful temper. It seems,
indeed, in such a moral _milieu_ to become an expression, one of the
most beautiful, of goodness. It assures us somehow of the genuineness
of virtue, and brings it nearer to us as {423} something human to be
loved. Free from all touch of pride and malice, it takes on the look of
a child’s joyousness made large and beneficent by expansive sympathies.
It is to be maintained, then, not only that a full rich laughter may
thrive in the soil of a good man’s soul, but that this soul will remain
incompletely developed without it. This doctrine seems flatly to
contradict great authorities, Pascal and the rest. Yet it may be shown
that there is really no contradiction here. The laughter which Pascal,
Addison, and the others denounce, is not the genial and humorous
kind, but the coarse and brutal sorts, and, what is hardly a jot more
sufferable, the reckless output of “the vacant mind”.
Laughter, then, may be claimed to be one of the possessions of men to
which they should jealously cling. It brings gaiety into what is always
tending to grow a dull world, and of which at times the onlooker is
disposed to say what Walpole said of the doings of the fashionable
æsthetes at Bath, “there never was anything so entertaining or so
dull”. It supplies diversion in youth and still more in age, and it may
with a few, as it did with Heine and R L. Stevenson, remain a bright
comrade on the sick-bed. It is the manna on which good fellowship
loves to feed. And, so many-sided is it, it may be recommended as
a planer for moral ridges, and it may add the last touch to the
character-picture which every man is engaged in painting. It will
graciously accompany us when we visit the nursery and try our cumbrous
hand at the art of entertaining childhood; and will not forsake
us—if we care for its company—when we betake ourselves to the graver
occupations.
If this is true it would seem as if, instead of trying to put it down,
we should seek to promote the laughing {424} habit in ourselves and
in others. Yet here one must be careful. For one thing, the man to
whom it counts as a considerable ingredient of happiness can hardly be
expected to assist in an effort to render all men of an equal quickness
in mirthful response. He knows better than any one else that the
spectacle of folly, of make-believe and of self-inflation, on which his
laughter is fed, implies a lack of all the finer laughter of the mind
in the great majority of his fellows. It would be an act of suicidal
madness, then, on his part, to try to transform his social world into a
body of laughter-loving men and women. Happily for the “gelast,” such
a transformation is beyond the powers of any conceivable society of
laughter-promoters. Humorous men must continue with perfect serenity of
mind to put up with being a “contemptible minority”.
Not only in the interests of the lover of laughter is it well that
he cannot impose his merry habit on all men alike. The wise man will
remember that it takes all sorts to make our social world, and that
the desirability of the laughing capacity varies greatly with a man’s
disposition, habits of mind and circumstances. To those, for example,
who are of sensitive feeling and keen perception, especially if called
on to lead an oppressively dull life, or, like Goldsmith, to wrestle
with circumstance, a broad and quick appreciation of the laughable
may be a real need. Some hearts of many chords, resonant to all the
notes of life’s music, might break but for the timely comings of the
laughter-fay with her transforming wand. On the other hand, many
worthy people not only do very well without it, but might be at a
disadvantage by possessing the endowment. This seems to be true of many
excellent men and women whose {425} special bent is towards a rigorous
concentration of thought and moral energy on some mission. Such persons
appear ever to dwell in the subduing shadow of their cause; they bear
about with them a special kind of self-consciousness, a sense of their
indispensableness to the world. Laughter is not for these, we say
with half a sigh. Nor can it, one supposes, find the needed air and
sunlight in persons who hold imposing rank or office, and have to be
daily concerned with maintaining a proper awe in others; or in those
who have a deep-placed and imperturbable self-complacency, or those who
are solemnly preoccupied with the momentous business of raising their
social dignity. Probably nobody, save perhaps a waiter, has to be set
more securely above the temptation to laugh than a man qualifying for
his first dinner parties.
The case of these hopelessly confirmed “agelasts” is a very strong
one. Those of us who prize the free circulation of laughter as that
of a sea-air, and are disposed to object to the closeness of mental
atmosphere which seems to enfold the devoted, shall do well to remember
how much the world owes to a lack of humour in its citizens. If
Rousseau had been a great laugher we should certainly never have had
his picturesque and instructive attack on civilisation and all that
flowed from it. Would Dante and Milton and the other builders of the
vast and sombre architecture of verse have achieved their task if the
laughing imp had been pulling vigorously at their coat tails? How many
of our valuable social institutions would have been built up if the
beginners had been keenly alive to the absurd aspects of the bunglings
which are wont to characterise first attempts? Let those who laugh,
therefore, be ready, not only from an enlightened self-interest,
but from a becoming {426} esteem for alien virtues, to allow the
“agelasts” their place in the world.
