CHAPTER VI

DEVIATIONS AND THE LUDICROUS

Whenever we can prick a vital point in our neighbor, whenever we can find a weak spot in our fellow beings, in their manners, beliefs, institutions, and ideals, there we invariably find the ludicrous. For while we enjoy the spontaneous laughter of free activity and unimpeded manifestation of energy we also feel our superiority by the detection of defects, imperfections, and weakness in our fellow beings, or in the manners which they have, or in the views and beliefs which they entertain. The social brute attacks and kills its weak associate, while man hits his neighbor's weak spots with jibes, ridicule, and laughter.

It is quite probable that laughter, in addition to the fact of its being one of the important psychomotor manifestations of the play instinct, may also be of some use in the biological process of organic social growth. All variations that fall below the average social level have somehow to be corrected and possibly eliminated.

Now when a variation is positively harmful to social life then society defends itself by penalties and punishments. Variations, however, occur all the time in social life, and their tendency is at first uncertain. Many of the variations may be good, and others may be indifferent. Not all variations from the standard can possibly be punished as sins and crimes. It is true that in many

ancient barbaric and savage societies change and variation are regarded as sinful and criminal. Man must live up to the average standard, any deviation from which is strictly punished by law. Life is prescribed to its very minutiæ, even to the cut of the dress, the kind and manner of food and relations with other people. Still, even under such conditions, some slight variations will occur, variations which cannot possibly be provided against. Society wishes to be immune from changes, and especially from uncertain changes, the old way is certain and safe, while a new way may possibly lead to some harmful results. The only sure protection is to guard against all possible changes and variations, however slight and apparently harmless.

Who can foresee whither a variation may tend? May not a given variation be of a harmful, inferior type and tend gradually to disintegrate, to degrade the quality of social life? Variations are risky and dangerous, better not to try them. Life, however, cannot be arrested, variations do occur in societies and tribes, however rigid and stationary their social status. Variations cannot be exactly treated as sinful and criminal, since many of them are quite slight and inoffensive. There are again some that may prove useful. On the whole, however, changes are suspicious, especially if they do not coincide with custom and religion. Something must be done to counteract and destroy the very germ of possible serious changes, or slight eccentricities. Slight eccentricities and trivial changes do not deserve punishment or the use of social force. Society possesses a powerful weapon to kill the germs of variations, to nip them in their bud. This weapon is ridicule. Slight, inoffensive variations are treated as inferior, as below the average

level, below the normal; such variations or mutations are treated with ridicule; they are regarded as inferior to the normal type and laughed at.

Society does not find it convenient to undertake forcible suppression of slight, incubating, individual mutations; it does not wish to set in motion the machinery of law and order, the judge, the policeman, the soldier, the court, the prison, and the barrack in order to punish small changes, insignificant mutations and trivial eccentricities; they are all put down below the normal and covered with ridicule. Such a powerful solvent is ridicule that few variations or mutations can withstand it. Only mutations of great vigor and vitality can survive the scathing lightning of laughter and ridicule. Few men and women have the hardihood to withstand that peculiar ostracism expressed in social ridicule. Man is gregarious; he must go with the crowd. In fact we may say that man is more afraid of social ridicule than of actual severe punishment. Society can thus kill innovations, deviations, variations, mutations, without any severity, without any shedding of blood as the inquisitorial phrase runs; it can smother all new-fangled things and have its laugh and fun beside. Why punish, why not laugh?

To be classed with the rejected, with the inferior, with the abnormal is humiliating to the average man, and more so to the average woman. The average "normal" man and woman dread ridicule. The power of ridicule is so potent, the fear of it is so overwhelming that the stoutest of heart turns coward and runs. Neither persecution nor social ostracism can equal in repressive force social jibe and jeer. The true hero is he who can ignore social ridicule.

Persecution is a homage paid to the persecuted. For

society sees in the persecuted a power to be reckoned with of which it is afraid, but laughter is an innocent merrymaking at the expense of the insignificant, the weak, the defective, the inferior, and the trivial. Such an attitude of our neighbors to us is so humiliating that few can bear it. Society thus possesses an amusing and powerful means for the control of variations, deviations, and eccentricities. Man can hardly remain unscathed by the social lye, by the powerful solvent of social ridicule. Laughter is an efficient instrument, inexpensive and apparently mild. "Great enlargement of mind," Pascal tells us, "not less than extreme limitation of faculty is charged with folly. Nothing obtains currency but mediocrity. The multitude have established their order of things and are on the alert to let no one escape who attempts to break through at either end Neither Hamlet mad nor Hamlet genius can escape the detection and revenge of the established order.

There are, however, times when decadence sets into the social organism; social rigidity relaxes; then the individual turns on society and repays it in its own coin. Genius discerns the weak spots of the social constitution, of enfeebled institutions, worn out ideas, decaying ideals and beliefs. With the power of his genius the individual brings those defects and faults clearly before the social mind. Like the wasp he stings the social caterpillar in the weakest, in the most vital and most tender points of social organization. Society wriggles in laughter, but it bears the attack often without retaliation. Society is served with its own medicine; it is wounded by its own most powerful weapon. Such a condition is an indication of grave social changes.

The weapon of ridicule is employed by all great re

formative movements, such as Humanism, the Reformation, the Renaissance, the English and the French revolutions. The ridicule which the individual turns on society indicates decay of old structures and presages the birth of a new order of things. Under such conditions we find Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopædists of the eighteenth century. Like Aristophanes, Voltaire made people laugh. The great Greek comic writer ridiculed the new order from the standpoint of the old one, while the great French philosopher made France and Europe laugh away their old worn out institutions and obsolete beliefs. Aristophanes could only see before him a degenerated Greece with all its glory in the past, while Voltaire saw before him a rejuvenated Europe and France with all their greatness in the future.

Perhaps a few examples taken from Voltaire may best elucidate our standpoint:

"How can you prefer senseless stories that mean nothing?"

"That is just why we read them," answered the ladies.

This is a good comment on the literature produced and consumed by ladies in our own times.

Zadig followed the noble maxim of Zoroaster: When thou eatest give something to the dogs, even though they should bite thee. Instructed in the sciences of the ancient Chaldeans, he was not ignorant of such principles of natural philosophy as were then known, and knew as much of metaphysics as has been known in any age, that is to say, next to nothing. He was firmly persuaded that the year consisted of 365 days and a quarter, and when the leading magi of his time told him with contemptuous arrogance that he entertained dangerous opinions and that it was a