In this brief account of the mirthful aspect of the indecent I have confined myself to what discloses itself to consciousness in the moderate forms of laughter, common among civilised men who practise a certain self-restraint. Yet we know that the outbursts which are provoked, in coarser men at least, by the uncovering of sexual matters have a deeper {101} source in the obscure parts of our animal organisation. Our sources of knowledge with respect to the condition of men when they are seized with the sexual orgasm, including the testimony of mythology, suggest that laughter here assumes the function of voicing a state of riotous self-glorification of the animal part of our nature, when fully released for a moment; and, further, that here, as in some forms of nervous laughter, it has an organic connection with a condition of emotional paroxysm.
It is hardly necessary to point out that relativity has a large empire in this branch of the laughable. A man’s idea of what is obscene will be relative to the standards of his society, which may vary considerably. The Englishman living abroad is apt to be impressed by the fact that men and women, otherwise as refined as his own people, hesitate less to call a spade a spade and to allude in conversation to subjects which are tabu at home. Similarly, the modern reader of Shakespeare may be shocked by the freedom of speech of the cultivated women of another age.
Further, as implied above, the readiness to laugh here will be modified profoundly by refinement of feeling. If it is true that all men are capable of enjoying an allusion to the indecent, provided that it is delicately executed, it is no less true that only coarse-minded men are able to drink frequently or deeply at this rather muddy spring of laughter.[59]
(7) Another group of laughable presentations has a certain analogy with the last. Popular mirth has made a {102} prominent target of men’s pretences. To peep behind the mask and seize the make-believe is a sure means of providing ourselves with laughter. So large, indeed, is the part of affectation and disguise in social life, that not only the ruder popular art, but comedy has made them one chief source of its entertainment. The flavour of the laughter varies greatly according to the moral complexion of the pretence. Seeing through the transparent make-believe of the child sets us laughing in one key; the detection of the half-unconscious humbug, in another; and that of the artful impostor, in yet another.
That the appreciation of this embodiment of the laughable is relative, may not be at once evident. Yet a glance at the numerous little hypocrisies not only allowed, but even exacted by polite society, will suffice to show how the standard may vary. The dulling influence of use is exceptionally apparent here. The shams of life cease to amuse us—save a very few—when they are numerous and ubiquitous. The Englishman who laughs at the little pretences of society abroad, may be quite incapable of discerning the amusing side of quite similar simulations and dissimulations in the ways of his own society.
Here, too, as in the case of moral blemishes generally, the impulse will be restrained by the tendency to judge seriously, and by the higher degrees of moral sensitiveness. Men of easy morals will laugh cynically, perhaps, at forms of imposture which would shock those of a finer moral texture.
(8) We may now pass to a species of the laughable which has a more markedly intellectual character. Among the exhibitions of human quality none appears to have had its ludicrous mark more widely recognised than that of want of knowledge or of skill. Here, again, our friend, the clown {103} of the circus, comes to our aid. The spectacle of his futile attempts to imitate the exploits of the skilled horseman and other experts stirs the risibility of the multitude to one of its fortissimo outbursts. Ignorance of locality, especially when it lands a traveller in a mess, is a common source of merriment to the rustic onlooker. Children, savages, and all simple folk delight in such exhibitions of ignorance and incompetence. The more restrained amusement of “society” at the want of savoir faire in the uninitiated shows that this enjoyment of the spectacle of ignorance by the well-informed is widespread. The value of the spectacle is evinced by the fact that when in argument a man desires to win the laugh of onlookers to his side, he will do his best to show up a laughable degree of ignorance in his fellow-disputant. The presence of the expert in a gathering of bucolics is a situation pregnant with possibilities of mirthful enjoyment. Let the delightful discussions of Mr. Hardy’s Wessex folk suffice as illustration.
These amusing uncoverings of ignorance and inability are a spicy ingredient in the mutual quizzings of men belonging to distinct peoples or classes, such as the savage and the white man, the sailor and the landsman. This will be illustrated later on.
In these cases the spectator may not count on the possession by others of knowledge or skill. The man who laughs has at most a vague expectation that outsiders should be equal to those of his own set. The laugh at ignorance and incompetence takes on another and more ironical ring when knowledge and competence are reasonably to be expected, as for example when an official shows a striking incompetence for the duties of his office.
The spectacle of human ignorance grows particularly entertaining when it has to do with matters supposed to be {104} of common knowledge. M. Bergson gives us an example in the observation of a disappointed traveller on hearing that there was an extinct volcano in the neighbourhood: “They had a volcano and allowed it to go out”.[60] It is this element of ignorance of what is generally known which, in part, gives the amusing aspect to many breaches of rule, particularly those of language. So firm is our assumption that everybody, even the foreigner, ought to be able to speak our language that we cannot hear a gross mispronunciation or misapprehension of meaning without feeling it to be naïve. Shakespeare in the same play makes us laugh at the bad English of Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans. Of course the fun is greater if the foreigner stumbles unwittingly into an observation which tells against himself; as when a German visitor to London, being asked how his wife was, answered, “She is generally lying, and when she is not lying she is swindling,” meaning to say “lying down” and “feeling giddy” (“hat Schwindel”).