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Chapter III Plato, Aristotle, the author of the Coislinian Treatise on Comedy, Demetrius, Quintilian, Plutarch, among the ancients; and among the moderns, Descartes, George Herbert, Thomas Hobbes, Spinoza, Swift, Addison, Montesquieu, Lord Chesterfield, Oliver Goldsmith, Lamennais, Stendhal, Darwin, George Eliot, Alexander Bain, MacDougall, Professor Lloyd Morgan, Dr. Wrench. I do not suggest here that every one of these people gives us a comprehensive definition. Many of them are as one-sided as the former set. But at least they avoid the banality of seeing in the laughable merely such abstract states as a contrast, an incongruity, or a surprise; at least they have the profundity to see that laughter is not and cannot be always an entirely harmless and innocent expression, and they all belong by right to the line which culminates in a complete and comprehensive explanation of laughter, whether as an expression or as a social function. In the Philebus, Plato discusses laughter with some care and the upshot is that self-ignorance is the cause of This is merely an elaborate way of saying that the foibles of those who are too feeble to injure us are merely funny; but that the foibles of those who are strong enough to injure us may prove to be our tragedy and are therefore a matter of grave concern for us. In the Republic, Plato deprecates laughter very much as Lord Chesterfield does, at least among people of quality; for he says that the guardians of an ideal state are not to be given to laughter. 2 Elsewhere in the Republic, and again in the Laws, he speaks of the things that should not, and those that should be, laughed at. In the former, he says: "He is a fool who thinks anything ridiculous but that which is evil, and who attempts to raise a laugh by assuming any object to be ridiculous but that which is unwise and evil." 3 And in the latter he says: "About serious matters a man should be serious." 4 This is the first hint we get in antiquity that all is not well with laughter, and there is in it something against which it is advisable to be on one's guard. The general impression derived from Plato is that there is always a contempt of something or somebody in laughter. In the Poetics, Aristotle takes the idea a stage farther and makes it more precise. He says: "The ridiculous is part of the base or ugly. It is the kind of failing and deformity which does not cause pain or disaster, such Again we get the idea of something mean and contemptible behind the comic, that is why Aristotle, in the Rhetoric, is able to define wit as "educated insolence." 6 And this view of laughter recurs all through Greek and Roman writers. While valuable as constituting the first step in the direction which sees something not altogether innocent in laughter, the views of Plato and Aristotle, however, miss a good deal. For instance, they offer no explanation of that purely subjective cause of laughter which comes insistently to the human creature who feels at the top of his form, and who, standing in the sunshine, is free and unburdened by cares; they offer no explanation of the laugh of embarrassment, of safety, or of the exaggerated laugh over a joke heard in a foreign language which we happen to understand. The author of the Coislinian Treatise on Comedy either follows Aristotle's theory, or directly represents it. He says, among other things: "The joker will make game of faults in the soul and in the body." 7 Demetrius of Alexandria also derives the ridiculous from some deformity, and follows Plato in warning the prudent to laugh only at opportune times — at feasts, symposia, and in rebuking luxury and high living. 8 Cicero, although dismissing the definition of laughter as impracticable, follows Aristotle in believing that "laughter has its basis in some kind or other of meanness or deformity;" 9 and Quintilian, while approving of this view of Cicero's, also points out that "sayings designed to raise a laugh are generally untrue (and In Quintilian's statement we see the element of contempt in laughter extended so as to include not merely deformity, defectiveness and ugliness, but everything that may be "uncomplimentary" to a human being; but in the Questiones Conviviales almost all the occasions for laughter mentioned by Plutarch refer to physical or moral defects. 12 There is in these ancients too much stress on the purely reactive laughter resulting from a plain and unmistakable appeal to the laugher's sense of physical superiority, and we feel that a number of the commonest causes of laughter in cultured adults are being overlooked; but it is more candid and helpful to acknowledge this factor in the laughable as important and even basic, than to attempt to deny it altogether as some over-anxious modern defenders of laughter are wont to do. Among the moderns, Descartes was probably the first who troubled to explain the physiology, or the bodily mechanics of laughter. In this, however, he is naturally not very helpful, though he has interesting things to say about laughter itself. "Although apparently," he says, "laughter is one of the chief signs of joy, it is only moderate joy, in which there is a mixture of admiration and hatred, that can give rise to it." 13 And again: "Experience also teaches us that in all those cases which give rise to that hearty laugh which Descartes is obviously puzzled by the complexity of laughter. Although he sees a tincture of hatred or admiration in it, his language on the subject