Chapter IX: Laughter in Social Evolution (1)

In the two preceding chapters we have followed the earlier stages of the development of laughter in the individual and have glanced at its counterpart in the life of savage communities. If now we try to push the psychological inquiry farther, and ask how the mirth of the child develops into that complex sentiment which in these days we call humour, we find ourselves forced to pause. One thing is clear, however. No one of us would ever have acquired this valuable endowment but for the educative action of that advanced stage of social culture which is our intellectual and moral environment. It seems to follow that we shall need to look for a moment at the movement of social culture itself, to consider the impulse of laughter as one of the features in the life of a community, and to inquire how it has become transformed, almost beyond recognition, by the movement of social progress.

To attempt to give an exhaustive account of these social changes would clearly lead us very far. It may be argued with force that every one of the great directions of social evolution, such as that of intellectual conceptions, of moral sentiments, of political and social liberty, of wealth, of the differentiation of classes and ranks, has involved as its effect some change in the intensity, the mode of distribution, and the manner of expression in daily life and in {255} art, of the laughing impulse. But we do not need to consider so deeply. It will be enough if we briefly retrace those phases of social evolution which appear to carry with them as their immediate accompaniments considerable modifications of the mirthful spirit.

We must in this inquiry begin by defining the social aspect of laughter. This was touched on in the last chapter in connection with our study of the mirth of savages. We have now to examine it more closely.

One of its most obvious characteristics is its contagiousness, already referred to.[227] The potent appeal of laughter to a mechanical imitativeness is significant in more ways than one. It suggests how large a part of human hilarity is nothing but a kind of surface resonance, as empty of ideas as the infectious yawn or cough. But it suggests also that laughter is social in the sense that it is essentially choral and so uniting. A gathering of yokels at a fair laughing at a clown tends for the moment to become a coherent group; and the habit of laughing together will tend to consolidate the group.

When the conjoint laughter is less automatic and issues from community of ideas and sentiments, the contagious property still plays a part. It is as if the swift response of others’ laughter, the drowning of one’s own outburst in the general roar, effaced for the time the boundaries of one’s personality. To rejoice together in the full utterance of the laugh, though it moves us less deeply than to weep together, is perhaps no less potent in cementing a lasting comradeship.

The social side of laughter comprehends, however, much more than this. It is commonly recognised that the feeling expressed has something human for its object. Now those {256} who directly or indirectly serve as the butt are all the world over disposed, till the grace of a genial tolerance has been added, to dislike and resent the part thrust on them. So far, then, laughter would seem to be anti-social and dividing, and, alas, the history of literature will furnish the student with notable illustrations. Yet this hurtful edge in laughter becomes one of its valuable social properties. As the despised Greenlanders may teach us, laughter supplies a mode of punishment which combines with effectiveness, economy and humanity, a good deal of enjoyment for the onlookers. In all societies, if not exactly in the Greenland fashion, it has been accorded an important place among the agencies which, by castigating vices and follies, seek to lower their vitality.

The sharp edge of laughter represents, however, only one of its effects on the sensibilities of the butt. Savage life has given us illustrations, not only of its disagreeable consequences turned to judicial purposes, but of its agreeable consequences in cajoling others out of attitudes of hostility and stubbornness. This curious effect, as it may seem, of a mode of treatment which is primarily hurtful is to be explained in the main by its playful function. To substitute a joke for argument or coercive pressure is, like tickling, to challenge to play, and tends to call up the play-mood in the recipient of the challenge. The mutual teasings of savages serve, as we have seen, as a training, an ἄσκησις, in simple and estimable virtues, such as the maintenance of good temper, toleration, and the setting of comradeship above one’s private feelings.

One other social aspect of laughter illustrated by savage life needs to be touched on. In the instinctive tendency of the savage to ridicule the customs and ideas of outside folk we have one expression of the self-protective attitude of a {257} community against insidious outside influences. Just as the Hebrews ridiculed the religious ideas of the worshippers of Baal and so helped to keep their national faith intact, so these tribes low down in the culture scale have in their laughter at what is foreign a prophylactic against any contamination from outside peoples. No doubt this tendency in laughter will help to preserve once useful tribal characters when altered circumstances, introduced, for example, by the coming of the white man, require new adaptations. In this we see the essentially conservative function of laughter in the life of societies. On the other hand, as we have seen, novelties in dress introduced by the white man may attract and delight. In dealing with the connection between social progress and laughter, we shall need to consider very carefully the attitude which the mirthful spirit takes up towards social changes.

Now these aspects of laughter point, as we have seen, to a social utility in laughter. As offspring of the play-impulse, it might, indeed, be expected to share in those benefits which, as recent research has made clear, belong to play. In our study of its development and persistence in the life of progressive communities, we shall have occasion to illustrate this utility much more fully. That laughing is good, physically and morally, for its individual subjects has become a commonplace, at least to the student of literature. Here we shall be concerned with its distinctly social advantages, such as the maintenance of customs which from the point of view of the community, or of some class of the community, are to be regarded as good, the keeping down of vices and follies, and the furtherance of social co-operation.

