Chapter IX: A Few Closing Words 283 (4)

Instead, therefore, of condemning the lazy man, as the moralists would, it is the part of wisdom to view him as a victim of disease and as standing in need of careful treatment. Nature intended him to be vigorous, forceful, a being of achievement; circumstances have made him listless, inert, responsive but in feeble measure to the spur of honour, ambition, pride, love, or necessity. Sometimes, to be sure, he is contented with his laziness, and would almost resent an attempt to rescue him from it; more frequently he writhes in secret over a defect which he realises exposes him to the contempt and ridicule of his more virile fellow-men, and renders his life an empty, profitless existence. As one unhappy victim confessed in a moment of extraordinary self-revelation:

“I begin, but do not finish. When I conceive a work, a feverish impatience seizes me to reach the desired aim; I should like to attain it at once. But to accomplish something, patient and continuous efforts are required. I never accomplish anything.... One dull day, in one of the suburbs, I saw a large piece of waste land, more covered with fragments of earthenware than with grass. Three or four houses had been commenced, charming little dwellings of red brick and white stone; the walls had been there for two or three years, but the floors and ceilings were lacking, the roofs had never been tiled, and one could see across the ever wide-open windows. My mind is in a similar condition—a rough plain with several pretty houses, the roofs of which will never be finished.” (_The Fortnightly Review_, vol. lxix, p. 763.)

What, then, is the cause of laziness? How should one proceed in the attempt to cure it? Still more important in this complex and severely competitive age, with its incessant demand for vigour and effectiveness of performance, what are the preventive measures that may be taken in the interest alike of the individual and society?

Only a few years ago it would have been impossible to answer these questions in any but the vaguest and most general way. It might have been said—indeed, it was said—that laziness is essentially an infirmity of the will. No statement could be more correct, but also none could be more futile in the absence of any clear appreciation of the factors determining the weakness or strength of one’s will-power. For, as somebody has truly said, the will is not an isolated entity, absolutely independent of, and superior to, the organism through which it operates. Having a controlling force, it still is, to a large extent, itself controlled by material as well as by psychical circumstances, by bodily states and by the impressions the mind absorbs from the environment. Consequently the solution of the problem of laziness depends at bottom on the ascertainment of the factors hurtful to efficient willing.

This task quite recently has been essayed with remarkable success, and, especially by a little group of French investigators, with immediate reference to the problem presented by the lazy man. Laziness in all its phases has been studied with the resourcefulness and painstaking precision characteristic of the new school of medical psychologists, to whom we are already so heavily indebted for a better understanding of the mind of man both in its normal and its abnormal aspects. And with respect to laziness they have likewise made some interesting and important discoveries.

What, in particular, they have found is that it is usually associated with a peculiarly debilitated condition of the nervous system—an “asthenia” marked by a slow heart-beat, low arterial pressure, and poor circulation. The consequence of this is, to quote Théodule Ribot, one of the leaders in the scientific study of laziness, that “the brain shows not so much an indisposition as a real incapacity for concentrating attention, and soon, owing to the fact that its nourishment is at the vanishing-point, becomes exhausted.” A whole series of idlers, tested scientifically, were shown to be suffering from this asthenic condition, which led them instinctively to husband their feeble resources by the simple expedient of exerting themselves no more than was absolutely necessary. Yet not a few of them were to all appearance healthy enough, and, until the medical examination had been made, it was difficult to credit their well-grounded complaint that they really felt “too tired to work,” and at best could do so “only by fits and starts.”

This is not to say that they were all of them “born tired.” Congenitally weak many of them may have been; but the more the investigators familiarised themselves with the asthenia of the lazy, the more they found reason for the belief that, as a rule, it was an acquired and functional rather than an inborn and organic weakness, although often initiated by local troubles organic in nature. Thus, studying laziness in children attending school, it was discovered that quite frequently their inertia is connected with the presence of adenoid, or abnormal tissue, growths, in the cavity back of the nose. These growths, by making it extremely hard for the child to breathe properly, deplete his vitality so that he remains undersized and is quickly fatigued by intellectual or muscular effort. The natural consequence is that he becomes more or less of an idler, bringing upon himself the reproaches and punishments of parents and teachers. What he actually needs is not scoldings or whippings but a slight surgical operation.

Often a surprising development of both mental and physical power follows the removal of the adenoids. In one case, reported by Professor Swift, a girl of fourteen grew three inches taller within six months after an operation for adenoids, and at the same time showed an improvement in her school-work that contrasted strikingly with the apathy and dulness that had preceded it. Another, three years younger, grew six inches in about four months, and from being a sad idler was transformed into an unexpectedly attractive and bright pupil. A boy of twelve, backward both mentally and physically, likewise lost his dulness and laziness within an astonishingly short time after the impediment to his breathing had been removed.

Dental defects also contribute materially to the development of laziness and mental retardation. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in individual cases, and at least one psychologist—Professor J. E. Wallace Wallin, of St. Louis—has demonstrated it in the case of a group of children.

