The weariness, the fever, and the fret
which kill the capacity for a whole-hearted abandonment to simple pleasures.
So far as this is the case, what laughter survives may be expected to take on the tone of a forced utterance with something of a sigh of weariness behind it. It is as though men had no time to laugh. Even at a social entertainment you will find men and women who meet your playful challenge only with a niggardly giggle which they instantly suppress: poor distracted souls unable for a moment to free themselves from the chaos of social claims which haunts them.
A yet more sinister characteristic of this later social laughter, reflected more or less clearly even in much of {431} what now passes for comedy, is its cynicism. By this is meant more than the hollowness of the laughter of the world-weary: it implies a readiness to laugh at a new sort of thing, or at least at the old sorts in a new way. Thus, we may hear the unscrupulous member of a profession laughing at some “amusing” bit of conscientiousness in another member. The laughter has its readily distinguishable tones: now the thin wiry note of contempt which issues from the superior person, now the rough brazen sound burred by the bolder lips of the roué. Such laughter is in the case of an individual, of a class and of a nation alike, the revelation of the attitude of a mind which has not yet completed the process of discarding its old obligations.
The tendencies here touched on illustrate how closely the moral forces encompass our laughter, how directly they determine its key and the depth of its sincerity. They suggest, too, how much more the evil inclinations menace the healthy vigour of our mirth than the good, even though these should be cultivated up to the confines of the saintly.
These signs may well make the friend of laughter sad. There is nothing unreasonable in the idea of a death of all the more joyous and refreshing mirth. The utilities—on which, perhaps, I have insisted too much—give us no pledge of a final survival of the merry impulse. However considerable its benefit to a society, we have examples of highly efficient communities which seem to do very well without it. And the like is probably true of individual laughter. A few persons may, as I have suggested, owe to it their persistence on the human scene; yet the evolutional efficacy of this utility is probably very narrowly circumscribed.
In spite of these sinister indications, an eye patient in search may descry others which point to the persistence of a wholesome laughter. Even if comedy and satire seem {432} tired and slumbering, the humorous spirit is awake and productive. We have in the literature of more than one country the promise of a development of new tones of quiet, reflective laughter. The growth of a wider appreciation of other literatures than our own is overcoming the obstacles, already touched on, to an international appreciation of flavours, so far at least as to allow of a rapprochement of the larger-minded members of civilised nations in a reciprocal enjoyment of their humorous writings.
For the rest, we may put our trust in the growing volume of what I have called private laughter. It is not unlikely that in the future, men who think will grow at once more tenacious of their ideals, and more alive to the ludicrous consequences which these introduce. If so, they will become still less like gay-hearted children than they now are, and will have to brighten the chamber of life, as it loses the blithe morn-given light, with the genial glow of humour. They will be able to keep the flame alive with fuel drawn from the storehouse of literature. In this work of conserving human laughter they will do well, while developing the thoughtfulness of the humorist, to keep in touch with the healthiest types of social laughter, the simple mirth of the people preserved in the contes and the rest, and the enduring comedies. If a few men will cultivate their own laughter in this way and do their best to make their private amusement that of an inner circle of friends, we may hope that it will not die—though the death of what we love were less terrible to face than its debasement—but be preserved by a few faithful hands for a happier age. They will have their reward in advance, since pure and honest laughter, like mercy, blesses him that gives, and him that takes.