The foregoing considerations suggest that in any effort to promote
laughter we should move cautiously. A man may waste much precious
time in trying the experiment on a member of his family. A waggish
schoolmaster, too—and to the credit of the profession he is to be
found—may, if he experiment in this direction, meet with nothing but
disappointment. Perhaps some good “tests of humour” would be helpful
here; but the daily papers have not yet succeeded in inventing a
satisfactory one, and the psychological laboratories have, wisely
perhaps, avoided the problem. Moreover, the business of testing would
comprise some examination of the quality of the “humour” expressed,
lest the pedagogue should be fostering in a boy a kind of growth which
he is much better without. Perhaps, indeed, this testing of quality,
were it possible, should be undertaken for more serious purposes: since
the saying of Goethe, that the directions taken by a person’s laughter
are one of the best clues to his character, may be found to apply,
differences being allowed for, to the raw stripling. In undertaking
any such investigation of youthful mirth, the investigator would need
to note the quality of the expressive sounds themselves; for one may
suspect that in these days of early sophistication a young laugh, as
pure and clear of tone as it is full and unhindered, is a rarity. For
a first attempt at gauging a boy’s humour the schoolmaster might,
perhaps, do worse than select the following test, suggested by a
remark of one of my most learned and most respected friends, that the
situation referred to is the one which, in his case, excites the most
hearty merriment: “Supposing you made a call, and having placed your
hat on a chair inadvertently proceeded to sit on it; how would you
feel?” {427}
A more manageable problem for the pedagogue would seem to be to try,
now and again, to force back the bolts of discipline and approach the
boy with a judicious overture of fun. It is refreshing to find that
this has recently been recommended by a highly respectable journal
of the profession which writes: “It is no inherent dislike to work
or to the teacher, but the absolute necessity of relieving a dull
lesson by a bit of fun, that is accountable for many a difficulty
in discipline”.[338] Next to this, the aim would be to encourage
boys to bear the discipline of others’ laughter, so that they fall
not below the moral level of the estimable savage. This part of the
schoolmaster’s business is certainly not neglected in our country, and
perhaps has even been a little overdone.
* * * * *
The gift of humour will save a man from many follies, among others that
of attempting the office of prophet. This has its proper domain, for
example in astronomy, though even in certain ambitious departments of
physical science it begins to look like presumption. To bring it into
the region of human affairs smacks of a juvenile confidence which has
not begun to define its logical boundaries. Hence I shall not risk the
illustrating of my subject by a forecast of the future of laughter.
It may be enough to say that, at the fraction of a second of the cosmic
clock at which we happen to live, certain tendencies are observable
which appear to have some bearing on this question. The most cheerful
of men would perhaps hardly call the present a mirthful moment. We seem
to have travelled during a century or more very far from the serene
optimism which dwelt fondly on the perfectibility {428} of mankind. If
we grow enthusiastic about man’s future at all, we let our minds run on
the perfectibility of his machines. This fact in itself suggests that
we are not likely to find an exceptional exuberance of the mirthful
spirit. Writers, too, have emphasised the fact that the age, if not
dull, is certainly not gay. An essayist, not long taken from us, has
written sadly about the decline of the old frank social laughter;[339]
and another, writing of Falstaff says that, though by laughter man is
distinguished from the beasts, the cares and sorrows of life have all
but deprived him “of this distinguishing grace, degrading him to a
brutal solemnity”.[340]
That the old merry laughter of the people has lost its full resonance
has been remarked above, and it may be possible, while avoiding
youthful dogmatism, to conjecture to some extent how this loss has come
about.
To begin, it seems fairly certain that the decline of popular mirth is
only a part of a larger change, the gradual disappearance of the spirit
of play, of a full self-abandonment to the mood of light enjoyment.
We may see this not only in the rather forced gaiety supplied by the
gorgeous “up-to-date” pantomime and other shows. It is illustrated in
the change that has come over our out-of-door sports. Where is the fun,
where is the gaiety, in the football and the cricket matches of to-day?