These children, twenty-seven in number, were pupils in a Cleveland public school; they were afflicted with tooth-decay to a varying extent, and they were mentally backward, being from one to four years retarded in their school-work. At Professor Wallin’s direction their teeth and gums were treated, they were taught to use a tooth-brush properly, and to chew their food thoroughly. Before the dental treatment began they were twice given five psychological tests, to ascertain their memory-power, attention-power, etc.; the same tests were twice given to them while the treatment was under way; and, six months after its termination, or just before the close of the school-year 1910-1911, the tests were again given twice.

Comparing the results of the different testings, a progressive and remarkable improvement was found. In ability to memorise, the average improvement for the group was 19 per cent.; in attention power, 60 per cent.; in adding, 35 per cent.; in ability to associate words having an opposite meaning, 129 per cent.; and in general association ability, 42 per cent. More than this, and testifying incontrovertibly to the direct influence of the dental treatment in promoting vigour of thought, only one of the children failed of promotion, six completed thirty-eight weeks of school-work in twenty-four weeks, and one boy did two years’ work in one year. Yet all of these children, remember, had formerly been quite unable to keep up with the work of their grades.

How explain this great improvement? Only on the theory that, by repairing their teeth and drilling them in the rudiments of mouth hygiene, a stop had been put to a disease-process which involved both nervous strain and—through the swallowing of the toxic products of tooth-decay—a poisoning of the supply of blood to the brain, with consequent lessening of the brain’s ability to function properly.

Eye trouble, particularly in the way of hypermetropia, or far-sightedness, is another frequent cause of laziness in school-children, and the correction of the defective vision often is followed by a marked access of vigour and alertness. In such cases, however, the laziness is usually manifest only in the school-room, the child being active enough at play, when no strain is put on the eyes comparable with that occasioned by reading.

To cite a single instance, a little boy of ten was reported as being so inattentive at school and so uninterested in his work as to yawn and become sleepy when required to read. As no amount of scolding sufficed to turn him from his idle ways, and as he began to complain of headaches and nervousness, he was finally taken to an oculist. To the surprise of his parents, who had always believed his vision normal, he was found to be suffering from latent hypermetropia; and, on being provided with the proper eye-glasses, he soon demonstrated, by the rapidity with which he improved in his studies and the interest he now showed in them, that his laziness had been determined by the condition of his eyesight.

In fact, any bodily defect that is of such a character as to impose an excessive strain on the nervous system tends to produce an asthenic condition, with accompanying apathy and indolence. And, even when the local trouble is only temporary, its disappearance is not necessarily followed, as it was in the instances just narrated, by a return to energetic, effective activity. For, in the meantime, the idler may have acquired an unconscious—or, to be more precise, a subconscious—belief that sustained exertion is and always must be beyond his powers. Thus a vicious circle is established, the belief in his incapacity causing him to act in such a way as to intensify the asthenic state, and the resultant increased feeling of debility operating, in its turn, to confirm and strengthen his erroneous belief. In other words, he is now suffering chiefly from a “fixed idea,” and his condition is that of any psycho-neurotic patient.

On this point all who have made a scientific study of laziness are in substantial agreement. We must, flatly affirms the pioneer investigator Doctor Maurice de Fleury, “take the indolent for what they nearly always are—neuropaths; and neurosis for what it always is—bad habits of cerebral activity.” The longer a man has been an idler, the more deeply rooted, of course, will be his subconscious conviction that exertion is impossible to him; but, according to de Fleury and other investigators, once this conviction is broken down, he will find that he can work, and work to good purpose.

The effecting of a cure, needless to say, is not always easy. It requires co-operation on the part of the patient, and on the physician’s part intelligent and sympathetic use of both physiological and psychological methods of treatment. Hygienic measures must be adopted to tone up the nervous system, to improve the circulation, the digestion, the nutrition—to develop, as far as possible, a general feeling of well-being. The idler must gradually be trained to occupy himself usefully—not, perhaps, for many hours at a time, but for regular stated periods, however short. And to this end, the effort has to be made, from the outset, to awaken in him an absorbing interest in the attainment of some one specific aim in life, thereby replacing his baneful fixed idea of incapacity for work with the opposed and beneficial obsession of something that he must and can accomplish.

Here we come to what is by far the most important factor in the cure of laziness—the dynamic, regenerative power of some special interest.[2] Even your idler, enfeebled by positive organic weakness, may rise superior to himself and achieve marvels, if only his enthusiasm be sufficiently aroused to a definite end. It was thus, for example, with Charles Darwin.

When he was a boy, as was said above, Darwin was colossally lazy. He neglected his books, and spent his days roaming through the fields, gun in hand. “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family,” was his father’s bitter reproof. As he grew older, his propensity for idling seemed only to increase. In spite of this, hoping against hope that he would yet settle down to serious things, his father entered him at the University of Glasgow, with the idea of fitting him for the practice of medicine. “It is no use,” the boy frankly avowed, after a few months at Glasgow; “I hate the work here, and I cannot possibly be a physician.” So earnest were his protests that he was transferred to Cambridge University, on the understanding that he would study to be a clergyman.

At Cambridge, as good fortune would have it, he entered the natural history class of an eminent and enlightened scholar, Professor Henslow, who sent him into the woods and fields to make collections of plants and insects. Free again to roam under the clear blue skies, but this time with a lofty purpose set before his mind, a passion for achievement took possession of him. The boy whom other teachers had found dull and lazy proved himself, under Professor Henslow’s inspiring guidance, a marvel of industry and mental vigour. There was no longer any thought of the “last resort” plan of putting him into the ministry. He would, he told his delighted father, become a naturalist, and he would work hard.

