The same exhilarant aspect of the vanishing of the outworn moves us in a quieter way when we ridicule the survivals of customs and rites which have lost their significance. This form of hilarious enjoyment, which implies a piercing through of appearances and a searching into meanings, will be more fully considered later on.
It seems to follow from what has been said that laughter {283} reacts in a double manner upon changes of social habit. First of all, it resists the wildness of the craving for the new (neomania). As schoolboys are wont to treat a newcomer, it applies its lash vigorously to a proposed innovation, in order to see what “stuff” it is made of, and whether it can justify its existence. In this way it moderates the pace of the movement of change. On the other hand, it completes the process of throwing off an outworn habit by giving it, so to speak, the coup de grâce. It thus combines the service rendered to a herd of sheep on the march by the shepherd who walks in front, with that rendered by the sheep-dog which runs back again and again to the laggards. It seems to be enforcing Goethe’s maxim:—
“Ohne Hast
Aber ohne Rast.”
We may now glance at some of the workings of this complex movement of social progress on the formation of social sets, and on their reciprocal attitudes.
It is evident that, by introducing much more subdivision of employment and exclusive knowledge of experts, progress will tend to widen the area of mutual quizzing and chaffing, already dealt with. It is of more importance to point out that the advance of a community in knowledge and culture will lead to the formation of new groups involving certain differences of rank. The importance of this kind of group-division shows itself in classic comedy. Juvenal expresses the lively contempt of the urban citizen for his provincial inferior,[246] and our own comedy of the Restoration, taking town life as its standard, pours ridicule on the country gentry.[247] It is illustrated also in the relation of the clergy {284} as the learned class, to the ignorant laity. As the contes amusingly suggest, a large part of the authority of the clergy during the Dark Ages rested on this intellectual superiority. If we view culture widely we may speak of an indefinite number of levels composing a scale of intellectual dignity. These levels are commonly supposed to coincide with such groups as the professional class, the man of business (Kaufman), and the lower class. But no such coincidence can be assumed when once education has become a common possession. A large portion of our “upper” class—which is determined no longer by descent but to a considerable extent by wealth—is neither cultured nor even well-informed. A clerk will often be found to have more general knowledge and literary taste than his well-dressed employer, and a working man, in spite of the limitations of poverty, may know more about such subjects as philosophy and history than the great majority of the middle class. We see then that the strata representing gradations of culture are largely independent of commonly recognised divisions. These older distinctions may, indeed, be very much toned down by the culture-movement. The ancient line of division between the superior man and his inferior spouse has been half effaced by the admission of women into the higher culture circle. The culture divisions are real social groups, each being bound together by a large community of ideas, tastes and interests; and their importance in the system of social grouping tends to increase.
The development of culture groups introduces a new and important change in the standards of fitness, to which laughter is, so to speak, tied. When superiority is lacking in a clearly recognisable basis of reason, its ridicule of inferiors can only have its source in a pride which may be, and often is, of the most foolish. When, however, it resides {285} in the possession of greater spiritual wealth, more refined ideas and a more acute sense of the fitting, the laughter itself shows a finer quality. It is less boisterous, more discerning, and more penetrating. As such, we need not wonder that, though it is felt to be irritating, it is not understood. The nouveau riche, whose vulgarity reveals itself as soon as he appears in a society having refined manners, may wince under the half-repressed smile, though he seems for the most part well protected by an insensitive tegument. As Schopenhauer has observed, the man of mediocre intelligence very much dislikes encountering his intellectual superior; and it so happens, for the gratification of merry onlookers, perhaps, that social ambition not infrequently precipitates its possessor into a sharp encounter with those who have a whole world of ideas of which he knows nothing.
Not but that the inferior here, too, may now and again have his chance of laughing back. The possession of ideas and of an exacting taste is apt to appear affected to one wanting in them. Midas, accustomed to measure values by incomes, and to identify intelligence with the cleverness of the money-maker, not unnaturally regards a habit of appealing to ideas as an eccentric superfluity; and so laughter may come consolingly to him who is utterly beaten in the encounter of wits. The “common-sense” of the average Briton scores many a loud laugh in its confident self-assertion against any proposed introduction of ideas into the sphere of practical affairs.
A further effect of the movement of culture on group-formation is seen in the divisions into sects, a phenomenon which seems to be conspicuous in the communities built up by our race. This tendency to a minute subdivision of religious, political and other bodies introduces a new kind of relation. We cannot well say that one section surpasses {286} its rivals in intelligence. This may or may not be the case, but the rules of the social game require us to leave the question open. On the other hand, this differentiation of organised opinion into a number of particular creeds or “views,” the shade of opinion being often fine, leads to a new bifurcation of “higher” and “lower” groups. The “higher” here is the mass or majority which naturally laughs at tiny minorities as faddists and cranks. Yet again, the fine impartiality of the god of laughter, to whom, since mankind for the greater part is other than wise, the difference of the many and the few may hardly count, occasionally gives the despised minority its chance; for minorities do sometimes represent ideas which are born for sovereignty.
While the progress of a nation in ideas and institutions thus serves in a manner to multiply groups, and so to introduce new opportunities for the indulgence of group attack and retaliation, it tends on the whole to break down their barriers. It does this by means of the pulpit, the press, and the educational agencies which help to circulate new ideas through all classes. These conduce, both directly and indirectly, to a certain assimilation of groups; and assimilative action is going on rapidly to-day. Yet, as we have seen, it leaves ample room for different grades of culture, since natural differences of coarseness and fineness in the intellectual fibre will always secure the broad contrast of the cultured and the uncultured.