Laughter by Henri Bergson (best motivational novels txt) π
What does laughter mean? What is the basal element in the laughable?What common ground can we find between the grimace of a merry-andrew, a play upon words, an equivocal situation in a burlesque anda scene of high comedy? What method of distillation will yield usinvariably the same essence from which so many different productsborrow either their obtrusive odour or their delicate perfume? Thegreatest of thinkers, from Aristotle downwards, have
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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 failingβs 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 anotherβs 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
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