And he did work hard. Though his health was permanently impaired by the hardships of a voyage of exploration, so that “for nearly forty years he never knew one day of the health of ordinary men,” and “every day succumbed to the exhaustion brought on by the slightest effort,” he nevertheless found a way to work with an effectiveness few men of normal health have equalled.

The establishment of regular hours for work—thus gradually forming a work habit which itself constituted a sort of fixed idea contrary to the idea of indolence, and the reinforcement of this work habit by enthusiastic pre-occupation with an inspiring theme—such was the secret of Charles Darwin’s mastery over ills more serious than those which have made countless men lifelong idlers. What he did is precisely what the medical psychologist of to-day prescribes as fundamental in the successful treatment of laziness. Listen to the wise Doctor de Fleury:

“Let it be known that it is often possible in the practice of life to replace an absurd idea by a good fixed one, and to form excellent habits in the place of deplorable manias. It is precisely in doing this that the psychological treatment of indolence consists; it is this patient work that the doctor of misguided minds ought to undertake.

“To induce [a lazy person] to become possessed of a good fixed idea, is not a superhuman work for those who know how to set about it. In fact, the means to be employed remind one of a woman who wishes to make herself loved.

“Let us consider for a moment the means dictated to her by her infallible instinct concerning love affairs. First of all, she dresses herself with care, so as to show off her charms to the full; then she finds opportunities for constantly being seen, increases the number of meetings; her presence must become habitual—in fact, necessary; he must suffer when she is no longer near. She kindles the flame of jealousy, to make it understood that she is an incomparable treasure, and that another will grasp her if he does not stretch forth his arm in time.

“Imitate her, you who wish to learn the marvellous art of reclaiming the indolent. Help your patient to choose a work really suited to his abilities; embellish the idea [of it] with all the hope that it is possible to raise—self-content, worldly importance, glory, and fortune to be conquered. Talk about it without ceasing; like a Wagnerian motive, repeat it again and again, and soon you will find that the brain seizes the idea, and can no longer exist without this good obsession. Finally, when the idea becomes cherished, when the brain loves it as one loves and desires a woman, make it to be understood that it belongs to all, that it is in the air, that another, braver and more manly, may step in and carry it off....

“Naturally, it is necessary to vary one’s advice according to the character and profession of each patient. I have had the opportunity of treating—for nervous affections and at the same time for indolence—men occupying the most varied social positions: students, composers, military officers, men of letters, lawyers, financiers, politicians, poor workmen, and idle, rich people. For each one of them it was necessary to choose a ruling idea, suited to his occupation and in proportion to his strength.”

Treatment by suggestion, then, plus careful preliminary physiological, and if necessary medical, treatment to ameliorate the asthenic condition common to idlers—that is the proper course to pursue in dealing with all cases of laziness. And it is also the course to pursue in the more important matter of prevention, a matter which, as the case of Charles Darwin strikingly suggests, rests chiefly with fathers and mothers.

Everybody knows that, as things now stand, young men and women choose vocations in a haphazard way, and too often choose vocations for which Nature has not intended them. What it is equally important to recognise is that even when they do happen to hit on a vocation fitted to them, it is only the exceptional man or woman who works anywhere near the limit of his or her capacity. The great majority fritter away much of their time, and may justly be accused of idleness.

The surprising thing about this is that, as has already been pointed out, it is seldom one sees anything like real laziness in early childhood. What causes the sharp contrast between the activity of childhood and the frequent apathy of later years? Unfavourable physical conditions cannot be held wholly responsible, especially when it is observed that there always are some people who, like Darwin, contrive to work effectively despite serious physical shortcomings. One must look a little deeper, and, looking deeper, one finds, as medical psychologists have lately found, that the trouble lies mostly with the parental attitude in childhood and youth.

Too many parents discourage the ceaseless questioning of their children, and thereby deaden that great stimulus to effort—curiosity. Too many fail to direct their children’s thoughts into really worth while channels. Too many daily give them an example, not of industrious activity, but of half-hearted endeavour. All this goes to create in the child habits inimical to real work; and in proportion as he is afterward, by parent or teacher, forced to work, he finds work burdensome and exhausting. Under this condition, whether or no he is suffering from adenoids, eye trouble, or any other physical cause of nervous strain, he is likely to develop the asthenic state of the true idler, with the result of soon or late feeling that sustained effort is beyond him.

On parents, therefore, ultimately rests the blame for the prevalence of laziness; and for its prevention we must likewise look to parents. As a friend, a prominent American medical psychologist, once said to me emphatically:

“There would be far fewer lazy men in the world if parents only appreciated the possibility of so influencing their children in early youth as to confirm them in the tendencies to energetic action and fruitful thinking which they usually display in the first years of life. Instead of neglecting or repressing these tendencies, as so many parents unfortunately do, they should encourage their children in the active use of their minds, should train them in habits of systematic and effective thinking, and especially, by observing just what aptitudes they most clearly show, should take pains to cultivate in them an abiding interest in the subjects for which they seem to have greatest talent.

