One would conclude from their records that the Jews were people who never laughed except ironically. To be sure, Michal laughed at David’s dancing, and Sara laughed at the idea of having a child, and various people in the New Testament laughed others “to scorn.” But nobody seems to have laughed heartily and innocently. One gets the impression of a race devoid of humor. This is partly because it is not the province of religious writings to record humor; but it is mainly because Jewish thought condemns humor. Wherever humor arises in a Christian civilization—as in the popular Gothic humor—it is a local race-element, an unsubdued bit of something foreign to Judah. Where the Bible triumphs utterly, as in Dante and Calvin, there is no humor.
And yet the comic survives in us. It eludes the criticism of Christianity as the sunlight eludes the net. Yes, not only our own laughter survives, but the old classic comedy still seems comic—and more truly comic than the old lyric poetry seems poetic or the drama dramatic. Ancient poesy must always be humored and nursed a little; but when the comic strikes home, it is our own comic; no allowances need be made for it.
There is a kind of laughter that makes the whole universe throb. It has in it the immediate flash of the power of God. We can no more understand it than we can understand other religious truth. It reminds us that we are not wholly Jew. There is light in the world that does not come from Israel; nevertheless, that this is a part of the same light that shines through Israel we surely know.
I have not tried to analyze laughter; but only to show the mystery that surrounds its origin. Now a certain mystery surrounds all human expression. The profoundest truths can only be expressed through the mystery of paradox—as philosophers, poets, prophets, and moralists have agreed since the dawn of time. This saying sounds hard; but its meaning is easy. The meaning is that Truth can never be exactly stated; every statement is a misfit. But truth can be alluded to. A paradox says frankly, “What I say here is not a statement of the truth, but is a mere allusion to the truth.” The comic vehicle does the same. It pretends only to allude to the truth, and by this method makes a directer appeal to experience than any attempted statement of truth can make.
There is, no doubt, some reason at the back of this strange fact, that our most expressive language is a mere series of hints and gestures—that we can only hope, whether by word or chisel, to give, as it were, a side reference to truth. To fathom this reason would be to understand the nature of life and mind.
I have often thought that the fact that life does not originate in us, but is a thing supplied to us from moment to moment—as the power of the electric current is supplied to the light—accounts for the paradoxical nature of our minds and souls. It is a commonplace that the poet is inspired—that Orpheus was carried away by the god. So also it is a commonplace that the religious person is absorbed in the will of God—as St. Paul said, his own strength was due to his weakness. So also it is a commonplace of modern scientific psychology that unconsciousness accompanies high intellectual activity. Sir Isaac Newton solved his problems by the art he had of putting them off his mind—of committing them to the unconscious.
All these are but different aspects of the same truth, and we must regard consciousness as resistance to the current of life. If this be true, it is clear that any wilful attempt to tell the truth must pro tanto defeat itself, for it is only by the surrender of our will that truth becomes effective. This idea, being a universal idea, is illustrated by everything; and the less you try to understand it, the more fully will you understand it. In fact one great difficulty that a child or a man has in learning anything, comes from his trying too hard to understand.
Once imagine that our understanding of a thing comes from our ceasing to prevent ourselves from understanding it, and we have the problem in its true form. Accept once for all that all will is illusion, and that the expressive power is something that acts most fully when least impeded by will, and there remains no paradox anywhere. The things we called paradoxes become deductions. Of course St. Paul’s weakness was the foundation of his strength; of course Orpheus was irresponsible; of course the maximum of intellectual power will be the maximum of unimpeded, unconscious activity. And as for our Comic, of course—whatever laughter may be in itself—laughter will be most strongly called forth by anything that merely calls and vanishes. Such things are jokes, burlesques, humor. They state nothing: they assume inaccuracy: they cry aloud and vanish, leaving the hearer to become awakened to his own thoughts. They are mere stimuli—mere gesture and motion, and hence the very truest, very strongest form of human appeal.