Could anything be less like an “amusement” than a match at Lord’s—save
when for a moment an Australian team, forgetful of its surroundings,
bounds into the field? Even the clapping of hands by the solemn-looking
spectators sounds stiff and mechanical.
This reduction of the full stream of choral laughter of a past age
to a meagre rillet may readily be supposed to be due altogether to
a growing refinement of manners in all {429} classes. Leaders of
the “high society” tell us, as we have seen, that loud laughter is
prohibited by its code of proprieties. The middle class, in which
the imitation of social superiors grows into a solemn _culte_, has
naturally adopted this idea from the upper class: and the classes below
may be disposed on public occasions to consider Mother Grundy so far as
to curb the froward spirit of fun. Still, the decline seems to be much
more than any such artificial restraint would account for. The evidence
available certainly favours the conclusion that, even when unfettered,
the people does not laugh long and loud as it once did.
This is not the place to attempt an explanation of a change which
is perhaps too recent to be easily explained. Yet we may hazard the
suggestion that it is connected with other recent social tendencies
which seem to be still operative. It is probably one phase of a whole
alteration of temper in the mass of the people. It looks as if only
the more solid material interests now moved the mind, as if sport had
to have its substantial bait in the shape of stakes, while comedy must
angle for popularity with scenic splendours which are seen to cost
money. Other forces lying equally deep may not improbably co-operate.
The mirth of Merry England was the outgoing of a people welded in
brotherhood. The escape from the priest, and later from his Spanish
champion, had begotten a common sense of relief and joyous expansion.
No such welding pressure has come in these latter days pushing all
ranks into a common service of mirth. The sharp class-antagonisms of
the hour, especially that of employer and employed, leave but little
hope of the revival of such a choral laughter of a whole people.
This decline of the larger choral laughter, including the reciprocal
laughter of social groups, appears to have for one {430} of its
consequences a falling off in the part played by mirth as a tempering
and conciliatory element in authority. Any gain arising from the
introduction of a “humouring spirit” into our government of the young
is, one fears, more than neutralised by the loss which ensues from
the banishment of the cajoling laugh from the relations of master
and workman and mistress and maid. Perhaps, too, in our terribly
serious purpose of conferring the blessing of an incorporation into a
world-wide empire upon reluctant peoples of all degrees of inferiority,
we are losing sight of the conciliatory virtue of that spirit of
amicable jocosity, the value of which, as we have seen, was known to
some who had to do with savage peoples.
The seriousness of to-day, which looks as if it had come to pay a
long visit, may be found to have its roots in the greater pushfulness
of men, the fiercer eagerness to move up in the scale of wealth and
comfort, together with the temper which this begets, the discontent—
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
which kill the capacity for a whole-hearted abandonment to simple
pleasures.
So far as this is the case, what laughter survives may be expected to
take on the tone of a forced utterance with something of a sigh of
weariness behind it. It is as though men had no time to laugh. Even
at a social entertainment you will find men and women who meet your
playful challenge only with a niggardly giggle which they instantly
suppress: poor distracted souls unable for a moment to free themselves
from the chaos of social claims which haunts them.
A yet more sinister characteristic of this later social laughter,
reflected more or less clearly even in much of {431} what now passes
for comedy, is its cynicism. By this is meant more than the hollowness
of the laughter of the world-weary: it implies a readiness to laugh at
a new sort of thing, or at least at the old sorts in a new way. Thus,
we may hear the unscrupulous member of a profession laughing at some
“amusing” bit of conscientiousness in another member. The laughter has
its readily distinguishable tones: now the thin wiry note of contempt
which issues from the superior person, now the rough brazen sound
burred by the bolder lips of the roué. Such laughter is in the case
of an individual, of a class and of a nation alike, the revelation
of the attitude of a mind which has not yet completed the process of
discarding its old obligations.
The tendencies here touched on illustrate how closely the moral forces
encompass our laughter, how directly they determine its key and the
depth of its sincerity. They suggest, too, how much more the evil
inclinations menace the healthy vigour of our mirth than the good, even
though these should be cultivated up to the confines of the saintly.
These signs may well make the friend of laughter sad. There is nothing
unreasonable in the idea of a death of all the more joyous and
refreshing mirth. The utilities—on which, perhaps, I have insisted
too much—give us no pledge of a final survival of the merry impulse.
However considerable its benefit to a society, we have examples of
highly efficient communities which seem to do very well without it. And
the like is probably true of individual laughter. A few persons may,
as I have suggested, owe to it their persistence on the human scene;
yet the evolutional efficacy of this utility is probably very narrowly
circumscribed.
