Laughter | Page 8

title: l'Avare, le Joueur, etc. Were you
asked to think of a play capable of being called le Jaloux, for instance,
you would find that Sganarelle or George Dandin would occur to your
mind, but not Othello: le Jaloux could only be the title of a comedy.
The reason is that, however intimately vice, when comic, is associated
with persons, it none the less retains its simple, independent existence,
it remains the central character, present though invisible, to which the
characters in flesh and blood on the stage are attached. At times it
delights in dragging them down with its own weight and making them
share in its tumbles. More frequently, however, it plays on them as on
an instrument or pulls the strings as though they were puppets. Look
closely: you will find that the art of the comic poet consists in making
us so well acquainted with the particular vice, in introducing us, the
spectators, to such a degree of intimacy with it, that in the end we get
hold of some of the strings of the marionette with which he is playing,
and actually work them ourselves; this it is that explains part of the
pleasure we feel. Here, too, it is really a kind of automatism that makes
us laugh--an automatism, as we have already remarked, closely akin to
mere absentmindedness. To realise this more fully, it need only be
noted that a comic character is generally comic in proportion to his
ignorance of himself. The comic person is unconscious. As though
wearing the ring of Gyges with reverse effect, he becomes invisible to
himself while remaining visible to all the world. A character in a
tragedy will make no change in his conduct because he will know how
it is judged by us; he may continue therein, even though fully conscious
of what he is and feeling keenly the horror he inspires in us. But a
defect that is ridiculous, as soon as it feels itself to be so, endeavours to
modify itself, or at least to appear as though it did. Were Harpagon to
see us laugh at his miserliness, I do not say that he would get rid of it,
but he would either show it less or show it differently. Indeed, it is in
this sense only that laughter "corrects men's manners." It makes us at
once endeavour to appear what we ought to be, what some day we shall
perhaps end in being.

It is unnecessary to carry this analysis any further. From the runner who
falls to the simpleton who is hoaxed, from a state of being hoaxed to
one of absentmindedness, from absentmindedness to wild enthusiasm,
from wild enthusiasm to various distortions of character and will, we
have followed the line of progress along which the comic becomes
more and more deeply imbedded in the person, yet without ceasing, in
its subtler manifestations, to recall to us some trace of what we noticed
in its grosser forms, an effect of automatism and of inelasticity. Now
we can obtain a first glimpse--a distant one, it is true, and still hazy and
confused--of the laughable side of human nature and of the ordinary
function of laughter.
What life and society require of each of us is a constantly alert attention
that discerns the outlines of the present situation, together with a certain
elasticity of mind and body to enable us to adapt ourselves in
consequence. TENSION and ELASTICITY are two forces, mutually
complementary, which life brings into play. If these two forces are
lacking in the body to any considerable extent, we have sickness and
infirmity and accidents of every kind. If they are lacking in the mind,
we find every degree of mental deficiency, every variety of insanity.
Finally, if they are lacking in the character, we have cases of the
gravest inadaptability to social life, which are the sources of misery and
at times the causes of crime. Once these elements of inferiority that
affect the serious side of existence are removed--and they tend to
eliminate themselves in what has been called the struggle for life--the
person can live, and that in common with other persons. But society
asks for something more; it is not satisfied with simply living, it insists
on living well. What it now has to dread is that each one of us, content
with paying attention to what affects the essentials of life, will, so far as
the rest is concerned, give way to the easy automatism of acquired
habits. Another thing it must fear is that the members of whom it is
made up, instead of aiming after an increasingly delicate adjustment of
wills which will fit more and more perfectly into one another, will
confine themselves to respecting simply the fundamental conditions of
this