Laughter - Henri Bergson (books to read for self improvement txt) 📗

by our long acquaintance with social life. It goes off spontaneously

and returns tit for tat. It has no time to look where it hits.

Laughter punishes certain failing’s somewhat as disease punishes

certain forms of excess, striking down some who are innocent and

sparing some who are guilty, aiming at a general result and

incapable of dealing separately with each individual case. And so it

is with everything that comes to pass by natural means instead of

happening by conscious reflection. An average of justice may show

itself in the total result, though the details, taken separately,

often point to anything but justice.

In this sense, laughter cannot be absolutely just. Nor should it be

kind-hearted either. Its function is to intimidate by humiliating.

Now, it would not succeed in doing this, had not nature implanted

for that very purpose, even in the best of men, a spark of

spitefulness or, at all events, of mischief. Perhaps we had better

not investigate this point too closely, for we should not find

anything very flattering to ourselves. We should see that this

movement of relaxation or expansion is nothing but a prelude to

laughter, that the laugher immediately retires within himself, more

self-assertive and conceited than ever, and is evidently disposed to

look upon another’s personality as a marionette of which he pulls

the strings. In this presumptuousness we speedily discern a degree

of egoism and, behind this latter, something less spontaneous and

more bitter, the beginnings of a curious pessimism which becomes the

more pronounced as the laugher more closely analyses his laughter.

Here, as elsewhere, nature has utilised evil with a view to good. It

is more especially the good that has engaged our attention

throughout this work. We have seen that the more society improves,

the more plastic is the adaptability it obtains from its members;

while the greater the tendency towards increasing stability below,

the more does it force to the surface the disturbing elements

inseparable from so vast a bulk; and thus laughter performs a useful

function by emphasising the form of these significant undulations.

Such is also the truceless warfare of the waves on the surface of

the sea, whilst profound peace reigns in the depths below. The

billows clash and collide with each other, as they strive to find

their level. A fringe of snow-white foam, feathery and frolicsome,

follows their changing outlines. From time to time, the receding

wave leaves behind a remnant of foam on the sandy beach. The child,

who plays hard by, picks up a handful, and, the next moment, is

astonished to find that nothing remains in his grasp but a few drops

of water, water that is far more brackish, far more bitter than that

of the wave which brought it. Laughter comes into being in the self-same fashion. It indicates a slight revolt on the surface of social

life. It instantly adopts the changing forms of the disturbance. It,

also, is afroth with a saline base. Like froth, it sparkles. It is

gaiety itself. But the philosopher who gathers a handful to taste

may find that the substance is scanty, and the after-taste bitter.

[THE END]

End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic

by Henri Bergson