The question how far this utility extends is one which cannot be answered simply. It will be found that societies, {258} so far from universally recognising laughter as a useful habit, have taken vast pains to restrain it. Indeed, our study of the fortunes of mirth in the advance of social life will show us that it has had throughout to struggle for its existence.

From what has just been said it will be clear that we shall have to consider the history of laughter and the movement of social evolution as inter-connected. Not only does a change in ideas, sentiments or institutions tend to modify the expression of the mirthful mood, there is a reciprocal influence of laughter upon ideas, sentiments and institutions. Such interaction holds good generally between amusements and serious pursuits; the recreations of a community serve in important ways to determine the measure of the vigour thrown into serious activities. In the case of laughter this reciprocal influence is much more marked, owing to the circumstance that mirth has been wont to play about serious things, to make these the target for its finely tipped shafts, now and again going so far as to shoot one into the midst of the solemnities of social life.

In the savage tribe we find but little of class division. The perception of what is unfit and the laughter which accompanies this are directed, for the most part, to members of other communities. The laughter is choral because it is that in which the whole tribe joins or is prepared to join; but for that very reason it has a monotonous sound. Some differentiation of groups within the community seems necessary, not merely for the constitution of a society, but for the free play of the laughing spirit. Diversity in thought and behaviour is a main condition of the full flow of social gaiety.

The germ of such diversity is present in the lowest {259} conceivable type of human community. The institution of male and female in which Nature, as if to combine divine work with human, at once joins together and puts asunder, has been with us from the beginnings of human society; and it might be an amusing pastime to speculate how the males of our ape-like ancestors first gurgled out their ridicule of female inferiority, and how the females managed to use their first rudiment of speech-power in turning the tables on their lords and masters. Some differentiation of rank, too, must have been found in the simplest human societies in the contrast between the old and the young, and the closely connected opposition of the rulers and the ruled. But it would be hazardous to reason that, in the early stages of social evolution, much in the way of exchange of fun passed between those who were presumably kept solemnly apart by the sense of their relative station.

It is only when we move on to a society with a considerable amount of class differentiation that its relation to the nurture and distribution of the spirit of mirth grows apparent. In glancing at these divisions we may conveniently adopt M. Tarde’s expression, “social group”. Such a group may be either a class, the members of which have like functions and a common character connected with these, such as priests and traders; or it may be a set constituted merely by community of knowledge and taste, as the members of a society standing on a particular level of culture. Although this double way of dividing social groups necessarily leads to overlapping, it seems desirable to adopt it here, so as to give an adequate account of the relation of group-formation to the particular directions of social laughter.

The development of distinct groups within a community influences the behaviour of the laughing impulse, first of {260} all, by introducing diversity of occupations, abilities and intelligence. In this way it enlarges the field for those relative judgments about competence and fitness with which, as savage laughter illustrates, simple forms of mirth have so much to do. Thus, the establishment of distinctions of employment and mode of life between the sexes has contributed copiously to that mirthful quizzing of each by the other which seems to have been a prime ingredient in human jocosity from the lowest stages of culture. The slightly malicious laughter of the male at female incompetence, which is seen in the schoolboy’s treatment of his sister, is illustrated throughout the course of literature. And good examples are not wanting of a turning of the tables by the female on the male. The story of King Alfred’s misadventure with the cakes—of which we have found the counterpart in savage life—is an example of the more shrewish criticism of the male ignoramus by the female expert. When the sense of injury is less keen, and the impression of the folly of the performance fills the soul, the shrewish note is apt to fall to the genial pitch of laughter. The differentiation of industrial and other employments, such as those of countryman and townsman, of landsman and seaman, of soldier and civilian, serve to develop new centres of concerted laughter, and new points of attack.

The formation of social groups further enlarges the material and the opportunities for laughter by introducing noticeable and impressive differences of behaviour, dress and speech. In this way the field of the odd, the absurd, that which contradicts our own customs and standards, has been made wide and fertile. A mere difference of locality may suffice to generate such differences. Not so many years ago, one could hear in the West of England the {261} jibes which the people in one small town or district were wont to hurl at those in another. We read that in the Middle Ages, when local differences of dress and speech were so much more marked than now, satires on people of particular localities were not uncommon—though probably much more than a perception of the laughably odd was involved in these rather fierce derisions.[228]

The immediate utility of this mirthful quizzing of other sets would, like that carried out by one savage tribe on another, consist in the preservation of the characteristics of one’s own set. But the play of laughter about class-distinctions illustrates another of its benefits. When one set gets used to the distinctive ways of another, it tends to regard them as right and proper for the latter; and it may carry its regard for their propriety so far as to support the inner sentiment of the other group by deriding those members who do not conform to their group-customs. Distinctive customs have been conserved not only—to adopt ethical terms having a somewhat different meaning—by “internal sanctions” in the shape of serious penalties as well as ridicule administered by fellow-members of the set, but by “external sanctions” in the shape of outside mockery. The imposing soldierly attitude has perhaps been kept up quite as much by the merry quizzing of civilians as by any military discipline and _esprit de corps_. A poor tottering hero in uniform could, one opines, never have escaped the eye of citizens lying in wait for the laughable.

