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

by James Sully

As hinted above, these two sources of laughter, a sudden oncoming of gladness and a relief from restraint, are closely connected. The unexpected presentation which gladdens us seems commonly to bring a kind of relief. This is certainly true of all cases in which the preceding state was one of conscious depression and ennui. The laughter of the young, in response to our often cumbrous attempts to amuse them, may be an escape from a certain strain which belongs to a state of ennui, from the confinement or restraint which the poverty of their surroundings at the moment imposes on them.[81] {142}

There is another conceivable way of bringing together the effect of sudden gladness and relief from restraint. It has been urged that all laughable things affect us by way of a shock of surprise followed by a sense of relief. Leigh Hunt, for example, thinks that when we laugh at something we receive a shock of surprise which gives a check to the breath, a check which is in proportion to the vivacity of the surprise; and that our laughter is a relief from this.[82] This theory embodies a sound physiological principle, one which we have already adopted, but it seems to go too far. As I have tried to show, a shock of surprise, as we ordinarily understand the expression, is not an invariable antecedent of our response to laughable things. On the other hand, it may be urged with some reason that even in cases where this full shock of the unexpected is wanting, there is a moment of strain as the presentation affronts the custom-trained eye, and that the laughter is the expression of the condoning of this affront, the acceptance of it as harmless play.

In order to complete our psychological analysis of the tendencies which combine in our enjoyment of ludicrous things, we need to glance at one other variety of primitive laughter, that of contempt. In dealing with this in Chapter III. we drew the line between it and the true enjoyment of the laughable as something “objective”. Yet it would be a profound error not to recognise the fact, that there is a real kinship between the two. To begin with, the laugh of contempt, say over a prostrate foe, or over one whom we have succeeded in teasing by playing off on him some practical joke, readily passes into an enjoyment of the laughable proper. It is obviously in part a laugh at something. Not only so, as a laugh it may be presumed to involve a less {143} serious attitude in the successful spectator than a sneer, say, or the hurling of opprobrious words. It will naturally direct itself to something in the undignified look of the discomfited party which would be likely to be recognised by others also as laughter-moving.

Again, though I hold that Hobbes’ theory, as he himself formulates it, errs by insisting on the swelling of the spectator’s self-consciousness into a feeling of superiority or power, it seems to me to be indisputable that all examples of the laughable which clearly fall into the category of mild degradations do give us a sense of uplifting, something akin to Hobbes’ “sudden glory”. As we are reminded by Dr. Bain, malevolence or malice has its protean disguises, and one of them is undoubtedly the joy of the laugher. The note of malicious crowing, of Schadenfreude, may, no doubt, be most distinctly heard in some of the laughter of satire and of the more brutal sort of joke. Yet I suspect that a trace of it lurks, like a beaten foe, inexpugnable though greatly reduced in strength, in a large part of our laughter.

There are one or two facts which seem to me to point to the conclusion that superiority is implied in, if not tacitly claimed by, the forms of laughter which have a distinctly personal aim. One of these is the familiar fact that anything in the shape of a feeling of inferiority to, or even of respect for, the laughable person inhibits the laughter of the contemplator. But other facts seem to me to be still more conclusive. Of these the first is that if a person finds himself distinctly involved in the disgrace, the absurd situation, or whatever else provokes laughter, he no longer laughs, or laughs in another key. I see my estimable fellow-pedestrian lose his hat at a street corner where the wind lies in ambush: my soul expands exultingly. The moment after, I, too, may fall a victim to the ambuscade, in {144} which case I probably stop laughing and become the subject of a different emotion. Or, if I am “laughing animal” enough to keep up the hilarity, the laugh will have changed. All the glory, the sense of uplifting, the exultation will have fled, and the new laugh, which embraces myself along with another unfortunate, will have in it something of humiliation, will at most have shrunk into a “chastened joy”.

The second fact is still more decisive. If no superiority is implied in our common laughter at others, how does it come about that we all have so very obstinate a dislike to be made its object? The most amiable of men find it hard enough to rise to the level of a bare toleration of others’ laughter: the man who can reach the sublime height of finding a real and considerable gratification in it must be a hero, or—as some would say—a craven. There are men of a genuine and most blameless humour who are hardly, if at all, less keenly sensitive to the attack of another laugher than the most serious of prigs. Is this understandable unless we suppose that laughter at a person is instinctively interpreted as an assertion of superiority over him?

It would seem then to be a reasonable view, that if laughter in ordinary cases involves superiority, and is so regarded by its object, the enjoyment of it by its subject will be very apt to bring with it a taste of superiority. This, I conceive, is the element of truth in Hobbes’ theory.

The foregoing considerations seem to show clearly that the realm of the ludicrous is not a closed and clearly bounded territory, as the theorists for the most part assume it to be. Our enjoyment of its amusing sights connects itself with, and indeed absorbs into itself, tendencies which we may observe in the laughter of children and uncivilised adults. And, if so, the fact seems to require us to go back upon those primitive tendencies in order to see how far the connection {145} holds, that is to say, how far the effects of the ludicrous can be regarded as due to the play of those tendencies.

An analysis of the primitive forms of laughter, which precede its regulation by a reference to ideas, has disclosed the fact that it is the expression of pleasure, yet not of all pleasure, but only of the sudden oncoming or increase of pleasure, of what we call gladness. It has shown us, further, that this joy of laughter is, in many, if not in all cases, conditioned by a sudden relaxation of mental strain, and may, indeed, be described by reference to this condition as a sense of relief from pressure. This was seen to hold good alike in those graver situations in which nervous laughter is apt to occur, in the lighter ones, such as the escape of schoolboys from the classroom to the playground, and in the still lighter ones in which the strain relaxed is momentary only, of which the laughter induced by tickling is the best representative.

Now it seems evident that we have in all these experiences something analogous to play. The natural alliance of laughter with the play-mood has already been touched on.[83] We may now go a step farther and say that these spurts of joyous consciousness which, in simple natures untrammelled by thought of appearances, express themselves in laughter are of the essence of Play. To be glad with the gaiety of laughter, to throw off the stiff and wearing attitude of seriousness and to abandon oneself to mirth and jollity is, in truth, to begin to play.