In spite of these sinister indications, an eye patient in search may
descry others which point to the persistence of a wholesome laughter.
Even if comedy and satire seem {432} tired and slumbering, the
humorous spirit is awake and productive. We have in the literature of
more than one country the promise of a development of new tones of
quiet, reflective laughter. The growth of a wider appreciation of other
literatures than our own is overcoming the obstacles, already touched
on, to an international appreciation of flavours, so far at least as to
allow of a _rapprochement_ of the larger-minded members of civilised
nations in a reciprocal enjoyment of their humorous writings.
For the rest, we may put our trust in the growing volume of what I have
called private laughter. It is not unlikely that in the future, men
who think will grow at once more tenacious of their ideals, and more
alive to the ludicrous consequences which these introduce. If so, they
will become still less like gay-hearted children than they now are,
and will have to brighten the chamber of life, as it loses the blithe
morn-given light, with the genial glow of humour. They will be able to
keep the flame alive with fuel drawn from the storehouse of literature.
In this work of conserving human laughter they will do well, while
developing the thoughtfulness of the humorist, to keep in touch with
the healthiest types of social laughter, the simple mirth of the people
preserved in the _contes_ and the rest, and the enduring comedies. If a
few men will cultivate their own laughter in this way and do their best
to make their private amusement that of an inner circle of friends,
we may hope that it will not die—though the death of what we love
were less terrible to face than its debasement—but be preserved by a
few faithful hands for a happier age. They will have their reward in
advance, since pure and honest laughter, like mercy, blesses him that
gives, and him that takes.
NOTES
[1] Article on “Humour” in the _Cornhill Magazine_, vol. xxxiii., pp.
318–26.
[2] See B. Bosanquet, _History of Æsthetics_, p. 360, where we are told
that serious modern comedy, such as Molière’s _L’Avare_, is, according
to Hegel, wanting in this characteristic.
[3] _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, Band II., Erstes Buch, Kap.
viii.
[4] _Le Rire_, published by Félix Alcan, 1900.
[5] See an article “Pourquoi rit-on?” by Camille Mélinaud, in the
_Revue des deux Mondes_, 1895 (Tom. 127, p. 612 ff.). The theory of
M. Mélinaud seems to resemble closely that of Jean Paul Richter and
others, which Lotze criticises, _Geschichte der Æsthetik_, p. 346.
[6] M. Bergson furnishes some striking illustrations of the forcing of
a theory on reluctant facts in his treatment of the laughable aspect of
the red nose and the black skin, _op. cit._, p. 41 ff.
[7] The references here are to one of a series of articles entitled
“Psychologie der Komik” in the _Phil. Monatshefte_, Bd. XXIV. See p.
399 ff. The articles have been elaborated in a volume, _Komik und
Humor_. The point here dealt with is touched on in this volume in Kap.
iv., s. 558.
[8] The point that when we judge two successive impressions to be
different we do not necessarily represent both simultaneously, has been
recently emphasised by G. F. Stout and T. Loveday, who quote the views
of Wundt and Schumann. See _Mind_, N.S., ix. (1900), pp. 1–7, and p.
386.
[9] Dr. Lipps seems half to perceive this mode of interaction among
parts of a complex presentation when he says that the cylinder appears
to renounce its dignity (Würde) as man’s head-covering when it stoops
to adorn the head of a child (_loc. cit._).
[10] _Geschichte der Æsthetik in Deutschland_, p. 343.
[11] _Versuch einer Theorie des Komischen_ (1817), s. 23.
[12] See Darwin, _Expression of the Emotions_, p. 199.
[13] See among other authorities, Raulin, _Le Rire_, p. 28.
[14] See art. “The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing and the Comic,” by
G. Stanley Hall and A. Allin, _American Journal of Psychology_, vol.
ix., p. 1 ff.
[15] _Purgatorio_, Canto xi., lines 82–3; _cf._ Canto i., line 20,
where the fair planet (Venus) is said to have made the whole East
laugh—a figure copied by Chaucer, _The Knightes Tale_, line 636.
Addison touches on this poetical use of “laughter,” _Spectator_, No.
249.
[16] Gratiolet, _De la Physionomie_, p. 116. Benedick instances as
interjections of laughing “ha! ha! he”! _Much Ado About Nothing_, IV.,
i.
