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Chapter V

I now propose to test the definition by means of the examples given in Chapter I, though before I start it may be well to emphasise the fact that, whereas all laughter is the expression of superior adaptation, all states of superior adaptation do not necessarily lead to laughter, and also that whereas the explanation I have given of the facial expression in laughter seems to account for the origin of laughter, the definition of laughter would still stand, even if the explanation of the expression could not be sustained.
        The letters in brackets correspond to those prefixed to each example in Chapter I, so that there will be no need to repeat the examples in extenso.
        (a) To find safety at its mother's side after being chased, is to find superior adaptation; therefore the signal of superior adaptation — showing teeth — is instinctively made.
        (b) To know oneself well dressed is to be conscious of superior adaptation. Self-glory, not necessarily resulting from any comparison, is therefore felt, and the slightest provocation broadens the perpetual smile into a complete display of teeth.
        (c) The other gods of Olympus enjoyed superior adaptation as compared with Hephæstos, and therefore gave the signal of it. (But in regard to this kind of

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superior adaptation, it should always be borne in mind that it is not constantly, at all stages of human evolution or even at all stages of the same man's life, necessarily expressed by laughter, that is to say, signalled by showing teeth. Physical superior adaptation tends to be felt less acutely by adults than by children, by cultivated than by uncultivated peoples, by the educated than by the uneducated. Thus, as Meredith observed — and he had no idea of the theory of laughter outlined here — "We know the degree of refinement in men by the matter they will laugh at." 1 The Chinaman, the schoolboy and the savage are much more inclined to laugh at a person falling down and hurting himself than the cultivated man, whose claim to superior adaptation resides in things more purely spiritual — scholarship, taste, science, etc., and who will laugh only at things which provoke the sense of superior adaptation in a more subtle and non-physical manner.)
        (d) As Bergson points out, we laugh only at the human. It is the humanising of the dog, by giving him a wig and converting him into an ugly and grotesque little man, that causes the animal to become an object provoking the onlooker to signal superior adaptation by showing teeth.
        (e) The child in its stall is not being belaboured and shows teeth because it wishes to signal that it is enjoying superior adaptation to the clown. (The same remarks apply here as in the parenthesis to (c).)
        (f) Ignorant people are inclined to imagine that their country, their language, their customs, are necessarily the most rational, and therefore show teeth

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at anyone betraying another nativity, another language, another custom. Moreover, to be unable to master as completely as they do something "which is such a commonplace with them as their own language, suggests a childish failing and naturally an inferiority. In the first case, the very sounds of a foreign language suggest, to the ignorant, the inane gibbering of infants and lunatics, and the mob are therefore inclined to show teeth when they overhear foreigners speaking.
        (g) We feel inclined to show teeth because we are instinctively impelled to signal superior adaptation to the extent of having our own hats on. (The same remarks apply here as in the parenthesis to (c).)
        (h) He shows teeth, because, knowing instinctively that it is the signal of superior adaptation, he tries out of vanity to bluff you into thinking his adaptation is still superior, and thus to damp your own feelings of superior adaptation and quell your laughter. It is all quite unconscious, both in him and in the crowd.
        (i) The lady in Bond Street showed teeth all the time out of pure self-defence or vanity. Although her adaptation was for the moment conspicuously inferior, she quite unconsciously gave the signal of superior adaptation for the same reasons actuating the man under (h).
        (j) Sir Arthur Mitchell, who investigated this matter, quotes the opinions of men like Southey, Coleridge, Lowell, Edgeworth and Kinglake, all of whom declared that breathing the gas caused the most pleasant sensations; often they spoke of the pleasure as being quite strong. 2 Now pleasure has from the

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beginning of time been rooted in feelings of superior adaptation.
        (k) Here is a case of the liberation from the customary constraints, or rigid laws of reason and logic, and since every form of liberation is a state of superior adaptation, it leads to showing teeth. All nonsense comes under this head, and leads to the order of laughter which Hobbes, in his explanation, says arises from "absurdities" and "infirmities abstracted from persons."
        (l) The more dignified a person is, the more he challenges by comparison our own claim to superior adaptation; consequently the more relieved do we feel when his superior adaptation is reduced under our eyes for a moment. This, of course, does not apply to a case where we are emotionally related to the superior person by great reverence, respect or love, because then another emotion conflicts with our single-minded contemplation of the mishap befalling him. (Same remarks apply here as in the parenthesis to (c).)
        (m) We fear no competition or rivalry from a horse, a child, an old woman, or an old man. They do not threaten our adaptation, consequently we are not conscious of our superior adaptation when they fall. But a child may show teeth when another child falls, because possibilities of rivalry are present. One must be very low in the scale of human evolution to feel superior adaptation on witnessing the fall of an animal. (See, however, the parenthesis to (c).)
        (n) We show teeth when embarrassed, because we feel our adaptation is inferior, and we wish to convince the company that it is not inferior. (See (h) and (i).)