is not positive and does not suggest that he was satisfied with his attempted solution. He leaves the problem very much as a writer might leave an unfinished essay — intending to take it up again — just roughly sketched out. But what makes him interesting is that his rough sketch has most of the essentials in it, and would have required but very slight modification in order to develop into a sound finished structure. George Herbert, writing in 1631, expressed emotionally a sensitive man's doubts about laughter. He probably felt, just as Bergson did, 15 that the attitude of mind in laughter is at root inconsistent with charity and ideal justice; but having no system into which laughter had to be fitted, was able to say so outright, without circumlocution, or explanations which confused the issue. "Laugh not too much," he wrote, "the witty man laughs least: For wit is news only to ignorance. . . . All things are big with jest; nothing that's plain But may be witty, if thou hast the vein." 16 An important point is made here, which is that the humorous or funny side of all things is only too obvious to most men of culture, and constantly to call attention to it — to make it de rigueur to call attention to it — is the pastime of lesser minds. Thomas Hobbes is a very much underrated thinker. So little trouble has been taken to do him justice on this point of laughter alone, that whole chapters and books have been written against him by men who have not even taken the pains to consider "subjective laughter" as an important aspect of laughter, and who have not even once referred to it in their discussion of the subject. So angered have they been by their own hasty and narrow reading of his meaning, and so anxious have they felt to rescue laughter from his hands, that, just as Puritans can deal with life only by amputating and limiting it, so they are able to deal with laughter only by shutting their eyes to many of its most important aspects. I shall now quote Hobbes, and if the reader will bear with me, I hope, in the sequel, to be able to show how completely satisfactory and therefore comprehensive his explanation is. "There is a passion," says Hobbes, "that hath no name; but the sign of it is that distortion of the countenance which we call laughter, which is always Elsewhere, Hobbes, writing on the same subject, says: "'Sudden glory' is the passion which maketh those 'grimaces' called 'laughter'; and is caused either by some sudden act of their own that pleaseth them or by the apprehension of some deformed thing in another by comparison whereof they suddenly applaud themselves. And it is incident most to them that are conscious of the fewest abilities in themselves; who are forced to keep themselves in their own favour by observing the imperfections of other men. And therefore much laughter at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity. For of great minds one of the proper works is to help and free others from scorn, and compare themselves only with the unstable." 18 Now, here, although I do not claim that we have a perfect verbal statement of the exhaustive definition of laughter, I do maintain, in opposition to most Anglo-Saxon critics and thinkers, that we have an exhaustive definition, because — and these are facts overlooked by all Anglo-Saxon critics of the great philosopher — in Hobbes's explanation, not only is the old field of the ancients retained, but it is greatly extended to include It is characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon critics of Hobbes, that they consistently shirk the explanation of two aspects of laughter — its subjective aspect and its sting. They withdraw the sting on the one hand by saying that men do not laugh from any feeling of superiority, and then, when they are obliged to admit that laughter can and does offend when it is directed against one, they are naturally at a loss to account for the offence. Some of them, including the Frenchman, Bergson, as we have seen, actually take the sting for granted without attempting to explain it. Laughter is self-glory. So we can now understand why a person can laugh apparently at nothing, that is to say, unprovoked by any external stimulus, or the memory of any external stimulus. Not one of the men in the first section (including, of course, Bergson), and hardly any already quoted above in the second section, thought of this kind of laugh. We can now also understand all those laughs in which there is definite outside provocation; for, although Hobbes quite unnecessarily limits the series of these external stimuli, those externally provoked laughs not mentioned by him are, as I hope to show, implicit in his two words "self-glory." If, therefore, Hobbes's definition of laughter has hitherto been found one-sided and inadequate, I suggest that it is owing to the fact that most critics and writers have themselves deliberately limited it. And yet, with Hobbes's definition of laughter before us, we can understand so much that was obscure before. We can now see why the schoolboy, standing stripped in the sunlight on a sandy shore, laughs and laughs heartily — at nothing! We can see why a young girl knowing herself to be faultlessly attired, will laugh at the most inadequate provocation. Why the same young girl will laugh with sincere and convincing heartiness at the clumsiest remark made by the handsome young man who admires her, and will hardly notice the profound witticism of the plain man who has apparently not noticed her. Nothing said by Bergson