“Man,” says Hazlitt, “is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he
is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what
things are and what they ought to be.” The sources, then, of laughter
and tears come very close together. At the difference between things as
they are and as they ought to be we laugh, or we weep; it would depend,
it seems, on the point of view, or the temperament. And if, as Horace
Walpole once said, “Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to
those who feel,” it is the thinking half of humanity that, at the sight
of life’s incongruities, is moved to laughter, the feeling half to
tears. A sense of humor, then, is the possession of the thinking half,
and the humorists must be classified at once with the thinkers.
If one were asked to go further than this and to give offhand a
definition of humor, or of that elusive quality, a sense of humor, he
might find himself confronted with a difficulty. Yet certain things
about it would be patent at the outset: Women haven’t it; Englishmen
haven’t it; it is the chiefest of the virtues, for tho a man speak with
the tongues of men and of angels, if he have not humor we will have none
of him. Women may continue to laugh over those innocent and innocuous
incidents which they find amusing; may continue to write the most
delightful of stories and essays–consider Jane Austen and our own Miss
Repplier–over which appreciative readers may continue to chuckle;
Englishmen may continue, as in the past to produce the most exquisite of
the world’s humorous literature–think of Charles Lamb–yet the
fundamental faith of mankind will remain unshaken: women have no sense
of humor, and an Englishman cannot see a joke! And the ability to “see a
joke” is the infallible American test of the sense of humor.
But taking the matter seriously, how would one define humor? When in
doubt, consult the dictionary, is, as always, an excellent motto, and,
following it, we find that our trustworthy friend, Noah Webster, does
not fail us. Here is his definition of humor, ready to hand: humor is
“the mental faculty of discovering, expressing, or appreciating
ludicrous or absurdly incongruous elements in ideas, situations,
happenings, or acts,” with the added information that it is
distinguished from wit as “less purely intellectual and having more
kindly sympathy with human nature, and as often blended with pathos.” A
friendly rival in lexicography defines the same prized human attribute
more lightly as “a facetious turn of thought,” or more specifically in
literature, as “a sportive exercise of the imagination that is apparent
in the choice and treatment of an idea or theme.” Isn’t there something
about that word “sportive,” on the lips of so learned an authority,
that tickles the fancy–appeals to the sense of humor?
Yet if we peruse the dictionary further, especially if we approach that
monument to English scholarship, the great Murray, we shall find that
the problem of defining humor is not so simple as it might seem; for the
word that we use so glibly, with so sure a confidence in its stability,
has had a long and varied history and has answered to many aliases. When
Shakespeare called a man “humorous” he meant that he was changeable and
capricious, not that he was given to a facetious turn of thought or to a
“sportive” exercise of the imagination. When he talks in “The Taming of
the Shrew” of “her mad and head-strong humor” he doesn’t mean to imply
that Kate is a practical joker. It is interesting to note in passing
that the old meaning of the word still lingers in the verb “to humor.” A
woman still humors her spoiled child and her cantankerous husband when
she yields to their capriciousness. By going hack a step further in
history, to the late fourteenth century, we met Chaucer’s physician who
knew “the cause of everye maladye, and where engendered and of what
humour” and find that Chaucer is not speaking of a mental state at all,
but is referring to those physiological humours of which, according to
Hippocrates, the human body contained four: blood, phlegm, bile, and
black bile, and by which the disposition was determined. We find, too,
that at one time a “humour” meant any animal or plant fluid, and again
any kind of moisture. “The skie hangs full of humour, and I think we
shall haue raine,” ran an ancient weather prophet’s prediction. Which
might give rise to some thoughts on the paradoxical subject of _dry_
humor.
Now in part this development is easily traced. Humor, meaning moisture
of any kind, came to have a biological significance and was applied only
to plant and animal life. It was restricted later within purely
physiological boundaries and was applied only to those “humours” of the
human body that controlled temperament. From these fluids, determining
mental states, the word took on a psychological coloring, but–by what
process of evolution did humor reach its present status! After all, the
scientific method has its weaknesses!
We can, if we wish, define humor in terms of what it is not. We can draw
lines around it and distinguish it from its next of kin, wit. This
indeed has been a favorite pastime with the jugglers of words in all
ages. And many have been the attempts to define humor, to define wit, to
describe and differentiate them, to build high fences to keep them
apart.
“Wit is abrupt, darting, scornful; it tosses its analogies in your face;
humor is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart,” says E. P.
Whipple. “Wit is intellectual, humor is emotional; wit is perception of
resemblance, humor of contrast–of contrast between ideal and fact,
theory and practice, promise and performance,” writes another authority.
While yet another points out that “Humor is feeling–feelings can always
bear repetition, while wit, being intellectual, suffers by repetition.”
