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The Origin of LaughterAuthor(s): Sylvia H. BlissReviewed work(s):Source: The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Apr., 1915), pp. 236-246Published by: University of Illinois PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1413253 .

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THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER'By SYLVIA H. BLISS

"The greatest of thinkers, from Aristotle downwards, have tackledthis little problem, which has a knack of baffling every effort, ofslipping away and escaping only to bob up again, a pert challengeflung at philosophic speculation." Laughter, An Essay on the Mean-ing of the Comic. Henri Bergson.

There is noticeable in various quarters a revival of interestin the subject of laughter. Thinkers are resolutely attackingthis problem-which Bergson may term little, but which inreality is very large. Our knowledge of the exciting causesof this most human act has been greatly extended, yet thesubject is by no means exhausted. Despite the clever andpenetrating theories advanced the essential secret of laughterremains shrouded in mystery.Is it not possible that an attack from a different quartermay prove less barren of results? The question may notbe for the philosopher after all but instead demand evidencefrom the biologist and the psychologist. If, through all thecenturies, the challenge has been flung at the feet of thewrong party, Bergson may well characterize it as "pert."The problem is not primarily in regard to the nature of thething laughed at; neither has it to do in the first instancewith the reason for laughter at that particular thing. In theact itself is the mystery. Why should we laugh at all?Those who have investigated the matter have too oftenpaused in their search when a perception of one aspect ofthe comic has been attained. Thenceforth their endeavorsare directed to the task of elucidating and illustrating thisone aspect with the result that the original, underlying causeof laughter remains almost untouched. The earnest studentturns from current theories in disappointment. They do notgo deep enough. Dr. Sidis' recent book, with its wealth ofillustration-which his theory, "Allusion to human stupidityis the root of all comic," is strained to explain, leaves the

1 The writer has learned that the argument in this article is similarin some respects to that used by Freud in his treatise on wit. Herinvestigation was independent of that of the latter.

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THE ORIGINOF LAUGHTER 237reader far from satisfied, while Bergson's clever expositionof the comic is based upon the laughter of highly developed,modern man. From the essay of the latter floats the laughterof the cultured Frenchman-late product of the world's mosthighly civilized race. For an adequate investigation the con-sideration of quite other and simpler phenomena is necessary.The apparent causes of laughter are so various that thegeneralization which embraces all its manifestations must bewide indeed and likewise very simple. We are forced toreckon not only with the broad and generally recognized fieldof the humorous and with the stock instances of the comic;with deformity, eccentricity, surprise, queerness, "the me-chanical in the living," and the inferior, but also with nu-merous occasions not readily classifiable which yet can byno means be ignored. The laughter of childhood; the laughterwith which, according to a press dispatch, two women in theItalian quarter in New York watched the death struggles ofa man whom their companion had murdered; the laughter,as noted by the dramatic critic of The Westminster Gazette,invariably won from an audience by the utterance on the stageof the word " damn "-these are a few of the instances await-ing accurate classification.The evidence afforded by the smile must also be admitted.This fleeting "pale vestige of a laugh," arising at a multitudeof provocations, supersedes to a great extent in the highlycultivated person, the more vigorous physical reaction.Science has demolished the idea of a " funny bone," findsin the brain no special center for appreciation of the humor-ous, and in the world of thought and action nothing inher-ently, intrinsically comic. A social corrective, an outlet forsurplus energy, relief from strain--laughter is all these as-suredly, yet to perceive certain ends which a function servesis by no means to account for its existence. It is evident thatthe laughter of the modern human being is a highly complexfunction far removed from the bald simplicity of that firstlaugh whose strange sound broke the long, silent gravity ofthe pre-human ages. What emotion gave rise to the firstlaugh? Was that primeval man in any modern sense amused?He laughed at no sally of wit; his brain was tickled by nosubtle and devious perception of the comic. Of this we maybe certain. Summoning to our aid the evidence which biologyand psychology afford and guided by the imagination exaltedby scientific training to a species of insight, we will pene-trate to that far away epoch, when mirth was born to earth.What was the first emotion, and what its cause? Without


