CHAPTER IV

THE DISAPPOINTMENT THEORY

SPINOZA was a more careful philosopher than Hobbes, and the most grave and consecrated reasoner about real good and evil that ever lived. His judgment, therefore, that derision is an evil thing, a thing that hinders the being of man, but that jests promote his being and are good, is of greater weight than the casual remarks of more discursive philosophers. It is testimony of some consequence in a science which must rest to a great extent upon introspective feeling. Spinoza had classified derision, with propriety according to his system, as one of the forms of hate, and he added:

"I recognize a great difference between derision (which in Corollary 1 above is termed bad) and laughter or jest. For laughter and jest are a kind of joy, and so, if they are only not excessive are good."

Even before Spinoza, indeed, there was opposition to the idea of Hobbes and Descartes that mockery and scornful pride are in the heart of all laughter. There was still living the other opinion of Aristotle, as appears in the remark of Pascal that "Nothing produces laughter more than a surprising disproportion between that which one expects and that which

one sees." This opinion did not rise to a position of authority in modern philosophy, however, until it appeared in the aesthetics of Immanuel Kant. Kant's statement is as boldly unqualified as that of Hobbes, and would shine out as clearly in memory, had it been as ably expressed.

"Laughter," he says, "is an affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing." And after a few words of illustration: "We must note well that it does not transform itself into the positive opposite of an expected objectfor then there would still be something, which might even be a cause of grief-but it must be transformed into nothing."

As an example he cites the story of "a merchant returning from India to Europe with all his wealth in merchandise, who was forced to throw it overboard in a heavy storm, and who grieved thereat so much that his wig turned gray the same night." He says that in relating this story we should describe the merchant's grief very circumstantially, so that our hearers will be led to expect some vast evidence of anguish in the conclusion, and then they will "laugh and be gratified" all the more at the nothing which arrives.

Kant's example reveals both the correctness and the inadequacy of his theory. For the statement that a man's wig turned gray is in truth "nothing"-a pretentious nothing-from the standpoint of the specific expectation involved; but from the standpoint of our general sentimental contempt for merchants, and the pecuniary sources of their grief, it is also decidedly

something. And the something unlucky for the author-is "sudden glory" of the most obvious kind.

Kant's idea was repeated, and a little of the metaphysical excitement about freedom and necessity imported into it, by Friedrich Schelling, but until the time of Schopenhauer it was not intelligibly altered or developed. Schopenhauer was like a god in his conviction of the truth and originality of his own opinions, but I cannot see that he did much in this field except to narrow the conception of Kant so that it applied only to disappointments of an intellectual kind.

"The cause of laughter in every case," he said, "is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real objects which have been thought through it in some relation, and laughter itself is just the expression of this incongruity. . . . The more correct the subsumption of such objects under a concept may be from one point of view, and the greater and more glaring their incongruity with it, from another point of view, the greater is the ludicrous effect which is produced by this contrast. All laughter then is occasioned by a paradox, and therefore by unexpected subsumption, whether this is expressed in words or actions. This, briefly stated, is the true explanation of the ludicrous." And again: "In everything that excites laughter it must always be possible to show a concept and a particular, that is, a thing or event, which certainly can be subsumed under that concept, and therefore thought through it, yet in another and more predominating aspect does not belong to it at all, but is strikingly different from everything else that is thought through that concept. If, as often occurs, especially in witticisms, instead of such a real object of perception, the concept of a subordinate species is brought under the higher concept of the genus, it will yet excite laughter only through the

fact that the imagination realizes it, i. e., makes a perceptible representative stand for it, and thus the conflict between what is thought and what is perceived takes place."

If we examine all these great words carefully, we shall find that they are only the rather formidable definition of a mistake. And it is interesting to remember that long before their appearance Voltaire, in his Preface to "L'Enfant Prodigue," had observed that a mistake" is the only thing that ever awakens "violent peals of universal laughter." Schopenhauer added to this, however, an original attempt to explain why mistakes awaken laughter.

"In every suddenly appearing conflict," he said, "between what is perceived and what is thought, what is perceived is always unquestionably right; for it is not subject to error at all, requires no confirmation from without, but answers for itself. Its conflict with what is thought springs ultimately from the fact that the latter, with its abstract conceptions, cannot get down to the infinite multifariousness and fine shades of difference of the concrete. This victory of knowledge of perception over thought affords us pleasure. For perception is the original kind of knowledge inseparable from animal nature, in which everything that gives direct satisfaction to the will presents itself. It is the medium of the present, of enjoyment and gayety; moreover it is attended with no exertion. . . . Besides, it is the conceptions of thought that often oppose the gratification of our immediate desires, for as the medium of the past, the future, and of seriousness, they are the vehicle of our fears, our repentance, and all our cares. It must therefore be diverting to us to see this strict, untiring, troublesome governess, the reason, for once convicted of insufficiency. On this account then the mien or appearance of laughter is very closely related to that of joy."

It seems that Schopenhauer enjoyed with a deep understanding those jokes whose affirmative value is what we have called reality, or the simple truth. But it needs little argument to show that this value cannot explain the enjoyment of jokes in general. In the first place we have no such exclusive zeal as this for perceptual knowledge. In the second place what zeal we have is not humorous. And in the third place we do not need to make intellectual mistakes in order to enjoy humor. We do not need to "subsume particulars under a concept," or even indeed to exercise that degree of imagination implied in the word "expect.' We need only to experience a forward motion of interest sufficiently definite so that its "coming to nothing" can be felt. This might have been brought home to Schopenhauer by calling his attention to the humorous quality which is sometimes possessed by music, for he was very sure that music has to do with "the will" and not "the idea." I read in the London Spectator that Beethoven exhibits a humor "freakish, unexpected and at times obstreperous," and I suppose the statement will pass without challenge, although his music is, for the most part, faithful to the view of Schopenhauer, and does not pretend to represent things or ideas. Its humor cannot be reconciled with Schopenhauer's statement that "it is possible to trace everything laughable to a syllogism of the first figure with an undisputed major and unexpected minor, which to a certain extent is only sophistically valid." And neither can the innumerable little giggles and fleet smiles of im