A selection from the works of

Boris Sidis (1867 - 1923)

Philistine and Genius p. 2 - 28

The Source and Aim of Human Progress p. 29 - 60

A Study of the Mob p. 61 - 68

A Study of Mental Epidemics p. 68 – 73

Neurosis and Eugenics p. 75 – 81

The Principle of Reserve Energy p. 82 - 84

The Psychology of Laughter p. 85 – 223

Philistine and Geniusby Boris Sidis, 1919

PREFACE

WHEN in 1909 "Philistine and Genius" was delivered by me in the form of a Commencement address before the Harvard Summer School, my prediction of the coming European war storm was regarded by everybody as dream and fancy. My best friends and sympathisers thought my foreboding unjustified and ill-founded. I was an alarmist, a Cassandra, when I spoke of the coming catastrophe which was to shake Europe to its very foundation. When "Philistine and Genius" was published in 1911 the American and European press, dealing with the views advanced in this little volume, completely ignored the following warning given by me:

"About the middle of the nineteenth century Buckle made the prediction that no war was any more to occur among civilized nations. Henceforth peace was to reign supreme. 'The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. . . . Nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations shall not lift up swords against nations, nor shall they learn war any more.' This prophecy was rather hasty. We have had since the Civil war, the Franco-Prussian war, the Spanish-American war, the Boer war, the Russo-Japanese war, not counting the ceaseless wars of extermination carried on by civilized nations among the various semi-civilized and primitive tribes. Civilized nations do not as yet beat their swords into ploughshares, but keep on increasing the strength of their 'armed peace,' and are ready to fight bloody battles in the quest of new lands and the conquest of new markets.

"In spite of the Hague conference, convoked by the peace-loving Czar, no other age has had such large standing armies provided with such costly and efficient weapons of execution ready for instant use. The red spectre still stalks abroad claiming its victims. We still believe in the baptism of fire and redemption by blood. The dogma of blood redemption is still at the basis of our faith, and, consciously or unconsciously, we brand that sacred creed on the minds of the young generation."

The present European upheaval has finally disclosed to the impartial observer the fearful state of Europe as the final outcome of its "armed peace." Instead of realizing the dangers of armed peace or of "preparedness," we are ready to become a military democracy in which every able-bodied man is a soldier or a sailor, every child is a scout, and every woman a nurse or a munition worker. We are anxious to waste our resources on preparedness rather than on the education of the young. We hanker for the greatest navy in the world at a cost of several billions of dollars. We aspire after a million headed, billion armed navy and army. We clamor for universal, compulsory, military service in which our children should be drilled for murder and slaughter at the decree of a few autocratic officials and officers. We imitate Europe slavishly, in spite of the fact that the policy of preparedness or of "armed peace" has kept Europe in a state of turmoil for generations, has brought her to the brink of ruin, and has plunged her into the most cruel and most destructive war ever waged by man.

The recent estimate of Count von Roedern, Secretary of the Imperial German Treasury, puts the total cost of the war to date, the end of 1916, for all the belligerents, at fifty-nine and a half billions of dollars. The Mechanics and Metals National Bank of New York City figures that seventy-five billion dollars will be spent for direct military purposes, if the war lasts another year. The enormity of that expenditure can only be realized if we consider that the total wealth of Great Britain and Ireland is eighty-five billions of dollars, that of Germany eighty billions, that of France fifty billions, that of Russia forty billions, that of Austria-Hungary twenty-five billions, and that of

Italy twenty billions. Such waste is appalling.

According to the figures given by Mr. Frank H. Simonds, eighteen and a half million casualties, of which deaths make up nearly one-quarter, is the toll already levied on the fighting men of all the belligerent nations by twenty-six months of war. More than any other war the present European struggle squanders the wealth of empires and sacrifices the lives of nations.

Our social status is a reversion to savagery of the most degenerate type, an atavistic lapse towards the paleolithic and neolithic man, only more brutal, on account of the greater power for evil possessed by modern man. What Hun or Vandal ever dreamt of such colossal destruction! The fame of Attila, Jenghiz Khan, Batu, and Tamerlane pales and fades before the glory of' the Kaiser. In a couple of years the aggressive German "Kultur" has caused more ruin to humanity than all the invasions of the yellow peril in the history of mankind. Can we take issue with the late Professor Royce of Harvard when he declares the German Empire to be "the willful and the deliberate enemy of the human race"?

Some future historian in describing our times will place us below the moral level of our contemporaries, the Bushman and the Hottentot. He may say: "Towards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century there took place a vast accumulation of wealth, due to a rapid development of science and practical arts. Instead, however, of improving their condition, European nations deteriorated morally and intellectually.

"Liberal education gave way to technical training. Science served greed. Education became mechanical and military in character. The successful banker, the greedy usurer, the commonplace store-keeper, the mediocre shopkeeper, the philistine patriotic business man became the patterns, the ideals, the guides, and leaders of commercialized nations. Advertising and notoriety became the rage and the bane of society". The thinker gave way to the tinker, the scientist to the mechanic, the artist to the artisan, the genius to the philistine. False patriotism of the jingo type, controlled and animated by industrial and commercial interests, became the standard of nations. An insane frenzy of militarism seized on the minds of nations. Blind obedience became a virtue.

"The state enslaved the individual. Drill and discipline stupefied people. Nations boasting of scientific efficiency and 'kultur' broke treaties, attacked, destroyed, deported, enslaved whole populations of small, weak, neighboring countries. Women and babes were drowned like rats in the middle of the ocean. Aeroplanes and Zeppelins showered explosive missiles on defenceless people. For such cowardly, inhuman, and diabolical acts the miscreants were decorated and honored as heroes by their alleged superiors. Man could not have fallen to any lower level.

"The elements of nature were let loose for the ruin of nations. Man gloried in his devilish, military, inventive power of destruction. Professors, carrying high the banner of 'kultur,' exulted in the degrading, vicious process of training by which the individual is hypnotized and narcotized into submission to a brutal organization of military junkers, hallowed by the name of State. All conception of free, individual development was lost among the Germanic tribes of Central Europe. It was the darkest period in the history of mankind. Assaults on countries, massacres of nations, deportation of populations into slavery for powerful munition interests, all such outrages, dignified by the name of war for the defense of the Fatherland, had not their parallel even in the most degrading period of the history of humanity. Man was crazed with the lust of blood, frenzied with rapine and slaughter."

Such will be the just estimate of our times by a future impartial historian.

We possess indeed vast stores of wealth, but we have not as yet learned their use. Like silly

upstarts, we use our wealth for dissipation and ruin. Our greed and cruelty seem to grow with our possessions. Greed with its army and navy is like the Biblical horseleech that "hath two daughters crying, 'Give, give.'" Human life, man's genius, we hold in no esteem. We sink the value of man in the price of his product. We raise the value of stock, but lower the worth of man. Our young generation is trained by fear into discipline and obedience. We suppress the genius in the child, raise mediocrity, and cultivate the philistine.

"Obedience and discipline arc the mainstay of family and school," told me an otherwise intelligent schoolmaster. "I control my children with kindness, if possible, and if needs be, with force." The child is trained to act not by the light of reason, but by the command of superior force. The child is ruled by fear!

As a protection against fear the child learns to be secretive, evasive of truth, and cowardly of action. These traits of character, acquired in early childhood, become basic. The child will never fully rid himself of fear and its distressing consequences. Fear will stay with him, and dog his steps all his life long.

Fear is one of the most fundamental of animal instincts, it is the companion of the most primitive impulse of self-preservation. Once this fear instinct is aroused, it grows like an avalanche in its downward course. In later life this fear instinct becomes manifested in various ways, giving rise to the most distressing nervous and mental symptoms. In my medical practice, as specialist of nervous and mental diseases, I have traced again and again the worst forms of maladies to the fear instinct aroused in early childhood.

Training by fear, submission, and obedience opens the door wide to all kinds of nervous and mental germs, weakening the mental and moral constitution of man. Man becomes unreasonable, capricious, driven by the impulse of self-preservation, and by the furies of the fear instinct. The impulse of self-preservation with its satellite the fear instinct becomes predominant in character which lacks the stamina of sturdiness, frankness, openmindedness and independence.

A person brought up in the school of fear and blind obedience lacks steadiness of purpose, courage, independence, critical judgment, becomes bigoted and intolerant. He falls an easy prey to the suggestions of his times and surroundings, succumbs to the influence of unscrupulous leaders. Such a person lacks mental and moral poise, he is wanting in the true courage of reason, present in the fully developed man and woman. He can not withstand the pressure of social opinion, being unable to stand by his post in the face of threatening social opposition. Ruled by fear at home, he is governed by terror in society. He is afraid of social punishment, "of losing face," as the Chinese say, with his neighbors, gossips, circles and clubs. He dreads above all the judgment of the crowd, and is scared by the jeers and ridicule of the mob. Human life interests become limited by the narrow horizon of a mob-ruled personality. The unceasing obedience to the suggestions of the crowd weakens and loosens the reasoning and moral fibre, reduces the energies of the mind to the animal level, controlled by self-preservation and fear.

With reduced and impoverished energies, the person, in case of trouble and misfortune, is unable to fall back on his inner resources, he falls a prey to worry, fear, anxiety, and disease. In other cases the intellectual and moral powers are enfeebled by the rigid discipline and by the course of enforced obedience, the person falls a victim to all forms of temptations. With no principle to guide him, with no will to stay him, the person drifts helplessly on the stream of life. Lured by seductive sirens, his life is finally wrecked on the rocks and reefs of vice, sin, crime, and disease.

Where stumbling on vice, disease, and crime is avoided, the person inevitably lands on the dull shores of the Lotophagi. Ideas and ideals are forgotten and forsaken in the routine of animal

existence. This is the land of Philistinism, a land where all human, humane interests, independent thought, and courageous action are wanting. Philistines are uncritical, unconscious of defects and faults, living in the mire of self-contented stupidity and mediocrity. They cease to grow mentally and morally. Their intellectual and moral capacities become paralyzed, atrophied. Man becomes the equal of the brute.

With a philistine education and training, man is fit to become one of those unfortunate and pitiful European pawns and automata who obey blindly the commands of their superior officers. Philistines shoot, stab, poison, pillage, burn, outrage, and murder at the command of unscrupulous, self-seeking leaders, brutal junkers, bloodhounds of empires.

Brought up in a school of fear, obedience, and suggestibility, the philistine, like Cain, murders his brother without aim and without understanding the full significance of the awful deed. He is no more responsible than is the machine gun which he accurately trains and points at his supposed enemies. Philistines are led to the battlefield like cattle to the slaughter house. Philistines have no personality, no individuality, they are cogs in wheels, links in chains of monster mechanisms.

The philistine, the product of our home and school" is suggestible and gullible, he is always on the lookout for authority, for a leader whom he should worship, by whose opinions and conviction he is ready to swear, whose command he is ready and proud to follow. The philistine is good material for mobs, for mental epidemics, for religious crazes, and for all kinds of hysterical movements in which not reason but emotional automatism is in the foreground. Philistinism, stupidity, and implicit obedience of a monstrous, efficient war machine are intimately interrelated. The individual becomes a private, the nation an army, and the country a camp.

Do we as parents wish to bring up our children as soulless, willless machines? Do we wish them to be without good judgment, without personal convictions? Do we wish them to be led about like cattle? We certainly wish them to be of strong nature and sturdy character, able to stand by their convictions, able to use their critical judgment, able to discriminate the right from the wrong, able to love the good and avoid the evil.

In The Psychology of Suggestion, published by me in 1897, I arrive at the conclusion that "Personality is suppressed by the rigidity of social organization; the cultivated, civilized individual is an automaton, a mere puppet. . . Again, "Under the enormous weight of the sociostatic press. . . the personal self sinks, the suggestible, subconscious, social, impersonal self rises to the surface, gets trained and cultivated, and becomes the hysterical actor in all the tragedies of historical life." . . . In recent European events the suggestible, social self plays the chief rôle.

In the same work I come to the following conclusion: "When social conditions are of such a nature as to charge society with strong emotional excitement, or when institutions dwarf individuality, when they arrest personal growth, when they hinder the free development and exercise of the personal, controlling consciousness, then society falls into a hypnoid condition, the social mind gets disaggregated. The gregarious self begins to move within the bosom of the crowd, and becomes active the demon of the demos emerges to the surface of social life, and throws the body politic into convulsions of demoniac fury."

The European horrors, atrocities, and brutalities, dignified by the stupefying and hypnotizing slogan "Kultur, Patriotism," are due to the early training, by fear and force, of the individual into submission to superior authority. Such pernicious training sacrifices the genius of the child, the originality of the man, to a highly efficient, but brutal and bloodthirsty Moloch State. The European war is a mental plague which attacks gigantic, social aggregates when their ultimate constituent units, the individuals, are deprived of independent thought and liberty of decision and action, when

men are swayed by hypnotizing suggestions of "superior leaders" who represent the interests not of every individual at his best, but of high noble castes and of commercial classes. The organized murder of European nations is due to the stifling of human genius by the cultivation of mob spirit which is the cause of all forms of social insanity and mental epidemics.

In the stifling of the genius of the child and the cultivation of the mob spirit America does not lag behind Europe. Mental epidemics, excited by the fear instinct and by the impulse of self-preservation, are prevalent in the States. As described by me in The Psychology of Suggestion: "American society oscillates between acute financial mania and attacks of religious insanity. No sooner is the business fever over than the delirium acutum of religious mania sets in. Society is thrown from Scylla into Charybdis. From the heights of financial speculation society sinks into the abyss of revivalism. American society seems to suffer from circular insanity."

Revivalism, a mental frenzy to which the American mob mind is specially prone, is a resurrection of Greek Bacchanalia and Roman Saturnalia. Revivals are emotional debauches, religious orgies. As I had pointed out in the same work: "Revivalism is far more dangerous to the life of society than drunkenness. . . As a sot man falls below the brute; as a revivalist he sinks lower than the sot."

If Europe is in violent convulsions of war insanity, America suffers from no less serious mental maladies,―speculation frenzies, revival manias, and preparedness plagues. Mental epidemics are ineradicable afflictions of the highly evolved mob spirit characteristic of the philistine. The evolution of the philistine is the involution of genius. Philistinism is social decay. The progress of humanity is from brute to man, from Philistine to Genius. Boris Sidis

Sidis Institute Maplewood Farm, Portsmouth, New Hampshire

I

I ADDRESS myself to you, fathers and mothers, and to you, open-minded readers. I take it for granted that your lifework is with you a serious matter and that you put forth all your efforts to do your best in the walk of life which you have chosen. I assume that you want to develop your energies to the highest efficiency and bring out the best there is in you. I assume that you earnestly wish and strive to bring out and develop to the highest efficiency the faculties not only of your children, but also those of your friends and co-workers with whom you associate in your daily vocation, and that you are deeply interested in the education of your countrymen and their children, who share with you the duties, rights and privileges of citizenship. I also assume that as men and women of liberal education you are not limited to the narrow interests of one particular subject, to the exclusion of all else. I assume that you are especially interested in the development of personality as a whole, the true aim of education. I also assume that you realize that what is requisite is not some more routine, not more desiccated, quasi-scientific methods of educational psychology, not the sawdust of college-pseudogogics and philistine, normal school-training, but more light on the problems of life. What you want is not the training of philistines, but the education of genius.