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        (o) The mishap to a performer on the stage places him in a position of twofold inferiority; because, not only does he cease to be master of the character he is acting, but he also ceases to be master of himself qua man. (See, however, the parenthesis to (c).)
        (p) We show teeth only at the schoolboy howlers which we can recognise as such by our own unaided knowledge, because to know them as such through subsequent explanation is tacitly to confess that we might have been guilty of them ourselves — so that what might have been a position of superior adaptation becomes, if knowledge fails us, a position of inferior adaptation.
        (q) We show teeth at a pun, in the first place because the repetition of similar sounding words in one sentence is, as Bergson points out, sometimes unintentional and a sign of absent-mindedness (that is to say, inferior adaptation). Alexander Bain also suggests two further reasons. In the grasping of a pun there is self-glory (superior adaptation) at having noticed the play on the words, and there is triumph (superior adaptation) over the degradation of a nobler word. 3
        For instance, in Shakespeare's Henry VI. (Part II, Act I, Scene 2), Falstaff and the Prince of Wales are ragging each other.
        Says Falstaff: And I prithee, sweet wag, when thou art king, as God save thy grace — majesty I should say, for grace thou wilt have none, —
        Prince: What none?
        Falstaff: No, by my troth, not so much as will serve to be a prologue to an egg and butter.

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        In this triple pun, grace as a prayer, is degraded twice — first by being confused with grace (a form of address) and secondly by recalling grace, elegance in form and manner.
        Again in the schoolboy's reply to the Scripture question: "What does 'sick of the palsy' mean? "we get a similar degradation. The boy says: "It means having the palsy so long that you're sick of it."
        Here is another instance: "We row in the same boat, you know," said a comic writer to his friend Douglas Jerrold. "True, my good fellow," retorted Douglas Jerrold, "we do row in the same boat, but with different skulls."
        The degradation is here obviously the reduction of the noble human cranium to the level of an oar for propelling a boat.
        (r) When we understand a joke in a foreign language, we show teeth with more than usual insistence, because we celebrate a twofold triumph — that of understanding the joke and that of understanding the language.
        (s) We show teeth when tickled, because, as Dr. Robinson has pointed out, 4 ticklish places are in highly vulnerable and defenceless regions of the body, and the threat to them in tickling is therefore so serious that the relief from inferior adaptation, when it is realised that the threat is not serious, causes a correspondingly high feeling of superior adaptation. Moreover, only intimate associates ever tickle one, and a bodily attention from a very intimate friend is usually met with a feeling of superior adaptation. Added to this is the nervous stimulation, which, particularly in

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erogenous zones, like the neck, is not unpleasant, and is reminiscent (only racially so in the child, of course) of the eternal and time-honoured familiarities of sex-play, during which a feeling of superior adaptation is constant. It should, however, be remembered that all dogs show teeth when being tickled and rolled on the floor. Evidently, as Dr. Robinson points out, the state of one who is being tickled is a very defenceless one, at any moment the ragging may change to a serious menace, and showing teeth by the passive party has probably therefore been a traditional accompaniment of this play for millions of years before man appeared.
        (t) We show teeth on meeting a friend, because we are gregarious animals, and every friend means an access of support, strength and good adaptation. (This particular example, as we have seen above, was explained by Penjon most inadequately, and, strange to say, it is regarded by Mr. J. C. Gregory as a particularly difficult test for theories of laughter.) 5
        When an enemy appears and we are in company, we show teeth — often quite irrelevantly to the conversation we are having — in order to signal to our enemy that we can be superiorly adapted without him, or her, in our lives. When talking to people in the street, if you notice a smile on their faces, or any hilarity, which seems to be out of all proportion to the matter you are discussing, you may usually take it for granted that someone is hovering about to whom your companion wishes to give the impression of superior adaptation.
        (u) If we show teeth at a joke against ourselves, we do so only out of vanity, to convince the joker that we are still superiorly adapted, or else that we are good

