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.