We need more light, more information on "the problems of life." Is it not too big a phrase to employ? On a second thought, however, I must say that your problems are the problems of life. For the problems of education are fundamental, they are at the bottom of all vital problems. The ancient Greeks were aware of it and paid special attention to education. In rearing his revolutionary, utopian

edifice, Plato insists on education as the foundation of a new social, moral and intellectual life. Plato in his Republic makes Socrates tell his interlocutor, Adeimantus: "Then you are aware that in every work the beginning is the most important part, especially in dealing with anything young and tender? For that is the time when any impression which one may desire to communicate is most readily stamped and taken."

We may say that all man's struggles, religious, moral and economical, all the combats and conflicts that fill the history of mankind, can be traced finally to the nature and vigor of the desires, beliefs and strivings which have been cultivated by the social environment in the early life of the individual. The character of a nation is moulded by the nature of its education. The character of society depends on the early training of its constituent units. The fatalism, the submissiveness of the Oriental; the aestheticism, the independence, love of innovations and inquisitiveness of the ancient Greek; the ruggedness, sturdiness, harshness and conservatism of the ancient Roman; the emotionalism, the religious fervor of the ancient Hebrew; the commercialism, restlessness, speculation and scientific spirit of modern times, are all the results of the nature of the early education the individual gets in his respective social environment. We may say that the education of early life forms the very foundation of the social structure.

Like clay in the hands of the potter, so is man in the hands of his community. Society fashions the beliefs, the desires, the aims, the strivings, the knowledge, the ideals, the character, the minds, the very selves of its constituent units. Who has the control of this vital function of moulding minds? Fathers and mothers, the child is under your control. To your hands, to your care is entrusted the fate of young generations, the fate of the future community, which, consciously or unconsciously, you fashion according to the accepted standards and traditions with which you have been imbued in your own education.

It is related, I think, in Plutarch's Lives, of Themistocles telling with the ironical frankness characteristic of the Greek temperament that his son possessed the greatest power in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, his mother commands me, and he commands his mother." This bit of Greek irony is not without its significance. The mind of the growing generation controls the future of nations. The boy is father to the man, as the proverb has it; he controls the future. But who controls the boy? The home, the mother and father, the guides of the child's early life. For it is in early life that the foundation of our mental edifice is laid. All that is good, valid and solid in man's mental structure depends on the breadth, width, depth, and solidity of that foundation.

II

THAT the groundwork of man's character is laid in his childhood appears as a trivial platitude. I am almost ashamed to bring it before you. And yet, as I look round me and find how apt we are to forget this simple precept which is so fundamental in our life, I cannot help calling your attention to it. If we consider the matter, we can well understand the reason why its full significance is not realized. We must remember that all science begins with axioms which are apparently truisms. What is more of a truism than the axioms of Geometry and Mechanics―that the whole is greater than the part, that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another, or that a body remains in the same state unless an external force changes it? And yet the whole of Mathematics and Mechanics is built on those simple axioms.

The elements of science are just such obvious platitudes. What is needed is to use them as efficient tools and by their means draw the consequent effects. The same holds true in the science of education. The axiom or the law of early training is not new, it is well known, but it is unfortunately too often neglected and forgotten, and its significance is almost completely lost.

It is certainly surprising how this law of early training is so disregarded, so totally ignored in the education of the child. Not only do we neglect to lay the necessary solid basis in the early life of the child, a solid basis ready for the future structure, we do not even take care to clear the ground. In fact, we even make the child's soul a dunghill, full of vermin of superstitions, fears and prejudices,a hideous heap saturated with the spirit of credulity.

We regard the child's mind as a tabula rasa, a vacant lot, and empty on it all our rubbish and refuse. We labor under the delusion that stories and fairy tales, myths and deceptions about life and man are good for the child's mind. Is it a wonder that on such a foundation men can only put up shacks and shanties? We forget the simple fact that what is harmful for the adult is still more harmful to the child. Surely what is poisonous to the grown-up mind cannot be useful food to the young. If credulity in old wives' tales, lack of individuality, sheepish submissiveness, barrack-discipline, unquestioned and uncritical belief in authority, meaningless imitation of jingles and gibberish, memorization of mother-goose wisdom, repetition of incomprehensible prayers and articles of creed, unintelligent aping of good manners, silly games, prejudices and superstitions and fears of the supernormal and supernatural, are censured in adults, why 'should we approve their cultivation in the young?

At home and at school we drill into the child's mind uncritical beliefs in stories and tales, fictions and figments, fables and myths, creeds and dogmas which poison the very sources of the child's mind. At home and at school we give the child over as a prey to all sorts of fatal germs of mental diseases and moral depravity. We leave the child's mind an open field to be sown with dragon's teeth which bring forth a whole crop of pernicious tendencies,―love and admiration of successful evil, and adoration of the rule of brute force. From the dragon's teeth sown in early childhood there rises in later life a whole brood of flint-hearted men who blindly jostle and fight and mercilessly tear one another, to obtain for some greedy Jason, some witch of a Medea their coveted golden fleece.

III

WE regard with disapproval the bloody combats of some savage tribe; we regard with horror the sacrifice of children and prisoners to some idol of a Phoenician Moloch or Mexican Huitzlio-Potchli; we are shocked at the criminal proceedings of the infamous Torquemada with his inquisition glorying in its terrors and tortures in the name of Christ; we are sickened as we read of the religious wars in Europe; we shudder at the horrors of the night of St. Bartholomew; we are appalled by the recent slaughters of the Jews in Russia, by the wholesale massacre of the Christians in Turkey.

All such atrocities, we say, belong to barbaric ages and are only committed in semi-civilized countries. We flatter ourselves that we are different in this age of enlightenment and civilization. Are we different? Have we changed? Have we a right to fling stones at our older brothers, the savage and the barbarian? We are so used to our life that we do not notice its evils and misery. We can easily see the mote in the eye of our neighbor, but do not notice the beam in our own.

We are still savage at heart. Our civilization is mere gloss, a thin coating of paint and varnish.

Our methods of inflicting pain are more refined than those of the Indian, but no less cruel, while the number of the victims sacrificed to our greed and rapacity may even exceed the numbers fallen by the sword of the barbarian or by the torch of the fanatic. The slums in our cities are foul and filthy, teeming with deadly germs of disease where the mortality of our infants and children in some cases rises to the frightful figure of 204 per thousand!

The sanitary conditions of our cities are filthy and deadly. They carry in their wake all forms of plagues, pests and diseases, among which tuberculosis is so well known to the laity. "Tuberculosis," reads a report of a Tenement House Commission, "is one of the results of our inhumane tenements; it follows in the train of our inhumane sweatshops. It comes where the hours of labor are long and the wages are small; it afflicts the children who are sent to labor when they should yet be in school."

"The Consumers' League," says Mr. John Graham Brooks, "long hesitated to lay stress upon these aspects of filth and disease, because of their alarmist and sensational nature, and of the immediate and grave risk to the consumer of the goods manufactured in the sweatshop and the tenement house. If the sweatshop spread diphtheria and scarlet fever, there is the hue and cry before personal danger. But these diseases are the very slightest elements of the real risk to the general good. It is the spoiled human life, with its deadly legacy of enfeebled mind and body, that reacts directly and indirectly on the social whole." We do not realize that we drift into national degeneracy. We fail to realize that we raise a generation of stunted lives, of physical and nervous wrecks, of mental invalids and moral cripples.

We boast of our wealth unrivalled by other countries and by former ages. We should remember the great poverty of our masses, the filthy conditions of our wealthy cities, with their loathsome city-slums, in which human beings live, breed and teem like so many worms.

We spend on barracks and prisons more than we do on schools and colleges. What is the level of a civilization in which the cost of crime and war far exceeds that of the education of its future citizens? We spend on our army and navy a quarter of a billion dollars, which is found to be insufficient, while the "total money burden of crime amounts in this country to the enormous sum of 600 million dollars a year!"

The cost of crime alone is so enormous that a representative of the Board of Charities of one of our Eastern states considers "the entire abolition of all the penal codes and the complete liberty of the criminal class." Our civilization can boast of the city-slum, the abode of misery and crime, the gift of our modern industrial progress, wealth and prosperity.

Professor James and myself were over once on a visit to a charitable institution for mentally defective. With his clear eye for the incongruities and absurdities of life, Professor James remarked to me that idiots and imbeciles were given the comforts, in fact, the luxuries of life, while healthy children, able boys and girls, had to struggle for a livelihood. Children under fourteen work in factories, work at a wage of about twenty-five cents a day, and, according to the labor bureau, the daily wage of the factory children of the South is often as low as fifteen cents and sometimes falls to nine cents. In many of our colleges many a student has to live on the verge of starvation, freeze in a summer overcoat the whole winter and warm his room by burning newspapers in the grate. We are charitable and help our mediocrities, imbeciles and idiots, while we neglect our talent and genius. We have a blind faith that genius, like murder, will out. We know of successful talent, but we do not know of the great amount of unsuccessful talent and genius that has gone to waste. We favor imbecility and slight genius.

One of the physicians of the institution overheard our conversation and attempted to justify his work by an argument commonly advanced and uncritically accepted―"Our civilization, our

Christian civilization values human life." Does our civilization really value human life? The infant mortality of the slums of our large cities and the factory work of our young children do not seem to justify such a claim.

The loss of life on our railways is as large as one caused by a national war. Thus the number of persons killed on America on railways during a period of three years ending June 30, 1900, was about 22,000, while the mortality of British forces, including death from disease, during three years of the South African war amounted to 22,000. In 1901, one out of every 400 railway employees was killed and one out of every 26 was injured. In 1902, 2,969 employees were killed and 50,524 were injured.

Commenting on the statistics of railway accidents, Mr. John Graham Brooks says: "One has to read and re-read these figures before their gruesome significance is in the least clear. If we add the mining, iron and lumbering industries,―portions of which are more dangerous than the railroad,―some conception is possible of the mutilated life due to machinery as it is now run." It may also be of interest to learn that, according to the calculation made by a representative of one of the insurance companies, more than a million and a half are annually killed and injured in the United States alone.

The waste of human life is in fact greater than in any previous age. "Saul hath slain his thousands, but David his ten thousands." Think of our modern warfare, with its infernal machines of carnage, mowing down more men in a day than the warlike Assyrians and Romans, with their crude bows, arrows and catapults, could destroy in a century. And is not our country, our civilized Christian society, with its high valuation of human life, keeping on increasing its army and navy, and perfecting deadly weapons of slaughter and carnage? What about the justice dealt out by Judge Lynch? From 1882 to 1900 there were about three thousand lynchings! What about our grand imperial policy? What about our dominance over weak and ignorant tribes, treated in no gentle way by the armed fist of their civilized masters, who send to the benighted heathens their missionaries to preach religion and their soldiers to enforce the sale of narcotics and other civilizing goods?

IV

WE are stock-blind to our own barbarities; we do not realize the enormities of our life and consider our age and country as civilized and enlightened. We censure the faults of other societies, but do not notice our own. Thus Lecky, in describing Roman society, says: "The gladiatorial games form indeed the one feature which to a modern mind is most inconceivable in its atrocity. That not only men, but women, man advanced period of civilization,―men and women who not only professed, but very frequently acted upon a high code of morals―should have made the carnage of men their habitual amusement, that all this should have continued for centuries with scarcely a protest, is one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is, however, perfectly normal, while it opens out fields of ethical inquiry of a very deep, though painful, character."

As in modern times, our college authorities justify the brutalities of football and prize-fights, so in ancient times the great moralists of those ages justified their gladiatorial games. Thus the great orator, the moralizing philosopher, Cicero, in speaking of the gladiatorial games, tells us: "When guilty men arc compelled to fight, no better discipline against suffering and death can be presented to the eye." And it is certainly instructive for us to learn that "the very men who looked down with delight, when tile sand of the arena reddened with human blood, made the theater ring with applause when Terence in his famous line proclaimed the brotherhood of men."

One feeble protest is on record, a protest coming from the mother of civilization, from ancient Athens. "When an attempt was made to introduce the games into Athens, the philosopher Demonax appealed successfully to the better feelings of the people by exclaiming: "You must first overthrow the altar of pity 1"

The philosopher Demonax had not the compromising spirit of the modern professor. Although the brutal games of our youth and populace need a Demonax, we certainly should not look for one in our colleges and universities. Our college authorities assure us that athletic prestige is indispensable to a good university. In fact, according to some official statements, football teams are supposed to express the superior intellectual activities of our foremost colleges. Like Cicero of old, we claim that "our games are good,―they train men, and no better discipline can be presented to the eye."

The fact is, man is bat-blind to the evils of the environment in which he is bred. He takes those evils as a matter of course, and even finds good reasons to justify them as edifying and elevating. In relation to his own surroundings, man is in the primitive condition of the Biblical Adam,―he is not conscious of his own moral nakedness. Six days in the week we witness and uphold the wholesale carnage, national and international, political, economical, in shops, factories, mines, railroads and on the battlefields, while on the seventh we sing hymns to the God of mercy, love and peace.

We pick up the first newspapers or popular magazines that come to our hand, and we read of wars, slaughters, murders, lynchings, crimes and outrages on life and liberty; we read of strikes, lockouts, of tales of starvation and of frightful infant mortality; we read of diseases and epidemics ravaging the homes of our working population; we read of corporation iniquities, of frauds and corruption of our legislative bodies, of the control of polities by the criminal classes of the great metropolis of our land. We read of all that evil and corruption, but forget them next moment.

Our social life is corrupt, our body politic is eaten through with cankers and sores, "the whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises and putrefying sores, and yet we think we are a civilized people, superior to all countries and to all ages. "The voice of our brother's blood crieth unto us from the ground." How can we be so callous? How can we be so mole-blind and so stone-deaf?

The truth is, we have but a thin varnish of humaneness, glossing over a rude barbarism. With our lips we praise the God of love, but in our hearts we adore the God of force. flow much physical force is worshipped we can realize from the crowds that throng the games of base-ball, football, prize-fights and boxing exhibitions. They go into tens of thousands. flow many would be drawn by a St. Paul, an Epictetus, or a Socrates?

The newspaper, the mirror of our social life, is filled with the names and exploits of our magnates of high finance, our money-mongers and usurers. Our journals teem with deeds and scandals of our refined "smart set" set up as patterns, as ideals, after which our middle class so longingly craves. Like the Israelites of old we worship golden calves and sacred bulls. Our daughters yearn after the barbaric shimmer and glitter of the bejewelled, bespangled, empty-minded, parasitic females of "the smart set." Our college boys admire the feats of the trained athlete and scorn the work of the "grind." Our very schoolboys crave for the fame of a Jeffries and a Johnson. If in the depths of space there is some solar system inhabited by really rational beings, and if one of such beings should by some miracle happen to visit our planet, he would no doubt turn away in horror.

V

We press our children into the triumphant march of our industrial juggernaut. Over 1,700,000 children under 15 years of age toil in fields, factories, mines and workshops. The slums and the factory cripple the energies of our young generation The slaughter of the innocents and the sacrifice of our children to the insatiable Moloch of industry exclude us from the rank of civilized society and place us on the level of barbaric nations.

Our educators are narrow-minded pedants. They are occupied with the dry bones of text-books, the sawdust of pedagogics and the would-be scientific experiments of educational psychology; they are ignorant of the real vital problems of human interests, a knowledge of which goes to make the truly educated man.

