SECTION II.

CAUSE OF LAUGHTER.

This has been partly explained by Beattie, partly by Hobbes; and it is chiefly to vindicate the latter, who knew much more of the human mind than the people who have attacked him, that I write the pages immediately following.

Speaking of the quality in things, which makes them provoke the pleasing emotion or sentiment of which laughter is the external sign, Beattie says, "it is an uncommon mixture of relation and contrariety, exhibited, or supposed to be united, in the same assemblage." And elsewhere he says, "laughter arises from the view of two or more inconsistent, unsuitable, or incongruous parts or circumstances, considered as united in one com plex object or assemblage, or as acquiring a sort of mutual relation from the peculiar manner in which the mind takes notice of them."

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The latter may arise from contiguity, from the relation of cause and effect, from unexpected likeness, from dignity and meanness, from absurdity, &c.

"Thus, at first view, the dawn of the morning, and a boiled lobster, seem utterly incongruous, but when a change of colour from black to red is suggested, we recognize a likeness, and consequently a relation, or ground of comparison.

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'And here let it be observed, that the greater the number of incongruities that are blended in the same assemblage, the more ludicrous it will probably be. If, as in the last example, there be an opposition of dignity and meanness, as well as of likeness and dissimilitude, the effect of the contrast will be more powerful, than if only one of these oppositions had appeared in the ludicrous idea."

This first part of the subject seems, indeed, so clear as to admit of no objection.

Hobbes, viewing more particularly the act of the mind, defines laughter to be a "sudden glory, arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly." And elsewhere he says, "men laugh at jests, the wit whereof always consisteth in the elegant discovering and conveying to our minds, some absurdity of another."*

Dr. Campbell objects that "

contempt may be

Human Nature, chap. ix. § 13.

raised in a very high degree, both suddenly and unexpectedly, without producing the least tendency to laugh." But if there exist that incongruity in the same assemblage described as the fundamental cause of this sudden conception of our own superiority, laughter, as Beattie has shown, "will always, or for the most part, excite the risible emotion, unless when the perception of it is attended with some other emotion of greater authority," dependent on custom, politeness, &c.

Dr. Campbell also observes, that " laughter may be, and is daily, produced by the perception of incongruous associations, when there is no contempt.

"We often smile at a witty performance or passage, such as Butler's allusion to a boiled lobster, in his picture of the morning, when we are so far from conceiving any inferiority or turpitude in the author, that we greatly admire his genius, and wish ourselves possessed of that very turn of fancy which produced the drollery in question.

Many have laughed at the queerness of the

comparison in these lines,

"For rhyme the rudder is of verses,

With which like ships they steer their courses;"

who never dreamt that there was any person or party, practice or opinion, derided in them.

"If any admirer of the Hobbesian philosophy should pretend to discover some class of men whom the poet here meant to ridicule, he ought to consider, that if any one hath been tickled with the passage to whom the same thought never occurred, that single instance would be sufficient to subvert the doctrine, as it would show that there may be laughter where there is no triumph or glorying over any body, and consequently no conceit of one's own superiority."

Now, the class of men laughed at in both cases is the same, namely, poets, whose lofty allusions are ridiculed by the former, and silly rhymes by the latter; nor can any one duly appreciate or be pleased with either, to whom this intention of the writer is not obvious. Who ever dreamed of turpitude in the author," as Dr. Campbell supposes!

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"As to the wag," says Beattie, "who amuses himself on the first of April with telling lies, he must be shallow indeed, if he hope by so doing to acquire any superiority over another man, whom he knows to be wiser and better than himself; for on these occasions, the greatness of the joke, and the loudness of the laugh, are, if I rightly remember, in exact proportion to the sagacity of the person imposed on."- No doubt; but it is because he is thrown into an apparent and whim

sical, though momentary, inferiority; and the greater his sagacity, the more amusing does this

appear.

"Do we not," says he, "sometimes laugh at fortuitous combinations, in which, as no mental energy is concerned in producing them, there cannot be either fault or turpitude? Could not one imagine a set of people jumbled together by accident, so as to present a laughable group to those who know their characters?"— Undoubtedly; but then the slouch of one, and the rigidity of the other, &c. make both contemptible, as to physical characteristics at least, and there is no need of turpitude in either.

The strongest apparent objection, however, is that of Dr. Campbell, who says, "Indeed, men's telling their own blunders, even blunders recently committed, and laughing at them, a thing not uncommon in very risible dispositions, is utterly inexplicable upon Hobbes's system. For, to consider the thing only with regard to the laugher himself, there is to him no subject of glorying, that is not counterbalanced by an equal subject of humiliation (he being both the person laughing, and the person laughed at), and these two subjects must destroy one another."

But he overlooks the precise terms employed by Hobbes, who says, "The passion of laughter