Chapter IX: Laughter in Social Evolution (2)

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.

The spread of knowledge and culture through all classes acts indirectly on group-distinctions by throwing open the occupations of one class to members of others, and more particularly of “lower” ones. The workman’s son who has a brain and cultivates it may, as we are often told, find his way to the university and take his place unchallenged {287} among the lawyers, the doctors, or the exalted “dons” themselves.

Now all sudden changes in class, especially such as involve elevation, are apt to appear laughable. Even when promotion comes by royal favour, we feel the leap into a higher sphere to be anomalous, and are wont to examine the grounds of the new title with some care. The conservative instincts of men oppose themselves laughingly to the appearance of new dignitaries very much as they oppose themselves to the appearance of new ideas, and some temporary unfitness in the person for his new social niche is to be expected. In the comedy of the Restoration, we are told, “no measure is kept in pouring contempt on the mushroom growths of yesterday, the knights of recent creation”.[248]

Something of this impression of the incongruously new is produced for a moment even in the case of a well-earned rise in the social scale. The young aspirant’s family and connections, living on in the less brilliant light, will perforce laugh, though perhaps with something of sympathetic admiration, at the oddity of the sudden elevation; and the rising young man will be singularly fortunate if he does not now and again betray an amusing unfamiliarity with the ways of the company he has joined.

Yet the confusion of ranks due to the universalising of education is small and unimpressive when compared with that arising from another cause. The great destroyer of fixed class-boundaries is the force which tends to transmute a community into a plutocracy. This tendency may, no doubt, illustrate in a measure the effect of a diffused education; for the successful fortune-builder will sometimes have attained success by scientific knowledge skilfully {288} applied. Yet the presence—or the absence—of other qualities than the intellectual seems to have much to do in these days with sudden elevations in the plutocratic scale.

As the comedy of Molière may tell us, the spectacle of a man standing at the foot of the social ladder and looking up wistfully at its higher region has something entertaining in it both for those on his actual level and for those on the level of his ambition. Later, when the wistful glance is followed by actual climbing, the unrehearsed performances may grow mirth-provoking even to the point of tearful mistiness. Nor does the attainment of the goal make an end of the fun, since the maintenance of a decorous equilibrium at the new altitude may turn out to be even more precarious than the climbing, especially when relatives and other accidents of the humbler state persist in their attachment.

On the other hand, these climbings exhibit much in the way of amusing imposture; for men, as Schopenhauer tells us, have been known to push their way, unqualified and impious, even into literary circles, and snatch a kind of reflected distinction by the use of arts at once ancient and vulgar.

The spectacle of changing one’s class exhibits the amusing aspect of fraud in another way. When leaders high up in “society” pay homage to the deity of the climbing money-maker by betaking themselves to trade under assumed names, the mirth of Midas and of his whole despised caste may find its opportune vent.

We may now briefly indicate the general effect of the social movements just sketched upon the quality and the mode of distribution of the hilarious moods of a people.

(_a_) To begin with, the advance and wider spread of the wave of culture will clearly tend to effect a general raising {289} of the standard of taste, and to develop an appreciation of the quality of the ludicrous. This result, though effected in part by the development of art and the extension of its educative influence, is in the main the direct outcome of intellectual progress and of that increase in refinement of feeling which seems to depend on this progress. One may describe this change by saying that the standard of ideas tends gradually to gain ground, hemming in if not narrowing that of custom. The primal laugh, void of intellectual content, becomes less general, the laugh of the mind more frequent. This effect of an introduction of ideas holds good in the case of members of all classes in so far as they enter into the higher culture group. In this way particular standards of locality and of social group begin to count less in our laughter.

This effect of expansion of the intellectual view is reflected in all the more refined varieties of comic art. Any manifest insistence on dignity of rank, more especially when the group is not of imposing aspect, whether the _petite noblesse_ in a small “Residency” town on the Continent or the families which compose “Society” in an obscure town in England, is felt to be on the verge of the ludicrous. On the other hand, a magnifying of the dignity of a person or a class by those below, when accompanied by a cringing demeanour, is apt to take on the amusing aspect of flunkeyism, the due appreciation of which presupposes a certain maturity of the laughter of the mind.