[17] See an article on “Organic Processes and Consciousness,” by J. R.
Angell and H. B. Thompson, in the _Psychological Review_, vol. vi., p.
55. According to these researches, a hearty laugh, causing sudden and
violent changes in the breathing curve, is accompanied by the sharpest
and most marked vaso-dilation, as tested by capillary pulse drawing;
though in one case the opposite effect of constriction was produced.
[18] _Anatomy of Melancholy_, Pt. 2, sec. 2, mem. vi. subsec. 4 (“mirth
and merry company”).
[19] Laughter is pronounced a “good exercise” by Dr. Leonard Hill in
his useful work, _Manual of Human Physiology_ (1899), p. 236. The
physiological benefits are more fully treated of by Dr. Harry Campbell
in his publication, _Respiratory Exercises in the Treatment of Disease_
(1898), p. 125.
[20] “_Positions_,” ed. by Quick, pp. 64, 65.
[21] Angell and Thompson in the article quoted above suppose that the
whole dilation of the capillaries during laughter is a secondary effect
of sudden changes in the breathing. This seems a reasonable conclusion.
Yet since, according to these writers, smiling as well as mild laughter
causes gentle changes of the same kind, it seems possible that we have
here, in a disguised form, the working of the general law stated by
these writers: that agreeable experiences are accompanied by dilation
of the peripheral blood-vessels.
[22] See _The Expression of the Emotions_, chap, vi., p. 163. It is
curious to note that Mulcaster and the recent physiologists referred
to above claim a beneficial influence for “a good cry” as well as for
laughter. But they do not seem explicitly to put them on the same level
as occasional exercises.
[23] Maria’s words in _Twelfth Night_, “If you desire the spleen,”
seem to point to some supposed organic disturbance due to immoderate
laughter.
[24] _Op. cit._, pp. 207 and 213.
[25] Prof. James seems to admit this in his smaller work, _Psychology_,
p. 384.
[26] On the Contagion of Laughter, see Raulin, _Le Rire_, p. 98 ff.
[27] It has been pointed out by an ingenious French writer, L.
Dugas—whose work, _Psychologie du rire_, has appeared while my volume
is passing through the press—that even a wild, uncontrollable laughter,
“le fou rire,” in spite of its elements of suffering, remains to a
large extent a pleasurable experience (_see_ pp. 25, 26).
[28] The French language is particularly rich in its vocabulary under
this head, including expressions like “rire du bout des dents” and “du
bout des lèvres” (_cf._ Homer’s expression, ἐγέλασσεν χείλεσιν), “rire
dans sa barbe,” and others like “rire jaune”.
[29] _Sartor Resartus_, Bk. I., chap. iv.
[30] Article on “Ticklishness” in the _Dictionary of Psychological
Medicine_. He adds that ticklishness is not locally coincident with
sensitiveness to pain. On the other hand, Dr. Charles Richet remarks
that the parts most sensitive to tickling are the parts richest in
tactile nerves. Article “Chatouillement,” _Dictionnaire de Physiologie_.
[31] See Wundt, _Physiolog. Psychologie_ (4te Auflage), Bd. i., pp.
434–5. According to this authority the propagation of the stimulation
may be either direct from one sensory fibre to another, or indirect,
involving muscular contractions and muscular sensations.
[32] See Külpe, _Outlines of Psychology_, p. 148.
[33] See the article on “The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing, and
the Comic,” by G. S. Hall and A. Allin, in the _American Journal of
Psychology_, vol. ix., p. 1 ff. These returns do not make it quite
clear whether “ticklishness” is taken to mean the non-laughing as well
as the laughing varieties.
[34] My references to Dr. Robinson’s views are partly to the article
in the _Dictionary_ already quoted, and partly to notes of lectures
given before the British Association and the West Kent Medical Society,
which he has been so kind as to show me. I have made much use of his
interesting and often brilliant suggestions in dealing with the subject
of ticklishness.
[35] Both of these are included by Dr. Richet among the most sensitive
parts (_loc. cit._).
[36] How far the results are complicated by the action of the muscles
which serve to erect the separate hairs on the body, and are said by
Lister to contract near a tickled surface, I am not sure.
[37] _E.g._, Külpe, _op. cit._, 147.
[38] _Expression of the Emotions_, p. 201.
