Chapter III

. we drew the line between it and the true enjoyment of the laughable as something “objective”. Yet it would be a profound error not to recognise the fact, that there is a real kinship between the two. To begin with, the laugh of contempt, say over a prostrate foe, or over one whom we have succeeded in teasing by playing off on him some practical joke, readily passes into an enjoyment of the laughable proper. It is obviously in part a laugh _at_ something. Not only so, as a _laugh_ it may be presumed to involve a less {143} serious attitude in the successful spectator than a sneer, say, or the hurling of opprobrious words. It will naturally direct itself to something in the undignified _look_ of the discomfited party which would be likely to be recognised by others also as laughter-moving.

Again, though I hold that Hobbes’ theory, as he himself formulates it, errs by insisting on the swelling of the spectator’s self-consciousness into a feeling of superiority or power, it seems to me to be indisputable that all examples of the laughable which clearly fall into the category of mild degradations do give us a sense of uplifting, something akin to Hobbes’ “sudden glory”. As we are reminded by Dr. Bain, malevolence or malice has its protean disguises, and one of them is undoubtedly the joy of the laugher. The note of malicious crowing, of Schadenfreude, may, no doubt, be most distinctly heard in some of the laughter of satire and of the more brutal sort of joke. Yet I suspect that a trace of it lurks, like a beaten foe, inexpugnable though greatly reduced in strength, in a large part of our laughter.

There are one or two facts which seem to me to point to the conclusion that superiority is implied in, if not tacitly claimed by, the forms of laughter which have a distinctly personal aim. One of these is the familiar fact that anything in the shape of a feeling of inferiority to, or even of respect for, the laughable person inhibits the laughter of the contemplator. But other facts seem to me to be still more conclusive. Of these the first is that if a person finds himself distinctly involved in the disgrace, the absurd situation, or whatever else provokes laughter, he no longer laughs, or laughs in another key. I see my estimable fellow-pedestrian lose his hat at a street corner where the wind lies in ambush: my soul expands exultingly. The moment after, I, too, may fall a victim to the ambuscade, in {144} which case I probably stop laughing and become the subject of a different emotion. Or, if I am “laughing animal” enough to keep up the hilarity, the laugh will have changed. All the glory, the sense of uplifting, the exultation will have fled, and the new laugh, which embraces myself along with another unfortunate, will have in it something of humiliation, will at most have shrunk into a “chastened joy”.

The second fact is still more decisive. If no superiority is implied in our common laughter at others, how does it come about that we all have so very obstinate a dislike to be made its object? The most amiable of men find it hard enough to rise to the level of a bare toleration of others’ laughter: the man who can reach the sublime height of finding a real and considerable gratification in it must be a hero, or—as some would say—a craven. There are men of a genuine and most blameless humour who are hardly, if at all, less keenly sensitive to the attack of another laugher than the most serious of prigs. Is this understandable unless we suppose that laughter at a person is instinctively interpreted as an assertion of superiority over him?

It would seem then to be a reasonable view, that if laughter in ordinary cases involves superiority, and is so regarded by its object, the enjoyment of it by its subject will be very apt to bring with it a taste of superiority. This, I conceive, is the element of truth in Hobbes’ theory.

The foregoing considerations seem to show clearly that the realm of the ludicrous is not a closed and clearly bounded territory, as the theorists for the most part assume it to be. Our enjoyment of its amusing sights connects itself with, and indeed absorbs into itself, tendencies which we may observe in the laughter of children and uncivilised adults. And, if so, the fact seems to require us to go back upon those primitive tendencies in order to see how far the connection {145} holds, that is to say, how far the effects of the ludicrous can be regarded as due to the play of those tendencies.

An analysis of the primitive forms of laughter, which precede its regulation by a reference to ideas, has disclosed the fact that it is the expression of pleasure, yet not of all pleasure, but only of the sudden oncoming or increase of pleasure, of what we call gladness. It has shown us, further, that this joy of laughter is, in many, if not in all cases, conditioned by a sudden relaxation of mental strain, and may, indeed, be described by reference to this condition as a sense of relief from pressure. This was seen to hold good alike in those graver situations in which nervous laughter is apt to occur, in the lighter ones, such as the escape of schoolboys from the classroom to the playground, and in the still lighter ones in which the strain relaxed is momentary only, of which the laughter induced by tickling is the best representative.