The finer opportunities for this mirthful screwing up of men of other groups to their proper moral height would occur when the peculiarities of the mode of life imposed a special rule of behaviour, and, particularly, when this rule was a severe one. The hollow hero, trying to hide the {262} poverty of his courage in braggadocio, has been a favourite figure in comic literature, classic and modern. A notable illustration of this situation is the laughter heaped on the clergy by the people during the Middle Ages. The caricatures of the monk—representing him, for instance, as a Reynard in the pulpit with a cock below for clerk, and the many _Contes_ which exposed his cunningly contrived immoralities, and frequently visited them with well-merited chastisement, show pretty plainly that the popular laughter in this case had in it something of hate and contempt, and was directed in part to the exposure and punishment of the celibate class. This may be asserted, even though it must not be forgotten that in these _Contes_ the holy man by no means infrequently emerges from his dangerous experiment unscathed: a fact which suggests that in the popular sentiment there lurked, not merely something of the child’s mirthful wonder at daring cunning, but a certain sympathetic tolerance for a caste, on the shoulders of which was laid a somewhat weighty yoke. The mental attitude of the narrator rather suggests here and there that of an easy-going Englishman when confronted with the spectacle, say of a drunken sailor or soldier.[229]

Another class having high pretensions, which has come in for much of the “screwing-up” kind of laughter, is the physician. Next to the healer of the soul, he undertakes the most for mortals. In _Gil Blas_, in the comedies of Molière, and in other works, we may see how his ancient methods and his pedantries were apt to affect the intelligent layman with mirthful ridicule. {263}

So far nothing has been said of the rank of the groups thus formed. The differentiating of a higher from a lower caste, with more or less of authority on one side and subserviance on the other, will turn out to be the most important feature in social grouping in its bearing on the calling forth of social laughter. As we have seen, our merriment has much to do with dignities, with the claims on our respect made by things above us; while, on the other hand, the contemptuous laugh which has had volume and duration implies a relation of superior and inferior—if only the fugitive one created by the situation of quizzer. All stages of group-formation seem to involve something of this distinction between an upper and a lower class. The simplest conceivable structure of society includes a head and ruler of family, clan or tribe, and subjects. Hence, the vast significance of social grouping as a condition of choral laughter.

How far persons in positions of authority have gratified their sense of superiority by derisive laughter at those below them, it would, of course, be hard to say. When power is real and absolute there are other ways of expressing contempt. Literature undoubtedly furnishes examples of the ridicule by the social superior of the ways of a lower class, as in the Provençal poem of Bertran de Born (_c._ 1180) in which the villains are treated contemptuously. Yet the larger part of literature, not being produced for a ruling caste, does not throw much light on this subject.[230] One can only infer with some probability, from the relations of parents and adults, generally, to children, and of white {264} masters to their coloured slaves, that power has always been tempered by some admixture of good-nature, which composition has produced a certain amount of playful jocosity, at once corrective and cementing.

The derisive laughter of the superior is particularly loud in certain cases where the authority is not so real as it might be. Man’s ridicule of his not too obedient spouse may be said almost to shriek adown the ages. We may read in papyri of Egypt of the fourteenth or thirteenth century B.C. of the misfortunes of a husband, named Anoupou.[231] The Greek comedians thought no abuse of the sex too bitter or too coarse.[232] In Latin literature we have satirical portraits of different types of women, drawn under the figures of various brutes, a fox, a mare, etc.[233] In mediæval society, the low opinion of women entertained by their lords is illustrated in the firm persuasion that the only way to treat them was to beat them—watching them was quite vain—so that they might be occupied all the day with crying.[234] Sometimes, as in the _Arabian Nights_, this contempt takes the form of bitter denunciation; but, for the most part, it has laughed in the brighter key of comedy. Even the satire here is wont to lose all trace of savageness, and to assume the tone of a good-natured acceptance of the incurable.

While the formation of social ranks has thus secured a wide range for supercilious mocking of inferiors, it has guaranteed these ample opportunity of avenging themselves by laughter at the expense of the authorities.

How soon in man’s history any such laughter became {265} possible, it would be hard to say. In the simpler types of community, the severe restraints laid on youths by the men of the tribe must, one supposes, have been fatal to any indulgence by sons in laughter at the expense of fathers, such as is illustrated in comedy both ancient and modern. The penalties attached to breach of ceremonial rule must have stifled any impulse of laughter, if it happened to arise. It is said that when the chief of a certain tribe chanced to stumble, his subjects were bound to pretend to stumble in order to cover up his defect.[235] The utility of this quaint custom may have lain in its effectual suppression of the risible impulse. This theory, however, postulates a kind of courtier widely removed from the modern, of whom it seems safe to say that he might be trusted to see stumblings and worse without feeling an over-mastering temptation to laugh.