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238 BLISSdoubt the organisms lowest in the scale of life were and areemotionless. Fulfilling without hindrance or delay their func-tions of nutrition and reproduction, with need and opportunityfor satisfaction, income and expenditure, nicely balanced,what room for pleasurable or painful feeling? Scarcely withaccuracy may we use the term satisfaction in connection withforms so simple, for satisfaction implies a period of want,and here such hiatus between desire and fulfillment, if ex-istent, is infinitesimal. With advance in the scale of life thissimple equilibrium is disturbed. Instinct is delayed in itsfunctioning, hunger and reproduction must wait on occasion.Thus began the swing of the pendulum between need andsatisfaction, and without doubt all the marvelous complexityof human emotion is due in the last analysis to the lengthenedrepetition, the slower and more devious recurrence, of thatprimal oscillation. With further advance need grew morepoignant, satisfaction more intense, until in the higher ani-mals we meet states of feeling fitly termed sad and joyful.Why not laughter? Why is man alone, of all creation, theanimal that laughs? Readily enough comes the answer: Be-cause man alone has intelligence to perceive the humorous.But we find that intelligence is not coextensive with laughternor is appreciation of the comic a necessary condition of itsarousal. Yet it is possible that a consideration of certainother differences between men and animals-differences usu-ally overlooked-will yield matter of greater significance toour problem.The animal is perfectly natural. It follows instinct, hidingand repressing nothing. It may growl, roar, fight, give chase,plunder, excrete, and, subject to certain limitations, feed andreproduce, when it wills. Indecency and shame are wordswithout meaning. Rightness exhorts no homage. If he loves,well and good, but if he hates no social or ethical code tor-ments him with its " ought." In scientific phraseology thereis for the animal no inhibition of instinct. With this free andnatural state contrast man's condition. In the evolution ofhumanity those instincts which are inimical to the progressof civilization are theoretically transformed into qualities andacts less at variance with social and ethical laws, but in realitythe substitution is far from perfect and entire. Man is notyet completely evolved; he is but partly adjusted to a civi-lized environment and a portion of his nature lags far be-hind at a primitive, savage level.The human being, from childhood up, must curb, repress,skulk, hide, control. From the mother's " no, no," to the


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THE ORIGIN OF LAUGHTER 239thundering " Thou shalt not" from Mount Sinai there is aconstant denial of instinct. So accustomed are we to regardthis as pure benefit that we are blind to the accompanying dis-service.Consider man's inner life-a nest of hopes, impulses, anddesires, in themselves perfectly natural and to be expectedat this stage of evolution, yet directly in opposition to theprevailing social, ethical and religious codes. Nature confinedis not entirely quiescent. With all the outlets, transforma-tions and substitutions which physical and mental activitiesafford there remains still a large residue of repressed primalinstinct which results in discordant and tense conditions inthe subconscious life. The repressions of the primitive manof our study were obviously of the most elemental impulsesand took place in obedience to nascent social demands of thetribe and through his own growing sense of shame.Regarding emotion in its essence as the state of tensionoccasioned by delay between impulse and act, desire and ful-fillment, hunger and satisfaction, and perceiving that the pri-mary emotional difference between animals and men consistsin the fact that the latter, of their own volition, to serve cer-tain ends, carry on the work of restraint and delay initiatedby nature, eventually pushing into the subconscious regiontendencies at variance with the slowly forming social code,we discern the conditions ripe for the origin of laughter. Forlaughter is the result of suddenly released repression, thephysical sign of subconscious satisfaction. Our primitive mansaw, it may be, another do the thing reprobated by the tribeand his own nascent conscience. The sight relieved the ten-sion occasioned by his own repressed wish to do the selfsamething-and he laughed. That paroxysm of nerve and musclewas not caused by sense of superiority, as Dr. Sidis wouldno doubt claim; rather it sprang from unconscious sympathywith the reactionary act.It is probable that the track for that particular dischargeof nervous energy was laid long before actual laughter tookplace. Darwin noted that the lower jaw of some species ofbaboons quivered up and down when they were much pleased.The writer has seen the jaws of cats quiver when the ani-mals were excited by the near approach of prey. Expectancy,pleasurable anticipation, satisfaction, with their accompanyingbodily reactions, paved the way for laughter.Today in the highly civilized human being what part ofthe personality laughs? The highest and latest evolved? Thekeen trained intellect perceiving something which delights it?


