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The Sense of Humor, a serious look at laughter
The Sense of Humor, a serious look at laughter
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PREFACE
Although I have tried to make this book enjoyable, and keep it alive to the qualities of its subject, my prevailing purpose has been scientific. So far as the present technique of psychology permits of solutions, I have tried to solve the problem of humorous laughter. And if I have taken one valid step toward that solution, it will please my purpose better than any amount of the success that might be called literary.
The relation between science and the literature of generalities seems to me to be one of the great problems of the future. For science is developing so technical and special a body of knowledge upon every subject under the sun, that only an expert can know anything substantial of what is to be known about it. And yet literary men with no real training in science continue to pretend that they know something, if not everything, about all subjects. They write essays upon general problems with the same free joy of self-expression with which they write stories or poems about particular things or experiences. And these essays, while they may stimulate the reader and give him a fine sense of mental companionship, are very likely to be in flat contradiction to some method or result that scientific men have already humbly and conscientiously verified—in which case they certainly belong to the second and not the first order of human values. The attitude of Carlyle toward Darwin's discoveries is an example in point, and Nietzsche's amateur views on heredity at the very basis of his gospel of the Superman, and the light manner in which men like H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw, and at one time Maxim Gorki, while professing to be scientific socialists, have dismissed or miscomprehended the Marxian theories of history.
This may seem a remote opening for a book about humor, but it happens that the problem of humor has always been a special field of play for the irresponsible essay-writer, and the literature that adorns it is notoriously inconsequential. When I told Bernard Shaw that I was writing this book, he advised me to go to a sanitarium. "There is no more dangerous literary symptom," he said, "than a temptation to write about wit and humor. It indicates the total loss of both." And with a proper emphasis upon the word literary, that is entirely true. But if technical science continues to develop as it has in the last half-century, and men of letters continue not to develop, it will soon be true that there is no more dangerous literary symptom than a temptation to write about any problem of general knowledge. People will take our Plays seriously, but not our Prefaces—not our essays, epigrams, and immortal disquisitions. These they will glance through with an indulgent smile, and then go look the thing up in a laboratory report and find out what the truth is.
The problem of scientific as opposed to "literary" knowledge will have to be solved. And in as much as scientific knowledge happens upon the whole to be correct, I can see no way to solve it, except for the literary people to go to work. Of this gentle revolution I have tried to give a small example in the present book.
In the First Part I have stated my own theory as to what humor is, and I have shown its application to the various kinds of things we laugh at. In the Second Part I have given an account of the historic attempts of mankind to explain humor and state the causes of laughter. I have classified these attempts and criticised them from the standpoint of my own theory, but I have tried to make my account generous enough so that the reader who wishes to experiment or think further can find here all the leading ideas that others might contribute to his effort. In the concluding chapter I have treated my own theory in somewhat the same way as the rest, showing its relation to them and to the existing psychology of the emotions.
The Second Part is written mainly for purposes of historic reference and technical argument, and will not perhaps interest the general reader. It is folly, at any rate—in this day of the newspaper, the magazine, pamphlet, sign-board, prospectus, and the general onward rush for nowhere—for an author to pretend that people are really going to sit down and read his book. I therefore extend my benediction and gratitude, and the permission to say that he has read my book, to any one who will finish Part I and read the last chapter of Part II. He will know all the affirmative things I. have to say about humorous laughter.
Although I have tried to make this book enjoyable, and keep it alive to the qualities of its subject, my prevailing purpose has been scientific. So far as the present technique of psychology permits of solutions, I have tried to solve the problem of humorous laughter. And if I have taken one valid step toward that solution, it will please my purpose better than any amount of the success that might be called literary.
The relation between science and the literature of generalities seems to me to be one of the great problems of the future. For science is developing so technical and special a body of knowledge upon every subject under the sun, that only an expert can know anything substantial of what is to be known about it. And yet literary men with no real training in science continue to pretend that they know something, if not everything, about all subjects. They write essays upon general problems with the same free joy of self-expression with which they write stories or poems about particular things or experiences. And these essays, while they may stimulate the reader and give him a fine sense of mental companionship, are very likely to be in flat contradiction to some method or result that scientific men have already humbly and conscientiously verified—in which case they certainly belong to the second and not the first order of human values. The attitude of Carlyle toward Darwin's discoveries is an example in point, and Nietzsche's amateur views on heredity at the very basis of his gospel of the Superman, and the light manner in which men like H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw, and at one time Maxim Gorki, while professing to be scientific socialists, have dismissed or miscomprehended the Marxian theories of history.
This may seem a remote opening for a book about humor, but it happens that the problem of humor has always been a special field of play for the irresponsible essay-writer, and the literature that adorns it is notoriously inconsequential. When I told Bernard Shaw that I was writing this book, he advised me to go to a sanitarium. "There is no more dangerous literary symptom," he said, "than a temptation to write about wit and humor. It indicates the total loss of both." And with a proper emphasis upon the word literary, that is entirely true. But if technical science continues to develop as it has in the last half-century, and men of letters continue not to develop, it will soon be true that there is no more dangerous literary symptom than a temptation to write about any problem of general knowledge. People will take our Plays seriously, but not our Prefaces—not our essays, epigrams, and immortal disquisitions. These they will glance through with an indulgent smile, and then go look the thing up in a laboratory report and find out what the truth is.
The problem of scientific as opposed to "literary" knowledge will have to be solved. And in as much as scientific knowledge happens upon the whole to be correct, I can see no way to solve it, except for the literary people to go to work. Of this gentle revolution I have tried to give a small example in the present book.
In the First Part I have stated my own theory as to what humor is, and I have shown its application to the various kinds of things we laugh at. In the Second Part I have given an account of the historic attempts of mankind to explain humor and state the causes of laughter. I have classified these attempts and criticised them from the standpoint of my own theory, but I have tried to make my account generous enough so that the reader who wishes to experiment or think further can find here all the leading ideas that others might contribute to his effort. In the concluding chapter I have treated my own theory in somewhat the same way as the rest, showing its relation to them and to the existing psychology of the emotions.
The Second Part is written mainly for purposes of historic reference and technical argument, and will not perhaps interest the general reader. It is folly, at any rate—in this day of the newspaper, the magazine, pamphlet, sign-board, prospectus, and the general onward rush for nowhere—for an author to pretend that people are really going to sit down and read his book. I therefore extend my benediction and gratitude, and the permission to say that he has read my book, to any one who will finish Part I and read the last chapter of Part II. He will know all the affirmative things I. have to say about humorous laughter.
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