One can only conjecture that men began to discern and enjoy the amusing side of authority and its solemn ways of asserting itself, in their free moments, at a safe distance from tell-tale eyes.

What is known of the hard-worked slave of antiquity is suggestive not merely of play after toil, but of a safe turning on task-masters. When, as we read, the Egyptian workman got fun “out of the smallest incident in the day’s work—an awkward apprentice cutting his finger, a comrade sleeping over his task whom the overseer lashes to awaken him,” and so forth, did not something of a spirit of malicious crowing over the overseer express itself too? The analogy of the judiciously half-smothered laughter of the English schoolboy in playground or dormitory suggests the answer. We must not wonder if these dangerous excursions of the spirit of fun have failed to be recorded. {266} Still more significant is another picture from the same hand, representing a tussle between overseer and workmen in which “the stick vainly interferes,” so that “at least an hour elapses before quiet is re-established”.[236] This looks like the rollicking laughter of schoolboys at the spectacle of an orderly ceremony suddenly turned to disorder. The interpretation is borne out by the fact that these same Egyptians were able to enter into the fun of a loss of dignity in a solemn function, for example, the upsetting by a collision of the richly supplied table in the funereal boat, and the falling of a mummy on a priest during the ceremony of conveying it to its resting-place.[237]

The return of contemptuous laughter from the slave to his master was certainly allowed to some extent among the Romans. It became a well-recognised privilege during one of the chief annual festivals (Saturnalia). The slaves in the plays of Plautus treat the tyranny under which they live “in a spirit of gay bravado”.[238] Nor need we be surprised at these liberties if we remember that the modern schoolmaster must almost be perfect if he does not find it expedient, not merely to permit his pupils _desipere in loco_, but to allow them now and again to have a mild joke at his expense. The cajoling by means of jokes, which Miss Kingsley found so serviceable for managing the West African, may of course stop short of this, and its virtue lie in the substitution of a light, laughing treatment for bullying. Yet genial laughter, when the contempt has been vaporised out of it, necessarily tends at the moment to a levelling of planes, as is seen in the immediate assertion of {267} the right of reciprocity. This is perhaps the main reason why the schoolmaster is, in general, chary of introducing the method of jocosity. His laughter is apt to sound as if it held some of the gritty deposit of contempt.

The really delightful illustration of the turning of the tables on masters by those in subjection is to be found in woman’s retort on man’s contemptuous treatment. She has again and again managed to outwit him, as we have found him dolefully admitting, and has had her full laugh at his cumbrous attempts to manage her. The mediæval _fabliaux_ are certainly disposed to award success in strategy to her, rather than to her lord. Her ways of befooling him, too, have often been so simple—as when she persuades him that he has been dreaming what he fancies he has observed—that the poor dupe ought, one supposes, to have died of chagrin. And, when there has been a call for the finer sort of manœuvring, she wins the unprejudiced reader to her side by displaying an admirable ingenuity and subtlety of invention, qualities which Mr. Herbert Spencer would probably regard as secondary sexual characters evolved during ages of marital tyranny. Of her modes of turning on him in these latter days there is no need to speak. The shout of contemptuous laughter seems to have passed from the one side of the eternal fray to the other. But this hardly belongs to the present division of our subject.

It may be added that the laughter of the laity at the clergy illustrates, in addition to the impulse already dealt with, the itching of spirited mortals to turn on oppressors. The denunciations and anathemas of this class, backed, as they asseverate, by supernatural sanctions, have always been trying to untamed men and women. And the appetite of our ancestors for stories disgraceful to monks and priests drew some of its keenness from this rebelliousness of {268} the natural man against spiritual tyrannies. Here is an illustration of the feminine retort: A woman was chatting with a gossip of hers in church: bidden by the preaching friar to hold her peace she exclaimed, “I wonder which babbles most of the two?”[239]

Still another variety of social laughter springs out of this distinction of superior and inferior groups. The impulse of exalted persons to assert themselves and to strike their inferiors with awe—an impulse by the way which the peacock and other birds will betray in the presence of their inferior, man—is apt to be disallowed by those for whom the display is intended. It is one thing, they feel, to acknowledge true authority, another to bow down to the exaggeration of its claim, to the boastful exhibition of power and rank. Hence, perhaps, some of the quickness of the mirthful eye for the entertainment latent in all braggadocio. The soldier who needlessly emphasises the fact that he possesses the height and spirit of his calling by strutting, by imposing vociferation and the rest, has probably always been a source of comic merriment, as the _Miles gloriosus_ of Plautus and the Bobadil of Ben Jonson may remind us.