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240 BLISSDo wisdom, learning, dignity, purity, laugh? Recall Mere-dith's opinion as voiced by Adrian Hartley: " Mournful youcall it? Well, all wisdom is mournful. 'Tis therefore thatthe wise do love the Comic Muse. Their own high foodwould kill them. You should find great poets, rare philoso-phers, night after night on the broad grin before a row ofyellow lights and mouthing masks. Why? Because all's darkat home." From what region does that broad grin come?From idealism, philosophy and wisdom satisfied by nonsense,pleased at folly? Or does the laugh spring from that in theman which is akin to what is portrayed?We are but half in sympathy with that which we profess.We are not in all respects what we think we are. Undercertain conditions there is release of our unrecognized ten-dencies. De Quincey said that a man is disguised by sobrietyrather than by intoxication; and as intoxication uncoversthe under-self in man, so laughter, in the temperate, dis-closes, more delicately and deviously, the mind's unconscioustendencies. Grave, dignified, humane, respectable, religious-why do we laugh at the clever portrayal of characters quitethe opposite? Is it not because a part of our personality is insympathy with the indecorum, triviality, vulgarity of whatwe see? Are we not as honest at the vaudeville as at church-if we attend both? Even more honest? There may behypocrites at church; never at the theater. We may bowthe head during public prayer because it is the custom; welaugh at a joke because we must.This view finds confirmation when we consider what occursduring a struggle to suppress laughter-at the indecorum ofa child or at a joke "delicately not decent." Our surfacesense of propriety strives to suppress the evidence of sub-conscious approval. Without doubt the blush is the resultof similar though still deeper, conflicts.A clever comedienne responding in a recent interview tothe query, How is one funny? said, " I believe that the thingthat really takes is the thing with a touch of nature in it."Her remark was more profound than she knew. The secretof laughter is in a return to nature. Civilization and cultureare late additions and we are living to a great extent in arti-ficial conditions. Even common sense, according to Bergson,is an effort. Psychology makes plain the fact that our presentmental equipment has been slowly and painfully acquired anda certain strain in maintaining that high altitude is inevitable.This tension is relieved by nonsense and by the portrayal inhumorous anecdotes and on the stage of evasions of con-


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THE ORIGINOF LAUGHTER 241vention and infractions of the prevailing code of mannersand of morals. Carlyle once declared that Shakespeare wasgreater than Jesus and pointed to the creation of Fal-staff as proof of his assertion. Of Christ he said: "Thereis no Falstaff in Him." For the individual who is notshocked by this remark it is a perennial source of humorousfeeling. I defy a broad and healthy-minded man, even oneof fine religious temper, to read it without smiling. Castingabout for a reason what do we find? Contrast, the inferiorityof Falstaff, the fact that he is a stock character, typical ofcertain vices? Various formulas of the comic fit the case,but do not, I venture to say, explain the peculiarly humorouscharacter of Carlyle's statement. Falstaff stands as a repre-sentative of the primitive, natural man, and brought intojuxtaposition with his most startling and exalted antithesisin character, elevated for once in human judgment above thatwhich has stifled and repressed the traits he represents, hetriumphs for the moment, and through him nature in our-selves justifies its existence-and laughs.I am not aware that any explanation has been given of thesmile of the subject entering the hypnotic state. As this isa usual accompaniment of the condition it presents an inter-esting problem. If the theory advanced in this essay ap-proaches the truth the solution of the problem is made plainby Professor Jastrow's description of the hypnotic conscious-ness: "- a release from the restraining influences of fear,hesitation, and the ideals of reason and propriety." Hereagain a simpler, more primitive self has its opportunity-and smiles.

Having stated, somewhat clearly and convincingly, it ishoped, the theory of laughter as the expression of subcon-scious satisfaction, it remains to test the theory by applicationto various occasions of laughter. Before proceeding, how-ever, a glance at Bergson's essay on the subject will be in-structive. As I advanced in my study from point to point,the main thesis becoming at each step ever clearer and morereasonable, I was struck by the confirmation afforded it bycertain isolated passages in the work of the French philoso-pher-passages which he interprets in accordance with hisdefinition of the comic as the "mechanical in the living."" What is essentially laughable is what is done automatically.In a vice, even in a virtue, the comic is that element by whichthe person unwittingly betrays himself-the involuntary ges-ture or the unconscious remark." " Profoundly comic say-ings are those artless ones in which some vice reveals itself