Now it seems evident that we have in all these experiences something analogous to play. The natural alliance of laughter with the play-mood has already been touched on.[83] We may now go a step farther and say that these spurts of joyous consciousness which, in simple natures untrammelled by thought of appearances, express themselves in laughter are of the essence of Play. To be glad with the gaiety of laughter, to throw off the stiff and wearing attitude of seriousness and to abandon oneself to mirth and jollity is, in truth, to begin to play.

The deep kinship between laughter and play discloses itself as soon as we begin carefully to compare them. Let us look at some of their common characteristics.

Play contrasts with work, not as rest or inactivity contrasts with it, but as light pleasurable activity contrasts {146} with the more strenuous and partly disagreeable kind. The same holds good of laughter. It is light pleasurable activity in contrast to the more burdensome activity of our serious hours.

Again, play is free activity entered upon for its own sake. That is to say, it is not directed to any end outside itself, to the satisfaction of any want, save that of the play-impulse itself; and so it is free from external restraint, and from the sense of compulsion—of a “must” at the ear, whether embodied in the voice of a master or in that of a higher self—which accompanies the attitude of the worker. Similarly, when we laugh we are released from the strain and pressure of serious concentration, from the compulsion of the practical and other needs which keep men, in the main, serious beings.

It follows at once that play is relative to work, that it is enjoyed as a relief from graver occupations, and cannot be indefinitely prolonged. And, as has been hinted above, the same holds true of laughter and what we appropriately describe as playing the fool.

In saying that play is spontaneous activity, freed from the imperious rule of necessity, I do not mean that it is aimless. The play-impulse provides its own ends; for, without something to aim at, it could not become conscious activity in the full sense. Thus in the case of children, at any rate, and possibly of young animals also, playing at some form of combat implies, as Prof. Groos urges, a keen striving for something akin to conquest. In other words, the instinct which underlies the activity seems to bring with it the setting up of something like an end. Similarly with respect to those varieties of children’s play which aim at the realisation of an idea, and so resemble art. In this case, too, an instinct, namely, imitative production, prompts to the semblance of a serious conative process, the striving {147} after an end. The same applies to mirthful activity. In playing off a joke on another we certainly have a definite aim in view. In neither case, however, is the end regarded as a serious or important one. Play ceases to be pure play just as soon as the end, for example conquest, begins to be regarded as a thing of consequence to the player; and, in like manner, laughter ceases to be pure mirth just as soon as the end, say the invention of a witticism, is envisaged as a solid personal advantage, such as heightened reputation.[84]

A like remark applies to the intrusion of the serious attitude into play when this takes on an elaborate form requiring some concentration of attention. This does not destroy the playful character of the

## activity so long as the end is not viewed as matter of serious import.

In this respect, too, laughter resembles play, for we may take considerable pains in shaping our practical joke without ever losing hold of fun as our end.

This brings us to another point of kinship between play and laughter. Each, though marked off from the things of the real serious world, has to do with these in a manner. The play both of animals and of children is largely pretence, that is to say, the production of a semblance of an action of serious life, involving some consciousness of its illusory character. This seems inferrible, in the case of animal play, _e.g._, the make-believe combats, from the palpable restriction of the movements within the limits of the harmless.[85] And with regard to the play of the nursery, it {148} is probable that all through a play-action there is, in spite of the look of absorbing seriousness, a dim awareness of the make-believe. It is fairly certain that we have to do in this case with a double or “divided” consciousness.[86] And, as has been illustrated above, laughter is wont to hover about the domain of the serious. In both cases we find the love of pretence playing pranks with the real world, divesting things of their significance and value for the serious part of our mind, and transmuting them by fancy into mere appearances for our amusement.