It will be evident that all this laughter of inferiors at superiors, whether these are so really or merely in their own opinion, must, so far as it has got home, have had a valuable corrective function. If the derision of the lord helps to keep in place his inferior dame or vassal, much more does the laughter of his inferior serve to hold him to what befits his rank. _Noblesse oblige_ is a rule largely maintained by the demands of those below who are expected to pay homage. These, as we know, have been much employed in claiming modest rights from their “betters”. The curbing of a king’s tyrannies may have required a rebellion {269} of his barons, or a riot of his people: yet a good deal of checking of tyrannic propensities has been carried out by the unalarming expedient of ridicule. Even in a free and enlightened country we may observe in officials a tendency now and again to inflate their dignity unduly; so that one infers that the restraining force of the laughter of inferiors still counts.

The results of this spirited turning of the worm have been considerable. The impish spirit of mirth has taken up its abode with the common people, and instructed them in the rich sources of the laughable which lie in all rank and dignity. On the other hand, the “high and mighty” have, from a true instinct of self-preservation, waged fierce war with this irreverent attitude of the multitude. The struggles between the two will be spoken of presently.

The scope for laughter which, given the disposition, these divisions of group and of rank bring with them is further widened by the vital circumstance that, as groups in the same community, they have to enter into various relations with one another. A judicious mixture of opposition and harmony of interest seems to be most favourable to a rich production of mirth. This is illustrated even in such masterful relations as that of the overseer and the commanding officer, who may find that the compulsion of the rod is inadequate to the extraction of the required amount of work, and so have to cast about for other instruments.

The good effect of a skilful use of the cajoling laugh has already been illustrated. It is seen with particular clearness in the relation of husband and wife; for the fun of the situation is that, in spite of profound differences of taste and inclination and of a sharp antagonism, the necessity of {270} common interests and ends holds them together in daily association. This necessity, ever present to the wiser of them, has tempered the contempt and forced the derider to at least a pretence of good humour. The same may be said of the relation of the sexes in general. The quality and range of the fun which is wont to lighten a talk between a young man and a young woman on a first introduction are pretty closely determined by the consciousness of sexual relation on either side. Shyness, a disposition to regard the other suspiciously as opponent, together with the instinct to please and win admiration, and the desire to strike on points of sympathy—all this helps to bring about, and is reflected in the peculiar wrigglings in which the mirthful spirit expresses itself on such an occasion.

One of the best examples of the combined effect of hostility and a desire to agree is to be found in the humours of the market place. The relation of buyer and seller seems to be pregnant with opportunities for merry fooling on either side. The direct and sharply felt opposition of interest is apt to beget a good deal of the rough sort of “taking down”. Not only will the tongue be stirred to derisive attack, the situation may even beget retaliations in the shape of practical jokes. The merchant, as the expert, has always had the upper hand in the contest of wits. His customer has had to find consolation in satires on the cheat, such as those which were common in the Middle Ages.[240] On the other hand, the need of coming to an agreement has served to bring into the haggling process a good deal of the conciliative kind of laughter. The vendor has always known the value of good-natured banter as an instrument {271} of persuasion. This overflow of the spirit of fun into the channels of serious business may still be seen as a faint survival in front of a cheap-Jack’s van. George Eliot has given us a charming picture of the play of this spirit in the south in her chapter on “The Peasants’ Fair” in _Romola_.

The same intrusion of fun as an auxiliary into the business relations of groups is seen in many other cases where opposition has to be toned down and a _modus vivendi_ arrived at, as in that of opposed political parties, religious bodies and the like. The appearance of the laughing imp, if only he behaves himself, in these rather warm encounters of groups serves to cool the atmosphere and to temper animosity by at least a momentary experience of genial contact. It does much, indeed, to tone down the uneasy and half-suspicious attitude which members of any group are apt to take up on first having to do with those of a strange group, especially one of higher rank.

We may now summarise the chief social utilities of the reciprocal laughter of classes at the ways of other classes. In the first place, it helps, like the laughter of the savage tribe at the ways of other tribes, to counteract any tendency to imitate the manners and customs of foreign groups. What we have laughed at, we are not likely to adopt. This is the self-protective function of laughter. To laugh at the ways of another group is, moreover, in most cases at least, to indulge in a feeling of our own superiority; and this attitude would have a further conservative tendency, especially when it is the laugh of the expert in his own department at the outside ignoramus.

Let us now glance at the effect on the group whose ways are being laughed at. To be the object of another set’s ridicule, especially when we have the right of retort, so far from necessarily weakening our hold on that which is {272} ridiculed may strengthen it. When we are strongly attached, others’ laughter may make us cling the more firmly to what we cherish. Laughter in this case is, indeed, as we have seen, an excellent training in a good-natured suffering of others’ ridicule, a training which has in it the virtue of a moral tonic.