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242 BLISSin all its nakedness." " Any incident is comic that calls ourattention to the physical in a person when it is the moralside that is concerned." "The comic character slackens inthe attention that is due to life." " The comic is that side ofa person which reveals his likeness to a thing."Why should we laugh at automatism, the mechanical,absent-mindedness? Bergson's explanation is that thesethings stand for unsociability, for imperfection, which callfor the corrective of laughter. But we do not laugh in orderto correct the comic. Laughter is spontaneous and involun-tary. It bursts forth when a person unwittingly betrays him-self because that betrayal is of natural, elemental tendencies.Laughter is honest and responds to the primitive honesty ofothers. We laugh at a sneeze which hinders a speech at itsmost pathetic passage because pathos in oratory is alwayssomewhat strained-even artificial, while the sneeze is abso-lutely natural and honest. We laugh at the sudden intrusionof the physical when the moral, spiritual, or intellectual ispredominant because the latter are of late date in man's evo-lution-from the body's standpoint interlopers in the house-hold of personality, and the abrupt resumption of rule by thephysical delights because there is relief, triumph, even, fanci-fully speaking, a species of revenge. What has not the bodysuffered through dominance of the soul!Passing to the consideration of some of the conditionswhich give rise to laughter it must be admitted at the outsetthat not all upon analysis yield to the interpretation advancedin this essay. But let it be remembered that our theory en-deavors to account for pure, elemental laughter. Once or-ganized, once this particular emotional reaction-possibly ac-cidental in the first instance-became a habit of the nervoussystem, occasions for its use multiplied. The act was of valueto developing humanity. It has eased-it is easing-the tran-sition from the freedom and naturalness of animal and savagelife to freedom from the animal and savage, our long anddifficult task.All theories of laughter and the comic are more or lessapplicable for the laughter of the world today flashes andgleams like the rays of light from a many-faceted jewel.Still do we find it in large measure the symbol of subcon-scious satisfaction but it has become expressive also of variousother satisfactions, complex, subtle and devious. Certain ofthese are direct outgrowths of the more primitive forms andtraceable to the same roots, while others are apparently purelymental in character. It is notable that the higher we rise in


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THE ORIGINOF LAUGHTER 243the scale of wit and humor the less hearty and boisterousis the accompanying laughter. It has been said that it iswith their minds that Americans laugh most, nowadays. In-terpreted from the standpoint of our study this indicates anadvance in evolution-the substitution of mental for moreprimitive needs and tendencies.Obviously our formula covers all instances of the humorouswhich relate to socially and morally reprobated acts and con-ditions. It is in this region that the greatest repressionsoccur and these in turn give rise to our broadest and coarsesthumor. The theory likewise accounts for laughter at remarkshaving double meaning and at jokes whose point dependsupon their vague hint or suggestion of evil. These may wina smile from persons who would turn in disgust from ob-vious vulgarity and obscenity. Only a keen and delicate shaftcan penetrate their surface conventionality and refinement.But a step removed is the laughter which greets profanityon the stage. Without doubt the laugh springs from uncon-scious sympathy with the vigorous expletive. The theoryeasily fits also that large field of the comic which owes itspower to the sudden humiliation and confounding of pride,pretension, formality, dignity, assumption of piety, learningor virtue, and the like. We are subconsciously on the sideof the child or simple, unconventional individual who blurtsout the plain, honest truth.Beyond this lies a very wide region whose exploration ex-ceeds the purpose of this essay, yet one or two venturesbeyond the easy and obvious application of our theory willserve to show its unsuspected scope and adaptability. Take,for instance, the story cited by Bergson, and quoted by Dr.Sidis in his Psychology of Laughter. The anecdote relatesto an M. P., who, when questioning the Home Secretary onthe morrow of a terrible murder which took place in a rail-way carriage, remarks: "The assassin, after despatching hisvictim, must have got out the wrong side of the train, therebyinfringing the Company's rules." Bergson explains the laugh-able effect of this remark by the implied automatic regula-tion of society, "an administrative regulation-setting itselfup for a law of nature." Sidis dismisses it with the briefnote-" There is nothing mechanical about it except the factthat the remark shows the stupidity of the M. P." But justwhere is the real crux of the story? Do we laugh at theimplied automatism, or, on the other hand, at the assumedstupidity of the M. P.? Rather is not the smile caused bythe sudden subordination of artificial, man-made rules by the


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244 BLISSgreat, tragic, unconventional, and in a sense natural, act ofmurder? Shift the order in which the incidents are related,picture first the rigid regulations and then their sudden in-fraction by the escaping murderer, and we have tragedy, thedirect predominance of the greater fact. But tune the imagi-nation first to murder and then obtrude the petty rules as inany sense binding upon that wild, tragic,-even triumphantfigure, and the wild, tragic and unconventional within our-selves exults in its superiority and priority,-and laughs.Or, again, why do we laugh at the following anecdote re-lated by Sidis? " An Irishman in a museum was looking ata copy of the Winged Victory, and asked an attendant whatit was called, 'That is a statue of Victory, sir,' was the reply.Pat surveyed the headless and armless statue with renewedinterest. ' Victhry, is it?' he said. 'Then begorry, Oi'd loiketo see the other fellow.' "

