Psychology and parenthood

by H. Addington Bruce

To mention only a few of the theories of the comic finding place in psychological works, it is affirmed by some authorities that the essence of the laughable is that it induces a sudden sense of superiority in the person moved to laughter. This is the “sudden glory” theory of Thomas Hobbes, and in support of it is cited more especially the familiar fact that nobody likes to be laughed at. It also finds support in the undoubted feeling of contempt which so often accompanies the laughter provoked by the buffooneries of a mountebank, the dialogue and action of a farce comedy, and the so-called “comic pictures” now to be found in such lamentable profusion in many of our newspapers. In some slight degree, too, there may be a “sudden glory” in the laughter at the awkwardness and groundless fears of a child, or at his naïve remarks, and in the laughter occasioned by mischances to other people. But certainly there is much that is laughable—notably the kindly banter between friends—that cannot reasonably be said to engender any feeling of superiority. And, more than this, we are all of us, every day of our lives, witnessing things that do suddenly arouse in us a lively feeling of superiority, but without moving us to laughter—moving us, rather, to pity and perhaps tears.

Even as amended by the psychologist Bain, the “sudden glory” theory remains inadequate. Bain defines “the occasion of the ludicrous” as “the degradation of some person or interest possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion.” This is a decided improvement, because it clearly recognises that the laughable must be devoid of elements awakening counteracting emotions. But it is open to the criticism that laughter is frequently excited by objects and occurrences in which, unless the imagination be severely wrenched, it is impossible to assume that ideas of degradation are dominant or even operant.

When, for example, we laugh at the spectacle of a child half hidden in his grandfather’s hat, what do we think of as degraded? Is it the child, the hat, or the absent grandfather? In such an instance can the idea of degradation properly be said to enter at all? So, likewise, it is difficult to conceive the presence of any idea either of degradation or superiority in the ringing laughter of a child at his puppy’s gambols or at the frisking of his kitten. And how explain on such a principle the laughter at non-malicious witticism?

Appreciating the inapplicability of the Hobbesian doctrine in any form as explanatory of all sources of laughter, other investigators have emphasised the principle of contrast and incongruity, but to scarcely more satisfactory effect. “Laughter,” says Herbert Spencer, “naturally results only when consciousness is unawares transferred from great things to small—when there is what we call a descending incongruity.” The manifest insufficiency of this theory is avoided in the more extensive one, to which Darwin inclines, defining the laughable as that which is queer, unusual, disagreeing with or contrary to our mental habits or the normal order of affairs. Assuredly there is almost always an element of queerness in the things at which we laugh. Yet it is also certain that the queer does not always make us laugh. As Camille Mélinaud has pointed out:

“There are things contrary to the normal order that have nothing ludicrous about them; and if the view were true that queerness is the laughable element, those things that are strangest and most unusual should be the ones most certain by their very nature to excite laughter. But we do not laugh at the dancing horses, the jumping pigs, the musicians playing on bottles, of the circus, all of which are most contradictory of what we are accustomed to. If we laugh at the circus, it is at the accessory jokes and incidents in the detail. A conjurer’s tricks, seemingly contradictory as they are of all our experiences and notions, do not make us laugh. We laugh at his jokes and his funny ways of proceeding, but we wonder at his tricks.” (Popular Science Monthly, vol. liii, p. 398.)

Mélinaud’s own view, oddly enough, is about as unconvincing as any that has ever been formulated, for, while laying stress on the principle of incongruity, he insists that laughter comes only when the laugher, “by a rapid process of thought,” submits the object of his mirth to a reflective analysis and arrives at the laugh-provoking conclusion that what seems absurd is really quite natural from the point of view of the person or thing laughed at. Then, and not until then, do we feel amused. On such a theory one might well wonder that children ever find it possible to laugh, and that laughter is so prevalent among adults who are not accustomed to any very high degree of logical thinking.

Altogether different from any of the foregoing is the more recent theory of the French philosopher, Henri Bergson, as presented in a special treatise on laughter, of which an excellent translation by C. Brereton and F. Rothwell has lately been published in this country. Bergson recognises, as not every investigator has done, the essentially spontaneous character of laughter, and he insists with Darwin on postulating queerness as an indispensable element in the laughable. But, as he sees it, the queerness must be of a specific sort in order to excite laughter—must consist, in fine, in an automatic inelasticity, whether of form, action, or thought, which is in sharp contrast to the wonted mobility of life. It is our immediate recognition of this automatism and rigidity that moves us to laughter.

When, Bergson affirms, we laugh at a man who stumbles and falls in the street, our laughter is caused, not by his sudden change of attitude, but by the involuntary element in this change. “Perhaps there was a stone on the road. He should have altered his pace or avoided the obstacle. Instead of that, through lack of elasticity, through absent-mindedness and a kind of physical obstinacy—as a result, in fact, of rigidity or of momentum—the muscles continued to perform the same movement when the circumstances of the case called for something else. That is the reason of the man’s fall, and also of the people’s laughter.” So with our laughter at the appearance and horseplay of a clown. We laugh at his painted face because we immediately recognise in it “something mechanical encrusted upon the living,” and we laugh at his antics because of their automatic, machine-like character.

In fact, “We laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing. We laugh at Sancho Panza tumbled into a bed-quilt and tossed into the air like a foot-ball. We laugh at Baron Munchausen turned into a cannon-ball and travelling through space.” In laughter caused by puns, jests, and witticisms, the same principles of automatism and inelasticity obtain, though of course in much subtler form. Analyse closely all varieties of the comic and you always get back to the basic idea of “something mechanical in something living.” Or, Bergson concludes, “The comic is that side of a person which reveals his likeness to a thing, that aspect of human events which, through its peculiar inelasticity, conveys the impression of pure mechanism, of automatism, of movement without life.”

Really to appreciate both the plausibility and the shortcomings of this novel theory of the laughable one must read Professor Bergson’s book. It is there elaborated so ingeniously that one finds it difficult to give instances of the comic to which it cannot in some way be applied. Even the laughter of children at the bobbing up of their jack-in-the-box, the fall of their house of cards, or the tail-chasing gyrations of their kitten, may conceivably be explained on the assumption that what the children laugh at is the automatic character of the bobbing, the falling, and the whirling. On the other hand, these very examples irresistibly suggest that the Bergsonian explanation is, after all, rather strained and far-fetched, and that, in common with its less thorough-going predecessors, it overlooks the elusive something fundamental to the laughable. This impression is deepened when we recall the extent to which automatism, rigidity, inelasticity, prevail in the affairs of men without exciting so much as a smile.