“If they would only do this, and would at the same time keep a close watch for any symptoms of nerve-strain due to organic or functional disturbances, correcting these at the earliest possible moment, we should hear much less than we do now of the indolence of the average child of school age; and we certainly should be taking a great forward step in the lessening of laziness among grown men and women. For, obviously, a child habituated from infancy to the fullest and freest use of his natural powers, will be likely to continue thinking and acting energetically in later life. In this, as in everything else, the law is the same—as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”

VI

A CHAPTER ON LAUGHTER

Picture to yourself a familiar scene—the interior of a theatre crowded with people. On the stage the persons of the play move to and fro, speaking their lines. Presently a slight change is made in the current of the dialogue, and, presto! the spectators who have been so quietly listening and watching become weirdly agitated. Their features are distorted in strange grimaces, they throw back their heads, and give utterance to abrupt, explosive, unmelodious noises. Even their bodies take part in the amazing commotion.

Something “funny” has just been said by one of the actors, and those who have heard it are responding by an outburst of “laughter.”

Recall likewise the equally familiar picture of a huge circus tent with its bewildering array of equipment for the performance of feats of strength and daring, surrounded by tier upon tier of seats filled with expectant holiday-makers. The entertainment is about to begin; from an entrance come the blaring strains of a brass band, and a long, gaily bedecked procession circles slowly before the gaping throng. At the end of the procession are half a dozen men of uncouth gait and bizarre appearance, their faces whitened and spotted, queer conical caps on their heads, and wearing enormous, shapeless garments as white and spotted as their faces.

These men say nothing—they simply go through all sorts of foolish antics. But at the mere sight of them the same uproar of discordant sounds fills the air, the spectators, like those of the theatre and with even greater vehemence, uniting in a very bedlam of guffaws.

Pass, finally, to the open street, alive with men and women hurrying to their work. Some one has carelessly dropped on the sidewalk the slippery skin of a fruit. The first man to step on it feels his legs give way beneath him, strives frantically to keep his balance, waves his arms about, and ends by plumping to the ground with a heavy thud. At once he is beset by the “smiles” and “chuckles” of those who have witnessed his fall; and, hurt and annoyed, he scrambles to his feet, gives himself a hasty brush, and disappears as rapidly as possible.

Now, just what is this singular phenomenon of laughter, so readily induced and from such a variety of causes? What is there in the words of an actor, the antics of a clown, or the misfortune of another person, to provoke, under the circumstances mentioned, the peculiar reaction of bodily and facial contortion and inarticulate vocal utterance that, regarded dispassionately, seems almost repulsive? What useful purpose can be served by such behaviour, such an obvious departure from the well-ordered ways of the reasoning life? In a word, why do we laugh?

It is a question far more easily asked than answered, as every one has discovered who has really pondered it. The answer that immediately comes to mind—“We laugh because we are amused”—not only is hopelessly inadequate, but to a large extent is incorrect. It can readily be shown that people sometimes laugh in situations where their mental state is anything but that of amusement. In one well-authenticated instance a frontiersman, on returning to his home and finding it in ruins, with his wife and children mutilated corpses, began to laugh and continued laughing until he died from the rupture of a blood-vessel. In another case, cited among the responses to a questionnaire on laughter issued by that well-known American psychologist, President G. Stanley Hall of Clark University, a number of young people from nineteen to twenty-four years of age were sitting together when the death of a friend was announced. “They looked at each other for a second, and then all began to laugh, and it was some time before they could become serious.”

A young woman, replying to the same questionnaire, confessed that she often laughed when hearing people speak of the death of their friends, “not because it is funny or pleases her, but because she cannot help it.” Another young woman reported that on hearing of the death of a former school-mate she felt deeply grieved, yet “laughed as heartily as she had ever done in her life,” and, in spite of every effort to control herself, “had to break out into a laugh repeatedly.” A third “must always laugh when she hears of a death, and has had to leave the church at a funeral because she must giggle.”

Even the shock of a severe physical pain is known to provoke occasionally, not tears but laughter. “A young man,” says C. G. Lange, “whom I was treating with a powerful caustic for an ulceration of the tongue, invariably, at the moment when the pain was at its highest, was attacked by a violent outburst of laughter.”

One has only to think also of the laughter caused by tickling to realise that it is not always true to say that we laugh because we are amused. And when it is true, this answer, instead of solving the problem of laughter, merely raises it in another form, since it then becomes necessary to explain why we are amused by the sayings and happenings at which we laugh. Most students of laughter have indeed felt that the important thing to do is to determine the nature of the laughable, a task itself of considerable difficulty and leading to the most diverse conclusions in the numerous explanatory formulas which have been advanced from time to time, but which, when closely scrutinised, are chiefly noteworthy for their incompleteness.