gets anywhere near explaining such laughs as these. There is not, in fact, an example I have given which cannot be explained by Hobbes's definition. But this is not all; for Hobbes's explanation also clears up the mystery about the offensive character of laughter when it is directed against one — a mystery carefully ignored not only by Bergson but also by all those who oppose Hobbes — and it gives us a most important and valuable hint concerning the kind of people who laugh most. This last contribution to the subject alone sets Hobbes head and shoulders above most moderns in the matter of psychological insight. But I am anticipating, and must now first complete this brief history of thought on the subject. Spinoza, who regarded the true philosopher as a man "who in truth finds nothing worthy of hatred, laughter, or contempt," 19 was not so clear as Hobbes, Thus, although Spinoza saw quite clearly that "derisive laughter comes from the pleasure we feel at conceiving the presence of a quality we despise in an object we dislike," and although he admits that "a man hates what he laughs at," 20 he very naturally feels that this does not by any means cover all laughter. We know, in fact, that it covers but very few kinds of laughter. He, therefore, finds it necessary to distinguish between the laughter which is derisive and the laughter which Voltaire regarded as pure "joyfulness," and says: "We distinguish between mockery and laughter; for laughter and merriment are nothing but joy, and therefore, provided they are not excessive, are in themselves good." 21 To those who claim that I have no right to extend Spinoza's sentence as I have extended it, I would retort that it can have no other meaning. It must mean that there is a distinction between the laughter of mockery and pure laughter, which, according to Spinoza, is joy, and only joy. To say that mockery as mockery is distinct from laughter, would either be to state a mere platitude, or else again to be guilty of confusion; for everybody knows there is some mockery in some laughter. As for the implicit "pure laughter," contained in Spinoza's distinction, I shall have more to say later. Suffice it for the present to observe that, as a Jew, he was bound to know of laughter as this "pure" joy, unadulterated by any comparison. It is only surprising that, in trying to distinguish this laughter from the laughter resulting from a comparison, he did not see the beauty and simplicity of Hobbes's synthetical phrase "self-glory" — more especially as he Swift, who knew that "men laugh at one another's cost," recognised the power of laughter as a weapon and as a lash; 22 but he, too, seems to have been unable to find room in his explanation for more than the laughter which results from a comparison. He was followed by Addison, who said: "I am afraid I should appear too abstracted in any speculations, if I show that when a man of wit makes us laugh, it is by betraying some oddness or infirmity in his own character, or in the representation which he makes of others, and that when we laugh at a brute or even at an inanimate thing, it is at some action or incident that bears a remote analogy to any blunder, or absurdity in reasonable creatures." 23 All this is true and covers a vast number of instances of the laughable; but it is very much inferior to Hobbes's explanation. There seems, however, to have been an excess in Addison's day of the kind of laughter which results from a merely physical comparison, or at least of a comparison involving joy over another's misfortune (Schadenfreude), and Addison acknowledges this. He speaks of the sort of men called "Whims and Humorists," who are always playing practical jokes on their guests, to create a laugh, 24 and we gather that practical joking, for the provocation of laughter, was as popular among the cultivated in the eighteenth century as it is now among the working-classes, schoolboys of all classes, the Chinese and savages. It was said to have been Montesquieu's opinion that laughter was born of pride and vanity, 25 while his "Frequent laughter," he wrote, "is the characteristic of folly and ill-manners: it is the manner in which the mob expresses their silly joy at silly things. In my mind there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made anybody laugh, they are above it; they please the mind, and give cheerfulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter; and that is what people of sense and breeding should show themselves above. A man's going to sit down in the supposition that he has a chair behind him, and falling down upon his breech for want of one, sets a whole company laughing, when all the wit in the world would not do it; a plain proof, in my mind, how low and unbecoming a thing laughter is. . . . I am neither of a melancholy nor a cynical disposition, and am as willing and as apt to be pleased as anybody; but I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh." 26 There is much good sense in this attitude. Most men of culture, when they are reminded of the lowly origin of laughter by the mirth over horse-play, or the rapturous jeers of the mob over some physical infirmity, may feel revolted by laughter. But it is when laughter climbs to planes less obviously associated with either inferiority in a fellow-being, or Oliver Goldsmith wrote on laughter in a way suggesting that the blood relationship between the laugh over horse-play or merely physical inferiority, and the laugh over more spiritual triumphs, was beginning to be