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Chapter V 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 (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 (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 (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).) (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. 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 (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 (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 (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. (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).) (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 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 (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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