Yet this inter-groupal laughter is not wholly subservient to the maintenance of characteristic differences. In all the higher forms of society, at least, such ridicule has an assimilative action as well. It manages to some extent, by inducing self-criticism, to get rid of useless excrescences. Thus, it helps to keep down class-vanity, the professional narrowness which cries, “There’s nothing like leather!” a narrowness which is so delightfully satirised by Molière in the wranglings of M. Jourdain’s professors.

The correction of this exclusive feeling of self-importance of a group by outside laughter has always been at work, helping to keep groups in friendly touch, and hindering the sectional or professional _esprit de corps_ from overpowering the larger social consciousness which we call national sentiment, and the common-sense of the community. Of this last more will be said presently.

So far, we have illustrated the bearing on the ways of laughter of what may be called the structural features of societies. There has been no reference to the effects of social movements, of all that is meant by the successive changes of fashion in manners, dress and so forth, and of those more persistent movements which make up what we call social progress. The least reflection will show that in this continual flux of things social, the unceasing modifications of the head-covering and the rest, and the trampling down of old beliefs and institutions by the resistless “march of intellect,” we have at least as large a field for the gambols {273} of the laughing spirit as in the distinctions and oddly combined relations of classes.

We may best begin by referring to the movements of fashion. These may be defined as changes in dress, manners and so forth, which are marked off from the improvements entering into progress by two circumstances: (1) that they are capricious, not the products of a rational choice of the best; and (2) that they are of comparatively short duration. When we call a mode of doing a thing a fashion, we imply, quite unknowingly perhaps, that it has not the cachet of a change for the better, and that as such it has no security of tenure.

A fashion differs from a custom in being essentially communicable from one group to another, and even from one nation to another. Its development thus belongs to a comparatively late period of social evolution. Its hold on men and women is explained by the fact that it appeals to two of their strongest instincts, the craving for novelty and the impulse to imitate superiors.

Keeping to the intra-national diffusion of manners, we note that the movement of fashion is normally from the highest rank or ranks downwards. This movement may well have commenced far back in the evolution of communities where class-distinctions were rigorously enforced. The attitude of reverence towards superiors has for its psychological concomitant the impulse to imitate. Just as children will copy the voice and gestures of one whom they look up to, so savages will copy the ways of Europeans who manage to make themselves respected. In the ceremonies of primitive tribes and even of highly complex societies, _e.g._, church ritual, a good deal of scope is offered for this flattery of imitation. We may infer, indeed, that the impulse to adopt the ways of exalted personages must always have {274} been at work. In the earlier stages of human history this impulse was checked by the force of custom and of law, _e.g._, sumptuary laws. This imitation from below must strike at the root of those external differences, such as style of dress, between group and group, observance of which has helped greatly to maintain class-distinctions. It could only have made way against these barriers gradually. So difficult, in sooth, does the feat appear to be, that Mr. Herbert Spencer suggests that fashion, as the imitation of those of high rank and authority, began in a change of custom; as in the rule already alluded to that when the king slipped the onlooking courtiers should at once imitate his awkwardness.

It is probable that the imitation of what is distinctive and fixed in the costume and manners of the higher class preceded by some interval the imitation of the changes we call fashion. How the two are connected does not seem to be quite clear. Did the rulers and those immediately about them, piqued at the adoption of their ways by the vulgar, try to steal a march on imitation by changing their customs? To judge from what takes place to-day, one would answer “yes”. I am told that ladies strongly object to go on wearing a fashionable hat as soon as it becomes generally worn by factory girls, or other inferior group. However this be, it seems certain that the “leaders of society,” while they reserve for special ceremonial occasions a distinctive dress, mode of speech and the rest, choose to alter these from time to time for other purposes. Such alterations may be the result of the caprices of a “leader,” guided by some inventor, or they may take the form of an assimilation of a foreign mode. Lastly, the leaders may include others besides the Court people: the universities are accredited with the origination of many of the pretty bits of slang, the use of {275} which is supposed to betoken a certain social altitude and “up-to-dateness”.

In the midst of these changes of fashion something of custom may be seen still to persist. Taking the dress of woman to-day, we note that in spite of experiments like those of the Bloomers, skirts continue to be a permanent feature in female attire. Fashions in respect of width, and even of length, may come and go, but the skirt as skirt seems to go on for ever.

Even when the impulse to adopt the dress and behaviour of the upper class was allowed a certain play, it was probably long before it acted on all ranks. Each rank, whilst keen in its imitation of the ways of the class above it, would naturally resist any further descent of the imitative movement.

In this descent of fashion from higher to lower ranks we see a mutual modification of fashion and permanent custom. In some cases imitation from below may be stopped pretty early through lack of means for giving effect to it. The joy of wearing pearls, or other precious stones in fashion at the moment, is denied the young seamstress. Yet there are solaces here in the shape of “imitations”. Again, the lower middle class, not to speak of the cottagers, are, for obvious reasons, not likely to be affected by a craze for the Queen Anne style in domestic architecture. Even in the case of dress, fine limitations which the “mere male” might find it hard to define, seem to be imposed, for example, on the architecture of the hat, when a new style is assimilated by lower ranks. Here, again, fashion is clearly restrained by class-custom. Ideas of neatness, of an unaggressive quietness appear to be valued, in theory at least, in milliners, domestic servants, and others who minister to the wants of the titled and the wealthy. The very {276} expression “the fashionable world” implies that the full magnificence and luxury of fashion is a monopoly.