forgotten, and that the line of demarcation between the two was hardening. He says: "Among well-bred fools, we may despise much, but have little to laugh at. The truth is, the critic generally mistakes humour for wit, which is a very different excellence. Wit raises human nature above its level; humour acts as a contrary part, and equally depresses it. To expect exalted humour is a contradiction in terms. . . . When a thing is humorously described, our burst of laughter proceeds from a different cause: we compare the absurdity of the character represented with our own, and triumph in our conscious superiority. No natural defect can be a cause of laughter, because it is a misfortune to which ourselves are liable. We only laugh at those instances of moral absurdity, to which we are conscious we ourselves are not liable. For instance, should I describe a man as wanting his nose, there is no humour in this, as it is an accident to which human nature is subject; but should I represent this man as extremely curious in the choice of his snuff-box, we here see him guilty of an absurdity of which we imagine it impossible for ourselves to be guilty, and therefore applaud our own good sense on the comparison. Thus, then, the pleasure we receive from wit Goldsmith draws a distinction here, which, although it shows an attempt to raise the plane of the laughable, does not really place an insuperable barrier between the two kinds of laughter — the laughter at a human infirmity and the laughter at a mere human absurdity. These two kinds are in the same line of evolution, and it is merely a matter of breeding, education and general sensitiveness, which one inclines to. The fact that Goldsmith can no longer laugh at a human infirmity merely indicates, not that a human infirmity is never laughable, but that he personally has evolved to a stage no longer accessible to that humorous appeal. We have only to think of the different degrees of culture — the culture of the Chinese coolie which does not make him above laughing loudly at seeing a dog run over in the street, and the culture of the Oxford don, who, quite incapable of laughing at such a sight, hilariously repeats a howler in an undergraduate's examination paper — to be able to allow for different kinds of laughter at different stages of evolution, without dismissing from the possibly humorous as negatively as Goldsmith does, appeals which leave us individually untickled. For by Goldsmith's method we can never arrive at an exhaustive definition of laughter, which, based on the belief that all laughter is the same expression, whether in the Chinaman, the savage, or the Oxford scholar, gives one explanation of it which covers both the laughter of the savage and that of the highest product of modern culture. Lamennais is particularly interesting, because he But Lamennais definitely attacks the expression itself. He says: "Laughter never gives to the face a sympathetic or benevolent expression." (This is most important because Lamennais said it without any idea of the explanation of laughter I am about to advance.) "On the contrary, it distorts the most harmonious features into a grimace and obliterates beauty." 28 Then he adds: "But whatever the reason that provokes it [laughter], if you probe deeply enough, you will find, whether the laugher admits or not, that it is always associated with some secret self-satisfaction, some kind of malicious pleasure. Whoever laughs at anybody, feels at that moment superior to him in the light in which he sees him and which excites his mirth, and his laughter is above all the expression of the satisfaction which this real or imaginary superiority makes him feel." 28a Except for the analysis of the expression itself, this does not take us even as far as Hobbes. But it is a useful confirmation of a certain part of Hobbes's explanation, and when we add to it a fresh factor provided by Stendhal, who hints that in order to laugh at a person, we must in some way feel that we have reasons to look up to him or at least to respect "I must," says Stendhal, "be able to feel a certain amount of respect for the person at whose expense I am expected to laugh." 29 This probably explains the difficulty most men experience in finding women comic on the stage (there are far fewer women comedians than men), it also explains why nobody laughs at a child or a horse falling. We feel too remote from them, in any case, to be tickled by any mishap that overtakes them. Their misfortune in the race does not give us a better chance in any way. A good deal of what has gone before in this section is summed up in two or three remarks of Darwin's on laughter, and in reading them we should bear in mind not only what a cautious and painstaking thinker, but also what a very careful observer he was. What is more, he knew the animal world, and took every opportunity of collecting information about it. After admitting what few stubborn defenders of the "innocence" of laughter will ever admit, that "the subject is extremely complex," Darwin tells us that "something incongruous or unaccountable, exciting surprise and some sense of superiority * in the laugher, who must be in a happy frame of mind, seems to be the commonest cause [of laughter]." 