To mention only a few of the theories of the comic finding place in psychological works, it is affirmed by some authorities that the essence of the laughable is that it induces a sudden sense of superiority in the person moved to laughter. This is the “sudden glory” theory of Thomas Hobbes, and in support of it is cited more especially the familiar fact that nobody likes to be laughed at. It also finds support in the undoubted feeling of contempt which so often accompanies the laughter provoked by the buffooneries of a mountebank, the dialogue and action of a farce comedy, and the so-called “comic pictures” now to be found in such lamentable profusion in many of our newspapers. In some slight degree, too, there may be a “sudden glory” in the laughter at the awkwardness and groundless fears of a child, or at his naïve remarks, and in the laughter occasioned by mischances to other people. But certainly there is much that is laughable—notably the kindly banter between friends—that cannot reasonably be said to engender any feeling of superiority. And, more than this, we are all of us, every day of our lives, witnessing things that do suddenly arouse in us a lively feeling of superiority, but without moving us to laughter—moving us, rather, to pity and perhaps tears.

Even as amended by the psychologist Bain, the “sudden glory” theory remains inadequate. Bain defines “the occasion of the ludicrous” as “the degradation of some person or interest possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion.” This is a decided improvement, because it clearly recognises that the laughable must be devoid of elements awakening counteracting emotions. But it is open to the criticism that laughter is frequently excited by objects and occurrences in which, unless the imagination be severely wrenched, it is impossible to assume that ideas of degradation are dominant or even operant.

When, for example, we laugh at the spectacle of a child half hidden in his grandfather’s hat, what do we think of as degraded? Is it the child, the hat, or the absent grandfather? In such an instance can the idea of degradation properly be said to enter at all? So, likewise, it is difficult to conceive the presence of any idea either of degradation or superiority in the ringing laughter of a child at his puppy’s gambols or at the frisking of his kitten. And how explain on such a principle the laughter at non-malicious witticism?

Appreciating the inapplicability of the Hobbesian doctrine in any form as explanatory of all sources of laughter, other investigators have emphasised the principle of contrast and incongruity, but to scarcely more satisfactory effect. “Laughter,” says Herbert Spencer, “naturally results only when consciousness is unawares transferred from great things to small—when there is what we call a descending incongruity.” The manifest insufficiency of this theory is avoided in the more extensive one, to which Darwin inclines, defining the laughable as that which is queer, unusual, disagreeing with or contrary to our mental habits or the normal order of affairs. Assuredly there is almost always an element of queerness in the things at which we laugh. Yet it is also certain that the queer does not always make us laugh. As Camille Mélinaud has pointed out:

“There are things contrary to the normal order that have nothing ludicrous about them; and if the view were true that queerness is the laughable element, those things that are strangest and most unusual should be the ones most certain by their very nature to excite laughter. But we do not laugh at the dancing horses, the jumping pigs, the musicians playing on bottles, of the circus, all of which are most contradictory of what we are accustomed to. If we laugh at the circus, it is at the accessory jokes and incidents in the detail. A conjurer’s tricks, seemingly contradictory as they are of all our experiences and notions, do not make us laugh. We laugh at his jokes and his funny ways of proceeding, but we wonder at his tricks.” (_Popular Science Monthly_, vol. liii, p. 398.)

Mélinaud’s own view, oddly enough, is about as unconvincing as any that has ever been formulated, for, while laying stress on the principle of incongruity, he insists that laughter comes only when the laugher, “by a rapid process of thought,” submits the object of his mirth to a reflective analysis and arrives at the laugh-provoking conclusion that what seems absurd is really quite natural from the point of view of the person or thing laughed at. Then, and not until then, do we feel amused. On such a theory one might well wonder that children ever find it possible to laugh, and that laughter is so prevalent among adults who are not accustomed to any very high degree of logical thinking.

Altogether different from any of the foregoing is the more recent theory of the French philosopher, Henri Bergson, as presented in a special treatise on laughter, of which an excellent translation by C. Brereton and F. Rothwell has lately been published in this country. Bergson recognises, as not every investigator has done, the essentially spontaneous character of laughter, and he insists with Darwin on postulating queerness as an indispensable element in the laughable. But, as he sees it, the queerness must be of a specific sort in order to excite laughter—must consist, in fine, in an automatic inelasticity, whether of form, action, or thought, which is in sharp contrast to the wonted mobility of life. It is our immediate recognition of this automatism and rigidity that moves us to laughter.

When, Bergson affirms, we laugh at a man who stumbles and falls in the street, our laughter is caused, not by his sudden change of attitude, but by the involuntary element in this change. “Perhaps there was a stone on the road. He should have altered his pace or avoided the obstacle. Instead of that, through lack of elasticity, through absent-mindedness and a kind of physical obstinacy—as a result, in fact, of rigidity or of momentum—the muscles continued to perform the same movement when the circumstances of the case called for something else. That is the reason of the man’s fall, and also of the people’s laughter.” So with our laughter at the appearance and horseplay of a clown. We laugh at his painted face because we immediately recognise in it “something mechanical encrusted upon the living,” and we laugh at his antics because of their automatic, machine-like character.

In fact, “We laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing. We laugh at Sancho Panza tumbled into a bed-quilt and tossed into the air like a foot-ball. We laugh at Baron Munchausen turned into a cannon-ball and travelling through space.” In laughter caused by puns, jests, and witticisms, the same principles of automatism and inelasticity obtain, though of course in much subtler form. Analyse closely all varieties of the comic and you always get back to the basic idea of “something mechanical in something living.” Or, Bergson concludes, “The comic is that side of a person which reveals his likeness to a thing, that aspect of human events which, through its peculiar inelasticity, conveys the impression of pure mechanism, of automatism, of movement without life.”