The imitation of the manners of high life by the middle class is in most cases a pretty clear acknowledgment of a superior social quality. One of the most amusing examples of this thinly-veiled snobbism is the elevated hand-shake lately in vogue. A fashion like this easily reaches the eye of the vulgar, focussed for the first appearance of a new characteristic of “high life,” by way of the theatre or of the illustrated paper. A point worth noting here is the exaggeration of what the imitators regard as of the essence of the new “mode”. It would be curious to hear what symbolism (if any) those who appeared so eager to get the hand-shake up to the level of the eyes assigned to this fashionable rite.

This eager and almost simian mimicry of the ways of society’s leaders must, it is evident, tend to the obliteration of recognisable class-distinctions in ordinary life. We only need to compare the spectacle of a crowd in London to-day with that of a mediæval city crowd, as represented in a drawing of the time, to see what a depressing amount of assimilation in dress the forces of fashion have brought about.

The connections between these movements of fashion and the spirit of laughter are numerous and pretty obvious. Even the primal movement, the adoption of a fashion by the head of a community from abroad, offers a rich spectacle for those who lie in wait for the coming of the ludicrous. How finely the folly that lurks in a slavish submission to fashion grins out at us from the story of those New Zealand chiefs who, goaded by the fashion set by others of giving great feasts, would often push their feast-givings to the point of causing a famine among their peoples![241] The following {277} of a foreign fashion by a court has in it, moreover, always something to prick the spirit of malicious laughter in the subjects. Not so terribly long since, the importation of customs from one European court to another, and a reciprocation of the loan, by way of family connections, was the subject of a rather malicious laughter in each of the countries affected.

It is, however, in the downward rush of fashion from rank to rank, and the incidents which attend it, that the seeker for the laughable will find his satisfaction. The eagerness of persons to be in the van of the movement will of itself produce a crop of ludicrous aspects: for the first sudden appearance of a large and capturing novelty, say in a high-branded bonnet or manner of speech, brings to us something of the delightful gaiety which the sight of the clown brings to a child. It is a huge folly, which we greet with the full, unthinking roar of hilarity. Never, indeed, does the inherent non-rationality of a large part of human behaviour reveal itself so directly and so unmistakably as when a fashion which has reigned long enough to become accepted as right is thus rudely thrust aside in favour of an interloper: whence the laughing contempt poured on new fashions by comic poets and satirists.[242]

Nor is this all, or the best. The behaviour of the ardent aspirant has its absurd aspect even for dull souls. The form of self-assertion which consists in stepping out of one’s rank is always viewed by those of the deserted rank with an acidulated amusement; and those who are too manifestly eager to appropriate a new fashion are wont to be regarded as persons who are trying to get above their set. If the {278} fashionable cosmetic is laid on thickly, as it pretty certainly will be by those seized with the more vulgar form of social ambition, the fun will wax still greater. The display in this case adds to the delightful transformation of the clown a touch of the bombast of the mountebank.

New possibilities of mirth arise out of the collision between the imitative impulse to be fashionable, and respect for the customs of one’s group. An exaggeration of something in dress or speech which savours of an attempt to break through class-barriers cannot but amuse the onlooker disposed to mirth. Middle-class house-wives are, one hears, wont to enliven the dulness of their Sunday afternoons by a stealthy quizzing of their “maids” as they set out for their parade. The maid’s village acquaintance—if it could succeed in stifling envious admiration—would doubtless draw a more rollicking enjoyment from the spectacle. In general, any appearance of craning one’s neck so as to overtop one’s set is greeted by a slightly malicious laughter; and the bold donning of fashionable array is the most easily recognisable manifestation of the craning impulse. For a more purely disinterested spectator, too, the situation has its entertaining drollness. The struggle in the panting bosom of a young woman, whether of white or of coloured race, as the passionate longing for some bewitching novelty—recommended, too, by the lead of her superiors—is sharply confronted with the sense of what befits her, and possibly a vague fear of being plunged by a fiery zeal into the morass of the laughable, has its comic pathos for the instructed eye.

One further contribution to the fun of the world made by this hot eagerness to pay homage to rank is perhaps worth a reference. Like the verbal kind, the flattery of imitation is often visibly hollow. When the soul of man or woman is held captive by the necessity of doing what is done by {279} others—especially by others higher up—there is no room for thought of sincerity: whence, among many results, this one, that for him who can be pure spectator responsive to the amusing aspects of things, the spectacle of a great national demonstration of loyalty cannot fail to have its diverting aspect.