About the middle of the nineteenth century, Buckle made the prediction that no war was any more to occur among civilized nations. Henceforth peace was to reign supreme. "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. . . . Nations shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift lip sword against nation, nor shall they learn war any more." This prophecy was rather hasty. We have had since the Civil war, the Franco-Prussian war, tile Spanish-American war, the Boer war, the Russo-Japanese war, not counting the ceaseless wars of extermination carried on by civilized nations among the various semi-civilized nations and primitive tribes. Civilized nations do not as yet beat their swords into ploughshares, but keep on increasing the strength of their "armed peace," and are ready to fight bloody battles in the quest of new lands and the conquest of new markets.

In spite of The Hague conference of peace convoked by the peace-loving Czar, no other age has had such large standing armies provided with such costly and efficient weapons of execution ready for instant use. The red spectre still stalks abroad claiming its victims. We still believe in the baptism of fire and redemption by blood. The dogma of blood-redemption is still at the basis of our faith and, consciously or unconsciously, we brand that sacred creed on the minds of the young generation. We are not educated to see and understand the wretchedness, the misery of our life,-the evil of the world falls on the blind spot of our eye. In the name of evolution and the survival of the fittest, we justify the grasping arm of the strong, and even glory in the extermination of the weak. The weak, we say, must be weeded out by the processes of natural selection. The strong are the best; it is right that they should survive and flourish like a green bay tree. The fact is that we are still dominated by the law of the jungle, the den and the cave. We are still wild at heart. We still harken to the call of the wild; we are ruled by the fist, the claw and the tooth.

Love, justice, gentleness, peace, reason, sympathy and pity, all humane feelings and promptings are with us sentiments of unnatural" or supernatural religion which we profess in our churches, but in which we really have no faith as good for actual life. We mistake brutishness for courage, and by fight and by war we train the beast in man.

All humane feelings are regarded as so many hindrances to progress; they favor, we claim, the survival of the weak. We are, of course, evolutionists, and believe most firmly in progress. We believe that the luxuries and vices of the strong are conducive to prosperity, and that the evils of life by the automatic grinding of that grind-organ known as the process of evolution somehow lead to a higher civilization.

When in the beginning of the eighteenth century Bernard de Mandeville proclaimed the apparently paradoxical principle that Private Vices are Public Benefits, the academic moralists were shocked at such profane brutality. Mandeville only proclaimed the leading, the guiding principle of

the coming age of industrial prosperity. We now know better. Are we not evolutionists? Have we not learned that progress and evolution and the improvement of the race are brought about by the fierce struggle for existence, by the process of natural selection, by the merciless elimination of the weak and by the triumph of the strong and the fit? What is the use of being sentimental? Like Brennus, the Gaul, we throw our sword on the scales of blinded justice and shout triumphantly "Væ victis!"

VI

WE are confirmed optimists and sow optimism broadcast. We have optimistic clubs and mental scientists and Christian scientists,―all afflicted with incurable ophthalmia to surrounding evil and misery. We are scientific, we are evolutionists, we have faith in the sort of optimism taught by Leibnitz in bis famous Theodicea. We are the Candides of our oracles, the Panglosses. You may possibly remember what Voltaire writes of Professor Pangloss. "Pangloss used to teach the science of metaphysico-theologo-cosmologo-noodleology. He demonstrated to admiration that there is no effect without a cause and that this is the best of all possible worlds. It has been proved, said Pangloss, that things cannot be otherwise than they are; for everything, the end for which everything is made, is necessarily the best end. Observe how noses are made to carry 'spectacles, and spectacles we have accordingly. Everything that is, is the best that could possibly be." It is such shallow optimism that now gains currency.

Verily, we are afflicted with mental cataract. "If we should bring clearly to a man's sight," says Schopenhauer, "the terrible sufferings and miseries to which his life is constantly exposed, he would be seized with horror, and if we were to conduct the confirmed optimist through the hospitals, infirmaries, and surgical operating-rooms, through prisons, asylums, torture-chambers and slave-kennels, over battlefields and places of execution; if we were to open to him all the dark abodes of misery, where it hides itself from the glance of cold curiosity, he would understand at last the nature of this best of possible worlds."

Schopenhauer is metaphysical, pessimistic, but he is certainly not blinded by a shallow optimism to the realities of life. Drunk with the spirit of optimism, we do not realize the degradation, the misery and poverty of our life. Meanwhile the human genius, the genius which all of us possess, languishes, famishes, and perishes, while the brute alone emerges in triumph. Weare so overcome by the faith in the transcendent, optimistic evolution of the good, that through the misty heavenly, angelic visions, we do not discern the cloven hoof of the devil.

Professor James in a recent address told the Radcliffe graduates that the aim of a college-education is "to recognize the good man," when you see him. This advice may be good for Radcliffe young ladies; but, fathers and mothers, the true education of life is the recognition of evil wherever it is met.

The Bible begins the story of man in a paradise of ignorance and finishes it with his tasting of the fruits of the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil. "And the eyes of them both were opened and they knew that they were naked. And the Lord God said,―Behold, the man is become as one of us to know good and evil, and now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live for ever. Therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden. So he drove out the man." We prefer the sinful, mortal, but godlike man with his knowledge of evil to the brutish p}lilistine in the bliss of Elysium.

VII

IN the education of the young generation the purpose of the nation is to bring up the child as a good man, as a liberal-minded citizen, devoted soul and body to the interests of social welfare. This purpose in the education of the young citizen is of the utmost importance in every society, but it is a vital need in a democratic society. We do not want narrow-minded patriots devoted to party-factions, nor bigoted sectarians, nor greedy entrepreneurs fastening in trusts, like so many barnacles, on the body-politic. We do not want ringleaders and mobs, unscrupulous bosses and easily led voters. What we need is men having at heart the welfare of their fellow-men.

The purpose of the education provided by the nation for its young generation is the rearing of healthy, talented, broad-minded citizens. "We need, above all, good citizens, active and intelligent, with a knowledge of life and with a delicate sense of discrimination and detection of evil in all its protean forms; we need strong-minded citizens with grit and courage to resist oppression and root out evil wherever it is found. A strong sense of recognition of evil should be the social sense of every well-educated citizen as a safeguard of social and national life. The principle of recognition of evil under all its guises is at the basis of the true education of man.

Is it not strange that this vital principle of education, the recognition of evil,―a fundamental principle with the great thinkers of humanity,―should remain so sadly neglected by our educators and public instructors? Our educators are owl-wise, our teachers are pedants and all their ambition is the turning out of smooth, well-polished philistines. It is a sad case of the blind leading the blind.

It is certainly unfortunate that the favored type of superintendent of our public education should be such a hopeless philistine, possessed of all the conceit of the mediocre business man. Routine is his ideal. Originality and genius are spurned and suppressed. Our school-superintendent with his well-organized training-shop is proud of the fact that there is no place for genius in our schools.

Unfortunate and degraded is the nation that has handed over its childhood and youth to guidance and control by hide-bound mediocrity. Our school-managers are respected by the laity as great educators and are looked up to by the teachers as able business men. Their merit is routine, discipline and the hiring of cheap teaching-employees.

It is certainly a great misfortune to the nation that a good number of our would-be scientific pedagogues are such mediocrities, with so absurd an exaggeration of their importance that they are well satisfied if the mass of their pupils turn out exact reproductions of the silly pedagogue. What can be expected of a nation that entrusts the fate of its young generation to the care or carelessness of young girls, to the ire of old maids, and to pettifogging officials with their educational red tape, discipline and routine,―petty bureaucrats animated with a hatred towards talent and genius?

The goody-goody schoolma'am, the mandarin-schoolmaster, the philistine-pedagogue, the pedant-administrator with his business capacities, have proved themselves incompetent to deal with the education of the young. They stifle talent, they stupefy the intellect, they paralyze the will, they suppress genius, they benumb the faculties of our children. The educator, with his pseudo-scientific, pseudo-psychological pseudogogics, can only bring up a set of philistines with firm, set habits,―marionettes,―dolls.

Business is put above learning, administration above education, discipline and order above cultivation of genius and talent. Our schools and colleges are controlled by business men. The school-boards, the boards of trustees of almost every school and college ill the country consist

mainly of, manufacturers, store-keepers, tradesmen, bulls and bears of Wall street and the market-place. What wonder that they bring with them the ideals and methods of the factory, the store, the bank and the saloon. If the saloon controls politics, the shop controls education.

Business men are no more competent to run schools and colleges than astronomers are fit to run hotels and theaters. Our whole educational system is vicious. A popular scientific journal entered a protest against the vulgarization of our colleges, the department-store trade methods of our universities, but to no avail. The popular hero, the administrative business superintendent still holds sway, and poisons the sources of our social life by debasing the very foundation of our national education.

VIII

FR0M time to time the "educational" methods of our philistine teachers are brought to light. A girl is forced by a schoolma'am of one of our large cities to stay in a corner for hours, because she unintentionally transgressed against the barrack-discipline of the school-regulations. When the parents became afraid of the girl's health and naturally took her out of school, the little girl was dragged before the court by the truant officer. Fortunately "the judge turned to the truant officer and asked him how the girl could be a truant, if she had been suspended. He didn't believe in breaking children's wills."

In another city a pupil of genius was excluded from school because "he did not fall in with the system" laid out by the "very able business-superintendent." A schoolmistress conceives the happy idea of converting two of her refractory pupils into pin-cushions for the edification of her class. An "educational" administrative superintendent of a large, prosperous community told a lady who brought to him her son, an extraordinarily able boy, "I shall not take your boy. into my high-school, in spite of his knowledge." When the mother asked him to listen to her, he lost patience and told her with all the force of his school-authority, "Madam, put a rope around his neck, weigh him well down with bricks!"

A principal of a high school in one of the prominent New England towns dismisses a highly talented pupil because, to quote verbatim from the original school document, "He is not amenable to the discipline of the school, as his school life has been too short to establish him in the habit' of obedience." "His intellect," the principal's official letter goes on to say, "remains a marvel to us, but we do not feel, and in this I think I speak for all, that he is in the right place." In other words, in the opinion of those remarkable pedagogues, educators and teachers, the school is not the right place for talent and genius!

A superintendent of schools in lecturing before an audience of "subordinate teachers" told them emphatically that there was no place for genius in our schools. Dear old fogies, one can well understand your indignation! Here we have worked out some fine methods, clever rules, beautiful systems and then comes genius and upsets the whole structure! It is a shame! Genius cannot fit into the pigeon-holes of the office desk. Choke genius, and things will move smoothly in the school and the office.

Not long ago we were informed by one of those successful college-mandarins, lionized by office-clerks, superintendents and tradesmen, that he could measure education by the foot-rule! Our Regents are supposed to raise the level of education by a vicious system of examination and coaching, a system which Professor James, in a private conversation with me, has aptly characterized as "idiotic."

Our schools brand their pupils by a system of marks, while our foremost colleges measure the

knowledge and education of their students by the number of "points" passed. The student may pass either in Logic or Blacksmithing. It does not matter which, provided he makes up a certain number of "points"!

College-committees refuse admission to young students of genius, because "it is against the policy and the principles of the university." College-professors expel promising students from the lecture-room for "the good of the class as a whole," because the students "happen to handle their hats in the middle of a lecture." This, you see, interferes with class discipline. Fiat justitia, pereat mundus. Let genius perish, provided the system lives. Why not suppress all genius, as a disturbing element, for "the good of the classes," for the weal of the commonwealth? Education of man and cultivation of genius, indeed! This is not school policy.

We school and drill our children and youth in schoolma'am mannerism, schoolmaster mind-ankylosis, school-superintendent stiff-joint ceremonialism, factory regulations and office-discipline. We give our pupils and students artisan-inspiration and business-spirituality. Originality is suppressed. Individuality is crushed. Mediocrity is at a premium. That is why our country has such clever business men, such cunning artisans, such resourceful politicians, such adroit leaders of new cults, but no scientists, no artists, no philosophers, no statesmen, no genuine talent and no true genius.

School-teachers have in all ages been mediocre in intellect and incompetent. Leibnitz is regarded as a dullard and Newton is considered as a blockhead. Never, however, in the history of mankind have school teachers fallen to such a low level of mediocrity as in our times and in our country. For it is not the amount of knowledge that counts in true education, but originality and independence of thought that are of importance in education. But independence and originality of ,thought are just the very elements that are suppressed by our modern barrack-system of education. No wonder that military men claim that the best "education" is given in military schools.

We are not aware that the incubus of officialdom, and the succubus of bureaucracy have taken possession of our schools. The red tape of officialdom, like a poisonous weed, grows luxuriantly in our schools and chokes the life of our young generation. Instead of growing into a people of great independent thinkers, the nation is in danger of fast becoming a crowd of well-drilled, well-disciplined, commonplace individuals, with strong philistine habits and notions of hopeless mediocrity.

In levelling education to mediocrity we imagine that we uphold the democratic spirit of our institutions. Our American sensibilities a-re shocked when the president of one of our leading colleges dares to recommend to his college that it should cease catering to the average student. "We think it un-American, rank treason to our democratic spirit when a college president has the courage to proclaim the principle that "To form the mind and character of one man of marked talent, not to say genius, would be worth more to the community which he would serve than the routine training of hundreds of undergraduates."

We are optimistic, we believe in the pernicious superstition that genius needs no help, that talent will take care of itself. Our kitchen clocks and dollar timepieces need careful handling, but our chronometers and astronomical clocks can run by themselves.

The truth is, however, that the purpose of the school and the college is not to create an intellectual aristocracy, but to educate, to bring out the individuality, the originality, the latent powers of talent and genius present in what we unfortunately regard as "the average student." Follow Mill's advice. Instead of aiming at athletics, social connections, vocations and generally at the professional art of money-making, "Aim at something noble. Make your system such that a

great man may be formed by it, and there will be a manhood in your little men, of which you do not dream."

Awaken in early childhood the critical spirit of man; awaken, early in the child's life, love of knowledge, love of truth, of art and literature for their own sake, and you arouse man's genius. We have average mediocre students, because we have mediocre teachers, department-store superintendents, clerkly principals and deans with bookkeepers' souls, because our schools and colleges deliberately aim at mediocrity.

Ribot in describing the degenerated Byzantine Greeks tells us that their leaders were mediocrities and their great men commonplace personalities. Is the American nation drifting in the same direction? It was the system of cultivation of independent thought that awakened the Greek mind to its highest achievements in arts, science and philosophy; it was the deadly Byzantine bureaucratic red tape with its cut-and-dried theological discipline that dried up the sources of Greek genius. We are in danger of building up a Byzantine empire with large institutions and big corporations, small minds and dwarfed individualities. Like the Byzantines we begin to value administration above individuality and official, red-tape ceremonialism above originality.

We wish even to turn our schools into practical school-shops. We shall in time become a nation of well-trained clerks and artisans. The time is at hand when hall be justified in writing over the gates of our school-shops "mediocrity made here!"

IX

I ASSUME that as liberal men and women you have no use for the process of cramming and stuffing of college-geese and mentally indolent, morally obtuse and religiously "cultured" prigs and philistines, but that you realize that your true vocation is to get access to the latent energies of your children, to stimulate their reserve energies and educate, bring to light, man's genius. The science of psychopathology now sets forth a fundamental principle which is not only of the utmost importance in psychotherapeutics, but also in the domain of education; it is the principle of stored up, dormant, reserve energy, the principle of potential, subconscious, reserve energy.

It is claimed on good evidence, biological, physiological and psychopathological, that man possesses large stores of unused energy which the ordinary stimuli of life are not only unable to reach, but even tend to inhibit. Unusual combinations of circumstances, however, radical changes of the environment, often unloose the inhibitions brought about by the habitual narrow range of man's interests and surroundings. Such unloosening of inhibitions helps to release fresh supplies of reserve energy. It is not the place here to discuss this fundamental principle; I can only state it in the most general way, and give its general trend in the domain of education.