Undoubtedly Pat was ignorant--of art, yet it is not thisfact in itself which renders the story so delightfully refresh-ing. Spencer's theory of the cause of laughter as a descendingcongruity-the transference of consciousness from greatthings to small-is in order here; also the explanations of-fered by contrast, surprise, superiority, and Bergson's ideathat we are amused at the intrusion of the body when thesoul is meant. Yet these theories merely remove the problema step farther from us. Why do we laugh at descendingcongruity, contrast, the body when the soul is meant? Inattempting to apply our own explanation let it be noted thatthe story amuses in proportion to our appreciation of thevalue of the statue-as a work of art and as a symbol ofman's highest victories. Is it that portion of ourselves insympathy with the highest meaning of the work which laughs?Or is it that submerged nook where lurks approval of Pat'spoint of view,-which delights in his vision of a vanquishedphysical antagonist, minus even more than head and arms?Doubtless we harbor an unconscious pugnacity revolting inobscurity against the dominance of unfleshly ideals and which,through the medium of the story, is for the moment trium-phant.Passing finally to another variety of the comic, why do welaugh at the story of the Irishman who declared that themoon was of greater use than the sun because it shone atnight, when without it we should be in darkness? The secretspring of amusement does not lie in the fact that the speakeris ignorant, for, state the matter in another manner,-say,"There is a man who does not know that the light of day


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THE ORIGINOF LAUGHTER 245comes from the sun and that the moon's radiance is but areflection from the same source," and we smile but slightly.Evidently the mirth-provoking element is to be found in themanner of making the statement. We laugh at the first formbecause we perceive the fallacy of the statement instantane-ously, without a conscious process of reasoning. We delightin mental agility, just as on a lower plane we delight in bodilyagility which in turn is a substitute for still more primitiveactivities.There remains to be explained the tendency to break forthinto laughter on occasions of great gravity, solemnity, sor-row, and even tragedy. Constituted as we are it is evidentthat the entire personality can not long remain keyed to thehighest pitch. There is always the possibility of dissociation,of the sudden breaking away of the natural man under thestrain,-or perhaps more truly the severance of the tense,solemn mood, resulting in relief and satisfaction on a lowerplane. The mirth of the two women witnesses of a murder,before mentioned, may be referred to subconscious cruelty,and this in turn-it is probable-to still deeper repressionsand perversions.Apparently the natural method would have been to investi-gate first the laughter of childhood, but if the view advancedin this essay approaches truth it was not the child who firstlaughed. Repression of impulses and conscious regulationof the life could begin only with the adult. In time the arti-ficial standards would be imposed on the child and at lengthinhibition would become organized in the race-a habit ofthe nervous system. Laughter, beginning as an accidentalphysical convulsion following indirect or delayed satisfactionof repressed impulses, would likewise have become a habitof the body and it is not difficult to conjecture why in thechild, that bundle of budding instincts and premature im-pulses laughter should follow the slightest stimulus. Later, asbody and mind are increasingly exercised, furnishing an out-let for subconscious impulses, laughter becomes less.In a recent interesting article H. Addington Bruce' describesthe laughter of childhood and in consequence all laughter as"a means whereby nature provides a salutary outlet for sur-plus nervous energy." But it is doubtful if we can, withstrict scientific accuracy, speak of nature as deliberately anddirectly implanting an instinct " for the performance of animportant physiological function." Among the various re-sponses of a developing organism to environment those prov-

1 The Outlook, August 9, 1913.


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246 BLISSing useful would persist as habits and eventually become or-ganized as instincts. The habit of laughter developed andsurvived because it was useful. The man who laughedheartily was among those fittest to survive. Furthermore," surplus nervous energy" is but another name for unusedpower which could arise, in the first instance, only throughthe restraint and repression of natural functions. Thus itwill be seen that the theory of laughter as a means for theoutlet of nervous energy itself requires explanation, and thisexplanation is afforded, logically and satisfactorily it appearsto the writer, by the doctrine of the satisfaction of subcon-scious tendencies.It may be objected that the view of human nature involvedin this theory of the origin of laughter is degrading. Fromthe standpoint of the idealist the assumption of a specialfaculty of the mind whose function it is to recognize the pres-ence of a definite humorous quality in events and acts wouldbetter accord with man's dignity and worth. But the evidencefavors no such assumption. On the other hand, those whodelve most deeply into the abyss of human mentality testifyto the complexity, contradiction, and inequality of the ele-ments of mind. The recognition of truth is in the end neverdegrading but prophylactic and remedial. Perceiving thefunction of laughter-provoking agencies we shall be slow tocondemn even the broadest and coarsest humor, for this, fur-nishing an indirect outlet for suppressed instincts, may bemore beneficent than we know. Lacking this relief the im-pulses might seek satisfaction in forms much less innocent.Laughter is born of the exigencies of evolving humanity andit will be long before its joyful echoes die from the earth.

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