30 He also carefully discusses the expression itself, argues very cogently that "no abrupt line of demarcation can be drawn between the movement of the features during the most violent laughter and a very * The italics are mine. — A.M.L. Apart from giving us Darwin's high authority in support of some parts of Hobbes's explanation, this does not take us even as far as the latter. Although it covers a good many instances of laughter, it leaves a good deal unexplained, including those purely subjective states which appear, on the surface, to require no act of comparison for the generation of "self-glory." We still wish to know, for instance, why the lady who fell in Bond Street laughed. She could not have felt superior, nor could she have felt any self-glory. Darwin admits that "we often see persons laughing in order to conceal their shame or shyness," 33 but he suggests no reason why laughter should do this. Nor does he explain why laughter can be felt as an affront, or, as Bergson says, a humiliation. A member of much the same school of thought, Alexander Bain, argues that "the occasion of the ludicrous is the degradation of some person or interest possessing dignity, in circumstances that incite no other strong emotion." 34 This, too, is compatible with Hobbes and Darwin, but like the latter, and unlike Hobbes, Bain does not say enough to include the laughter arising from purely subjective states, and he says nothing about the expression itself. Professor MacDougall, although he takes a pessi- This quite unnecessary modification of Aristotle's theory is so little helpful, and covers so small a field in the domain of laughter, that I should not have included it had it not been for the reputation of its author. Strange to say. Professor Lloyd-Morgan comments quite favourably on this view of MacDougall's and suggests a modification of it which is equally inadequate. He says: "There is, however, probably an element of truth (if not the whole truth) in the view that laughter is a protective reaction which shields us from the depressing influence of the shortcomings of our fellow men — even when they jest. As pity softens the primitive callousness of laughter, so does laughter in turn relieve us from the depression which stupidity, for example, engenders." 36 Thus, almost at the end of our enquiries, we still find ourselves wanting, if not an exhaustive definition, at least a verbal recasting of Hobbes's definition which, if possible, will cover the explanation of the facial contortions of laughter. For, I take it, that all this while the reader has been remembering the thirty-two Now I contend that we should still be wanting this verbal recasting of Hobbes's definition had not a London medical man. Dr. G. T. Wrench, hinted at a very good and useful one by suggesting the words "laughter is the expression of superior adaptation." 37 These are much better words than Hobbes's, because, while the latter do not clearly cover the laughter of the lady who fell in Bond Street, or the laughter of the man who loses his hat in the wind, the former, as we shall see, cover both these and every example of laughter that can possibly be made to fit Hobbes's definition. In fact, they cover every one of the examples I have given or have been able to find in life and in the literature of laughter. We laugh when we feel that our adaptation to life is superior. It may be a purely subjective state, unprovoked by any external object, (Hobbes's self-glory covers this, too), or it may be a state of mind excited by a comparison, as when we laugh at a schoolboy howler. Or it may be a bluff laugh, that is to say, pretended expression of superior adaptation when one is really feeling inferior. The factor of a sense of superiority in laughter has, as we have seen, always been admitted by the more enlightened critics and thinkers; but naturally and rightly their opponents refused to accept it as a universal cause of laughter, because as long as it suggested superiority over somebody or something (which is distasteful to most modern people) and the As Professor Lloyd-Morgan put it, when combating the old plea for superiority in laughter, "as a factor in a particular type of laughter, this exultation over others and the accompanying self-exultation may be accepted; as a comprehensive theory of laughter, it can hardly pass muster. Not all exultation over inferiors is of the order of laughter, not all laughter is of the order of self-exultation." 38 Quite true! But the learned Professor is probably thinking of the purely subjective element in innumerable occasions for laughter — the euphoria of healthy children, of healthy adults; the cases of bluff laughter — the lady in Bond Street, the man who loses his hat in the wind; and the cases of laughter over mere surprises, incongruities or absurdities, where no conscious superiority enters into the matter at all, but which, as I shall presently show, are covered by superior adaptation. The vague sense of superior adaptation in the girl who knows herself to be perfectly dressed, need not necessarily involve any definite image of someone else Thus the fear and trembling felt by most writers on laughter, lest the thing they prize so highly should be given a priggish interpretation, which would be un-Christian besides being too limited, is appeased by the re-wording of Hobbes's definition, suggested by Dr. Wrench's brief remarks on laughter. But before proceeding to test this definition in connection with my example, something must now be said about the expression of laughter itself, which is not dealt with by Dr. Wrench, though, strange to say, the wording of Hobbes's definition suggested by his remarks covers what seems to be the correct interpretation of that also. |
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