You have heard the psychologizing educator advise the formation of good, fixed, stable habits in early life. Now I want to warn you against the dangers of such unrestricted advice. Fixed adaptations, stable habits, tend to raise the thresholds of mental life, tend to inhibit the liberation, the output of reserve-energy. Avoid routine. Do not let your pupils fall into the ruts of habits and customs. Do not let even the best of habits harden beyond the point of further possible modification.

Where there is a tendency towards formation of over-abundant mental cartilage, set your pupils to work under widely different circumstances. Confront them with a changed set of conditions. Keep them on the move. Surprise them by some apparently paradoxical relations and strange phenomena. Do not let them settle down to one definite set of actions or reactions. Remember that rigidity, like sclerosis, induration of tissue, means decay of originality, destruction of man's genius. With solidified and invariable habits not only does the reserve energy become entirely inaccessible,

but the very individuality is extinguished.

Do not make of our children a nation of philistines. Why say, you make man in your own image? Do not make your schools machine-shops, turning out on one uniform pattern so much mediocrity per year. Cultivate variability. The tendency towards variability is the most precious part of a good education. Beware of the philistine with his set, stable habits.

The important principle in education is not so much formation of habits as the power of their re-formation. The power of breaking up habits is by far the more essential factor of a good education. It is in this power of breaking down habits that we can find the key for the unlocking of the otherwise inaccessible stores of subconscious reserve energy. The cultivation of the power of habit-disintegration is what constitutes the proper education of man's genius.*

A well known editor of one of the academic Journals on Educational Psychology writes to me as follows: "Your remarks on the avoidance of routine would be like a red rag to a bull for a number of educators who are emphasizing the importance of habit formation in education at present."

X

THE power of breaking down or dissolving habits depends on the amount and strength of the aqua fortis of the intellect. The logical and critical activities of the individual should be cultivated with special care. The critical self, as we may put it, should have control over the automatic and the subconscious. For the subconscious has been shown to form the fertile soil for the breeding of the most dangerous germs of mental disease, epidemics, plagues and pestilences in their worst forms. We should try to develop the individual's critical abilities in early childhood, not permitting the suggestible subconsciousness to predominate, and to become overrun with noxious weeds and pests.

We should be very careful with the child's critical self, as it is weak and has little resistance. We should, therefore, avoid all dominating authority and categorical imperative commands. Autocratic authority cultivates in the child the predisposition to abnormal suggestibility, to hypnotic states, and leads towards the dominance of the subconscious with its train of pernicious tendencies and deleterious results.

There is a period in the child's life between the ages of five and ten when he is very inquisitive, asking all kinds of questions. It is the age of discussion in the child. This inquisitiveness and discussion should by all means be encouraged and fostered. We should aid the development of the spirit of inquisitiveness and curiosity in the child. For this is the acquisition of control over the stored-up, latent energies of man's genius.

We should not arrest the child's questioning spirit, as we are often apt to do, but should strongly encourage the apparently meddlesome and troublesome searching and prying and scrutinizing of whatever interests the child. Everything should be open to the child's searching interest; nothing should be suppressed and tabooed as too sacred for examination. The spirit of inquiry, the genius of man, is more sacred than any abstract belief, dogma and creed.

A rabbi came to ask my advice about the education of his little boy. My advice was: "Teach him not to be a Jew." The man of God departed and never came again. The rabbi did not care for education, but for faith. He did not wish his boy to become a man, but to be a Jew.

The most central, the most crucial part of the education of man's genius is the knowledge, the recognition of evil in all its protean forms and innumerable disguises, intellectual, æsthetic and moral, such as fallacies, sophisms, ugliness, deformity, prejudice, superstition, vice and depravity. Do not be afraid to discuss these matters with the child. For the knowledge, the recognition of evil does not only possess the virtue of immunization of the child's mind against all evil, but furnishes the main power for habit disintegration with consequent release and control of potential reserve energy, of manifestations of human genius. When a man becomes contented and ceases to notice the evils of life, as is done by some modern religious sects, he loses his hold on the powers of man's genius, he loses touch with the throbbing pulse of humanity, he loses hold on reality and falls into subhuman groups.

The purpose of education, of a liberal education, is not to live in a fool's paradise, or to go through the world in a post-hypnotic state of negative hallucinations. The true aim of a liberal education is, as the Scriptures put it, to have the eyes opened,―to be free from all delusions, illusions, from the fata morgana of life. We prize a liberal education, because it liberates us from subjection to superstitious fears, delivers us from the narrow bonds of prejudice, from the exalted or depressing delusions of moral paresis, intellectual dementia-praecox, and religious paranoia. A liberal education liberates us from the enslavement to the degrading influence of all idol-worship.

In the education of man do not play on his subconscious sense by deluding him by means of hypnotic and post-hypnotic suggestions of positive and negative hallucinations, with misty and mystic, beatific visions. Open his eyes to undisguised reality. Teach him, show him how to strip the real from its unessential wrappings and adornments and see things in their nakedness. Open the eyes of your children so that they shall see, understand and face courageously the evils of life.

Then will you do your duty as parents, then will you give your children the proper education.

XI

I HAVE spoken of the fundamental law of early education. The question is "how early?" There are, of course, children who are backward in their development. This backwardness may either be congenital or may be due to some overlooked pathological condition that may be easily remedied by proper treatment. In the large majority of children, however, the beginning of education is between the second and third year. It is at that time that the child begins to form his interests. It is at that critical period that we have to seize the opportunity to guide the child's formative energies in the right channels. To delay is a mistake and a wrong to the child. We can at that early period awaken a love of knowledge which will persist through life. The child will as eagerly play in the game of knowledge as he now spends the most of his energies in meaningless games and objectless silly sports.

We claim we are afraid to force the child's mind. We claim we are afraid to strain his brain prernaturely. This is an error. In directing the course of the use of the child's energies we do not force the child. If you do not direct the energies in the right course, the child will waste them in the wrong direction. The same amount of mental energy used in those silly games, which we think are specially adapted for the childish mind, can be directed, with lasting benefit, to the development of his interests in intellectual activity and love of knowledge. The child will learn to play at the game of knowledge-acquisition with the same ease, grace and interest as he is showing now in his nursery-games and physical exercises.

XII

ARISTOTLE laid it down as a self-evident proposition that all Hellenes love knowledge. This was true of the national genius of the ancient Greeks. The love of wisdom is the pride of the ancient Greek in contradistinction to the barbarian, who does not prize knowledge. We still belong to the barbarians. Our children, our pupils, our students have no love of knowledge.

The ancient Greeks knew the value of a good education and understood its fundamental elements. They laid great stress on early education and they knew how to develop man's mental energies, without fear of injury to the brain and physical constitution. The Greeks were not afraid of thought, that it might injure the brain. 'They were strong men, great thinkers.

The love of knowledge, the love of truth for its own sake, is entirely neglected in our modern schemes of education. Instead of training men we train mechanics, artisans and shopkeepers. We turn our national schools, high schools and universities into trade-schools and machine-shops. The school, whether lower or higher, has now one purpose in view, and that is the training of the pupil in the art of money-making. Is it a wonder that the result is a low form of mediocrity, a dwarfed and crippled specimen of humanity?

Open the reports of our school superintendents and you find that the illustrations setting forth the prominent work performed by the school represent carpentry, shoemaking, blacksmithing, bookkeeping, typewriting, dressmaking, millinery and cookery. One wonders whether it is the report of a factory inspector, the "scientific" advertisement of some instrument-maker or machine-shop, a booklet of some popular hotel, or an extensive circular of some large department-store. Is this what our modern education consists in? Is the aim of the nation to form at its expense vast reserve armies of skilled mechanics, great numbers of well-trained cooks and well-behaved clerks? Is the purpose of the nation to form cheap skilled labor for the manufacturer, or is the aim of society to form intelligent, educated citizens?

The high-school and college courses advised by the professors and elected by the student are with reference to the vocation in life, to business and to trade. Our schools, our high schools, our colleges and universities are all animated with the same sordid aim of giving electives for early specialization in the art of money-getting. We may say with Mill that our schools and colleges give no true education, no true culture. We drift to the status of Egypt and India with their castes of early trained mechanics, professionals and shopkeepers. Truly educated men we shall have none. We shall become a nation of narrow-minded philistines, well contented with their mediocrity. The savage compresses the skull of the infant, while we flatten the brain and cramp the mind of our young generation.

XIII

THE great thinker, John Stuart Mill, insists that "the great business of every rational being is the strengthening and enlarging of his own intellect and character. The empirical knowledge which the world demands, which is the stock in trade of money-getting, we would leave the world to provide for itself." We must make our system of education such "that a great man may be formed by it, and there will be a manhood in your little men of which you do not dream. We must have a system of education capable of forming great minds." Education must aim at the bringing out of the genius in man. Do we achieve such aim by the formation of philistine-specialists and young petty-minded artisans?

"The very cornerstone of an education," Mill tells us, "intended to form great minds, must be the recognition of the principle, that the object is to call forth the greatest possible quantity of intellectual power, and to inspire the intensest love of truth; and this without a particle of regard to the results to which the exercise of that power may lead." With us the only love of truth is the one that leads to the shop, the bank and the counting-house.

The home controls the school and the college. As long as the home is dominated by commercial ideals, the school will turn out mediocre tradesmen.

This, however, is one of the characteristic types of the American home: the mother thinks of dresses, fashions and parties. The daughter twangs and thrums on the piano, makes violent attempts at singing that sound as "the crackling of thorns under a pot," is passionately fond of shopping, dressing and visiting. Both mother and daughter, love society, show and gossip. The father works in some business or at some trade and loves sports and games. Not a spark of refinement and culture, not a redeeming ray of love of knowledge and of art, lighting up the commonplace and frivolous life of the family. What wonder that the children of ten and eleven can hardly read and write, are little brutes and waste away their precious life of childhood in the close, dusty, overheated rooms of the early grades of some elementary school? Commercial mediocrity is raised at home and cultivated in the school.

"As a means of educating the many, the universities are absolutely null," exclaims Mill. "The attainments of any kind required for taking all the degrees conferred by these bodies are, at Cambridge, utterly contemptible." Our American schools, with their ideals of money-earning capacities, our colleges glorying in their athletics, football teams and courses for professional and business specializations would have been regarded by Mill as below contempt.

What indeed is the worth of an education that does not create even as much as an ordinary respect for learning and love of truth, and that prizes knowledge in terms of hard cash? What is the educational worth of a college or of a university which suppresses its most gifted students by putting them under the ban of disorderly behavior, because of not conforming to commonplace mannerisms? What is the educational value of a university which is but a modern edition of a gladiatorial school with a smattering of the humanities? What is the educational value of an institution of learning that expels its best students because they "attract more attention than their professors"? What is the intellectual level of a college that expels from its courses the ablest of its students for some slight infringement, and that an involuntary one, under the pretext that it is done for the sake of class-discipline, "for the general good of the class" What travesty on education is a system that suppresses genius in the interest of mediocrity? What is the cultural, the humanistic value of an education that puts a prize on mediocrity?

XIV

DISCIPLINE, fixed habits approved by the pedagogue are specially enforced in our schools. To this may be added some "culture" in the art of money-getting in the case of the boys, while in the case of girls the æsthetic training of millinery and dressmaking may be included. The colleges, in addition to class-discipline looked after by the professors and college-authorities, are essentially an organization of hasty-pudding clubs, football associations and athletic corporations. What is the use of a college if not for its games? Many regard the college as useful for the formation of business acquaintances in later life. Others again consider the college a good place for learning fine manners. In other words, the college and the school are for athletics, good manners, business companionship,

mechanical arts and money-getting. They are for anything but education.

We have become so used to college athletics that it appears strange and possibly absurd to demand of a college the cultivation of man's genius. Who expects to find an intellectual atmosphere among the great body of our college undergraduates? Who expects of our schools and colleges true culture and the cultivation of a taste for literature, art and science? A dean, an unusually able man, of one of the prominent Eastern colleges tells me that he and his friends are very pessimistic about his students and especially about the great body of undergraduate students. Literature, art, science have no interest for the student; games and athletics fill his mental horizon.

In the training of our children, in the education of our young, we think that discipline, obedience to paternal and maternal commands, whether rational or absurd, are of the utmost importance. "We do not realize that in such a scheme of training we fail to cultivate the child's critical faculties, but only succeed in suppressing the child's individuality. We only break his will-power and originality. We also prepare the ground for future nervous and mental maladies characterized by their fears, indecisions, hesitations, diffidence, irritability, lack of individuality and absence of self-control.

We laugh at the Chinese, because they bandage the feet of their girls, we ridicule those who cripple their chest and mutilate their figure by the tight lacing of their corsets, but we fail to realize the baneful effects of submitting the young minds to the grindstone of our educational discipline. I have known good fathers and mothers who have unfortunately been so imbued with the necessity of disciplining the child that they have crushed the child's spirit in the narrow bonds of routine and custom. How can we expect to get great men and women when from infancy we train our children to conform to the philistine ways of Mrs. Grundy?

In our schools and colleges, habits, discipline and behavior are specially emphasized by our teachers, instructors and professors. Our deans and professors think more of reel tape, of "points," of discipline than of study; they think more of authoritative suggestion than of critical instruction. The pedagogue fashions the pupil after his own image. The professor, with his disciplinarian tactics, forces the student into the imbecile mummy-like mannerism of Egyptian pedantry and into the barrack-regulations of class-etiquette. Well may professors of our "war-schools" claim that the best education is given in military academies: They are right, if discipline is education. But why not the reformatory, the asylum and the prison?

We trust our unfortunate youth to the Procrustean bed of the mentally obtuse, hide-bound pedagogue. We desiccate, sterilize, petrify and embalm our youth in keeping with the rules of our Egyptian code and in accordance with the Confucian regulations of our school-clerks and college mandarins. Our children learn by rote and are guided by routine.

XV

BEING in a barbaric stage, we are afraid of thought. We are under the erroneous belief that thinking, study, causes nervousness and mental disorders. In my practice as physician in nervous and mental diseases, I can say without hesitation that I have not met a single case of nervous or mental trouble caused by too much thinking or over study. This is at present the opinion of the best psychopathologists. What produces nervousness is worry, emotional excitement and lack of interest in the work. But that is precisely what we do with our children. We do not take care to develop a love of knowledge in their early life for fear of brain injury, and then when it is late to acquire the interest, we force them to study, and we cram them and feed them and stuff them like geese. What

you often get is fatty degeneration of the mental liver.

If, however, you do not neglect the child between the second and third year, and see to it that the brain should not be starved, should have its proper function, like the rest of the bodily organs, by developing an interest in intellectual activity and love of knowledge, no forcing of the child to study is afterwards requisite. The child will go on by himself,─he will derive intense enjoyment from his intellectual activity, as he does from his games and physical exercise. The child will be stronger, healthier, sturdier than the present average child, with its purely animal activities and total neglect of brain function. His physical and mental development will go a pace. He will not be a barbarian with animal proclivities and a strong distaste for knowledge and mental enjoyment, but he will be a strong, healthy, thinking man.

Besides, many a mental trouble will be prevented in adult-life. The child will acquire knowledge with the same ease as he learns to ride the bicycle or play ball. By the tenth year, without almost any effort, the child will acquire the knowledge which at present the best college-graduate obtains with infinite labor and pain. That this can be accomplished I can say with authority; I know it as a fact from my own experience with child-life.