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fellows, or "good sports," or whatever the jargon of the day may be for the gregarious hero. If we are not vain, we either do not show teeth at a joke against ourselves, or else we show them out of courtesy, to encourage the joker. (See, however, (h), (i) and (v).)
        (v) This is a variation of (h), (i) and (u).
        (w) We show teeth at a surprise or an expectation that ends in nothing, which so many investigators have believed to be the occasion of all laughter, because, for millions of years, surprise and expectation have always meant possible danger, possible inferior adaptation. (The Jack-in-the-box is the classical toy of this kind of comedy.) When, therefore, the surprise or expectation turns out to be harmless, or nothing, we rise suddenly from a state of apprehension (possible inferior adaptation) to a state of confidence and safety (superior adaptation). This covers Spencer and Kant's descending incongruity, or the expectation that ends in nothing.
        (x) We show teeth at an incongruity because it is the characteristic of a mad world, freed from the mental and physical bondage of logic, reason and scientific method; and, in such a world, even if only imagined, we taste once more of the euphoria of irrational infancy (Freud) or merely of the joys of emancipation from reason (Renouvier, Penjon and John Dewey).
        (y) We show teeth at a good nonsense picture by Lear or Bateman, because the figure or scene presented either makes certain human beings appear grotesque, or else is possible only in a world that has abolished the constraints of reason. See (x). (The more harassed we are by the complexities of our real existence, the more

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likely we are to find superior adaptation in such scenes and pictures. Hence the extraordinary and increasing vogue of nonsense, during the gradually increasing complexities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.)
        (z) We show teeth at mere caricature because of the reasons under (y), or because we happen to know the people caricatured, and find their least fortunate features so spitefully exaggerated as to render them abnormal, that is to say, inferior people. (It should be noted that "abnormal" always means "sub-normal" to the crowd, who never stop to ascertain whether the aberration from type may not constitute a plus, but always hastily conclude that it constitutes a minus.)
        (A) We show teeth at disguises, because they have the power of making the familiar unfamiliar, so that the ascent from inferior adaptation in presence of the unfamiliar, to superior adaptation, operates as in (w); or because disguises transport us to an unreal world — a world of nonsense, a fairy world, or some inadequately explored world of the past, which we imagine to have been better than this (see (x) and (y)); or because a disguise may make a normal human being descend to an inferior being.
        (B) We show teeth when others show teeth, because we are gregarious animals, among whom moods are infectious. (We yawn when others yawn. Women cry when they see others cry.) The quality of sympathy does not, as the etymology of the word implies, lead to fellow feeling only for suffering, it imposes on those who possess it — particularly the uncontrolled — every mood that is conspicuous among their fellows.

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        (C) We show teeth at a good ruse, a good trick, a good case of diamond cut diamond, and also at a "witticism, because we sympathise, or side with the stronger party — the witty or resourceful speaker or trickster — and share his superior adaptation. (We only do so, however, in the case of witticisms, provided the point of the witticism does not hurt or offend our own peculiar susceptibilities. We laugh uproariously at a witticism that conforms with our own fads or beliefs, we hardly smile at one which exposes or assails them. I have tested this again and again with mixed audiences of men and women, by reciting Napoleon's witticism on the difference between success in war and success in love. Napoleon said: "Success in war means surrounding your enemy, routing him, and driving him from the field. Success in love means — escape." Without exception the men in the audience have always laughed at this, and the women and girls have always remained coldly silent and grave.
        (D) We show teeth at good mimicry or imitation: (1) because of sympathy with the superior adaptation (skill) of the imitators; (2) because of the element of deception which, however, does not deceive us; (3) because, in the case of mimicry of persons, the imitation usually caricatures and therefore belittles them; (4) because when men imitate cats and dogs, elephants, etc., they humanise the beasts (see (d) and (x)); and (5) because of the incongruity — nonsense state — of the situation: here you have a bird, or the sound of a bird, or a cat, or the sound of a cat, and no bird or cat. (See (x).)

