Laughter | Page 6

that this particular logical relation,
as soon as it is perceived, contracts, expands and shakes our limbs,
whilst all other relations leave the body unaffected? It is not from this
point of view that we shall approach the problem. To understand
laughter, we must put it back into its natural environment, which is
society, and above all must we determine the utility of its function,
which is a social one. Such, let us say at once, will be the leading idea
of all our investigations. Laughter must answer to certain requirements
of life in common. It must have a SOCIAL signification.
Let us clearly mark the point towards which our three preliminary
observations are converging. The comic will come into being, it
appears, whenever a group of men concentrate their attention on one of
their number, imposing silence on their emotions and calling into play
nothing but their intelligence. What, now, is the particular point on
which their attention will have to be concentrated, and what will here
be the function of intelligence? To reply to these questions will be at
once to come to closer grips with the problem. But here a few examples
have become indispensable.
II
A man, running along the street, stumbles and falls; the passers-by
burst out laughing. They would not laugh at him, I imagine, could they
suppose that the whim had suddenly seized him to sit down on the
ground. They laugh because his sitting down is involuntary.
Consequently, it is not his sudden change of attitude that raises a laugh,
but rather the involuntary element in this change,--his clumsiness, in
fact. Perhaps there was a stone on the road. He should have altered his

pace or avoided the obstacle. Instead of that, through lack of elasticity,
through absentmindedness and a kind of physical obstinacy, AS A
RESULT, IN FACT, OF RIGIDITY OR OF MOMENTUM, the
muscles continued to perform the same movement when the
circumstances of the case called for something else. That is the reason
of the man's fall, and also of the people's laughter.
Now, take the case of a person who attends to the petty occupations of
his everyday life with mathematical precision. The objects around him,
however, have all been tampered with by a mischievous wag, the result
being that when he dips his pen into the inkstand he draws it out all
covered with mud, when he fancies he is sitting down on a solid chair
he finds himself sprawling on the floor, in a word his actions are all
topsy-turvy or mere beating the air, while in every case the effect is
invariably one of momentum. Habit has given the impulse: what was
wanted was to check the movement or deflect it. He did nothing of the
sort, but continued like a machine in the same straight line. The victim,
then, of a practical joke is in a position similar to that of a runner who
falls,--he is comic for the same reason. The laughable element in both
cases consists of a certain MECHANICAL INELASTICITY, just
where one would expect to find the wide-awake adaptability and the
living pliableness of a human being. The only difference in the two
cases is that the former happened of itself, whilst the latter was
obtained artificially. In the first instance, the passer-by does nothing but
look on, but in the second the mischievous wag intervenes.
All the same, in both cases the result has been brought about by an
external circumstance. The comic is therefore accidental: it remains, so
to speak, in superficial contact with the person. How is it to penetrate
within? The necessary conditions will be fulfilled when mechanical
rigidity no longer requires for its manifestation a stumbling-block
which either the hazard of circumstance or human knavery has set in its
way, but extracts by natural processes, from its own store, an
inexhaustible series of opportunities for externally revealing its
presence. Suppose, then, we imagine a mind always thinking of what it
has just done and never of what it is doing, like a song which lags
behind its accompaniment. Let us try to picture to ourselves a certain

inborn lack of elasticity of both senses and intelligence, which brings it
to pass that we continue to see what is no longer visible, to hear what is
no longer audible, to say what is no longer to the point: in short, to
adapt ourselves to a past and therefore imaginary situation, when we
ought to be shaping our conduct in accordance with the reality which is
present. This time the comic will take up its abode in the person
himself; it is the person who will supply it with everything--matter and
form, cause and opportunity. Is it then surprising that the
absent-minded individual--for this is the character we have