From an economical standpoint alone, think of the saving it would ensure for society. Consider the fact that our children spend nearly eight years in the common school, studying spelling and arithmetic, and do not know them when they graduate! Think of the eight years of waste of school buildings and salaries for the teaching force. However, our real object is not economy, but the development of a strong, healthy, great race of genius.

As fathers and mothers it may interest you to learn of one of those boys who were brought up in the love and enjoyment of knowledge for its own sake. At the age of twelve, when other children of his age are hardly able to read and spell, and drag a miserable mental existence at the apron strings of some antiquated school-dame, the boy is intensely enjoying courses in the highest branches of mathematics and astronomy at one of our foremost universities. The Iliad and the Odyssey are known to him by heart, and he is deeply interested in the advanced work of Classical Philology. He is able to read Herodotus, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Lucian and other Greek writers with the same zest and ease as our schoolboy reads his Robinson Crusoe or the productions of Cooper and Henty. The boy has a fair understanding of Comparative Philology and Mythology. He is well versed in Logic, Ancient History, American History and has a general insight into our politics and into the groundwork of our Constitution. At the same time he is of an extremely happy disposition, brimming over with humor and fun. His physical condition is splendid, his cheeks glow. with health. Many a girl would envy his complexion. Being above five feet four he towers above the average boy or his age. His physical constitution, weight, form and hardihood of organs, far surpasses that of the ordinary schoolboy. He looks like a boy of sixteen. He is healthy, strong and sturdy.

The philistine-pseudogogues, the self-contented school-autocrats are so imbued with the fear of intellectual activity and with the superstitious dread of early mental education, they are so obsessed with the morbid phobia of human reflective powers, they are so deluded by the belief that study causes disease that they eagerly adhere to the delusion, to quote from a school-superintendent's letter, about the boy being "in a sanitarium, old and worn-out." No doubt, the cramming, the routine, the rote, the mental and moral tyranny of the principal and school-superintendent do tend to nervous degeneracy and mental break-down. Poor old college owls, academic barn-yard-fowls and worn-out sickly school-bats, you are panic-stricken by the power of sunlight, you are in agonizing, in mortal terror of critical, reflective thought, you dread and suppress the genius of the young.

We do not appreciate the genius harbored in the average child, and we let it lie fallow. We are mentally poor, not because we lack riches, but because we do not know how to use the wealth of mines, the hidden treasures, the now inaccessible mental powers which we possess.

In speaking of our mental capacities, Francis Galton, I think, says that we are in relation to the ancient Greeks what the Bushmen and Hottentots are in relation to us. Galton and many other learned men regard the modern European races as inferior to the Hellenic race. They are wrong, and I know from experience that they are wrong. It rests in our hands either to remain inferior barbarians or to rival and even surpass in brilliancy the genius of the ancient Hellenes. We can develop into a great race by the proper education of man's genius.

XVI

ONE other important point claims our attention in the process of education of man's genius. We must immunize our children against mental microbes, as we vaccinate our babies against small-pox. The cultivation of critical judgment and the knowledge of evil are two powerful constituents that form the antitoxin for the neutralization of the virulent toxins produced by mental microbes. At the same time we should not neglect proper conditions of mental hygiene. "We should not people the child's mind with ghost-stories, with absurd beliefs in the supernatural, and with articles of creed charged with brimstone and pitch from the bowels of hell. We must guard the child against all evil fears, superstitions, prejudices and credulity.

We should counteract the baneful influences of the pathogenic, pestiferous, mental microbes which now infest our social air, since the child, not having yet formed the antitoxin of critical judgment and knowledge of evil, has not the power of resisting mental infection, and is thus very susceptible to mental contagion on account of his extreme suggestibility. The cultivation of credulity, the absence of critical judgment and of recognition of evil, with consequent increase of suggestibility, make man an easy prey to all kinds of social delusions, mental epidemics, religious crazes, financial manias, and political plagues, which have been the baleful pest of aggregate humanity in all ages.

The immunization of children, the development of resistance to mental germs whether moral, immoral or religious, can only be effected by the medical man with a psychological and psychopathological training. Just as science, philosophy and art have gradually passed out of the control of the priest, so now we find that the control of mental and moral life is gradually passing away from under the influence of the church into the hands of the medical psychopathologist.

As we look forward into the future we begin to see that the school is coming under the control of the medical man. The medical man free from superstitions and prejudices, possessed of the science of mind and body, is to assume in the future the supervision of the education of the nation.

The schoolmaster and the schoolma'am with their narrow-minded, pedantic pseudogogics are gradually losing prestige and passing away, while the medical man alone is able to cope with the serious threatening danger of national mental degeneration. Just as the medical profession now saves the nation from physical degeneration and works for the' physical regeneration of the body-politic, so will the medical profession of the future assume the duty of saving the nation from mental and moral decline, from degeneration into a people of fear-possessed, mind-racked psychopathies and neurotics, with broken wills and crushed individualities on the one hand, accompanied, on the other hand, by the still worse affliction and incurable malady of a self-contented mediocrity and a hopeless, Chinese philistinism.

There are in the United States about two hundred thousand insane, while the victims of psychopathic, mental maladies may be counted by the millions. Insanity can be greatly alleviated, but much, if not all, of that psychopathic mental misery known as functional mental disease is entirely preventable. It is the result of our pitiful, wretched, brain-starving, mind-crippling methods of education.

XVII

IN my work of mental and nervous diseases I become more and more convinced of the preponderant influence of early childhood in the causation of psychopathic mental maladies. Most, in fact all, of those functional mental diseases originate in early childhood. A couple of concrete cases will perhaps best illustrate my point:

The patient is a young man of 26. He suffers from intense melancholic depression, often amounting to agony. He is possessed by the fear of having committed the unpardonable sin. He thinks that he is damned to suffer tortures in hell for all eternity. I cannot go here into the details of the case, but an examination of dread of the unknown, from claustrophobia, fear of remaining alone, fear of darkness and numerous other fears and insistent ideas, into the details of which I cannot go here. By means of the hypnoidal state the symptoms were traced to impressions of early childhood; when at the age of five, the patient was suddenly confronted by a maniacal woman. The child was greatly frightened, and since that time she became possessed by the fear of insanity. When the patient gave birth to her child, she was afraid the child would become insane; many a time she even had a feeling that the child was insane. Thus the fear of insanity is traced to an experience of early childhood, an experience which, having become subconscious, is manifesting itself persistently in the patient's consciousness:

The patient's parents were very religious, and the child was brought up not only in the fear of God, but also in the fear of hell and the devil. Being sensitive and imaginative, the devils of the gospel were to her stern realities. She had a firm belief in "diabolical possessions" and "unclean spirits"; the legend of Jesus exorcising in the country of the Gadarenes unclean spirits, whose name is Legion, was to her a tangible reality. She was brought up on brimstone and pitch, with everlasting fires of the "bottomless pit" for sinners and unbelievers. In the hypnoidal state she clearly remembered the preacher, who used every Sunday to give her the horrors by his picturesque descriptions of the tortures of the "bottomless pit." She was in anguish over the unsolved question: "Do little sinner-girls go to hell?" This fear of hell made the little girl feel depressed and miserable and poisoned many a cheerful moment of her life.

What a lasting effect and what a melancholy gloom this fear of ghosts and of unclean spirits of the bottomless pit produced on this young life may be judged from the following facts: When the patient was about eleven years old, a young girl, a friend of hers, having noticed the patient's fear of ghosts, played on her one of those silly, practical jokes, the effect of which on sensitive natures is often disastrous and lasting. The girl disguised herself as a ghost, in a white sheet, and appeared to the patient, who was just on the point of falling asleep. The child shrieked in terror and fainted. Since that time the patient suffered from nightmares and was mortally afraid to sleep alone; she passed many a night in a state of excitement, frenzied with the fear of apparitions and ghosts.

When about the age of seventeen, she apparently freed herself from the belief in ghosts and unclean powers. But the fear acquired in her childhood did not lapse; it persisted subconsciously and manifested itself in the form of uncontrollable fears. She was afraid to remain alone in a room,

especially in the evening. Thus, once when she had to go upstairs alone to pack her trunks, a gauzy garment called forth the experience of her ghost-fright; she had the illusion of seeing a ghost, and fell fainting to the floor. Unless specially treated, fears acquired in childhood last through life.

"Every ugly thing," says Mosso, the great Italian physiologist, "told to the child, every shock, every fright given him, will remain like minute splinters in the flesh, to torture him all his life long.

"An old soldier whom I asked what greatest fears had been, answered thus: 'I have only had one, but it pursues me still. I am nearly seventy years old, I have looked death in the face I not know how many times; I have never lost heart in any danger, but when I pass a little old church in the shades of forest, or a deserted chapel in the mountains, I always remember a neglected oratory in my native village, and I shiver and look around, as though seeking the corpse of a murdered man which I once saw carried into it when a child, and with which an old servant wanted to shut me up to make me good.''' Here, too, experiences of early childhood have persisted subconsciously throughout lifetime.

XVIII

I APPEAL to you, fathers and mothers, and to you, liberal-minded readers, asking you to turn your attention to the education of your children, to the training of the young generation of future citizens. I do not appeal to our official educators, to our scientific, psychological pseudogogues, to the clerks of our teaching shops,―for they are beyond all hope. From that quarter I expect nothing but attacks and abuse. We cannot possibly expect of the philistine-educator and mandarin pseudogogue the adoption of different views of education. We should not keep new wine in old goat-skins. The present school-system squanders the resources of the country and wastes the energies, the lives of our children. Like Cato our cry should be Carthago delenda est,―the school-system should be abolished and with it should go the present psychologizing educator, the schoolmaster and the schoolma'am.

Fathers and mothers, you keep in your hands the fate of the young generation. You are conscious of the great responsibility, of the vast, important task laid upon you by the education of your children. For, according to the character of the training and education given to the young, they may be made a sickly host of nervous wrecks and miserable wretches; or they may be formed into a narrow-minded, bigoted, mediocre crowd of self-contented "cultured" philistines, bat-blind to evil; or they may be made a great race of genius with powers of rational control of their latent, potential, reserve energy. The choice remains with you.

APPENDIX TO PHILISTINE AND GENIUS

PRECOCITY IN CHILDREN

By precocity I mean the manifestation of the child's mental functions at a period earlier than the one observed in the past and present generations of children.

In the course of his growth and development the individual unfolds his inner powers through acquisition of the stored-up experiences of previous generations.

The well known biogenetic law may, with some modifications, be applied to mental life. The development of the individual is an abbreviated reproduction of the evolution of the species. Briefly put: Ontogenesis is an epitome of Phylogenesis. This biogenetic law holds true in the domain of

education. The stored-up experiences of the race are condensed, foreshortened, and recapitulated in the child's life history. This process of progressive "precocity," or of foreshortening of education, has been going on unconsciously in the course of human evolution. We have reached a stage when man can be made conscious of this fundamental process, thus getting control over his own growth and development.

Although the process of foreshortening of education has been taking place throughout the history of mankind, and especially of civilized humanity, still the process has remained imperceptible on account of its extremely slow rate of progress. Hence the fact of "precocity," or of early development of children, has been hitherto regarded as rare, as phenomenal. Like all rare phenomena, precocity, or early child development, is considered as unique, as abnormal, and even as pathological. In fact, many still regard precocity as some form of malady akin to mental alienation.

It is well to bear in mind that phenomena, at first scarce and rare, may under favorable conditions become sufficiently numerous to be quite common. In fact, we may lay it down as a law that all discoveries, inventions, and changes in general, economical, political, social, mental, moral, and religious, first appear on a small scale in limited areas from which they spread in various directions. Organisms start, as variations or mutations, from minute nuclei of growth; species have their origin in small centres and restricted areas. A new species may begin with some apparently insignificant variation which may grow and develop, and which, from a certain standpoint, may be regarded as an abnormality.

What at present is considered as "precocity," and hence as an abnormality, may really be the foreshadowing of the future. The apparently precocious variation may and will turn out a normal phenomenon. The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. Early education, precocity, is to become the corner stone of human life. At present the preliminary period of child education is unduly retarded to the detriment of the individual and society.

The truth is, we do not realize the importance of early training. We begin education late in the child's life, when dispositions have become formed and habits have become rigid. This delay seriously injures the growth of the child by lowering the level of mental activity. The critical points of formation of mental interests are allowed to slip by, leaving the individual irresponsive to mental, æsthetic, and moral interests. The critical turning points, when the best energies could be brought out, are not taken care of at the right moment.

The mental functions become prematurely atrophied and degenerated. When we later on attempt to awaken those functions, we are surprised to find them absent. We labor under the false impression that the child is naturally inapt and deficient. To make up for this apparent deficiency we force the child's mind into narrow channels, crippling and deforming it into mean mediocrity. The child is run into the rigid moulds of home, school, and college with the result of permanent mutilation of originality and genius. The individual is deformed, because the critical spirit of inquiry and originality is racked on the Procrustes' bed of home and school. The unfortunate thing about it is the firm belief that the crippled spirit of the child is a congenital mediocrity. Instead of shouldering the fault, we put the burden on heredity. Darwinism with its spontaneous variation and hereditary transmission, Austro-Germanic Mendelism, accompanied by a widespread propaganda of Eugenics, have blotted out from view the far more fundamental factors of environment and education which play such a paramount role in man's life.

We may profit by recent studies in Psychopathology. In my investigations I have shown the important role which early child experience plays in the patient's life. Psychopathic affections can be traced to child fears which become afterwards reinforced by unfavorable conditions of life. This

is formulated in my works on psychopathology. Psychopathology clearly brings out the significant fact that a good start in early childhood is of the utmost consequence to the individual. Only a good education in early life can save man from the innumerable psychopathic maladies to which he is subject. The seeds of vicious habits and of criminal tendencies can be eliminated in early childhood.

Early development or what is termed "precocity" in children will not only prevent vice, crime, and disease, but will strengthen the individual along all lines, physical, mental, and moral. We should be careful not to cast the child's mind into ready made moulds, not to subject his mind, his character to the yoke of meaningless mannerisms and rigid formalities. We should have respect for the child's personality. We should remember that there is genius in every healthy, normal child.

We are blind to the child's latent genius, because we look to brute force as our standard. Like savages, we are afraid of genius, especially when it is manifested as "precocity in children." This abject fear of genius and of precocity is one of the most pernicious philistine superstitions, causing the retardation of the progress of humanity. The fear of mental precocity is essentially the phobia of the inveterate philistine.

We should bear in mind that the philistine is an insignificant, though exact part of a huge social machine, of a Frankenstein "kultur" before which the philistine prostrates himself in dust, a social monster of which he is proud to form an irresponsible mite. Whether he be an atom of a political organization, of a nation, or of a military kultur-system, the philistine is trained to be content to play the same ignoble, slavish role of submission, obedience, and irresponsibility. Without personal conscience, without personal will, without personal initiative, the impersonal philistine is like the stupid genie of Aladdin's lamp who slavishly obeys the master of the magic lamp.