[39] In using the expression “ticklish period,” I do not imply that
ticklishness necessarily disappears after a certain period of maximal
intensity. Like play, it probably persists in a certain number of
persons as a susceptibility to which the laws of propriety leave but
little scope for exercise.
[40] _Op. cit._, pp. 201, 202. The restriction I have added enables us
to include the case of the sole of the foot.
[41] _Loc. cit._ Dr. L. Hill confirms the observation and offers the
same explanation.
[42] In this connection an observation sent me by Dr. L. Hill is
significant. His little girl first responded with laughter to tickling
under the armpits at the same age (two and a half years) as she first
showed fear by crying on being put into the arms of a stranger.
[43] G. Heymans, _Zeitschrift für die Psychol. und die Physiol. der
Sinne_, Bd. xi., ss. 31 ff.
[44] Heymans, _loc. cit._
[45] The abnormal forms of automatic laughter, including the effects of
stimulants, are dealt with by Raulin, _op. cit._, 2^{ème} partie, chap.
iv., and 3^{ème} partie.
[46] Given in the returns to Stanley Hall’s inquiries. This explosion
of laughter on receiving sad news occurs in cases of cerebral disorder.
See Dugas, _op. cit._, p. 16.
[47] Quoted by Dugas, _op. cit._, p. 12.
[48] Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth perpetrate a pun in a moment of
intense excitement when Macbeth’s hesitation goads her into a resolve
to carry out the murder herself:—
“I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal
For it must seem their guilt”.
Did he mean to illustrate by this the way in which emotional strain
tends to lapse for a brief moment into laughter?
[49] _Op. cit._, pp. 163, 208.
[50] See _Les Passions de l’áme_, 2^{ème} partie, art. 25.
[51] Co-operative teasing, when it methodically “nags” a boy because he
happens, for example, to take the unfashionable side in some political
dispute, making his school-life a torment, had—with all deference to
apologetic headmasters, be it said—better change its name.
[52] Given by Stanley Hall in the article, “The Psychology of
Tickling,” etc., already quoted.
[53] Valuable beginnings may be found here and there; for example, in
the entertaining volume of a French comedian, _Le Rire_, par (B. C.)
Coquelin, cadet.
[54] _Iliad_, ii., 212 ff.
[55] _Loc. cit._
[56] There is, of course, often a reciprocal effect in these cases, the
non-compliant intruder serving to show up the absurd monotony of the
row.
[57] See an article, “The Analytical Humorist,” by H. D. Traill,
_Fortnightly Review_ (N.S.), vol. lx., p. 141.
[58] Mr. Kipling suggests that the want of a proper nose in a family is
regarded as a disgrace among the Hindoos (_Kim_, p. 81).
[59] It may be well to add, by way of caution, that the feeble
semblance of laughter which a modern theatre-goer is apt to produce
when he sees something _risqué_ is not a simple form of laughter at the
indecent. It is the outcome of a highly artificial attitude of mind, in
which there is an oscillation of feeling between the readiness of the
natural man to indulge and the fear of the civilised man that he may be
carried too far.
[60] _Op. cit._, p. 45.
[61] Compare above, pp. 13 ff.
[62] As our mode of classification shows, we may regard these as
primarily instances of laughable degradation. Nevertheless, some
apprehension of contradiction is clearly involved.
[63] From a speech delivered by Sir John Parnell in the Irish House of
Commons, 1795. See W. R. Le Fanu, _Seventy Years of Irish Life_, ch.
xvi. (“Irish Bulls”).
[64] See Bergson, _op. cit._, p. 45.
[65] _Poetics_, v. i. (Butcher’s translation).
[66] A further and most important enlargement of Hobbes’ principle is
made by Bain when he urges that the spectacle of degradation works
upon us, not merely by way of the emotion of power or glory, but by
way of the feeling of release from constraint. This point will more
conveniently be dealt with later.
[67] Compare above, p. 100.
[68] Kant’s contribution to the theory of the ludicrous is contained in
a single “Remark” appended to a discussion of the Fine Arts and Taste.
See Dr. Bernard’s translation of his _Kritik of Judgment_, pp. 221–4.
[69] Article “On the Philosophy of Laughing,” by the Editor, _The
Monist_, 1898, p. 255.
[70] I find after completing this paragraph that the point dealt
with, namely, that surprise, in the sense of the effect of mental
unpreparedness, is not an invariable antecedent of our response to
the laughable, has been urged by a French writer, M. Courdaveaux. His
critic, M. Dugas, does not seem to me to have effectually combated it.