Really to appreciate both the plausibility and the shortcomings of this novel theory of the laughable one must read Professor Bergson’s book. It is there elaborated so ingeniously that one finds it difficult to give instances of the comic to which it cannot in some way be applied. Even the laughter of children at the bobbing up of their jack-in-the-box, the fall of their house of cards, or the tail-chasing gyrations of their kitten, may conceivably be explained on the assumption that what the children laugh at is the automatic character of the bobbing, the falling, and the whirling. On the other hand, these very examples irresistibly suggest that the Bergsonian explanation is, after all, rather strained and far-fetched, and that, in common with its less thorough-going predecessors, it overlooks the elusive something fundamental to the laughable. This impression is deepened when we recall the extent to which automatism, rigidity, inelasticity, prevail in the affairs of men without exciting so much as a smile.

“The attitudes, gestures, and movements of the human body,” says Professor Bergson, in stating one of his many subsidiary laws of the comic, “are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of a mere machine.” Why, then, do we not laugh when we observe the machine-like precision with which a company of soldiers march on parade or execute the evolutions of drill? Surely one could not find a better example of “something mechanical in something living.” And, again, “any arrangement of acts and events is comic which gives us, in a single combination, the illusion of life and the distinct impression of a mechanical arrangement.” The bobbing of the jack-in-the-box meets this formula, and we do laugh at the jack-in-the-box. But it is met equally well by the strangely lifelike movements of such devices as the automatic chess-player and the type-setting machine, yet these do not ordinarily elicit any appreciable manifestation of mirth.

It is, however, when we turn to Bergson’s deductions from his theory of the comic that we are most strongly impelled to question its soundness. Emphasizing as he does the element of automatism in the laughable, he logically enough infers that the function of laughter is to serve as a social corrective. “The rigid, the ready-made, the mechanical, in contrast with the supple, the ever-changing, and the living, absent-mindedness in contrast with attention, in a word, automatism in contrast with free activity, such are the defects that laughter singles out and would fain correct.” We laugh, that is to say, only at imperfections in our fellow-men, or at things which remind us of imperfections, and the reason we laugh is that, consciously or unconsciously, we wish to call attention to them by way of, in Bergson’s own words, “a kind of social ragging.”

Stated thus baldly, the underlying defect of such an explanation of laughter becomes plainly apparent.[3] What has happened is that its author has read into the phenomenon of laughter a meaning applicable only under special circumstances. If it were true that we laugh only at what is imperfect and therefore ugly, however attenuated in ugliness, it would be impossible to understand the well-nigh universal eagerness for laughter; an eagerness which has led mankind to reward lavishly, even extravagantly, those who make it their business to provide occasions for laughter—the writers of farces and comedies, the fun-making actors and clowns, the producers of “comic pictures.” The egregious falsity of this “deformity” theory, as it may fairly be called, becomes still more manifest when we endeavour to apply it to account for the laughter of childhood, the period of life when laughter is most free and exuberant, but precisely when it is incredible to assume that it is motivated by any corrective impulse, conscious or otherwise.

To tell the truth, the attempt to reach a wholly satisfactory solution of the problem of laughter by striving to define the characteristics of the laughable seems foredoomed to failure. For, after all, the laughable must always remain a more or less uncertain quantity, if only for the reason that, as shown by facts of everyday observation, what makes one person laugh may not be in the least laugh-provoking to another. Yet everybody, or almost everybody, does laugh to some extent, and therefore the proper point of approach would rather seem to be through a study of the act of laughter itself and of its consequences with regard, not to the person or thing or phrase laughed at, but to the person doing the laughing.

Attacking the problem from this altogether different angle, one is soon in a position to discern several facts of real helpfulness in an explanatory way. By no means the least important is the extreme exuberance of laughter in childhood, to which reference has just been made. Once the child has begun to laugh—usually during the fourth or fifth month after birth, although occasional outbursts of a shadowy sort of laughter have been observed before the fourth month—it laughs with a truly amazing spontaneity and frequency. There seems to be nothing which may not become an object of laughter to a child, and, more than this, in direct contradiction to all theories postulating a reflective element at the bottom of every laugh, as often as not the laughter of childhood is conspicuously devoid of such an element.

For example, to cite a few observations from the record of a lady, Miss Milicent Shinn, whose painstaking study of the infancy of her niece Ruth is among the most stimulating of contributions to the modern science of child psychology, it appears that toward the end of the fifth month this little girl “habitually laughed with glee when any one smiled or spoke to her.” And when, two months later, she was taken into the open and allowed to roll about on a quilt, “the wooing of the passing freshness, the play of sun and shadow, the large stir of life in moving and sounding things, all this possessed her and made her ‘laugh and ejaculate with pleasure.’” Also, like almost every child of her age, little Ruth would be moved to hilarious mirth by being given a ride on somebody’s foot, or tossed and jumped about in one’s arms. Laughter, again, followed the successful accomplishment of any intellectual or muscular feat, such as pointing out pictures she had been asked to identify, climbing stairs, or deliberately letting herself fall “so as to come down sitting with a thud.”