The present horrible European war (predicted in this volume several years before the onset of the war. See pp. 30, 31) is the unfortunate, but natural outcome of philistine education and philistine life. The immediate cause of the war may be traced to politics, greed, competition, to commercial, industrial, cultural, national, international, and racial complications. At bottom, however, the present European war is ultimately due to our pernicious system of training, the bane of our industrial, social life. Millions of men are drilled and disciplined to act as automata; men are trained from childhood, at home, school, college, and university to surrender their individual judgment, and follow blindly an alleged "social consciousness," entrusted, by a set of philistine bureaucrats, to superior leaders, to generals, admirals, and field-marshals. Men are hypnotized by a pernicious and vicious system of training and quasi-education to consider it a high, sacred ideal to obey implicitly the will of a few officials and diplomats, to attack, plunder and slaughter at the command of generals and officers, in the interest of a plutocratic oligarchy, hallowed by the vague shibboleth: "Flag, Country, Patriotism."* The youth of nations is debauched with the belief in the supreme grandeur of delivering their personal responsibility in the keeping of a handful of Byzantine bureaucrats, irresponsible junkers, and half-crazed Cæsars.

The principle "Be Childlike" is paramount in the education of mankind. The child represents the future, all the possibilities, all the coming greatness of the human race. We, the adults, are contaminated by the brutal passions and vices incident to the struggle for existence and self-preservation.

Plasticity of mind is characteristic of genius. Plasticity of mind and body is preeminently characteristic of the child. Adaptability and plasticity are found in all young tissue, muscle, gland, and nerve. As the organism ages, becomes differentiated, and adapted to special functions and conditions of life, it loses its original plasticity. The tissues become fixed and the functions set. The adult's brain and mind begin to work in ruts. The child is superior to the adult.

The child looks at the world with eyes simple, clear, bright, not blinded by the heavy scales of traditions, superstitions, and prejudices of remote ages. The intricate worries, complex fears, selfish motives, brutal passions, greed, revenge, malice, vice, enmity do not as yet mar the soul of the child. Artificial needs, strong animal passions have no firm hold on the child's mind. The child's mind is purer, fresher, brighter, far more original than the adult intelligence with its philistine notions and hide-bound habits of thought and belief.

With age the mind becomes specialized and degraded in quality. Unless checked by a good education and by a persistent course of mental activity, intellectual and other mental interests, the adult mind is apt to deteriorate. Unless controlled by a good education and by intense mental interests, free from service to animal needs, the emotions of self-regard, the impulse of self-preservation with its fear instinct gradually gain in man the upper hand. In the child, on the contrary, the personal interests are relatively weak, and fluctuating, hence the possibility of pure disinterestedness, pure curiosity, love of learning, the root of all originality present both in genius and the child. The child presents the innocence and gentleness of human genius, the adult philistine is the embodiment of the force and cunning of the brute.

We should not be scared by the bug-bear of precocity. We should awaken man's genius by giving the child an early, a "precocious" education. We should bear in mind that the knowledge of our schoolboys and schoolgirls far surpasses that of the ancient sages or of the mediæval doctors. We should learn to understand and to utilize the process of progressive foreshortening of race acquisitions in the history of the individual.

The great biologist, Professor C. S. Minot, comes to a similar conclusion, as the result of his profound biological investigations: "I believe," says Minot, "that this principle of psychological development, paralleling the career of physical development, needs to be more considered in arranging our educational plans. For if it be true that the decline in the power of learning is most rapid at first, it is evident that we want to make as much use of the early years as possible—that the tendency, for instance, which has existed in many of our universities, to postpone the period of entrance into college, is biologically an erroneous tendency. It would be better to have the young man get to college earlier, graduate earlier, get into practical life or into professional schools earlier, while the power of learning is greater."

I may say that within my experience children who had the advantage of an early education and training manifested a higher grade of intellectual and moral life, a far better state of physical health than children brought up under the present retarding and crippling system of education. In conclusion I may add that in order to gain access to man's Reserve Energy we must have recourse to early child education, to the much maligned, and greatly feared "Precocity in Children."

"The cheapest' form of pride," says Schopenhauer, "is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation it follows that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise, he would not have recourse to those which he shares with his fellow-men. . . . Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies, tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his inferiority. . . .National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity, and baseness of mankind take in every country.". . . "Narrowness, prejudice, vanity, and self-interest are the main elements of patriotism." . . . "Does not all history show that whenever a king is firmly established on the throne, and the people reach some degree of prosperity, he uses it to lead an army, like a band of robbers, against adjoining countries? Are not almost all wars ultimately undertaken for purpose of plunder?" . . . Schopenhauer prophetically warns his countrymen: "All war is a matter of robbery, and the Germans should take that as a warning."

THE SOURCE AND AIM OF HUMAN PROGRESSA STUDY IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

AND SOCIAL PATHOLOGY

Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D.

Boston: Badger, 1919

______

To My Dear FriendsDr. Morton Prince and Dr. John Madison TaylorWho have kindly encouraged me in the publication of this essay.

ABOUT twenty-five years ago I published in my Psychology of Suggestion a series of experiments on Normal and Abnormal Suggestibility carried on at various laboratories including my own laboratory. I developed the psycho-physiological theory of the subconscious, traced the causation and nature of subconscious activities, and worked out the laws of normal and abnormal suggestibility. The following pertains to our present subject:

The nervous centers of man's nervous system, if classified as to function, may be divided into inferior and superior. The inferior centers are characterized by reflex and automatic activities. A stimulus excites the peripheral nerve-endings of some sense-organ. At once a nerve-current is set up in the afferent nerves. The current in its turn stimulates a plexus of central ganglia, the nerve energy of which is set free, and is propagated along the efferent nerves towards muscles and glands,—secretions, muscular contractions and relaxations are the result; biologically regarded, various reactions and adjustments follow.

Ingoing and outgoing nerve currents with their various end reactions may be modified by the nerve centers. Nerve currents' may be intensified, decreased in energy, or even entirely inhibited by central ganglia or by their mutual interaction and interferences. Sherrington and other physiologists have by a number of experiments formulated some of the important principles of such physiological activities. A law of inhibition or interference early formulated by Ziehen may suffice: "If an excitation of a definite intensity (m) take place in one cortical element (b), and another excitation of a different intensity take place at the same time in another cortical element (t) which is connected by a path of conduction with element (b), the two intensities of excitation may modify each other."

Although such modifications frequently occur, it nevertheless remains true that the inferior nerve-centers are of a reflex nature. No sooner is the nerve-energy of a lower center set free than at once it tends to discharge itself into action. Thus every sensation, perception, feeling, emotion, thought, or belief, if left uncontrolled, tends to be translated into some appropriate movement, action, or reaction. The physiological process of setting free the nerve energy in a central ganglion, or in a system of central ganglia, is accompanied by activity in the simpler, but more organized, more integrated nerve centers, and by the lower psychic functions of simple sentience, sensibility; and in the more complex, but less integrated, less organized centers; by the higher psychic functions of consciousness, such as sensations, precepts, images, ideas, and emotions.

Turning now to the superior or the highest nerve-centers, we find that they are characterized by

the highest mental functions, thought and reasoning, choice and will. A number of impressions, sensations and precepts reach those thought and will-centers; then a critical, a sifting, a selecting, a controlling or inhibitory process begins. Some of the mental states are modified and are permitted to develop within certain limits, others are given full play, while still others, and possibly the majority of them, are rejected and inhibited, not taking effect in reactions and adjustments to the environment.

The inhibited states belong to the great number of possible states with their reactions out of which selection is made by the critical thought and will-centers. These mental states, images, ideas, and feelings with their end-reactions, out of which selection is made, Galton aptly terms "the antechamber of consciousness." They are on the margin of consciousness, and are partly of a conscious and partly of a subconscious character. To quote from Galton: "Although the brain is able to do fair work fluently in an automatic way, and though it will of its own accord, strike out sudden and happy ideas, it is questionable if it is capable of working thoroughly and profoundly without past or present effort. The character of this effort seems to me chiefly to lie in bringing the contents of the antechamber more nearly within the ken of consciousness, which then takes comprehensive note of all its contents, and compels the logical faculty to test them seriatim before selecting the fittest for a summons to the presence of the chamber. The thronging of the antechamber is, I am convinced, beyond my control."

Mental activity in its rational or integrative aspects whether logical, moral, or aesthetic, is essentially selective in character. The logical process draws definite conclusions from given premises; the moral man or the ethical thinker regards definite relations in behavior response to definite relations in the environment as right or wrong; while the artist or the one who enjoys artistic work appreciates definite relations and combinations as the artistic and the beautiful. Even ordinary life where the process of selection is not so rigid as in the arts, sciences, and philosophy, still the process of attention for the maintenance of rationality is a severe judge in the rejection of unfit streams of thoughts and ideas that may present themselves in the antechamber of consciousness, as Galton terms the state of the mind. In a train of ideas, few ideas of the total mass that offer themselves are accepted, or utilized by the guiding, controlling consciousness to acted upon in the life adjustments of the organism. This holds true not only of the material needs, but more especially of the spiritual interests of man. The higher the level of mental activity, the more finite, the more precise, the more rigid the selective process becomes. The stream of consciousness, as it rushes along, selects, synthesizes or, physiologically speaking, integrates those trains of ideas which help most effectually to reach the destination, or, in other words, are especially fit for the purpose in hand.

This selective will-activity of the highest nerve-systems, given in the will-effort of selection, forms the very nucleus of man's rational life. These superior selective "choice and will centers," localized by Ferrier, Wundt, Bianchi and others, in the frontal lobes, and by others in the upper layers of the cortex, on account of their selective and inhibitory functions, may be characterized as selective and inhibitory centers par excellence.

Man's nerve organization may thus be classified into two main systems: I. the inferior, including the reflex, the instinctive, the automatic centres; and II. the superior, the controlling, selective, and inhibitory brain-centres of the cortex. Parallel to the double systems of nerve-centres, we also have a double mental activity, or double-consciousness as it is sometimes called, the inferior, the organic, the instinctive, the automatic, the reflex consciousness, or briefly termed the subconciousness; and the superior, the choosing, the willing; the critical, the will-consciousness. This controlling will-consciousness may also be characterized as the guardian-consciousness of the species and of the individual.

From an evolutionary, or teleological standpoint, we can well realize the biological function or importance of this guardian-consciousness. The external world bombards the living organism innumerable stimuli. From all sides thousands of impressions come crowding upon the senses of the individual. Each impression with appropriate receptors has its corresponding system of reactions which if not modified or counteracted, may end in some harmful or fatal result. It is not of advantage to the organism of a highly complex organization to respond with reactions to all impressions coming from the external environment. Hence, that organism will succeed best in the struggle for existence that possesses some selective, critical inhibitory "choice and will" centres. The more organized and the more sensitive and delicate those centres are, the better will the organism succeed in its life existence. The guardian consciousness wards off, as far as it is possible, the harmful blows given by the stimuli of the external environment. In man, this same guardian consciousness keeps on constructing, by a series of elimination and selection, a new environment, individual and social, which leads to an ever higher and more perfect development and realization of the inner powers of individuality and personality.

Under normal conditions man's superior and inferior centres with their corresponding upper, critical, controlling consciousness together with the inferior automatic, reflex centres and their concomitant subconscious consciousness keep on functioning in full harmony. The upper and lower consciousness form one organic unity, one conscious active personality. Under certain abnormal conditions, however, the two systems of nerve-centres with their corresponding mental activities may become dissociated. The superior nerve-centers with their critical, controlling consciousness may become inhibited, split off from the rest of the nervous system. The reflex, automatic, instinctive, subconscious centres with their mental functions are laid bare, thus becoming directly accessible to the stimuli of the outside world; they fall a prey to the influences of external surrounding influences termed suggestions. The critical, controlling, guardian consciousness, being cut off and absent, the reduced individuality lacks the rational guidance and orientation, given by the upper control- and will-centres, becomes the helpless plaything of all sorts of suggestions, sinking into the trance states of the subconscious. It is the subconscious that forms the highway of suggestions, suggestibility being its essential characteristic. The subconscious rises to the face of consciousness, so to say, whenever there is a weakening, paralysis, or inhibition of the upper, controlling will and choice-centre, or in other words, whenever there is a disaggregation of the superior from the inferior nerve-centers, followed by an increase of ideosensory, ideo-motor, sensori-secretory, reflex excitability; and ideationally, or rationally by an abnormal intensity and extensity of suggestibility. In order to bring to the fore subconscious activities with their reflex, automatic psycho-motor reactions by removal of the upper consciousness I have found requisite, in my investigations, the following conditions:

Normal Suggestibility,—Suggestibility in the Normal, Waking State:

(I) Fixation of the Attention.

(2) Distraction of the Attention.

(3) Monotony.

(4) Limitation of Voluntary Activity.

(5) Limitation of the Field of Consciousness.

(6) Inhibition.

(7) Immediate Execution of the Suggestion.

Abnormal Suggestibility,—Suggestibility in Hypnotic and Trance States:

(1) Fixation of the Attention.

(2) Monotony.

(3) Limitation of Voluntary Activity.

(4) Limitation of the Field of Consciousness.

(5) Inhibition.

The nature of abnormal suggestibility, the result of my investigations given in the same volume, is a disaggregation of consciousness, a cleavage of the mind, a cleft that may become ever deeper and wider, ending in a total disjunction of the waking, guiding, controlling guardian-consciousness from the automatic, reflex, subconscious consciousness. . . . Normal suggestibility is of like nature,—it is a cleft the mind; only here the cleft is not so deep, not so lasting as in hypnosis or in the other subconscious trance states; the split is here but momentary; the mental cleavage, or the psycho-physiological disaggregation of the superior from the inferior centres with their concomitant psychic activities is evanescent, fleeting, often disappearing at the moment of its appearance.

In the same work the following laws of suggestibility were formed by me:

(I) Normal suggestibility varies as indirect suggestion and inversely as direct suggestion. (II) Abnormal suggestibility varies as direct suggestion and inversely as indirect suggestion.

A comparison of the conditions of normal and abnormal suggestibility is valuable, since it reveals the nature of suggestibility, and discloses its fundamental law. An examination of the two sets of conditions shows that in abnormal suggestibility two conditions, distraction of attention and immediate execution are absent, otherwise the conditions are the same. This sameness of conditions clearly indicates the fact that both normal and abnormal suggestibility flow from some one common source, that they are of like nature, and due to similar causes. Now a previous study led us to the conclusion that the nature of abnormal suggestibility is a disaggregation of consciousness, a split produced in the mind, a crack that may become wider and deeper, ending in a total disjunction of the waking, guiding, controlling consciousness from the reflex consciousness. Normal suggestibility is of like nature, it is a cleft in the mind; only here the cleft is not so deep, not so lasting as it is in hypnosis, or in the state of abnormal suggestibility. The split is here but momentary, disappearing almost at the very moment of its appearance.

This fleeting, evanescent character of the split explains why suggestion in the normal state, why normal suggestibility requires immediate execution as one of its indispensable conditions. We must take the opportunity of the momentary ebb of the controlling consciousness and hastily plant our suggestion in the soil of reflex consciousness. We must watch for this favorable moment, not let

it slip by, otherwise the suggestion is a failure. Furthermore, we must be careful to keep in abeyance, for the moment, the ever-active waves of the controlling consciousness. We must find for them work in some other direction; we must divert, we must distract them. That is why normal suggestibility requires the additional conditions of distraction and of immediate execution. For in the waking state the waking, controlling consciousness is always on its guard, and, when enticed away, leaves its ground only for a moment. In normal suggestibility the psychic split is but faint; the lesion, effected in the body consciousness, is superficial, transitory, fleeting. In abnormal suggestibility, on the contrary, the split is deep and lasting,—it is a severe gash. In both cases, however, we have a removal, a dissociation of waking from the subwaking, reflex consciousness, suggestion becoming effected only through the latter. For suggestibility is the attribute of the subwaking, reflex consciousness.

