It only remains to add that if Schopenhauer’s theory turns out to be inadequate even when applied to an example chosen by himself, it is pretty certain to fail when applied to other groups of instances of the laughable in our list, in which incongruity does not seem to be a potent {133} ingredient, if indeed it is present at all. To suggest, for example, that our laughter at small and harmless vices, such as Aristotle speaks of, is the outcome of a suddenly conceived incongruity between a “real object” or presentation and a conception sounds sufficiently forced. Would the author of the theory have been prepared to say that in these instances we have present to our mind the concept of a perfectly virtuous man, and that our laughter comes of our failing to bring the perception under this conception? Surely the intrusion of any such exalted “concept” would be fatal to our enjoyment of the laughable aspect of vice.
Facts, moreover, contradict this view on every hand. It may suffice to allude to one of the world’s great purveyors of laughter, Sir John Falstaff. According to this theory, we ought to laugh most at his vices when he first reveals them, since this is the moment when we should be most likely to bring to bear on him the “concept” of a proper decent gentleman. But is it not the fact that we laugh more freely when we have quite ceased to think of him as a possible embodiment of sobriety and decency, and when we apperceive his behaviour by help of the conceptual tendency answering, not to the type of virtuous citizen, but to the general manner of behaviour or the character of John Falstaff himself? The same is true in everyday life. We are, I think, most ready to laugh at a man’s foibles, say, his vanity or his exaggerations of speech, when we know the man and can say, “Oh, it is only So-and-So!”
Neither the theory of Kant nor of Schopenhauer seems, then, to be competent to do what it undertakes to do, to explain the various forms and impressions of the laughable. These two theories, in spite of their difference, agree in regarding the incongruity which excites our laughter as lying between what we perceive and what our previous {134} experience and our pre-existing ideas and apperceptive habits have prepared us to accept as natural and proper. But our examination of the instance of the ill-matched hat and head supplied by Dr. Lipps, as also our fuller discussion of the relation of incongruity in the preceding chapter, has led us to recognise an amusing contrariety between different parts of a presentation, of what may be called internal incongruity in contradistinction to the external dealt with by Kant and Schopenhauer. Hence we have to inquire how these two modes of apprehending incongruity are related.
That, prima facie, we have to do in this case with a real difference in the mode of perception, seems indisputable; let the reader compare the effect of the two spectacles, a man wearing an extravagantly tall hat, and a small boy wearing a hat of the height of a man’s; or, again, a tiny man alone, and a short man by the side of a tall woman. In some instances, indeed, we may see that there is an intrinsic repugnance between the parts of a presentation, as when two colours in a woman’s dress violently clash, or when a statement is palpably self-contradictory. Here there seems to be no reference, however vague, to previous experience or the customary. At the same time we may easily see that this field of the internally incongruent is a very narrow one. Much of what looks like this turns out, on closer inspection, to be, in part at least, externally determined. This is true of what we call a bizarre mixture of incongruent elements in mode of attire or in manners; for it is experience and the habits of social life which dispose our minds to regard them as foreign one to the other. Much of our mirthful gratification at exhibitions of the incongruous arises through a perception of the intrusion of something foreign into a situation. When, for example, we observe a {135} rather sprightly gesture in the pulpit, we mentally view this action against a background which is the situation of the moment. Now this situation is by no means wholly presented: it is a presentation greatly enlarged and profoundly modified by the addition of a general significance. The attitude of the spectator’s mind, face to face with the scene, is determined by apperceptive tendencies which imply a readiness to expect a certain kind of behaviour. And this, again, evidently means that certain directions of imaginative activity, and something in the nature of a “generic image” and of conceptual thought, are stirring. This effect of experience and apperceptive habits in modifying our perceptions is probably illustrated in all our appreciations of the amusingly incongruous. To revert once more to the spectacle of the man’s hat on the child’s head, may we not say that in this case, also, we envisage the hat as an interloper in the situation—the sweet sanctum of the nursery?
It seems to follow that Kant and Schopenhauer were wise, when dealing with incongruity, in emphasising the apperceptive factor. Contrariety to what we are accustomed to is undoubtedly the great determining element in the ill-assortments of things which provoke our laughter. Hence, in examining the theories of these two writers, we seem to have dealt with the intellectual principle in its most comprehensive and most favourable form. Nor do I see how any transformation of this principle will make it an adequate theory. The entertaining instances of mischances and awkward situations, of takings down, of moral and intellectual failings, these and other varieties of the laughable dealt with above steadily refuse to yield up their secret at the bidding of this theory.
Let us now sum up the results of our criticism of the theories. We seem to have found that, whereas neither of {136} the two chief types of theory covers the whole field of the laughable, each has its proper, limited domain. It is certain that in many cases we laugh at an incident, a situation, an action, where the provocative is best described as a loss of dignity. It is equally certain that in many other cases our laughter springs directly out of a perception, more or less distinct, of incongruity.
That these principles have each a large sway over our laughter has been sufficiently illustrated in the preceding chapter: also that they frequently co-operate in one and the same amusing presentation. Hence we might expect that the advocate of each theory would be able to find his illustrations, and would sometimes manage to pounce upon one just after it had been carried off by his rival.[73]
But, it may be urged, even if both principles are shown to be valid they may be unified. If by this is meant that the incongruous and the undignified or unworthy, considered as abstract ideas, are identical, or that logically each involves the other, I am not concerned to discuss the point. It is enough for our present purpose to urge that the modes of perception and the shades of feeling involved are clearly distinguishable.
The same fundamental distinction would nullify the attempt to subsume one of these principles as a special case under the other. If we set out with the Intellectual principle, we may, without doubt, succeed in showing that many, if not all, amusing losses of dignity—such as a slight disgrace, or a bungling into a “fix”—logically involve a contrariety between what is presented and the normal custom or rule. But our question is one not of the logical analysis of meaning but of the psychological analysis of process, and I can find no evidence in favour of the theory {137} that when we laugh at these things we have at the moment any apprehension of such a contrariety.
It is the same if we start with the other or Moral principle. Incongruities which are lapses from standard ideas may certainly, as already conceded, be regarded as degradations. And it may be possible to show that in all cases of incongruity some loss of dignity is logically implied. Yet even if it be so, the psychological contention will still stand that in many cases of incongruity, including our old friend the child in the father’s hat, we have a full sense of relishing the incongruity and yet none at all of enjoying a degradation. Where is the degradation in the spectacle of a crow on a sheep’s back which may flood a child with mirth? In truth, if our theorists had only condescended to take note of so small a matter as children’s enjoyment of the world’s fun, the hypothesis of degradation could never have stood its ground so long.