The same tendency to excessive, even seemingly causeless laughter in the opening years of life has been noted by other close students of the emotions and their expression. Some have attempted, with the usual futile results, to explain it by an analysis of the things at which the child laughs. Others, more cautiously and more accurately, content themselves with describing it as a means whereby Nature provides a salutary outlet for surplus nervous energy.

It is undoubtedly this. Ask any child who has learned to talk—or, better, ask a grown person who has retained to a marked degree the faculty for hearty laughter—and the chances are you will be told that, while in any given instance the laugher may be far from clear as to why he has laughed, he does know that the involuntary movements of the laughter to which he yielded were preceded by peculiarly compelling sensations, variously expressed in such phrases as, “I had to laugh or burst,” “I had to do something to relieve the strain,” “I felt bubbling over,” “I felt a quiver, a thrill, a creepy feeling passing from my stomach to my mouth.”

That is to say, the evidence from the abounding laughter of childhood—pre-eminently a period of rapid physical growth and of the accumulation of a large store of nervous energy—as also the evidence from the laughter of unusually mirthful adults, who are, as a rule, persons of large build and of corresponding nervous force, suggests irresistibly the conception of laughter as an instinct implanted in us for the performance of an important physiological function. This view finds additional support in the familiar “giggling silliness” of the adolescent period, that strange period of unusual growth and stress, and the one in which are most likely to occur those singular attacks of untimely hilarity at funerals and on other solemn occasions, as mentioned among the responses to President Hall’s questionnaire. No more than the little child or your friend the jolly man does the adolescent always know at what he is laughing. He simply knows that he is impelled to laugh by forces latent in his being and over which he has no control.

Nor is it only as a relief from neural tension that laughter benefits the one who laughs. In the studies of laughter in childhood made by such investigators as Preyer, Sully, and Miss Shinn, one finds frequent allusion to occasions when laughter is obviously a reaction from a state of mental strain, and has a specifically useful effect in easing the mind. There is reason to believe that this is actually one of its constant ends—that it is a device for lightening the burden of mentation by temporary interruption of the thought process.

As all educators are well aware, the first years of life and the adolescent period are not only the years of greatest physical growth, but the years when the severest demands are made on the mind, both by the task of acquiring knowledge and by the perturbations of adolescence. They are the years when the mind, in its immaturity, is most in need of some protective mechanism to enable it automatically and at frequent intervals to take a holiday as it were. Such a mechanism is admirably provided in laughter, which, as every laugher will at once appreciate, when not unduly prolonged leaves behind it a pleasurable feeling of exhilaration and greater mental as well as physical well-being.

We laugh, then, in infancy and adolescence, not primarily because we are “light-hearted” or “amused,” but to satisfy a natural instinct of both physiological and psychological utility. We laugh less in maturity, partly because we have not, as a rule, the same necessity of getting rid of surplus nervous energy, partly because our minds have passed the tender formative age, and partly because widening experience has developed sentiments and ideas tending to inhibit laughter. Nevertheless we do still need to a certain extent the relief which laughter brings; we feel in some degree the old hunger for it, and consequently, often at very slight provocation, we yield, and even cultivate opportunities for yielding, to the impulse which was so conspicuously operant in the years of our youth. As with every instinct, moreover, the laughing process may, and occasionally does, become perverted, as in the laughter of cynicism and contempt, and in the abnormal laughter of the overwrought—itself, however, the modern medical psychologist assures us, a medium of relief from an unbearable strain.

As to the things at which we commonly laugh—the “laughable” whose nature has so perplexed philosophers—all that may safely be said is that their laugh-provoking power depends not so much on an inherent “comicality” as on the circumstances under which they occur to us, and our point of view toward them as determined by previous training and experience. Certainly, for instance, we cannot laugh at a subtle bit of wit until we have had education in the appreciation of the skilful use of language. The instincts of imitation and of sympathy, further, have a share in determining on many an occasion the functioning of the laughing instinct. Time and again we laugh merely because we see other people laughing. Personally I am inclined to think also that much at which we laugh as adults is laughable to us only by reason of subconscious association with similar occurrences which chanced to move us to laughter in our childhood. But on this point nothing positive should be asserted pending psychological investigation which has yet to be made.

Conceding, however, that the laughable is and must always remain elusive, baffling, uncertain, there need be no uncertainty as to our view of laughter itself. To laugh—to laugh spontaneously and heartily—is under nearly every circumstance a good thing both for the body and for the mind. Like sleep, it refreshes; like food, it strengthens. Humanity in truth would be the poorer—and the shorter-lived—were it ever to lose this splendid heritage of the power to laugh.

This is why I have said so much about laughter in the present book. To parents in especial knowledge of its true significance is important. They will not then fall into the mistake, too often made at present, of curbing their children’s instinctive tendency to laugh. Rather, they should deliberately seek to cultivate in them a keen sense of humour, and encourage them in merriment—not because it is a thing pleasing in itself, but because of its positive developmental value. Directly or indirectly to repress this basic instinct is always dangerous, leading to warpings of character, and at times undoubtedly contributing to the causation of that strangest and most misunderstood of human maladies, hysteria, to which we must now give some consideration.