A comparison of the two laws discloses the same relation. The two laws are the reverse of each other, thus clearly indicating the presence of a controlling inhibiting conscious element in one case, and its absence in the other. In the normal state we must guard against the inhibitory, waking consciousness, and we have to make our suggestion as indirect as possible. In the abnormal state, on the contrary, no circumspection is needed; the controlling, inhibitory waking consciousness is more or less absent, the subwaking, reflex consciousness is exposed to external stimuli, and our suggestions are therefore )the more effective, the more direct we make them. Suggestibility is a function of disaggregation of consciousness, a disaggregation in which the subwaking, reflex consciousness enters into direct communication with the external world, The general law of suggestibility is:

Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation, and inversely as the unification of consciousness.

"The problem that interested me most was to come into close contact with the subwaking self. What is its fundamental nature? What are the main traits of its character? Since in hypnosis the subwaking self is freed from its chains, is untrammeled by the shackles of the upper, controlling self, since in hypnosis the underground self more or less exposed to our view, it is plain that experimentation in the hypnotic self will introduce us into the secret life of the subwaking self; for as we pointed out the two are identical. I have made all kinds of experiments, bringing subjects into catalepsy, somnambulism, giving illusions, hallucinations, post-hypnotic suggestions, etc. As a result of my work one central truth stands out clear, and that is the extraordinary plasticity of the subwaking self.

"If you can only in some way or other succeed in separating the primary controlling consciousness from the lower one, the waking from the subwaking self, so that they should no longer keep company, you can do anything you please with the subwaking self. You can make its legs, its hands, any limb you like, perfectly rigid; you can make it eat pepper for sugar; you can make it drink water for wine; feel cold or warm; hear delightful stories in the absence of all sound; feel pain or pleasure; see oranges where there is nothing; you can make it eat them and enjoy their taste. In short, you can do with the subwaking self anything you like. The subwaking consciousness is in your power, like clay in the hands of a potter. The nature of its plasticity is revealed by its extreme suggestibility.

"I wanted to get an insight into the very nature of the subwaking self; I wished to make a personal acquaintance with it. 'What is its personal character?' I asked. How surprised I was when, after a close interrogation, the answer came to me that there can possibly be no personal acquaintance with it,—for the subwaking self lacks personality."

Under certain conditions a cleavage may occur between the two selves, and then the

subwaking self may rapidly grow, develop, and attain (apparently) the plane of self-consciousness, get crystallized into a person, and give itself a name, imaginary, or borrowed from history. (This accounts for the spiritualistic phenomena of personality, guides, controls, and communications by dead personalities, or spirits coming from another world, such as have been observed in the Case of Mrs. Piper and other mediums of like type; it accounts for all the phenomena of multiple personality, simulating the dead or the living, or formed anew out of the matrix of the subconsciousness. All such personality metamorphoses can be easily developed, under favorable conditions, in any psycho-pathological laboratory). The newly crystallized personality is, as a rule, extremely unstable, ephemeral, shadowy in its outlines (spirit-like, ghostlike), tends to become amorphous, being formed again and again under the influence of favorable conditions and suggestions, rising to the surface of consciousness, then sinking into the subconsciousness, and disappearing, only to give rise to new personality metamorphoses, bursting like so many bubbles on the surface of the upper stream of consciousness.

A few quotations from my work on the subject of the subconscious may help to elucidate the main traits of the lower secondary self with its extreme suggestibility and automatic, reflex consciousness:

"The subwaking self is extremely credulous; it lacks all sense of the true and the rational. 'Two and two make five.' 'Yes.' Anything is accepted, if sufficiently emphasized by the hypnotizer. The suggestibility and imitativeness of the subwaking self were discussed by me at great length. What I should like to point out here is the extreme servility and cowardliness of that self. Show hesitation, and it will show fight; command authoritatively, and it will obey slavishly.

"The subwaking self is devoid of all morality. It will steal without the least scruple; it will poison; it will stab; it will assassinate its best friends without the least scruple. When completely cut off from the waking person, it is precluded from conscience."

This explains the many atrocities committed by the Assyian, Macedonian, Roman or German soldier who by a long course of military training had fallen into the degraded and wretched state of the irresponsible, slavish, sub-conscious self.

"The subwaking self dresses to fashion, gossips in company, runs riot in business-panics, revels in the crowd, storms in the mob, parades on the streets, drills in the camp, and prays in revival meetings. Its senses are acute, but its sense is nil. Association by contiguity, the automatic, reflex mental mechanism of the brute, is the only one it possesses.

"The subwaking self lacks all personality and individuality; it is absolutely servile. It has no moral law, no law at all. To be a law unto one-self, the chief and essential characteristic of personality, is the very trait the subwaking self so glaringly lacks.

"The subwaking self has no will; it is blown hither and thither by all sorts of incoming suggestions. It is essentially a brutal self.

"The primary self alone possesses true personality, will, and self-control. The primary self alone is a law unto itself,—a personality having the power of investigating its own nature, of discovering faults, creating ideals, striving after them, struggling for them, and by efforts of will attaining to higher and higher stages of personality."

Suggestibility is a fundamental attribute of man's nature. We should, therefore, expect that man in his social capacity would manifest this general property; and such do we actually find to be the case. What is required is the bringing about of a disaggregation in the social consciousness. Such a

disaggregation may either be fleeting, unstable, the type is that of normal suggestibility; or the disaggregation may become stable, the type is that of abnormal suggestibility. The one is the suggestibility of the crowd, the latter that of the mob. In the mob direct suggestion is effective, in the crowd indirect suggestion. The deft stump orator, the politician, the preacher, fixes the attention of the crowd on himself, while interesting the hearers in his "subject." The orator, the preacher, or the demagogue, the politician, distracts the attention of the crowd by his stories, frequently giving his suggestion in some indirect and striking way, winding up the long yarn by a climax, requiring immediate execution of the suggestion.

The condition of limitation of voluntary movements is of paramount importance in suggestibility in general, since it brings about a narrowing down of the field of consciousness which of all other conditions is most favorable to dissociation. The condition of limitation of voluntary movements is one of the prime conditions that helps to bring about a deep, a more or less lasting dissociation in the consciousness of the crowd,—the crowd passes into the mob-state. A large gathering, on account of the cramping of voluntary movements, easily falls into a state of abnormal suggestibility. Large assemblies carry within themselves the germs of the possible mob. The crowd contains within itself all the elements and conditions favourable to a disaggregation of consciousness. What is required is that an interesting object, or that some sudden, violent impression should strongly fix the attention of the crowd, and plunge it into that state in which the waking personality is shorn of its dignity and power, and the naked, subwaking self remains alone to face the external environment.

Besides limitation of the voluntary movements and contraction of the field of consciousness, there are also present in the crowd, the matrix of the mob, the conditions of monotony and inhibition. When the preacher, the politician, the stump orator, the ringleader, the hero, gains the ear of the crowd, an ominous silence sets in, a silence frequently characterized as "awful." The crowd is in a state of over strained expectation; with suspended breath it watches the hero or the interesting, all absorbing object. Disturbing impressions are excluded, put down, or driven away by force. All interfering influence and ideas are inhibited. The crowd is entranced, and rapidly merge into the mob-state.

The suggestion given to the entranced crowd by the "master" or hero spreads like wild fire. The suggestion reverberates from individual to individual, gathers strength, becomes overwhelming, driving crowd into a fury of activity, into a frenzy of excitement. As the suggestions are taken up by the mob and executed, the wave of excitement rises higher and higher. Each fulfilled suggestion increases the emotion of the mob in volume and intensity. Each new attack is followed by a more violent paroxysm of furious, demoniac frenzy. The mob is like an avalanche, the more it rolls, the more menacing and dangerous it grows. The suggestion given by the hero, by the ringleader, by the master of the moment, who simply gives expression to the subconscious passions of the mob, is taken up by the crowd, and is reflected and reverberated from man to man, until every soul is dizzied, and every person is stunned. In the entranced crowd, in the mob, every one influences and is influenced in his turn; every one suggests and is suggested to; until the surging billow of excitement and mob-energy swells and rises, reaching a formidable height.

Let the crowd, the mass or the mob, be indicated by m and its energy by E, the energy of another mass m1 be E1. On account of the interaction of the masses the result will be m multiplied by m1 or mm1 and their energies EE1; the energies of masses m, m1, m2, give rnm1m2 or EE1E2. If the masses are equal, the energies are respectively E, E2, E3, and so on. While the masses grow by equal increments of m, the energies increase by the factor E. The masses are respectively: m, 2m, 3m, 4m, 5m, and so on, the corresponding energies are: E1, E2, E3, E4, E5. Mob-energy rises as the powers of the mass. We may say then that while the masses increase in arithmetical progression, the energies of the masses increase in a geometrical progression.* In other words, the

masses grow as the logarithms of their energies. In short, if M is the mass of the mob, then M = Log E.*

If m is 10 and E is 10, then a mass of 2m gives an energy of 10 2, a mass of 3m yields an energy of 10 3, a mass of 4m gives an energy of 10 4, or 10,000, a mass of 5m gives an energy of 105 or 100,000. While the mass increases in an arithmetical progression of 10, the mass energy grows in a geometrical progression of 10. Briefly stated, the mass grows as the logarithm of mass-energy.

A knowledge of the subconscious and of the laws of suggestibility are of vital consequence in Social Psychology in general and in Social Pathology in particular. As the great Sociologist, Tarde, points out: "To understand thoroughly the essential social fact, as I perceive it, knowledge of the infinitely subtle facts of mind is necessary,—the roots of what seems to be even the simplest and most superficial kind of sociology strike far down into the depths of the most inward and hidden parts of Psychology and Physiology."

In surveying human life in its organized capacity, from the lowest to the highest forms of social organizations in the great wealth of their manifestation, economic, tribal, totemic, sex and family relationship, marriage, art, morals, religion, magic, beliefs, practices, rites, taboos, and other social phenomena, the student of Social Psychology cannot help being impressed with the important rôle played by the instinctive, automatic, reflex consciousness, or the subconscious with its normal and abnormal suggestibility in the protean forms and activities taken by the metamorphic and anamorphic social spirit of aggregate humanity. If there is truth in Aristotle's dictum that man is a social or rather a gregarious animal, or in that of Tarde's and others that man is an imitative animal, there a deeper truth in the more fundamental view, which really includes all others, that man is by nature, or by his subconscious nature, a suggestible animal.

Man's subconsciousness, with its conditions and laws of normal and abnormal suggestibility, works on a large scale in the social evolution of the human race. In the course of human development and the incessant building of new social structures with their corresponding functions we find the activities of the upper controlling, regulating, ordering, critical consciousness, rationalizing the formative activities of the subconscious with its characteristic reflex, instinctive, automatic, suggestible consciousness. The rational progress of human societies depends on the interaction and synthesis of the upper and lower consciousness. When, however, the upper critical consciousness is kept in abeyance, or is dissociated from the lower self, society becomes subject to all forms of social diseases, mental epidemics, mob-actions, riots, horde-attacks, blind slaughters, massacres, pogroms, revolts, mass upheavals, mass movements on a great scale, such as are manifested in migrations of tribes and nations, or in local, national, and world-wars. The very weakening of the controlling social consciousness causes the social mind to become predisposed to overaction of the social subconsciousness with its abnormal suggestibility and consequent social, psychic diseases and mental epidemics of all sorts and description. For a clear understanding of Social Psychology and Social Pathology one should keep in mind the following laws formulated in my "Psychology of Suggestion":

(I) Social subconsciousness is the vehicle of suggestibility and more specially of abnormal suggestibility.

(II) Suggestibility varies as the amount of disaggregation of social consciousness and inversely as the unification or synthesis of social consciousness.

(III) Social, impulsive, reflex action is in inverse relation to the synthesis of the upper consciousness and the reflex subconscious.

(IV) While the social aggregate grows in an arithmetical progression, the emotional excitement of the aggregate grows in a geometrical progression; or the emotional energy rises as the powers of the mass, the mass varying as the logarithm of its energy.

(V) The greater the uniformity of the constituent units of social mass, the greater the mass-energy, and the more powerful the effects of social suggestibility. In other words, social suggestibility is directly proportional to the uniformity of the social aggregate.

(VI) Individuality is in inverse relation to the social mass.

(VII) The conditions of normal and abnormal suggestibility, such as Fixation of the Attention, Limitation of Activity, Suppression of Variations, Monotony, Contraction of the Field of Social and Individual Consciousness, and inhibition of non-conforming ideas, ideals, and beliefs, leading to a weakening and paralysis of the critical consciousness, tend to the laying bare of the suggestible subconscious with its consequent deleterious effects. The main principles of social psychology, outlined in my "Psychology of Suggestion" were adopted by Prof. Ross in his "Social Psychology":

"In the normal state" Professor Ross writes suggestion should be as indirect as possible in order to catch the inhibitory, waking self 'off its guard.' In the abnormal state no circumspection is needed; the controlling, inhibitory, waking consciousness is more or less dormant, the subwaking reflex consciousness is exposed, and our suggestions are more effective the more direct they are." Ross then quotes our general law of suggestibility formulated in The Psychology of Suggestion; "Suggestion (suggestibility) varies as the amount of disaggregation and inversely as the unification of consciousness."

"The primary self is the self with personality and will. . . . It alone embodies the results of reflection, and it alone holds life true to a personal ideal. It is the captain of the ship. . . . If now this primary self is overthrown or put to sleep, the subwaking self becomes the master of the ship. This (subconscious) self has little reason, will, or conscience. . . . It is imitative, servile, credulous, swung hither and thither by all sorts of incoming suggestions. The life it prompts cannot be stable, self consistent, integrated. It is low on the scale of personality, and a situation that commits to its hands the helm of the individual life is fraught with disaster." From this standpoint Ross discusses social suggestibility, the crowd, and the mob mind, worked out in my work on the psychology and pathology of the individual and society.

Ross further realizes the import in the domain of social psychology of the factors and conditions of normal and abnormal suggestibility as developed in my "Psychology of Suggestion." Thus he writes: "Sidis goes further in declaring 'If anything gives us a strong rise of our individuality, it is surely our voluntary movements. We may say that the individual self grows and expands with the increase of variety and intensity of its voluntary activity; and conversely, the life of the individual self sinks, shrinks with the decrease of variety and intensity of voluntary movements.' Here, perhaps, is the reason why individuality is so wilted in a dense throng." . . . "A crowd self will not arise unless there is an orientation (fixation) of attention, expectancy, narrowing of the field of consciousness that excludes disturbing impressions."

"With the growing fascination of the mass for the individual, his consciousness contracts to the pin point of the immediate moment, and the volume of suggestion needed to start on its conquering career becomes less and less. He becomes automatic, in a way unconscious. The end is a tranced impressionable condition akin to hypnosis. . . . The crowd self is ephemeral. . . . The crowd is unstable. . . . The crowd self is credulous . . . Rational analysis and test are out of the question. The faculties which we doubt with are asleep . . . The crowd self is irrational . . . His (man in the

crowd) actions are near to reflexes . . . The crowd self show simplicity . . . Finally, the crowd self is immoral. . . ."

Similarly Professor Giddings of Columbia University refers to these laws and their corollaries in his Sociology: "There are three of these laws" Professor Giddings writes in his work "that may be regarded as demonstrated: "Impulsive, social action is commenced by those social elements that are least self-controlled."

