It is true, no doubt, that a refined humour is capable of being turned at times to the same social uses as its ancestor, the elemental laughter of the people. One may see, in the journalism and literature of the hour, foibles, exaggerations and other amusing things dealt with in a humorous or quasi-humorous temper. The gentleness to which humour inclines allows, indeed, of attacks on parties, schools and personalities which would otherwise run the risk of being condemned as “bad form”. Yet something of a serious practical purpose, namely, to hold up to ridicule, can always be detected in this kind of writing: whence it is correctly designated, not as humour, but as “social satire”.
On the other hand, the moods of humour are admirably fitted for that indirect adaptation of the individual to social conditions which we call self-criticism. This humorous self-quizzing may be started by the spectacle of comedy, as Lessing and others suggest; yet this, as we shall see later, is not to be counted on. If a man wants promptly to detect the first flecks of dust on the bright surface of character, he must be habitually ready to note this surface.
This office of humour in helping us to nip evil tendencies in the bud may be viewed, in part, as the vicarious discharge by the critical self of the restraining function of the community on the individual. None of us can safely wander far and long from the point of wholesome contact with the community, that is to say, with the good sense and the right feeling embodied in a community. To master the not too easy art of seeing ourselves as others—for whose judgment we should care—see us is surely {324} eminently fitting for those who desire to laugh at what is objectively laughable.
Nevertheless, it must not be supposed that in such private self-correction we are always at the social point of view. Humour is the outgrowth of a pronounced individuality; its possession seems always to imply that a person forms his own ideas of the value of things, guided of course by the world’s teachers, but caring little whether his views agree with those which happen to obtain in his community at the moment. Here, again, in the high service rendered by a vigilant humour, we find the work of reflection carried out by the help of ideas or ideal conceptions, which are in part a product of the individual mind. The laughing rebuke administered to some folly, which lifts its head once more after many repressive blows, comes from the ideal self; which, though it must have nourished itself in some “communion of saints,” becomes in the end free and self-legislative. “Correction” seems too strong a word to use for this prophylactic function; for, as we have seen, humour does not readily lend itself as an instrument to serious purposes. What the habit of a quick humorous perception does for its subject here is best described, perhaps, as the fostering of a pure and wholesome atmosphere in the soul, in which disease-germs must perforce die of inanition.
We may now turn to those uses of humour, into the conception of which the thought of a practical aim can hardly intrude. Humour as amusement is something agreeable and cheering. It has the refreshing properties of primitive laughter and much more; for, as a mood that feeds itself on reflective contemplation, it is consolatory and sustaining in a way in which mere gaiety, even when it persists as a temper of mind, cannot be. Apropos of Voltaire’s saying that heaven had given us two things to counterbalance the many {325} miseries of life, hope and sleep, Kant remarks: “He could have added laughter, if the means of exciting it in reasonable men were only as easily attainable, and the requisite wit or originality of humour were not so rare” (as some other endowments).[276]
When the humorous bent is lively and “original,” it will stand its possessor in good stead in more than one way, amid the toilings and moilings of life. Seeing that laughter is always in a measure a throwing aside of serious pressure, we should expect it to come to our aid in the workaday hours. But it is only when the eye for the sparkling of fun in things has been instructed by humorous reflection that the alleviating service of mind-play is fully realised.
For one thing, the possession of a large humorous insight will greatly extend the scope of the conciliative function of laughter. All cajoling must be good-natured, or at least conceal the sting of laughter; but the finer disarming of men by banter requires the reflective penetration of the humorist. One may easily see this in the art of conciliating opponents, political and other. The winning force of a manifested good-nature will sometimes act on those who are far from appreciating the play of mind involved. The gêne introduced by an awkward situation,[277] the tendencies that make for loss of interest, for weariness, for a falling away from a perfect sympathetic touch, in all human relations—these things find their most effective counteractive in occasional intrusions of the humorous spirit. I think here of one no longer among us, with whom I once had the privilege of co-operating in a long and difficult piece of public business; and of how all weariness was kept out of {326} sight by laughing side-glances at threatening absurdities, frequent enough to have suggested a premeditated plan had they not been so delightfully spontaneous.
Perhaps, the stoutest obstacle to the smooth flow of social intercourse is the tendency in men to lay stress on their personal importance. The superior airs, which seem with some to be as much de rigueur as their correct attire, are sadly inimical to companionship, whether the would-be companion be a man’s wife or a contributor to his journal. The one sure safeguard against the stupid clogging of the social wheels, which this chronic stiffening of the figure introduces, is the gift of a lively humour, whose alert eye would at once note a possible laughableness of deportment for onlookers. One may see this function of humour illustrated in that instinctive readiness of one who has had a perfect social training to dismiss laughingly from conversation the first appearance of an allusion to himself and his claims.
In all this, though there may be no conscious aiming at an end, social utility is not wholly wanting. Yet just because it is an individual temper, humour confers its chief benefits on its possessor in the privacy of life. Its solacings and its refreshings come to him through the channel of a new and genial manner of reflecting on his mishaps and his troubles.
Most men who have developed any appreciable fund of humour must know how the petty annoyances of life can be laughed away, almost as soon as they are seen advancing. When, for example, your lost pencil is discovered in its hiding-place between the leaves of a rarely consulted book; or, on the other hand, after endowing it with various sorts of mischievous flight, you perceive it lying close by you on the desk, where it has been dutifully {327} complying with its proper law of inertia; you may snatch a compensating laugh from a moment’s reflection on the small ironies of things, or on the vast wastefulness of the world in the matter of hypotheses. Your vexation at the children who are at play in the road in front of your bicycle and refuse to retire till your bell rings a third time, instantly gives way to an agreeable smile as you sympathetically shift the point of view by recalling the fact that they are on their proper playground. The dreary ugliness of a London street in winter will now and again be lit up as with sunshine for you if your eye is focussed for the amusing, as when the driver of a slow van goes on nodding in blissful ignorance, while the driver of your ’bus behind, justly proud of his vehicle’s speed, pelts him mercilessly with the most awakening of epithets.