(See Dugas, _op. cit._, p. 63 ff.)
[71] See above, p. 6.
[72] Compare what was said above _à propos_ of the child and the hat,
p. 14.
[73] _Cf._ above, p. 114; also the article in _The Monist_ already
quoted.
[74] _English Comic Writers_, lect. i., “Wit and Humour”.
[75] “The Physiology of Laughter,” _Essays_, i., p. 206.
[76] According to Fouillée, contrast is the formal element, faultiness
(“le défaut”), the material. See Dugas, _op. cit._, p. 85 ff.
[77] Hazlitt defines the ridiculous as the highest degree of the
laughable, which is “_a proper subject for satire_,” _loc. cit._
[78] Compare Ribot, _La Psychologie des sentiments_, p. 344.
[79] M. Bergson has a glimpse of the co-operation of “child’s fun” in
our laughter, _op. cit._, p. 69; but he fails to see the magnitude of
this factor.
[80] See _The Emotions and the Will_, “The Emotions,” chap. xiv., §§
38–40.
[81] _Cf._ Dugas, _op. cit._, p. 128 ff.
[82] _Wit and Humour_, p. 7.
[83] See p. 76, ff.
[84] Prof. Groos does not, I think, bring out clearly enough the
distinction here drawn, though he may be said to half-recognise it when
he speaks of “joy in conquest” as the end of play combats (_Play of
Animals_, pp. 291, 292).
[85] This restriction sometimes takes on a look of a conative process
of self-control, _e.g._, when an older cat, not used to play, is
importunately challenged by a lively kitten.
[86] On this “divided consciousness” in play see Groos, _Play of
Animals_, p. 303 ff.
[87] On the uses of animal play see Groos, _The Play of Man_, Part
III., sect. 2, and Lloyd Morgan, _Animal Behaviour_, chap, vi., sect. 2.
[88] Among previous writers on the subject M. Dugas seems to be the
one who has had the clearest apprehension of the essentially playful
character of laughter (_op. cit._, chap. vi., especially p. 115 _seq._).
[89] Karl Groos connects both the tusslings and the tearings of young
animals with the instinct of sex-competition (_Play of Animals_, p. 35
ff.).
[90] _The Psychological Review_, 1899, p. 91.
[91] _Descent of Man_, Part I., chap. iii.
[92] _Animal Life and Intelligence_, p. 407. The author strikes me as
almost excessively cautious in accepting these evidences of canine
jocosity.
[93] W. Preyer, _Die Seele des Kindes_, p. 197.
[94] Quoted by Lloyd Morgan, _loc. cit._
[95] _Expression of Emotions_, p. 208; _cf._ p. 132 ff.
[96] See Darwin, _The Descent of Man_, Part I., chap. iii.
[97] So in _The Expression of the Emotions_, pp. 211, 212. In the notes
contributed to _Mind_, vol. ii. (1877), p. 288, two infants are spoken
of, one of which smiled when forty-five, the other when forty-six days
old.
[98] The references are to his work, _Die Seele des Kindes_, 4te
Auflage.
[99] Champneys and Sigismund are quoted by Preyer. Miss Shinn’s
observations are given in her work, _Notes on the Development of a
Child_, p. 238. Mrs. Moore’s are to be found in her Essay, _The Mental
Development of a Child_, p. 37. Dr. L. Hill writes that he noted the
first smile in his boy when he was three weeks old, and in his girl
when she was some days older.
[100] See especially what he says about an unusual expression,
including “a strongly sparkling eye” which occurred in the eighth week,
_op. cit._, p. 194.
[101] I am indebted to Miss Shinn for a sight of her complete original
notes; and some of my references are to these.
[102] It is regrettable that Preyer does not describe with some
precision the sounds produced by his boy on the twenty-third day.
[103] Miss Shinn insists that the laugh did not develop out of the
chuckle, since apparently it appeared, as many articulate sounds
appear, with something of a sudden completeness. But this is just what
we should expect if the laugh is an inherited movement.
[104] _Op. cit._, p. 197.
[105] Preyer puts this at the end of the first half-year, which seems
to me to be late.
[106] _Op. cit._, p. 96.
[107] On the point of the priority of the smile in the process of
evolution see Th. Ribot, _La Psychologie des Sentiments_, p. 346.
[108] Darwin, _Expression of the Emotions_, p. 133.
