From the time of King Solomon downwards, laughter has been the subject
of pretty general abuse. Even the laughers themselves sometimes
vituperate the cachinnation they indulge in, and many of them
----'laugh in such a sort,
As if they mocked themselves, and scorned the spirit
That could be moved to laugh at anything.'
The general notion is, that laughter is childish, and unworthy the
gravity of adult life. Grown men, we say, have more to do than to
laugh; and the wiser sort of them leave such an unseemly contortion of
the muscles to babes and blockheads.
We have a suspicion that there is something wrong here--that the world
is mistaken not only in its reasonings, but its facts. To assign
laughter to an early period of life, is to go contrary to observation
and experience. There is not so grave an animal in this world as the
human baby. It will weep, when it has got the length of tears, by the
pailful; it will clench its fists, distort its face into a hideous
expression of anguish, and scream itself into convulsions. It has not
yet come up to a laugh. The little savage must be educated by
circumstances, and tamed by the contact of civilisation, before it
rises to the greater functions of its being. Nay, we have sometimes
received the idea from its choked and tuneless screams, that _they_
were imperfect attempts at laughter. It feels enjoyment as well as
pain, but has only one way of expressing both.
Then, look at the baby when it has turned into a little boy or girl,
and come up in some degree to the cachinnation. The laughter is still
only rudimental: it is not genuine laughter. It expresses triumph,
scorn, passion--anything but a feeling of natural amusement. It is
provoked by misfortune, by bodily infirmities, by the writhings of
agonised animals; and it indicates either a sense of power or a
selfish feeling of exemption from suffering. The 'light-hearted laugh
of children!' What a mistake! Observe the gravity of their sports.
They are masters or mistresses, with the care of a family upon their
hands; and they take especial delight in correcting their children
with severity. They are washer-women, housemaids, cooks; soldiers,
policemen, postmen; coach, horsemen, and horses, by turns; and in all
these characters they scour, sweep, fry, fight, pursue, carry, whirl,
ride, and are ridden, without changing a muscle.
At the games of the young people there is much shouting, argument,
vituperation--but no laughter. A game is a serious business with a
boy, and he derives from it excitement, but no amusement. If he laughs
at all, it is at something quite distinct from the purpose of the
sport: for instance, when one of his comrades has his nose broken by
the ball, or when the feet of another make off from him on the ice,
and he comes down upon his back like a thunderbolt. On such occasions,
the laugh of a boy puts us in mind of the laugh of a hyæna: it is, in
fact, the broken, asthmatic roar of a beast of prey.
It would thus appear that the common charge brought against laughter,
of being something babyish, or childish, or boyish--something properly
appertaining to early life--is unfounded. But we of course must not be
understood to speak of what is technically called giggling, which
proceeds more from a looseness of the structures than from any
sensation of amusement. Many young persons are continually on the
giggle till their muscles strengthen; and indeed, when a company of
them are met together, the affection, aggravated by emulation,
acquires the loudness of laughter, when it may be likened, in
Scripture phrase, to the crackling of thorns. What we mean is a
regular guffaw; that explosion of high spirits, and the feeling of
joyous excitement, which is commonly written ha! ha! ha! This is
altogether unknown in babyhood; in boyhood, it exists only in its
rudiments; and it does not reach its full development till adolescence
ripens into manhood.
This train of thought was suggested to us a few evenings ago, by the
conduct of a party of eight or ten individuals, who meet periodically
for the purpose of philosophical inquiry. Their subject is a very
grave one. Their object is to mould into a science that which as yet
is only a vague, formless, and obscure department of knowledge; and
they proceed in the most cautious manner from point to point, from
axiom to axiom--debating at every step, and coming to no decision
without unanimous conviction. Some are professors of the university,
devoted to abstruse studies; some are clergymen; and some authors and
artists. Now, at the meeting in question--which we take merely as an
example, for all are alike--when the hour struck which terminates
their proceedings for the evening, the jaded philosophers retired to
the refreshment-room; and here a scene of remarkable contrast
occurred. Instead of a single deep, low, earnest voice, alternating
with a profound silence, an absolute roar of merriment began, with the
suddenness of an explosion of gunpowder. Jests, bon-mots, anecdotes,
barbarous plays upon words--the more atrocious the better--flew round
the table; and a joyous and almost continuous ha! ha! ha! made the
ceiling ring. This, we venture to say it, _was_ laughter--genuine,
unmistakable laughter, proceeding from no sense of triumph, from no
self-gratulation, and mingled with no bad feeling of any kind. It was
a spontaneous effort of nature, coming from the head as well as the
heart: an unbending of the bow, a reaction from study, which study
alone could occasion, and which could occur only in adult life.
