CHAPTER XV

THE MECHANICAL AND THE STUPID

Bergson, in his remarkable essay on laughter, claims that the ridiculous is present wherever the automatic, the absent-minded, the rigid, or the mechanical is detected in the flexible, ever adjusting spirit of the living; in other words, the ridiculous is the finding or revelation of the rigid, automatic mechanism that takes up its abode in the living soul. He studies the work of many comic writers, he analyzes jokes and witticisms and tries in all of them to find the mechanical behind life activity. Bergson lays down the law: "The attitudes, gestures, and movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds one of a mere machine." "Something mechanical encrusted upon the living." "The body taking precedence of the soul. Matter seeking to outdo the mind, the letter aiming at ousting the spirit." "The laughable is something mechanical in something living." According to Bergson, "comedy combines events so as to introduce mechanism into the outer forms of life." "What is essentially laughable is what is done automatically." "Absentmindedness is always comical." "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." "Inside the person we must distinctly perceive, as though through a glass, a set-up mechanism. The

originality of a comic artist is thus expressed in the special kind of life he imparts to a mere puppet."

It is true that mechanism in life is a factor in the ludicrous, but it is not true when we assert the universal proposition that the ludicrous is nothing but the mechanical in life. Bergson got hold of only one of the factors of the ludicrous. It is true that the detection of the mechanical, of routine in life is a source of ridicule, it is, however, only one of the many streams from which ridicule is drawn, but it is not the only one.

Moreover, the stream has not been traced to its source. The mechanical in life is ludicrous not as mere mechanical, but because it is in relation to an inferior form of existence. The mechanical, the routine is ludicrous, because it is associated with deformities, meanness, triviality, debasement, frivolity, and inferiority. Bergson lays down the law: "We laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing." True, but do we not laugh every time when a person gives us the impression of being an animal, a brute, an ass?

We do not certainly think of mechanism when we compare a person to a cow, an ass, or a mule. The mechanical in life may be granted to be ludicrous, but it is by no means true that in every joke, pun, humor, and wit we are to look for the rigid, the mechanical. We laugh whenever we can detect the inferior under the cloak of the superior, whenever we can show the low, the mean, the base under the guise of the superior. We laugh when we can discern the fool's cap under the crown of the monarch, when we can see the ass's head on a Bottom's body, conditions hidden from us in the case of persons who happen to fascinate us by their superficial manners of dignity. We laugh, not only at the man of

routine, but laugh all the more when we can discern in the respectable, dignified, moral, and religious man the scoundrel, the knave, and the rogue. We laugh whenever we discover the illusory under the veil of reality. We laugh whenever a low form of life attempts to impress us by superior airs. We laugh at meanness, mediocrity, vanity, and conceit.

Perhaps we may now further advance in our search for the nature of the ludicrous. We have pointed out that the finding of the inferior under the guise of.the superior, discerning the low form under the veil of the higher is the essence of the ludicrous. Defects, deviations from the normal, from the ordinary standard accepted in the given community-low states, mean conditions of life paraded as merits and virtues, vanity, and conceit in the garb of respectability and dignity, all are good subjects for ridicule. The high form is shown to be illusory, deceptive. The person ridiculed is unconscious of his defects and shortcomings, and thinks that his low form is really a high one. All his actions, sayings, and mental activity flow from that source of unconsciousness, the unawareness of his low condition. In fact, he even regards his low state as the very best and the highest. Failures are taken by him as successes, and demerits are regarded as virtues.

In its more developed forms the naïve, unconscious state rises to extreme vanity and conceit. He cannot see himself as others see him. He is cursed with the delusion of parading the inferior as the superior, he takes the low as the high, the mean as the dignified. Is not the ludicrous a form of mental blindness?

There is no need to go far to look for this mental defect. Like dirt, it is ever present, we must constantly

purify and clean ourselves from it. The ridiculous is something that takes direct possession of the soul and strikes at the very kernel of the human personality. Ridicule purifies the soul encrusted with moral dirt.

What defect acts so as to paralyze a person into unconsciousness of his own defects and failures? Is it not a defect of intelligence, a want of the reasoning powers? And still the defect, though mental, and affecting the reasoning capacities, must not be of the nature of a mental malady. For otherwise our pity would be aroused and we would regard it rather as a misfortune which would be more tragic than comic. The mental defect must be of such a character as can be corrected, or as something that may be rectified by the person. In short, the subject of ridicule is foolishness, stupidity, ignorance.

When we come to examine closely the sources of ridicule we find that possibly nothing so much answers the purpose of the comic as the dull of wit and the stupid. The boor, the yokel, the silly, the weakminded will ever form the theme of comedy and anecdote. It is the fool who is ridiculed. Whoever acts the superior being unconscious of his real inferiority or thinks that others cannot see it, while it is patent to everybody that he is below the average social standard of intellect, he is a fool and he is laughed at for his stupidity.

An ignorant fellow who tries to pass off as a learned professor or as a great scholar, even if he is conscious of his ignorance, but is unconscious of the fact that others can see through him, is a fit subject for ridicule. He is stupid and a fool.

The ludicrous side becomes even more enhanced if he is convinced that he is really a learned man and acts and talks accordingly, thus being doubly ignorant, ig

norant of his own condition and ignorant of the attitude that others have toward him. He is doubly foolish and the laughter at him is irresistible.

In cases where the cause of the ridicule is not clearly shown a little examination reveals the fact that it is the fool and human folly generally that excite the merriment and ridicule of people, they are the constant topic of the joker, the punster, the wit, and even of the earnest prophet, the psalmist, and Christ. The central character of comedy is the fool, and the subject of the comic is human folly. Human folly, under all its disguises and in all the endless forms of vanity, conceit, arrogance, false pride, false overestimation of self and things, institutions, manners, beliefs, and ideals, all defects and faults of the human soul that come under the categories of silliness, pig-headedness, asininity, are the subject of the comic and the ludicrous.

Cervantes lays his finger on the cause of the ludicrous by telling us plainly the source whence flow all the comic manifestations of that Divine Comedy in which is penned the immortal type of Don Quixote:

This gentleman (Don Quixote) gave himself up to the reading of tales of chivalry. Among them all none pleased him so much as those love speeches and challenges, where in several places he found written: "The reason of the unreasonable treatment of my reason in such wise, that with reason I complain of your beauty," and also when he read: "The high heaven of your divinity which divinely fortifies you with the stars making you meritorious of the merit merited by your greatness." With this kind of language the poor gentleman lost his wits. In short, he so bewildered himself in this kind of study that his brain was dried up in such a manner that he came to lose his wits.