No doubt the pushing worshippers of fashion, if they only wait long enough, get their chance of laughing back. As soon as the new thing, so charged with rollicking gaiety at first, settles down to a commonplace habit, there comes the moment for ridiculing the belated imitator. That popular figure on the stage, the “old dowdy,” is commonly represented as ridiculously behind the times in respect of attire. Yet the range of jocosity inspired by respect for mere newness, on the value of which reason has had nothing to say, is evidently limited.

We may now turn to those deeper currents of change which together make up social progress; including all distinct advance from lower to higher forms of intelligence, sentiment and character, as well as from lower to higher types of social life; and, along with these, the growth of institutions in which these changes express themselves.

We may assume that these progressive changes arise, either from the adoption of the products of superior mental capacity appearing in individuals who are members of the community, or from the propagation of ideas, inventions, institutions from one country to another.

To say precisely how the production and circulation of a social improvement takes place is not easy. Men of imaginative minds, with an exceptionally large mechanical, legislative, or other insight, or with a fine feeling for the subtle things of beauty or of the moral order, there must be. Against all attempted innovation, however, whether {280} from within or from without, the attitude of conservatism sets itself as a serious obstacle. Here, too, we seem to perceive the charm and influence of rank. It is only when some recognised authority proclaims the value of the new discovery that the multitude, which was perhaps a moment before doing its best to trample on it, turns deferentially and kneels. The free adoption of it as true or as good commonly follows much later.

A startlingly new idea, whether in science, religion, or the utilities of life, finds in its intrinsic reasonableness no defence against the attacks of malicious mirth. The ordinary mind when it laughs, just as when it is serious, judges things by the standard of what is customary. What violently jars with this is viewed as legitimate game for ridicule. The history of ideas and of the social movements growing out of them is one long illustration of this truth. The idea of a larger freedom and higher functions for women was treated by the theatre of ancient Greece as matter for wild hilarity. The idea came up again and again after this, thanks to the zeal and courage of isolated advocates. But it continued to excite the loud laughter of the crowd. And less than half a century ago, when J. S. Mill advocated the spiritual and legal emancipation of women, the response was at first largely an expression of amusement. Only to-day is a part of the civilised world beginning to recognise the naturalness and fitness of the idea that women should have their share, both in the intellectual gains of the more advanced education, and in the larger work of the world.

We may see by this illustration how mighty a force every new idea of a large revolutionary character has to meet and to overcome. Darwin’s idea of the evolution of man seemed in the sixties to the mass of Englishmen, including a bishop {281} of Oxford and many another high up in the scale of intellectual culture, very much as some of the teachings of our missionaries strike a keen-witted savage. The figure of the monkey, which is, by the way, one of the oldest symbols of caricature, rendered excellent service to those who, naturally enough, greeted the proposed topsy-turvyness of Darwinism with boisterous cachinnations.

It is much the same with the attitude of the crowd towards the first use of practical inventions. Much merriment accompanied the introduction from abroad by the gallants of the Restoration of so simple an innovation as the use of the fork[243]—a fact to be remembered by the English tourist abroad when he is disposed to laugh at the sight of a too lavish use of the knife. In such cases, the first adopters of the novelty are laughed at very much as in the case of a new fashion. The absurdity of the adoption in either case turns on the delightful freshness and the glorious irregularity of the proceeding.

On the other hand, we meet here, too, with a recoil of laughter upon the laugher. Though a respect for the customary prompts us at first to ridicule any sudden and impressive change in ideas or habits of life, yet, when the change is in a fair way of becoming fixed, the same feeling will urge us to make merry over those who show an obstinate prejudice in favour of the old. Laughter finds one of its chief functions in ridiculing worn-out ideas, beliefs that have been proved illusory, and discarded habits of life. Nowhere, perhaps, is the elation of mirth more distinctly audible than in this ridicule by an advancing age of survivals of the discarded ways of its predecessors. Art gives us many examples of this merriment over what is decaying and growing effete. Every age of stir and {282} commotion has probably had its satirical literature, striking with boisterous mirth at the disappearing phantoms. The broad and genial comedy of Aristophanes pushed against the tottering mythology of his time, and the fall evoked a large outflow of mirth. The great work of Cervantes and the satires (pasquins) of the same period poked fun at the sentimental clinging to the decaying order of chivalry and feudalism.[244]

Merry-making over the death of outworn ideas and institutions has frequently been reinforced by the deep and refreshing expiration which accompanies relief from pressure. This elemental form of laughter has entered into all those happy moments of national life when the whole people has become closely united in a joyous self-abandonment. Plautus, the comedian of the people, reflects in his broad merriment the rebound of the spirit after the second Punic War from a long continued state of tension, and the craving of the masses for a more unrestrained enjoyment of the pleasures of life.[245] The popular art of the Middle Ages, in which the demons seem to play the harmless part of the policeman in a modern pantomime, illustrates the rebound from an oppressive superstition. A like relief of tension and outburst of pent-up spirits are recognisable in the literature of the Reformation and of the English Restoration.

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.