The general tendency of this advance of ideas is as yet very imperfectly realised. The march of mind, like some military marches, is not quite so uniformly triumphant as it is wont to be represented. A considerable part of the laughter among what are called the educated classes is still {290} but little influenced by the finer and deeper perception of ludicrous quality; while, as for the uneducated majority of all social grades, it would be hard to find in their mirth any distinct traces of a deposit from the advance of the culture-stream. One might venture on the supposition that the appreciation of the ludicrous shown to-day by the frequenters of a “high class” Music Hall in London is, both as to its intellectual penetration and as to its refinement of feeling, but little, if anything, above that of a mediæval crowd which gathered to see and hear the jokes of the _jongleur_. So slow a process is the infiltration of refining influence from the higher strata of culture downwards.

(_b_) This change in the quality of social laughter through an infusion of ideas has undoubtedly been accompanied by a change in its quantity, as seen in a decline of the older, voluminous merriment of the people. This fall in the collective outburst, already touched on, and recognised by all students of the past, is largely due to a toning down of the simpler and heartier utterances of the common people. This change is so important as to call for a short investigation.

In simpler types of society, the more hearty and voluminous laughter probably came from the lowest strata. It is enough to recall the mirth of the Egyptian and the Roman slave. Later on, the large scope for indulgence in laughter was supplied by an _organisation_ of mirth in the shape of shows and other popular entertainments. There was possibly the germ of such an organisation in the annual celebration “in honour of the most jocund god of laughter” referred to by Apuleius.[249] One may instance the merry-makings at the harvest and vintage festivals out of {291} which Greek comedy took its rise, and the rollicking fun of the multitude at fairs and festivals during the Middle Ages. That the people were the true experts in the secrets of laughter is further suggested by the fact that slaves, both Greek and Roman, were selected as jesters and wits by well-to-do people. The fools kept by Orientals were probably from the same class.[250] The later “fools” of European courts were drawn from the simple folk.

The characteristics of this early type of popular mirth can be summed up in the word childishness. The slave or other oppressed worker could without effort throw off ideas of toil and chastisement in his play hour. Towards his master and his treatment of him, his attitude seems to have been on the whole the resignation of a life-long habit. He might, not improbably, enjoy a quiet joke at the expense of his overseer, but he seems to have entertained towards him none of the deeper animosity.

This naïve form of popular laughter gave way to a less childish type when “the common people” began to include a goodly number of free-men who were able to form opinions of their own, and bold enough to assert the right of expressing these. It follows from what has been said above that the newly gained freedom would naturally give rise to some laughter-bringing criticism of authorities. This tendency of the mirthful mood of the crowd was instantly perceived by the authorities who waged war against it, using the weapons of a repressive censorship. We have an example of this censorship in the police regulations which hampered the introduction of comedy from Athens into Rome. It was required by the authorities that the scene of the play should always be laid outside Rome as if to guard against a direct attack on Roman {292} institutions and persons.[251] A like hostility to the pranks of a free and quite unfastidious mirth was shown by the mediæval church. This may well have been in part the outcome of honest moral reprobation of the scurrilities of the songs, the _contes_ and the rest. Yet it looks as if the prohibitory enactments originated for the most part in the alarm of the ecclesiastics for the security of their hold on the mind of the people.

It was not, however, an easy matter to silence popular laughter when this had once heard itself and recognised its force. Aristophanes and his laughing public were, for a time at least, stronger than the demagogue whom they ridiculed. No doubt the civil and the ecclesiastical power have again and again succeeded in half-stifling for a time the ruder sort of laughter. Yet the complete suffocation of it in free communities has proved to be impossible. In the Middle Ages, we are told, the atmosphere of fun would rise now and again to a kindling heat, so that holy men themselves would join in the not too decent songs.[252] The modern history of Political Satire abundantly illustrates the force of popular laughter. Thus, in the Stuart period, satires were produced which were a popular protest against the grievance of monopolies.[253] How firmly it maintained its ground is illustrated by the fact that the politicians, when they have failed to oust it from the stage, have endeavoured to turn it to their own ends.[254] If the more scurrilous sort has now been driven from the stage, political caricature {293} flourishes vigorously and has dared to attack royalty itself within a measurable period.[255]

The people has undoubtedly been the upholder of the wholesome custom of mirth. Taking the peasantry, the workmen, and the lower middle class as representing the “people” of to-day, one has to confess that its merry note seems to have been lost. The reservoir which in the past supplied the stream of national gaiety has certainly fallen and threatens even to dry up. But of this more by-and-by.