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        (E) We show teeth in a mock intellectual way when, at a public debate, one disputant cracks a joke against his opponent; and we (particularly the less alert intellectually) regard the disputant who has had the joke cracked against him as defeated in the argument, because a crowd cannot help feeling, owing to the instincts associated with showing teeth, that a man or woman against whom they are showing teeth must be inferior. Hence the trick of raising a laugh against your opponent in debate, which was recommended by the Greek Gorgias as early as the fifth century B.C. 6
        (F) The superior adaptation felt by most decent and normal people when they hear stories or references either frankly indecent or bordering on the indecent, is really no different from the superior adaptation felt by the savage and shown by him in roars of laughter, when confronted by a frankly obscene act or display. It is due to the release from a constraint — in this case from one of decency — and to the consequent generation of an intense feeling of freedom and probably also of primitive and infantile irresponsibility and euphoria. It is also due in part to the fact that indecent stories and illusions turn almost exclusively on bodily functions, particularly those of sex, all of which are traditionally associated with superior adaptation. Of course. Puritans who suffer from a neurotic phobia, whether of the functions of the organs of sex, or of some other part of the body, will not feel this superior adaptation, or will repress it. Reminded by the indecent or salacious story, of their neurosis, they will feel more inferiorly adapted than ever, and will not, therefore, show teeth. The kind of obscenity the

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savage laughs uproariously at, however — for instance, to mention one example at random, that described by E. E. Evans-Pritchard in his able paper on this subject 7 — although more gross than that at which the civilised white man laughs, serves, as Mr. Pritchard shows, the same purpose in savage life. It releases the onlooker from constraints and conventions, the only difference being that the savage is often obliged, not necessarily owing to the greater immorality of his life, but rather to his greater familiarity with the sight of male and female nudity, to resort to more drastic breaches of what the European considers decency.
        A number of further examples can now be added.
        (G) A child smiles and laughs when it is being teased, a grown-up person does the same when he is being taunted, because each hopes by means of the bluff of showing teeth, to defeat his tormentor by feigning superior adaptation although inferior adaptation is felt. Shakespeare said: "They laugh that win." 8 Yes, but they also laugh that lose, if they who lose are anxious to despoil the victor of one of the most precious fruits of his victory — the evidence of inferior adaptation in the vanquished.
        (H) People laugh easily and uproariously in a court of law or in any grave assembly, because in surroundings of great solemnity where constraints 'and great individual restraint are imposed, any excuse to break through the irksome limitations of liberty is seized with unreasoning avidity, and for a moment superior adaptation is tasted and wildly expressed in the instinctive fashion by the most silent and most constrained of those present (the spectators). Hence the absurd ease

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with which judges, magistrates and presiding commissioners acquire a reputation for wit and humour. Alexander Bain noticed this. 9 (Children have a tendency to laugh in church and at funerals for the same reason.)
        (I) People show teeth encouragingly at anyone who has just escaped a serious injury, or who has just been rescued from danger. They hope, by the principle of sympathy to bring someone who is depressed by inferior adaptation speedily back to a consciousness of his superior adaptation. Mothers do this to their children after a fall or an accident that has turned out to be trifling.
        (J) Nothing so intrigues a whole company as solitary laughter; because until the cause of the solitary laugh is discovered, everyone present, knowing that he lies under the suspicion of being laughed at, cannot rest until he has cleared up the mystery and set at rest the doubts about his superior adaptation which the solitary laugher has raised. Hence the familiar anxious demand: "Do tell me what you are laughing at!"
        In regard to all these thirty-six examples of laughter (except those of feigned or bluff laughter), we should never forget Hobbes's careful opening statement that laughter "is always joy," and Darwin's reminder that the laugher "must be in a happy frame of mind." It is this element of joy in laughter which misled Voltaire into ruling that laughter was incompatible with "indignation" and "contempt," and he called it "joyfulness." As I have already shown, we need take no notice of the word "indignation" in Voltaire's

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objection; because, not only is indignation, in any case, incompatible with any form of laughter (except, perhaps, the feigned or "bluff" kind, and that is doubtful), but it was obviously introduced by Voltaire with a certain lack of candour to make his objection seem more conclusive. What is important is that Hobbes, like his critics, insists on joy always being an accompanying feature of genuine, unfeigned laughter. When, however, we have thoroughly grasped the fact that there is no laughter without superior adaptation, genuine or feigned, what could be more obvious than that joy must be a constant element in genuine laughter? No other emotion but joy could constantly accompany states of superior adaptation; for, as Hobbes, in the sequel to his statement, points out, dejection is wholly appropriated by those states which are the reverse of self-glory — that is to say, inferior adaptation.

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