An Essay on Laughter: Its Forms, Its Causes, Its Development and Its Value

by James Sully

A word more is needed on the language here used. The terms laughable and ludicrous may be employed interchangeably up to a certain point without risk of confusion. At the same time it is well to note that the second is used in a stricter sense than the first. The term ludicrous seems to denote particularly what is not only an universal object of laughter, but an object of that more intellectual kind of laughter which implies a clear perception of relations. In everyday language we should speak of incidents and stories, of which the fun is obvious and broad, as “laughable” rather than as “ludicrous”. Closely connected with this emphasis on an intellectual element in the meaning of the term ludicrous, is its tendency to take on an ideal connotation, to mark off what we deem to be worthy of laughter. Here, as in the case of other objects of an æsthetic sentiment, there is a half-disguised reference to the regulative principles of art.

This control by an æsthetic principle or standard is more {86} clearly indicated in the use of “comic,” a word, by the way, which is used more freely in some European languages than in our own. A comic spectacle means, for one who uses language with precision, a presentation which is choice, which comes up to the requirements of art, and would be excellent material for comedy.

Our problem may now be defined as an analysis of the objects of our common perception and imagination which ordinary men tend to laugh at and to describe as laughable. This inductive inquiry into facts is, as implied above, a necessary preliminary to a discussion of the nature of the “ludicrous” or “comic” as an ideal or regulative conception.

In order to find our way with some degree of certainty to the general characteristics of laughable things, we should do well to take at least a rapid survey of the objects of men’s laughter as reflected in popular jests, “contes pour rire,” “comic songs” and amusing literature in general; as also in what may be called the standing dishes in the repasts of fun served up in the circus and other places where they laugh. No assemblage of facts of this kind adequate for scientific purposes has, so far as I know, yet been made;[53] so that it must suffice here to indicate some of the leading groups of laughable objects which a brief inspection of the field discloses.

It may be assumed as a matter of common recognition that this field of laughable objects will lie in the main within the limits of the spectacle of human life. It is the situations, appearances and thoughts of men which yield to laughter the larger part of its harvest. At the same time allusion will be made now and again to provocatives {87} lying outside these limits, which are certainly found in simple examples of the laughable.

In attempting to form these groups one must give a warning. It is implied in what has been said above, that the things we laugh at have in many cases, perhaps in most, more than one distinguishably amusing facet. In trying to classify them, therefore, we must be guided by what seems the most massive and impressive feature; and, as already suggested, it is not always easy to say what really is the main determinant of our laughter.

(1) Among the things which are commonly said to be laughable we find many objects distinguished by novelty. A presentation which differs widely from those of the ordinary type, and so has a stimulating freshness, may, as we have seen, when agreeable and of sufficient force, excite to laughter by suddenly relieving the dulness of the common and oft-repeated, and raising the feeling-tone of the observer to the level of joyous excitement. The proper effect of a recognised laughable aspect only appears when experience begins to be organised and the mind of the spectator to perceive, dimly at least, a certain contrariety in the new presentation to the usual run of his perceptual experience, in other words, the aspect of “out-of-the-wayness” or oddity. Much of the laughter of children, and, as we shall see, of savages, at what is called “funny” illustrates this. A child will laugh vigorously, for example, on first hearing a new and odd-sounding word, or on first seeing a donkey roll on his back, a Highlander in his kilt, his sister’s hair done up in curling-papers, and the like. In some of these cases, at least, the appreciation of the new object as odd or singular is aided by the agreeably lively character of the novel impression. This is true also of the amusing effect of two strikingly similar faces seen together; for here the look {88} of oddity, which is explained by the circumstance that our ordinary experience is of dissimilarity between faces, is supported by the stimulative force of the likeness itself.

This expansive effect of the new and the odd on our feeling may come too from the perception of things sub-human. The sight of a crab walking sideways, of an oddly-marked dog, of an eddy of leaves in autumn, and so forth will excite laughter in a child.

A glance at the language employed in describing laughable objects suggests the large scope of the odd. Thus the “whimsical” and the “fantastic” in the realm of ideas and tastes, the “extravagant” in the region of sentiment—these and the like seem to refer directly to what is peculiar, to the point of an amusing remoteness from life’s common way.

This enjoyable appreciation of the odd is in a particularly obvious way subject to the condition of relativity. To begin with, the amusing aspect is determined by, and so strictly relative to the manner of the hour; so that, as the word “antic” shows, the old-fashioned begins to take on an amusing aspect as soon as it is so far displaced by a new custom as to be an out-of-the-way thing.