(_c_) As a last effect needing to be emphasised here, we have underlying the laughter of a people a curiously composite attitude. By this I mean an agglomeration of mental tendencies involving different _manières de voir_, and different standards of the fit and, consequently, of the laughable.

In the preceding chapter we saw how the choral laughter of the savage followed the directions of the self-conservative tendencies of his tribe. This unconscious self-adaptation of the mirthful mood to the ends of the tribal life has persisted through all the changes introduced by the play of fashion and by the movements of social evolution. We of to-day who travel so much more than our ancestors in foreign lands, and may even learn to speak their languages, retain the tendency to resist the importation of what strikes us as un-English. In certain seasons, say when the war-temper heats the blood and foreigners criticise, this feeling for what is national grows distinct and vivid, and reflects itself unmistakably in the manifestations of such mirth as seems to be compatible with the mood of the hour.

This point of view of the tribe has always coexisted with {294} the narrower and more relative one of the group, illustrated above, though it has in ordinary circumstances been less prominent in men’s mirthful utterances. The mediæval laughter at the priest, one may conjecture, was now and again directed from the national or patriotic point of view, as the people began to discern in him the servant of a foreign power.

Not only so, but in much of a people’s laughter at what it deems the “absurd”—the laughter of “common-sense,” as we may call it—it is the point of view of the tribe or society which is still adopted: and this holds good of the larger part, at least, of a community in the van of the march of civilisation. When we smile at what appears to us a far-fetched view, or a quaint habit of life, we are really guided by the standard, “what people round about us say and do and expect us to say and do”. This contented reference to a vaguely formulated custom, without any scrutiny of its inherent reasonableness, holds good, indeed, of the judgments passed by ordinary men on the laughable aspects of the immoral. Promptness in paying one’s debts, for example, will for most men wear a reasonable or a foolish aspect according to the custom of their tribe—though here two class-standards make themselves distinctly felt; and so the laugh may be turned, as the custom changes, from him whose tardiness in discharging liabilities suggests straitened means otherwise carefully concealed, to him who displays an ungentlemanly haste in matters of a contemptible smallness.

It seems to follow that the adjustments of laughter to more universal norms, to ideas of an inherent fitness in things, are a kind of artificial addition to deeper and more instinctive tendencies. The ordinary man, even when he enjoys the spectacle of some laughable folly or vice, {295} hardly transcends the point of view of custom, from which what all men do is seen to be right. It is only when a higher culture has made apparent the universality of the laughable, as of its opposite the reasonable, that a conscious resort to ideas becomes frequent. This clarifying of our laughter by the infusion of ideas is, in a special manner, the work of experts, namely, the moralist, the literary critic, and, most of all, the artist whose business it is to illumine the domain of the ludicrous. This function of art will form the subject of a later chapter.

* * * * *

In this chapter we have dealt merely with what I have called choral laughter, that of groups, smaller or larger. There is, however, another kind, the private laughter of the individual when alone, or in the company of sympathetic friends. This also has its pre-conditions in the processes of social evolution just touched upon.

Such independent laughter would, it is evident, be impossible in the lowest stages of this evolution. In the savage or quasi-savage state an oddly constituted member of a tribe—if such a being were possible—liable to be seized with a spasm of ridicule at the absurdities of tribal ceremonies would certainly encounter serious risks. It has needed ages of social progress to establish the conditions of a safe individual liberty in the indulgence of the jocose temper.

This freedom in choosing one’s own modes of laughter has gradually asserted itself as a part of all that we mean by individual liberty. Perhaps, indeed, it may be regarded as the highest phase and completion of this liberty.

This is not the place for a full inquiry into the complex conditions on which the development of a freer individual laughter depends. It may be enough to point to the need {296} of an advance in ideas and the capability, among the few at least, to form individual judgments, which this advance implies. A man who would laugh his own laugh must begin by developing his own perceptions and ideas.

A fuller understanding of the pre-conditions of an independent laughter will only be possible to one who has carefully examined its characteristics. In the following chapter I propose to analyse that variety of the laughing temper which seems in a peculiar way to be an attribute of the developed individual. This attribute is what is specially designated in these days by the term humour.

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