PHILOSOPHY OF LAUGHTER. CHAPTER I. THE WISDOM AND MYSTERY OF LAUGHTER. THERE is no circumstance of our life more mysterious than laughter. Sir Richard Steele has said "it is a good piece of service one man does another when he tells him the manner of his being pleased." But, surely no task is more difficult, for no mental or physical phenomena are more wonderful. Doubtless, laughter is the brother of tears, and he who smiles most will probably sigh most. The sources of all laughter and merriment are in the cordial sympathies of our nature. Laughter is very nearly related to the highest and most instinctive wisdom; it bears a high relationship among the noblest children of the brain; it stands at no distant remove from Judgment on the one hand, and Imagination on the other; and it is a B proof of a healthy nature, for both thinking and acting. He must be regarded as a foe to man who endeavours to preach down laughter. It is so good a piece of common property that all should possess it; and when its cheerful ringing music is only upon healthy themes, it leaves no man the worse for it, and many a man much the better. The causes, the provocatives to laughter are many, and it is evident that man is intended to laugh. The love of the mirthful, the perception of the ludicrous, is natural to him, and many things assist it which will be noticed in the course of this paper. The two great causes of laughter everywhere, are wit and humour, or the ludicrous expressed, and the ludicrous exhibited; but the chief cause of laughter is our love of order, and beauty, and consistency. We seem to be constituted thus for laughter, as a natural consequence of our perception of the most decorous and beautiful things in nature, and viewed in this light, the ludicrous becomes the safeguard of society, a great teacher of every kind of truth. We could have no knowledge of disorder, but from our knowledge of relation and order; no knowledge of deformity, but from beauty; no knowledge of the ridiculous, but from the natural and the lovely. In other words, the perception of resemblances and proprieties gives the perception of differences and improprieties; and literary history abound with instances of men who illustrate this view. Just as minds, gifted with exquisite sensibility of the beauty of tones, are most exquisitely pained by jarring notes, or as persons in whom the love of order and exactness predominates, are most shocked by disarray or disorder; so, those eyes so keen to notice the graces and beauties, the ovals and circles, and lovely shades of nature, are excited to mirth, when in their stead gracelessness and conceit, rugged angles and blots are presented to them. The poet, therefore, most exuberant and overflowing with just and admirable appreciation of delightful scenes, and thoughts, and impressions, will, by consequence, frequently overflow too with the contrastive affluence of words, moulding themselves into wit, of a mode of discourse admirably humoursome; will easily construct pictures and designs full of contraries and incongruities, but both illustrating the speaker's insight into the lovely and the natural. The sources of laughter lie then in incongruity. This is only another name for the ludicrous and the mirth-provoking. When we speak, therefore, of one who has a keen sense of the ludicrous, what we mean is, that there is an acute perception of differences, and the cause of the laughter is the emotion of surprise; thus the same cause which prompts laughter in the child by some unexpected toy, or by the removal of the mask from the face, prompts laughter on the cheek in mature years, when hypocrisy and deceit are unmasked. All deformity is ludicrous, unless sheltered by humanity, and that, sometimes finds even superior loveliness there. Perhaps this theory of the ludicrous tends to confirm the generally received and acknowledged theory of the Beautiful; namely, that all beauty depends on the law of association; that it is the result of accustomed observations, and common combinations, and circumstances of nature; and, therefore, whatever departs from the common routine, whatever becomes eratic is ridiculous, if it is not of sufficient magnitude to be terrible, and provokes to laughter, if it does not excite horror. We could not get on without laughter; the pools of life would become stagnant; care would be too much for us; the heart would corrode, life would be all bas relievo and no alto; our faces would assume a less cheerful aspect, and become like those of the men who never laugh; the river of Life, as we sailed over it, would be like "the lake of the Dismal Swamp," we should have to put all humanity through a revolution, we should indeed have to begin life with a sigh, and end it with a groan, while cadaverous faces and words, to the tune of The Dead March in Saul," would make up the whole interlude of our existence. Doubtless, a man's character may be read in his laughter. Show to us what a man laughs at, and how he laughs, and some estimate may be formed of the whole man. "In order to look into any person's temper," says Sir Richard Steele, “I generally make my first observation on his laugh, whether he is easily moved, and what are the passages which throw him into the agreeable kind of convulsion. People are never so much unguarded, as when they are pleased; and laughter being a visible symptom of some inward satisfaction, it is then, if ever, that you may believe the face. There is no better index to point us to the particularities of the mind, than this, which is in itself one of the most distinguishing marks of our rationality." For, as Milton says "Smiles from reason flow, to brutes denied, Laughter," Sir Richard continues, “is a vent of any sudden joy that strikes upon the mind, which being too volatile and strong, breaks out in the tremor of the voice. The poets make use of this metaphor, when they would describe Nature in her richest dress, for beauty is never so lovely, as when adorned by the smile, and conversation never sits easier upon us, than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter, which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation." |