Another point of similarity may be just alluded to. Recent discussions on the nature of play have served to bring out its utility or serviceableness. Not only is the sportive activity of children and young animals of physiological benefit as wholesome exercise, it is now seen to be valuable as a preliminary practice of actions which later on become necessary. Thus in play-combats children and young animals begin to learn the arts of skilful attack and defence.[87] Much of this benefit of play-activity is due to the circumstance that it is a mode of organised co-operation and supplies a kind of training for the serious social activity of later years. I shall hope to show later that laughter has a like value, not merely as a source of physiological benefit to the individual, but as helping us to become fit members of society. It seems hardly needful to point out that since the fact of this utility is known neither to the player nor to the laugher, it does not in the least affect the truth of our contention, that their

## activity is not controlled by external ends which have a practical or

other serious value. {149}

Our comparison justifies us in identifying play and mirth, so far as to say that when we play and when we laugh our mood is substantially the same. Common language seems to support this view. “Fun,” “frolic,” “sport,” “pastime,” these and the like may be said to cover at once all joyous play and all varieties of mirth. We are justified, therefore, in making the principle of play fundamental in our theory of laughter.[88] We may now proceed to illustrate rather more fully the presence of the play-attitude in the higher domain of laughter, the enjoyment of ludicrous spectacle.

To begin with, much of the laughable illustrated above may be regarded as an expression in persons or things of the play-mood which seizes the spectator by way of a sympathetic resonance. Examples have been given in the laughter excited by the spectacle of aimless actions which have the look of frolicsomeness. As our name “word-play” clearly suggests, verbal jokes are recognised as an outcome of the play-mood which throws off for the nonce the proper serious treatment of language. Again, the odd when it reaches the height of the extravagant has an unmistakable look of play-license. Much of the amusing effect of disguise, of pretence, including certain kinds of “aping,” appears to involve some recognition of the make-believe aspect of play. The disorderly, even when it applies to a room, is, to say the least, powerfully suggestive of the ways of rompish play. Many irregularities of thought and action readily take on the look of a self-abandonment to play; for example, irrelevances and confusions of idea, droll, aimless-looking actions, such as going off the scene and coming back again and again, {150} senseless repetitions of actions by the same person or by others—a common entertainment of the circus and the popular play-house. As a last example, we may instance the effect of the incongruous when it assumes a trifling aspect on a solemn occasion. This is surely amusing because it is so like the interruptions of child’s play.

How far can this principle be carried? May not a good deal of the amusingly incongruous in behaviour and in circumstances, of intellectual and of moral collapse, when this wears the aspect of folly, be said to affect us as an expression of the play-mood? And is not our amusement at the sight of certain mischances which have the look of a tripping up, an outwitting or befooling, either by others or by circumstance or “fate,” traceable to a perception of something indistinguishable from playful teasing?

Yet we must not rely on this expression of the playful too much. There seem to be many cases of the laughable, for example, amusing vices, absences of mind, and all irrelevances which bring in the solemn where it is out of place, where that which is expressed is a mood the very opposite of the playful. Nor do we need to push this principle to an extreme. Even if the laughable spectacle does not wear the look of a play-challenge, it can bring up the playful mood in the spectator in another way. It may so present its particular feature as to throw us off our serious balance, and by a sweet compulsion force us to play with it rather than to consider it seriously. A brief reference to our store of laughable things may suffice to illustrate this.

To begin with our laughter at novelties, the odd, the extravagant, what is it but the outcome of a play-impulse, a gay caprice which wills for the instant not to take objects seriously, but to disregard their real nature and significance, {151} practical, theoretical, and even æsthetic, for the joy of making them playthings for the eye? Or, if the suggestion of a rule, broken by the newcomer into our field of perception, obtrudes itself, our laughter announces that the infraction does not matter, that the violation of custom’s good law itself is passed over and turned into fun by the blithe play-spirit in us.

It is the same with mischances, awkward fixes, and all sorts of moral and intellectual shortcomings. These things obviously have in them what should appeal to our seriousness: they come up for judgment as pitiable, as regrettable, often as distinctly culpable. Yet we laugh and cast aside our judicial responsibilities just because the mood of the moment disposes us to be indulgent, and because the attitude we take up in viewing the offence as a little one instantly brings up the love of play, the impulse to turn the significant into enjoyable nonsense.

Once more, in our laughter at artful allusion to the obscene, it is the same swift transition from the serious attitude to that of play which seems to be at the bottom of our merriment. Here again it is the littleness—a quantity, as pointed out, varying considerably with the quality of the laugher—which disarms the serious attitude and allures it to play.