The truth of this is evident when we remember that we repeat a witty
saying that we may enjoy the effect on others, while we retell a
humorous story largely for our own enjoyment of it.
Yet it is quite possible that humor ought not to be defined. It may be
one of those intangible substances, like love and beauty, that are
indefinable. It is quite probable that humor should not be explained. It
would be distressing, as some one pointed out, to discover that American
humor is based on American dyspepsia. Yet the philosophers themselves
have endeavored to explain it. Hazlitt held that to understand the
ludicrous, we must first know what the serious is. And to apprehend the
serious, what better course could be followed than to contemplate the
serious–yes and ludicrous–findings of the philosophers in their
attempts to define humor and to explain laughter. Consider Hobbes: “The
passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from the
sudden conception of eminency in ourselves by comparison with the
inferiority of others, or with our own formerly.” According to Professor
Bain, “Laughter results from the degradation of some person or interest
possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong
emotion.” Even Kant, desisting for a time from his contemplation of Pure
Reason, gave his attention to the human phenomenon of laughter and
explained it away as “the result of an expectation which of a sudden
ends in nothing.” Some modern cynic has compiled a list of the
situations on the stage which are always “humorous.” One of them, I
recall, is the situation in which the clown-acrobat, having made mighty
preparations for jumping over a pile of chairs, suddenly changes his
mind and walks off without attempting it. The laughter that invariably
greets this “funny” maneuver would seem to have philosophical sanction.
Bergson, too, the philosopher of creative evolution, has considered
laughter to the extent of an entire volume. A reading of it leaves one a
little disturbed. Laughter, so we learn, is not the merry-hearted,
jovial companion we had thought him. Laughter is a stern mentor,
characterized by “an absence of feeling.” “Laughter,” says M. Bergson,
“is above all a corrective, it must make a painful impression on the
person against whom it is directed. By laughter society avenges itself
for the liberties taken with it. It would fail in its object if it bore
the stamp of sympathy or kindness.” If this be laughter, grant us
occasionally the saving grace of tears, which may be tears of sympathy,
and, therefore, kind!
But, after all, since it is true that “one touch of humor makes the
whole world grin,” what difference does it make what that humor is; what
difference why or wherefore we laugh, since somehow or other, in a sorry
world, we do laugh?
Of the test for a sense of humor, it has already been said that it is
the ability to see a joke. And, as for a joke, the dictionary, again a
present help in time of trouble, tells us at once that it is, “something
said or done for the purpose of exciting a laugh.” But stay! Suppose it
does not excite the laugh expected? What of the joke that misses fire?
Shall a joke be judged by its intent or by its consequences? Is a joke
that does not produce a laugh a joke at all? Pragmatically considered it
is not. Agnes Repplier, writing on Humor, speaks of “those beloved
writers whom we hold to be humorists because they have made us laugh.”
We hold them to be so–but there seems to be a suggestion that we may be
wrong. Is it possible that the laugh is not the test of the joke? Here
is a question over which the philosophers may wrangle. Is there an
Absolute in the realm of humor, or must our jokes be judged solely by
the pragmatic test? Congreve once told Colly Gibber that there were many
witty speeches in one of Colly’s plays, and many that looked witty, yet
were not really what they seemed at first sight! So a joke is not to be
recognized even by its appearance or by the company it keeps. Perhaps
there might be established a test of good usage. A joke would be that at
which the best people laugh.
Somebody–was it Mark Twain?–once said that there are eleven original
jokes in the world–that these were known in prehistoric times, and that
all jokes since have been but modifications and adaptations from the
originals. Miss Repplier, however, gives to modern times the credit for
some inventiveness. Christianity, she says, must be thanked for such
contributions as the missionary and cannibal joke, and for the
interminable variations of St. Peter at the gate. Max Beerbohm once
codified all the English comic papers and found that the following list
comprised all the subjects discussed: Mothers-in-law; Hen-pecked
husbands; Twins; Old maids; Jews; Frenchmen and Germans; Italians and
Niggers; Fatness; Thinness; Long hair (in men); Baldness; Sea sickness;
Stuttering; Bloomers; Bad cheese; Red noses. A like examination of
American newspapers would perhaps result in a slightly different list.
We have, of course, our purely local jokes. Boston will always be a joke
to Chicago, the east to the west. The city girl in the country offers a
perennial source of amusement, as does the country man in the city. And
the foreigner we have always with us, to mix his Y’s and J’s, distort
his H’s, and play havoc with the Anglo-Saxon Th. Indeed our great
American sense of humor has been explained as an outgrowth from the vast
field of incongruities offered by a developing civilization.