There are some people who cannot laugh, but these are not necessarily
either morose or stupid. They may laugh in their heart, and with their
eyes, although by some unlucky fatality, they have not the gift of
oral cachinnation. Such persons are to be pitied; for laughter in
grown people is a substitute devised by nature for the screams and
shouts of boyhood, by which the lungs are strengthened and the health
preserved. As the intellect ripens, that shouting ceases, and we learn
to laugh as we learn to reason. The society we have mentioned studied
the harder the more they laughed, and they laughed the more the harder
they studied. Each, of course, to be of use, must be in its own place.
A laugh in the midst of the study would have been a profanation; a
grave look in the midst of the merriment would have been an insult to
the good sense of the company.
If there are some people who cannot laugh, there are others who will
not. It is not, however, that they are ashamed of being grown men, and
want to go back to babyhood, for by some extraordinary perversity,
they fancy unalterable gravity to be the distinguishing characteristic
of wisdom. In a merry company, they present the appearance of a Red
Indian whitewashed, and look on at the strange ways of their
neighbours without betraying even the faintest spark of sympathy or
intelligence. These are children of a larger growth, and have not yet
acquired sense enough to laugh. Like the savage, they are afraid of
compromising their dignity, or, to use their own words, of making
fools of themselves. For our part, we never see a man afraid of making
a fool of himself at the right season, without setting him down as a
fool ready made.
A woman has no natural grace more bewitching than a sweet laugh. It is
like the sound of flutes on the water. It leaps from her heart in a
clear, sparkling rill; and the heart that hears it feels as if bathed
in the cool, exhilarating spring. Have you ever pursued an unseen
fugitive through the trees, led on by her fairy laugh; now here, now
there--now lost, now found? We have. And we are pursuing that
wandering voice to this day. Sometimes it comes to us in the midst of
care, or sorrow, or irksome business; and then we turn away, and
listen, and hear it ringing through the room like a silver bell, with
power to scare away the ill spirits of the mind. How much we owe to
that sweet laugh! It turns the prose of our life into poetry; it
flings showers of sunshine over the darksome wood in which we are
travelling; it touches with light even our sleep, which is no more the
image of death, but gemmed with dreams that are the shadows of
immortality.
But our song, like Dibdin's, 'means more than it says;' for a man, as
we have stated, may laugh, and yet the cachinnation be wanting. His
heart laughs, and his eyes are filled with that kindly, sympathetic
smile which inspires friendship and confidence. On the sympathy
within, these external phenomena depend; and this sympathy it is which
keeps societies of men together, and is the true freemasonry of the
good and wise. It is an imperfect sympathy that grants only
sympathetic tears: we must join in the mirth as well as melancholy of
our neighbours. If our countrymen laughed more, they would not only be
happier, but better; and if philanthropists would provide amusements
for the people, they would be saved the trouble and expense of their
fruitless war against public-houses. This is an indisputable
proposition. The French and Italians, with wine growing at their
doors, and spirits almost as cheap as beer in England, are sober
nations. How comes this? The laugh will answer that leaps up from
group after group--the dance on the village-green--the family dinner
under the trees--the thousand merry-meetings that invigorate industry,
by serving as a relief to the business of life. Without these,
business is care; and it is from care, not from amusement, men fly to
the bottle.
The common mistake is to associate the idea of amusement with error of
every kind; and this piece of moral asceticism is given forth as true
wisdom, and, from sheer want of examination, is very generally
received as such. A place of amusement concentrates a crowd, and
whatever excesses may be committed, being confined to a small space,
stand more prominently forward than at other times. This is all. The
excesses are really fewer--far fewer--in proportion to the number
assembled, than if no gathering had taken place. How can it be
otherwise? The amusement is itself the excitement which the wearied
heart longs for; it is the reaction which nature seeks; and in the
comparatively few instances of a coarser intoxication being
superadded, we see only the craving of depraved habit--a habit
engendered, in all probability, by the _want_ of amusement.
No, good friends, let us laugh sometimes, if you love us. A dangerous
character is of another kidney, as Cæsar knew to his cost:--
'He loves no plays,
As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;
Seldom he laughs;'
and when he does, it is on the wrong side of his mouth.
Let us be wiser. Let us laugh in fitting time and place, silently or
aloud, each after his nature. Let us enjoy an innocent reaction rather
than a guilty one, since reaction there must be. The bow that is
always bent loses its elasticity, and becomes useless.