In pretences, both hypocrisies and less serious kinds, which raise the laugh, we note the same swift lapse into the play-attitude. For, in order to enjoy these vain shows with perfect gaiety, we must be ready to bring a mental “blind spot” to bear on everything in them which has serious moral significance. Here, too, we take a leap into the world of the player, transmuting what has something of seriousness, something even of offending hurtfulness, into a mere plaything. {152}

The more intellectual varieties of the ludicrous disclose the same deep-seated characteristic. The incongruous, the absurd, the tricks of ambiguous speech, these are things which offend us as serious mortals bent on having consistency of ideas and clearness of utterance in our social world. They evoke our laughter when they take such a form as to upset this serious attitude and to win us over to regarding them as nothing but entertaining show.

In all the more intellectual laughter at things we seem to find the perfect form of the mind’s play. I say “perfect” because psychologists as well as others are wont to speak of poetic imagination as playful

## activity, though this, as controlled by the ends of art, is seriousness

itself compared with the freer movements of ideas when the sportive temper takes us.

One other illustration of the _rôle_ of the playful spirit in the sphere of the laughable must not be overlooked. I have dealt with the intrusion of the trivial into solemn scenes as an expression of the child’s playfulness. But, as has been suggested above, it is more than this. Scenes of great formality, where a degree of severe self-control is enforced which is trying to mortals of only a limited gravity, are apt to throw us into a state of highly unstable equilibrium. Hence the welcome we are disposed to give to anything which touches the playful susceptibilities in us. Under such circumstances small occurrences, which at other times would pass wholly unmarked, are grasped at and become laughable things for us, just because of the great necessity of man to escape now and again into the freedom of play.

As already implied, this saturation of laughter with the spirit of playfulness is characteristic only of the gayer kind, that which is purified from all tinge of seriousness. So far {153} as our jocose impulses lend themselves to serious purposes, as for example in the laughter of satire, the playful character tends to become less clearly recognisable. Not that here, too, we are unable to find a resemblance between laughter and play; for, as we know, much of what we call play or sport has its serious interest, and the player, like the laugher, may easily slip across the line which divides the playful from the serious attitude. Nevertheless, we shall need to insist on the point that laughter is a thing of different tones, some more playful than others, and that its nature and its function can only be clearly determined by distinguishing these.

The result of our inquiry is that the impressions of the laughable cannot be reduced to one or two principles. Our laughter at things is of various tones. It gathers up into itself a number of primitive tendencies; it represents the products of widely removed stages of intellectual and moral evolution. This is virtually admitted by all who recognise the Intellectual and the Moral principle; for our laughter at seeing dignity unfrocked is presumably of more ancient origin than the “laughter of the mind,” which discoursers on the ludicrous are for the most part thinking of. Our argument takes us farther, namely, to the conclusion that the effect of the laughable, even of what is given by philosophers as a sample of the ludicrous, is a highly complex feeling, containing something of the child’s joyous surprise at the new and unheard of; something too of the child’s gay responsiveness to a play-challenge; often something also of the glorious sense of expansion after compression which gives the large mobility to freshly freed limbs of young animals and children.

A consequence of this recognition of the relation of the laughable to our laughter as a whole is that we shall need to alter our method of treating the subject. Our problem {154} naturally transforms itself into the question: can we trace out the organic differentiation and integration of the several psychical tendencies which our analysis has disclosed? In other words, we find that we must resort to the genetic method, and try to explain the action of the ludicrous upon us in the modest scientific fashion by retracing the stages of its development. Such explanation may some day be crowned by a distinctly philosophical one, if a finer logical analysis succeeds in discovering the essence of the ludicrous; for the present it seems to be all that is available.

It will at once be evident that a large investigation into the origin and development of the laughing impulse will take us beyond the limits of pure psychology. We shall have to consider how the impulse grew up in the evolution of the race; and this will force us to adopt the biological point of view, and ask how this special group of movements came to be selected and fixed among the characters of our species. On the other hand, laughter is more than a physiological and psychological phenomenon. As hinted above, it has a social significance, and we shall find that the higher stages of its evolution can only be adequately dealt with in their connection with the movement of social progress.

Lastly, it will be by tracing the evolution of laughter in the human community that we shall best approach the problem of the ideal which should regulate this somewhat unruly impulse of man. Such a study would seem to promise us a disclosure of tendencies by which laughter has been lifted and refined in the past, and by the light of which it may consciously direct itself in the future.

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