It may be that this vaunted national sense has been
over-estimated–exaggeration is a characteristic of that humor,
anyway–but at least it has one of the Christian virtues–it suffereth
long and is kind. Miss Repplier says that it is because we are a
“humorous rather than a witty people that we laugh for the most part
with, and not at our fellow creatures.” This, I think, is something that
our fellow creatures from other lands do not always comprehend. I
listened once to a distinguished Frenchman as he addressed the students
in a western university chapel. He was evidently astounded and
embarrassed by the outbursts of laughter that greeted his mildly
humorous remarks. He even stopped to apologize for the deficiencies of
his English, deeming them the cause, and was further mystified by the
little ripple of laughter that met his explanation–a ripple that came
from the hearts of the good-natured students, who meant only to be
appreciative and kind. Foreigners, too, unacquainted with American slang
often find themselves precipitating a laugh for which they are
unprepared. For a bit of current slang, however and whenever used, is
always humorous.
The American is not only a humorous person, he is a practical person. So
it is only natural that the American humor should be put to practical
uses. It was once said that the difference between a man with tact and a
man without was that the man with tact, in trying to put a bit in a
horse’s mouth, would first tell him a funny story, while the man without
tact would get an axe. This use of the funny story is the American way
of adapting it to practical ends. A collection of funny stories used to
be an important part of a drummer’s stock in trade. It is by means of
the “good story” that the politician makes his way into office; the
business man paves the way for a big deal; the after-dinner speaker gets
a hearing; the hostess saves her guests from boredom. Such a large place
does the “story” hold in our national life that we have invented a
social pastime that might be termed a “joke match.” “Don’t tell a funny
story, even if you know one,” was the advice of the Atchison Globe man,
“its narration will only remind your hearers of a bad one.” True as this
may be, we still persist in telling our funny story. Our hearers are
reminded of another, good or bad, which again reminds us–and so on.
A sense of humor, as was intimated before, is the chiefest of the
virtues. It is more than this–it is one of the essentials to success.
For, as has also been pointed out, we, being a practical people, put our
humor to practical uses. It is held up as one of the prerequisites for
entrance to any profession. “A lawyer,” says a member of that order,
must have such and such mental and moral qualities; “but before all
else”–and this impressively–”he must possess a sense of humor.” Samuel
McChord Crothers says that were he on the examining board for the
granting of certificates to prospective teachers, he would place a copy
of Lamb’s essay on Schoolmasters in the hands of each, and if the light
of humorous appreciation failed to dawn as the reading progressed, the
certificate would be withheld. For, before all else, a teacher must
possess a sense of humor! If it be true, then, that the sense of humor
is so important in determining the choice of a profession, how wise are
those writers who hold it an essential for entrance into that most
exacting of professions–matrimony! “Incompatibility in humor,” George
Eliot held to be the “most serious cause of diversion.” And Stevenson,
always wise, insists that husband and wife must he able to laugh over
the same jokes–have between them many a “grouse in the gun-room” story.
But there must always be exceptions if the spice of life is to be
preserved, and I recall one couple of my acquaintance, devoted and loyal
in spite of this very incompatibility. A man with a highly whimsical
sense of humor had married a woman with none. Yet he told his best
stories with an eye to their effect on her, and when her response came,
peaceful and placid and non-comprehending, he would look about the table
with delight, as much as to say, “Isn’t she a wonder? Do you know her
equal?”
Humor may be the greatest of the virtues, yet it is the one of whose
possession we may boast with impunity. “Well, that was too much for my
sense of humor,” we say. Or, “You know my sense of humor was always my
strong point.” Imagine thus boasting of one’s integrity, or sense of
honor! And so is its lack the one vice of which one may not permit
himself to be a trifle proud. “I admit that I have a hot temper,” and “I
know I’m extravagant,” are simple enough admissions. But did any one
ever openly make the confession, “I know I am lacking in a sense of
humor!” However, to recognize the lack one would first have to possess
the sense–which is manifestly impossible.
“To explain the nature of laughter and tears is to account for the
condition of human life,” says Hazlitt, and no philosophy has as yet
succeeded in accounting for the condition of human life. “Man is a
laughing animal,” wrote Meredith, “and at the end of infinite search the
philosopher finds himself clinging to laughter as the best of human
fruit, purely human, and sane, and comforting.” So whether it be the
corrective laughter of Bergson, Jove laughing at lovers’ vows, Love
laughing at locksmiths, or the cheerful laughter of the fool that was
like the crackling of thorns to Koheleth, the preacher, we recognize
that it is good; that without this saving grace of humor life would be
an empty vaunt. I like to recall that ancient usage: “The skie hangs
full of humour, and I think we shall haue raine.” Blessed humor, no less
refreshing today than was the humour of old to a parched and thirsty
earth.