[109] A. Lehmann, in his interesting account of the development of
the emotions and their expression in the individual, suggests that
the first imperfect smile of the infant, which expresses the pleasure
of sweetness, is genetically related to the movements of sucking
(_Hauptgesetze des menschl. Gefühlslebens_, ss. 295, 296).
[110] Darwin, _Expression of the Emotions_, pp. 134, 135.
[111] As pointed out above, the French _e_ sound seems to be the common
one in children’s laughter. Preyer tells us that the corresponding
sound in German (_ä_) occurs in the first infantile babble
(_Development of Intellect_, p. 239).
[112] _Expression of the Emotions_, pp. 132–3.
[113] See the article already quoted on “The Psychology of Tickling,
Laughing,” etc., p. 33.
[114] See the article already quoted.
[115] Dr. Robinson considers that another agreeable effect of tickling
may be an inherited echo of the caresses of man’s progenitors.
[116] Stanley Hall also suggests that the most ticklish parts, which,
according to his inquiries, are _the sole of the foot_, the throat,
etc., are the “most vulnerable”. But he does not explain what he means
by vulnerable here, and certainly does not appear to use the word in
the sense given it by Dr. L. Robinson.
[117] Groos deals with the teasing of animals under the head of
“Fighting Plays” (_Play of Animals_, p. 136 ff.).
[118] H. M. Stanley, _Psychological Review_, 1899, p. 87.
[119] This idea, that when we laugh at ludicrous things the process is
fundamentally analogous to that of being tickled, has been made the
basis of a curious and suggestive physiological theory of laughter,
developed by a German writer. See Ewald Hecker, _Die Physiologie und
Psychologie des Lachens und des Komischen_.
[120] _Loc. cit._, p. 39.
[121] I am indebted for this fact to Dr. L. Hill. I believe a like
remark applies to all the laughter of play.
[122] The nature of the process of emotional development is more fully
treated, and the relation of its effect to that of the dulling action
of repetition is indicated, in my work, _The Human Mind_, vol. ii., p.
75 ff.
[123] Of course, increase of volume might arise through a widening of
the sensational factor in the experience, due to the larger diffusion
of somatic stimulation, which, as already remarked, is an element in
the expansion of laughter.
[124] This expression is commonly used only where an expression is
passed on to a palpably dissimilar feeling. But an essentially similar
process takes place, according to my view, within the limits of
development of what we call the same emotion.
[125] The application of the principle of arrest to the changes in
emotional states has been made with great success by Th. Ribot in his
volume, _Psychologie des Sentiments_, p. 260 ff.
[126] Miss Shinn’s observations are recorded in Parts III. and IV. of
her _Notes_.
[127] For a pretty reminiscent description of a first experience of
running and jumping, see Pierre Loti, _Roman d’un Enfant_, ii., p. 4 ff.
[128] The nearest approach I have met with to a suggestion of a wish to
inflict pain in this early practical joking is the following: The child
M. when two years old stood on her mother’s foot saying, “Oh, my poor
toe!” But it seems reasonable to say that in such moments of frolic
pain is quite unrepresentable.
[129] _Op. cit._, p. 196. I have heard of it occurring in a girl at the
age of three and a half. The point should certainly be determined by
more precise observations.
[130] Preyer first observed roguish laughter at the end of the
second year (_op. cit._, p. 196). He does not define the expression
“schelmisches Lachen”.
[131] Compare above, p. 83.
[132] See Mrs. Hogan’s _Study of a Child_, p. 18.
[133] _Cf._ what was said in chap. v., p. 142, apropos of Leigh Hunt’s
theory.
[134] Ruth’s laughter at the mother’s face was certainly very early.
[135] Hogan, _op. cit._, p. 71.
[136] See my _Studies of Childhood_, pp. 274–5.
[137] Most of the observations here quoted, on the laughter of the
boy C., have appeared before in a chapter of my volume, _Studies of
Childhood_. The reader who is familiar with this chapter will, I feel
sure, pardon the repetition.
[138] Rev. Duff Macdonald, _Africana_ (1882), i., pp. 266–7.
[139] It is true that this astounding proposition is answered somewhat
ironically by Rev. Dr. Folliott, who says, “Give him modern Athens,
the learned friend (Brougham) and the sham intellect Society—they will
develop his muscles”. Yet it seems odd that this confident assertor was
not taken to task for his amazing ignorance.