Our survey of laughable things has led us to recognise certain groups which appear to induce the laughing mood: each presenting its special variety of laughable feature. One group may be said, primâ facie, to exhibit mischances, another some form of human defect, another, again, something of the misfitting or incongruous, and so forth. We may now advance to the theoretic problem of unifying and explaining these varieties of the laughable.
Here, for the second time, we must touch on the views propounded by authorities on the subject under the name of Theories of the Ludicrous. Happily, it is not necessary to burden the reader with a full account of these. We shall of course pass by all doctrines deduced from a priori metaphysical conceptions, and confine ourselves to those which make a show, at least, of grounding themselves on an analysis of facts. Of these I shall select two or three typical theories which come to us with the claims of distinguished authorship. We shall test these by examining how far they succeed in comprehending the diversity of fact now before us.
1. The first of these typical theories localises the secret force of the laughable in something unworthy or degraded in the object. According to this view, the function of laughter is to accompany and give voice to what may be called the derogatory impulse in man, his tendency to look {120} out for and to rejoice over what is mean and undignified. This may be called the Moral Theory, or Theory of Degradation.
Aristotle’s brief remarks on comedy in the Poetics may be taken as illustrative of this way of envisaging the laughable. Comedy, he tells us, is “an imitation of characters of a lower type—not, however, in the full sense of the word bad”; and, again, the Ludicrous (τὸ γελοῖον) is a subdivision of the ugly (τοῦ αἰσχροῦ), and consists in “some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive”.[65] Of an adequate theory of the subject there is here, of course, hardly a pretence. It seems strange, indeed, that a great thinker with the works of his compatriot Aristophanes before him should have placed the ludicrous wholly in character, altogether overlooking the comic value of situation. Still, the reference of the laughable to the category of ugly and disgraceful things—for τὸ αἰσχρὸν on its moral side connotes the disgraceful (compare the Latin “turpe”)—may be said to imply a germ of the principle of degradation.
A more careful attempt to construct a theory of the ludicrous by a reference to something low or degraded in the object is embodied in the famous doctrine of Thomas Hobbes. According to this writer, “the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly”. In this theory our laughter is viewed as arising, not immediately from a perception of something low or undignified, but only mediately from this perception, through a recognition of our own superiority and an accompanying emotional movement, namely, an expansion of the “self-feeling,” a sudden quickening of the sentiment of pride or power. Nevertheless, the {121} theory may be said to come under the principle of degradation, in so far as it makes the process of laughter start with a perception of some point of inferiority, that is to say of a comparative loss of dignity, in the laughable object.
The main point of this theory, that whenever we enjoy the ludicrous we are consciously realising our superiority to another, will, I think, hardly bear examination. That in this enjoyment there may be, and often is, an element of this agreeable sense of elevation I readily allow, and I shall try to show presently how it gets there. But it is altogether inadequate as an exhaustive account of the several varieties of our laughing satisfaction. Even in the groups of cases to which it seems to be most plainly applicable, for example, those of mischances and awkward situations, it is not a sufficient explanation. Is there any discoverable trace of the uplifting of pride, of the temper of “Schadenfreude”—the malicious satisfaction of watching from the safe shore the tossings of mariners in a storm—in the instantaneous response of our mirth to the spectacle of the skater’s wild movements when for a moment he loses equilibrium, or of the hat wind-driven far from its proper seat on the respectable citizen’s head? Is there time here for mentally bringing in the contrasting idea of our own immunity? Has the laugh the characteristic taste of the outburst of contempt which is excited by the consciousness of victory, of taking somebody down?
In dealing with this type of theory, it seems only fair to test it in the more mature form given it by a recent writer. Prof. Alexander 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”. The most marked improvements here on Hobbes’ statement are (1) that consciousness of our own superiority {122} need not come in, since we may laugh sympathetically with another who scores off his adversary, and so forth; (2) that the object degraded need not be a person, since human affairs in general, e.g., political institutions, a code of manners, a style of poetic composition, may be taken down; and (3) that, as in Aristotle’s theory, certain limiting conditions, namely, absence of counteracting emotions, such as pity or disgust, are recognised. These extensions on the one hand and limitations on the other are clearly meant to safeguard the Hobbesian principle against the attacks to which it so dangerously exposes itself.[66]
Even in this new and more guarded form, however, the theory will not bear the strain put upon it. It will account fairly well for some of the forms of the laughable in our list, such as slight misfortunes or mischances, defects, moral and intellectual, which do not shock or otherwise hurt our feelings, also certain forms of make-believe which are distinctly hypocritical and so capable of being regarded at once as moral defects, and (being seen through) as discomfitures. It may apply also, as has been hinted above, to the effect of the obscene; though I, at least, feel that without some forcing the effect cannot be interpreted in this way. There seems to me to lurk in our laughter here something of the joy of the child, of the Naturkind, Walt Whitman, at the sight of what is customarily hidden away.[67]
Leaving this, however, as a more doubtful case, let us turn to other groups. Is it possible to regard all laughable exhibitions of incongruities as degradations? Is the {123} charming unsuitability of the “grown-up’s” coat and hat to the childish form viewed by the laughing spectator as a degradation when he “lets himself go”? Are we laughing at the clothes as degraded by being thus transformed, or at the child’s naïveté as a degradation of human intelligence? I confess that such a way of interpreting the spectacle strikes me as grotesquely forced. The look of the whole thing in the complete unfitness of its parts seems to affect one as a delicious absurdity before the sweet simplicity below the surface is detected.
Our author does his best to show that mere incongruity, where nothing is degraded, does not raise the laugh. I readily grant that he has made out his case, so far as to show that in most of the pungent and potently moving examples of the incongruous an element of degradation, of malicious detraction is present. But this is not enough. The question is whether it is always present, and whether in the cases where it is present it is the sole excitant of our mirth. I believe that a finer analysis shows that this is not so. Where, for example, is “the degraded” in a child’s laughter at the sight of his nursery all topsy-turvy on a cleaning day? Does he view the nurse as put to shame by the setting of chairs on tables and so forth, instead of observing the proper local congruities? or does he think of the room as something quasi-human which takes on an improper look as he himself does when he makes himself in a glorious mess? Slight movements of fancy of this kind may be present: but do they lie at the sources of his laughter and constitute its main moving force?