VII

HYSTERIA IN CHILDHOOD

A little girl, a pupil in a German school, made her appearance in class one morning with a bandage about her head. In answer to her teacher’s questions, she said she had been operated upon for ear trouble at a local hospital the day before. She described every detail of the operation, which, it seemed, had been exceedingly painful.

For some time she wore the bandage to school every day, and frequently complained that her ear was still troubling her. Her teacher was properly sympathetic, and, chancing to meet one of the girl’s relatives, expressed her anxiety for the child, and the hope that she would soon be completely cured.

“Cured?” repeated the relative. “Cured of what?”

“Why, her ear trouble—the disease that has made it necessary for her to keep her head bandaged.”

“But,” said the other, obviously puzzled, “I do not understand you. I did not know she had any ear trouble, and I have never seen her with a bandage.”

It was the teacher’s turn to be astonished. She could not believe that the girl had been deceiving her; but, to get at the truth, she decided to take her immediately to the hospital where the operation was supposed to have been performed. There the child made her way about as if perfectly familiar with the place, and greeted in a friendly manner the surgeon in charge. He, however, did not seem to recognise her, and when told the circumstances by the teacher, said:

“I can assure you I have never operated upon this girl.”

He then made a thorough examination of her ear, and found it to be quite sound. After which, careful investigation developed the fact that her sole knowledge of the hospital was derived from detailed information given her by a friend, a lady who, curiously enough, had been operated upon a little while previously for precisely the trouble that the girl had attributed to herself.

In other words, no doubt remained that she had for weeks been acting a lie, from what motive neither her teacher nor her parents could fathom.

Again, a clergyman writing to the Society for Psychical Research from a little English village named Ham, urgently requested the despatch of a skilled investigator to look into certain strange occurrences in the house of a Mr. Turner. This house, the clergyman asserted, was haunted by a “veritable ghost,” which amused itself by playing all sorts of mischievous and annoying pranks.

Remaining invisible, it hurled boots, shoes, and other small objects through the air, upset chairs and tables, and on at least one occasion it had pitched the family cat into the fire. All this was done, according to both the clergyman and several other intelligent eye-witnesses, under circumstances that rendered it impossible that the “manifestations” could be the work of any human agency.

“No one can explain it,” the clergyman declared. “It is quite a mystery, and is causing great excitement through the countryside.”

The task of laying this “poltergeist,” or troublesome ghost, was assigned to Mr. Ernest Westlake, an able psychical researcher. Proceeding to Ham, he found that the Turner family consisted of Mr. Turner, his wife, one son, and a deformed little daughter, Polly, not quite twelve years old. So impressed was he with what he heard that his first report indicated a belief that the phenomena witnessed might be genuine evidences of some mysterious and unknown force. But, after a few hours of watchful scrutiny, he sent word that “the Ham ghost is a humbug _now_, whatever it may have been.” In detail Mr. Westlake afterward added:

“After posting my first letter, I went to the Turners’ and sat on a bench in front of the fire. No one else was present besides the child. She sat on a low stool in the chimney on the right of the fire. On the other side of the hearth there was a brick oven in which, much to Polly’s interest, I placed a dish of flour, arguing that a power capable of discharging the contents of the oven (one of the first disturbances) might be able to impress the flour. After a time I went to the oven to see how the flour was getting on, stooping slightly to look in; but I kept my eye on the child’s hands, looking at them under my right arm. I saw her hand stealing down toward a stick that was projecting from the fire; I moved slightly, and the hand was withdrawn. Next time I was careful to make no movement, and saw her hand jerk the brand out on to the floor. She cried out. I expressed interest and astonishment; and her mother came in and cleared up the debris.

“This was repeated several times, and one or two large sticks ready for burning, which stood near the child, was thrown down. Then a kettle that was hanging on a hook and chain was jerked off the hook on to the coals. This was repeated. As the kettle refused to stay on its hook, the mother placed it on the hearth; but it was soon overturned on to the floor. After this, I was sitting on the bench that stood facing the fire in front of the table. I had placed my hat on the table behind me. The little girl was standing near me on my right hand. Presently the hat was thrown down on to the ground. I did not on the first occasion see the girl’s movements; but later, by seeming to look in another direction, I saw her hand sweep the hat off on to the floor. This I saw at least twice. A Windsor chair near the girl was then upset more than once, falling away from her. On one occasion I saw her push the chair over with both hands. As she was looking away from me, I got a nearly complete view. After one of these performances, the mother came in and asked the child if she had done it; but the latter denied it.” (_Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, vol. xii.)

Unquestionably, Mr. Westlake concluded, Polly was the “ghost.” Yet he found it difficult to conjecture why she should have assumed so singular a rôle. Neither she nor her parents—whom he exonerated from all complicity—had profited a penny’s worth from her exploits. Indeed, her parents had been put out of pocket by the damage to the household furniture and utensils.

Consider, also, the case of a little Chicago boy who had fallen out of a play-wagon and hurt one of his arms. The injury was in reality very slight; but his mother, becoming greatly alarmed, declared her belief that the doctor would say the arm was broken. What the doctor—D’Orsay Hecht, of Northwestern University Medical School—did say was that a few applications of witch-hazel would speedily remedy matters.