"The Law of Restraint of impulsive social action is: Impulsive social action varies with the habit of attaining ends by indirect, or complex means." In other words, impulsive social action varies with the attainment of ends by rational means, free from impulsive, emotional excitement, characteristic of the reflex, automatic consciousness or subconsciousness.

"The Law of extent and intensity of social action is: Impulsive social action tends to extend and to intensify in geometrical progression." This is my Law of Logarithmic relation of social mass and it energy.

I may add another important factor in Social Psychology, a factor revealed by my researches in the pathology of the human mind.

The disaggregation of social consciousness predisposes to the arousal of one of the most fundamental of impulses and instincts,—the impulse of self-preservation with its accompanying fear instinct. The subconscious is specially affected by self and fear suggestions, direct and indirect, which tend to awaken and stimulate the uncontrollable, slumbering impulse of self-preservation and fear which are ever ready to awaken and burst the bonds in which they are kept in the subconscious regions by the controlling, rational, personal consciousness. Once self-preservation and fear are aroused they magnify and intensify the pathogenic state of subconscious social activities.

"Intimidation" says Tarde "plays an immense part in society under the name of 'respect.' Every one will acknowledge this, and although the part is sometimes misinterpreted, it is never in the least exaggerated. Respect is neither unmixed fear nor unmixed love, nor is it merely the combination of the two, it is a fear which is beloved by him who entertains it." All taboos, covering the vast field of human life, religion, magic, family, marriage relationships, articles of diet, details of modes of living, rules of behavior, involving the minutiae of life of primitive societies, savage, barbarian and civilized, all the codes of law, religious, ceremonial, legal, political, all customs and rites and beliefs which control the human race in the course of its evolution, take their origin in self and fear. According to anthropological research all human institutions with all their taboos are based on fears of perils, often of an extremely superstitious nature, perils of soul and body, fears of impending evil of the supernatural before which gregarious man quails in terror of his life. The impulse of self-preservation and the fear-instinct are at the basis of social organized life activities. The taboos, the laws, the rules of genses, tribes, and nations, from the lowest to the highest, are upheld by a vague terror and sacred awe which society impresses on man by threats of ill-luck, fearful evil, and terrible punishments befalling sinners and transgressors of the tabooed, of the holy and the forbidden, charged with a mysterious, highly contagious, and virulently infective life-consuming energy. As the English anthropologist, Frazer, puts it: "Men are undoubtedly more influenced by what they fear than by what they love." The Bible lays special stress on the fear of God as the font of wisdom. The Biblical love is saturated with fear of the supernatural. Lack of obedience to commandments, in modern religions lack of faith, is threatened with fearful tortures and eternal damnation in hell. Throughout the course of human evolution, through the institutions of gentile savagery and barbarism to political class-civilization, social organization was taboo-intimidation based on self-preservation and fear. Organized society inspires its individual units with abject terror of the least trespass of custom, rule, rite and taboo. "Brute force" as the English anthropologist well puts it

"lurks behind custom in the form of what Bagehot has called 'persecuting tendency.'" Society enmeshes the individual in a close and strongly woven network of taboos, customs, commandments, and traditions, all maintained by force and fear.

Fear of the outraged sense of the community inhibits even the very thought of breach of a taboo or violation of custom. The taboo is based on some subconscious fear of some unknown force, or some vague apprehension of a spirit power avenging the awful transgression. The taboo is essentially the fear of the unseen, of the unknown. "A taboo is anything that one must not do lest ill-luck befall. And ill-luck is catching, like an infectious disease. Hence, if some one has committed an act that is not merely a crime, but a sin, it is every one’s concern to wipe out that sin, which is usually done by wiping out the sinner. Mobbish feeling always inclines to violence." This fear of communal anger, manifested at the breaking of some taboo, and resting on social self-preservation and mystic fear of the unknown and the unseen, is at the basis of all social institutions. Self-preservation and fear are at the heart of gregarious man the two: interpenetrate every fibre of his subconscious being.

Plato with his deep insight into the nature of man and society finds fear of such vital importance that he makes the knowledge of what to fear and what not to fear as fundamental in the education of the citizen. Self preservation with its companion the fear instinct dwell in the subconscious depths of gregarious man, and once aroused from slumber and started on their mad career cannot be arrested, they both become uncontrollable, giving rise to social plagues, mental crazes, epidemics and panics highly contagious and virulent in character. This was well brought out in the skillfully conducted campaigns by the various governments in appealing to the masses with their characteristic suggestible subconsciousness, stirring to the very depths the reflex consciousness of gregarious man by all sorts of direct and indirect suggestions of fear of attacks and patriotic reactions of self-defence against such attacks until the evil genie of self-preservation and fear became loose, resulting in a sweeping conflagration of a war of nations with all the horror of diseases, mutilation, and extermination of millions of human lives, over seventeen and a half millions, according to latest accounts, having perished in this world-massacre of the human race.

Of all the mental epidemics that befall aggregate humanity and its subconscious activities, the worst are the mob feelings of the militaristic type The subconscious activities are not rationalized and humanized, they are in fact more brutalized than ever, inasmuch as under the aegis of military law and under the tacit understanding that necessity knows no law, there is no pity and no mercy in war. The worst of crimes are committed for the benefit of the army and the militant nation. The individual in he army becomes used to holding human life in contempt, in fact the greater the slaughter, the greater is his merit; and the more medals, ribbons, and honors of hero-worship are showered on him, the more he becomes, after a time, indifferent to all sorts of himan suffering and loss of human life. We find this difference in the warlike Assyrians who enjoyed the impaling and flaying alive of their prisoners, and in the case of the military Spartans in the treatment of their unfortunate Helots, more specially in the imperial warlike world-conquerors, the Romans, in their love of the brutalities of gladiatorial combats and the popular delight in the shedding if blood on the arena. Thus Lecky in describing Roman society, says: "The gladiatorial games form indeed one feature which to a modern mind is almost inconceivable in its atrocity. That not only men, but women, in an advanced period of civilization,—men and women who not only professed, but very frequently acted upon a high code of morals, should have the carnage of men as their habitual amusement, that all this should have continued for centuries with scarcely a protest, is one of the most startling facts in moral history. It is, however, perfectly normal, while it opens fields of ethical inquiry of a very deep, though painful character." The great Roman phrase-monger and moralizer Cicero, glorifies gladiatorial games. "When guilty men" proclaims Cicero "are compelled to fight, no better discipline against suffering and death can be presented to the eye." It is instructive for us to learn as well as to ponder on the fact that "the very men who looked down with delight, when the

sand of the arena reddened with human blood, made the arena ring with applause when Terence in his famous line: ‘Homo sum, Nihil humani alienum puto’ proclaimed the brotherhood of man." If any protests against those edifying gladiatorial games and ancient forms of movie shows of the arena appeared at all, they came not from the intellectual and ideological classes, but from the despised Jews and from those pariahs of the ancient world, the unwarlike, peace-loving, humble, early Christians who lived by the apparently absurd rule of Christianity: "Love your enemies and return good for evil." There is, however, one feeble protest on record, but it is not from imperial Rome,—it is from the mother of human progress and humanistic civilization, from ancient Athens. "When an attempt was made to introduce the games into Athens, the philosopher Demonax appealed successfully to the better feelings of the people by exclaiming: 'You must first overthrow the altar of pity!' "

Of the many mental epidemics that occurred in the middle ages, the Crusades, on account of their duration, intensity, and extent, are of interest to the student of Social Psychology and Social Pathology.

The crusades agitated Europe for a couple of centuries with a loss of more than seven million men. Peter the Hermit and Pope Urban II were the heroes who first broke the ice, and directed the popular current to the conquest of the Holy Land. The fiery appeals of the emaciated, dwarfish hermit carried everything before them. The frenzy which had unsettled the mind of the hermit was by him communicated to his hearers who, sinking into a trance, fell easy victims to the fearful visions of a disordered mind.

Meantime Pope Urban II convoked two councils, one after another. At the second council that of Clermont, the pope addressed a multitude of thousands of people. His speech was at first listened to in solemn silence. Gradually, however, as the multitude became more and more subject to the action of the suggestion, and began to sink into the subconscious state of social trance as is usual under such conditions, sobs broke out. "Listen to nothing" he exclaimed "but the groans of Jerusalem! . . . And remember that the Lord has said 'He that will not take up his cross and follow me is unworthy of me.' You are the soldiers of the cross; wear then on your breast or on your shoulders the blood-red sign of Him who died for the salvation of your soul!" The suggestion took effect, it was irresistible. Leaving the fields and towns, agricultural serfs and petty traders displayed intense eagerness to reach the Holy City. Marching in parades and processions with high floating banners, flags, and sacred images at the sound of drums and praying monks hysterical multitudes called for preparedness in the cause of the holiest of wars,—the war of Christ against the infidel. Nations sank in a state of social somnambulism, obsessed by hatred in the name of Jove, and by war in the name of peace.

The silly, crazed, maniacal subconscious, in spite of its impulsive; and reflex character, often simulates the reflective self by using meaningless, pompous phrases of an idealistic nature. The chattering, irrational brute of the subconscious clothes itself in the tattered garments of rationality and idealism. Few are clear-sighted enough to discern the cloven hoof from under the mantle of the active subconscious, freed from all control of the rational self. Those few who by some luck happen to escape the madness of social hypnotization are afraid to give expression to their thoughts, because they are terrorized by the inquisitorial intolerance of crazed mobs and frenzied nations. Everyone spies and is spied upon in turn; everyone denounces and is denounced in turn for disloyalty to the cause of "humanity" and treason to the sacred flag. The few are forced into silence and submission by threats of violence and torture. If anyone dares to say anything rational, or if he has the courage to set himself in opposition to the maddened current of popular opinion, he is mobbed by pious crowds and is persecuted by inquisitorial courts of justice. Such was the terrible state of the mediaeval crusade-mania. Such in fact is the state of every crusade-mania which seizes on the minds of nations in the long history of national mental epidemics. If any rational person

during the crusade epidemic dared to speak a word of warning, the only answer of the hypnotized, entranced crusaders was the suggestion given by the pope: "He who will not follow Me is unworthy of Me." Such conscientious objectors, "sinners undeserving of Me," were usually wiped out by sword and fire.

If we ridicule the mediaeval crusade mania, let us compare it with what took place in our own times, in the first quarter of the twentieth century. At the outbreak of the war for the alleged defense of the Fatherland the excitement of militaristic mania in the central empires of Europe reached a formidable height. There were parades, processions, the carrying high of banners and flags, the preaching of hatred and singing of "Hass" and the patriotic national hymn—"Deutchland über Alles"; there were Leagues of Defense and Leagues of Security, and all sorts of societies for fighting the war to a finish and for winning the war. The plague did not spare scientists, philosophers, and theologians; such men as Wundt, Haeckel, and Harnack were affected alike with the lowliest chimney-sweeps and craziest asylum inmates,—all cursed and threatened perfidious England and the treacherous allies, all were obsessed by the fervor of national defense of the imperilled Fatherland. The patriotic crusade of the Fatherland-defense did not spare anyone; the young and the old, the learned and the ignorant, the conservatives and the radicals, the capitalists, the workman, and the international socialists were all alike affected by this terrible mental epidemic. If anyone happened by chance to escape the plague and give a word of warning he was promptly accused of disloyalty, interned, imprisoned, immured in a cell for years of torture. It seemed as if the insane asylums had opened wide their gates and let loose their populations to hold frenzied meetings, and parade the streets in processions of wild excitement with banner, flag, and drum for the salvation of the country. Thus a German medical eye-witness of all those militaristic orgies expressed himself in private: "The streets are now full of the unbalanced and the insane; this is their hour. . . . The war will afford a free arena for every instinct and every form of insanity."

Many of those parades and processions were at first staged and controlled by the ever present hands of the central government and the ruling classes. Then the highly virulent mental germs skillfully inoculated took a hold in the subconscious mind of European humanity; the disease developed rapidly, spread like wild fire, and raged unabated throughout the width and length of the central empires. This virulent epidemic soon spread to neighboring nations, and like its deadly associate, the influenza, reached the farthest corner of the1 habitable globe. In some nations there was a lull of 'neutrality,' the incubating period, followed by an ever rising temperature of popular' excitement, breaking out in series of 'preparedness parades' occurring all over the country from imperial New York, the stockyards of Chicago, the mines and vineyards of California to towns, villages, and hamlets. At first social hypnotization was staged by organizers, leaders, and hypnotizers in the form of parades and processions with banners and flags, to the sound of drums and orations reverberated and magnified by the boom and thunder of the press. The hypnotization took effect, and the demon of the demons began to stir in the depths of the subconscious social self.

Repetition and impressive, persistent suggestion finally brought about a lodgement of the virus in almost every individual of the social aggregate. Neither the learned nor the ignorant could escape the pressure of social suggestion. The way they tumbled one after another or rather one over another as victims to the fatal influence should have been a study of the utmost interest to the student of Social Psychology, Law, literary and scientific periodicals were full of war literature. Versifiers sang of "the blood-red glory cross of war" while soldiers and sailors made love not only in halls and on the streets, but also in all the best sellers and novelettes. All the posters, all the pictures of every journal in the land were full of war, magazines teeming with photographs of soldiers and sailors and the valorous deeds of the heroes at the front. Who could resist the pressure of insistent war suggestion repeated day after day and month after month? There no let up on Sundays and holidays. The pulpit thundered war, congregations sang battle hymns.

Then came the great "saving" mania. Everything and everybody had to be saved. Circulars were distributed about saving and the war. One went to sleep with war pictures and illustrated circulars of a militaristic character, and woke up with visions of war illustrations. Everything had to be saved. Save Belgium, save the country, pave Democracy, save your food, from potato peelings to the garbage can. The suggestion was irresistible, and the weak human spirit yielded and fell into a deep social trance from which the awakening could not but be one of disillusion. Meanwhile, the war literature, experiences of all kinds of colonels and generals and correspondents grew to enormous proportions. The dust raised by all that waste product which the country could have easily 'saved' blinded the eye and choked the breath. Everybody, young and old, fell to greedily reading the latest book on the war. Everybody was full of war, from the leader in society to the waiter in the club, from the leader in the paper to the wrapper round the grocery man's soap-box. Why wonder that when the air was full of the germs that the war malady spread like wild fire?

The populace became obsessed with a fury of war insanity, with craze of Victory-mania. Security leagues, unions, associations, clubs promote and advance something or other of a patriotic character to help winning the war were formed all over the country. The enthusiasm of national excitement went far beyond the bounds desired by the government, such as the activities of The National Security League which denounced members of Congress for not being red-blooded Americans, or for not showing one hundred per cent of Americanism, so that Congress in self-defense had to investigate and possibly suppress the activities of over zealous leagues. Leagues of all kinds of is description grew up rapidly and luxuriantly like mushrooms after a rain. Everyone attempted to outshine his neighbor, every one had to outdo his friend in doing his bit to help win the war. Posts, poles, trees, walls, and windows were plastered and placarded with leaflets, decals, and signs for tyhe defense of the nation and the glory of the country. Whoever happened to be skeptical, or not enthusiastic enough, was accused of being 'pro-German' and a spy, with consequences natural to such accusations. Every one tried to out-bawl his neighbor with declarations of loyalty, often of a spurious character.

The trance became deepened, the subconscious emotions of fear anger, and aggression became more and more intensified, fanned as they were by the hot breath of propaganda and the bellows of the press, until the mass of the nation fairly quivered with the fever of enthusiasm and maniacal excitement, an overwhelming mass excitement which no individual could withstand. "Make the world safe for Democracy," "He who does not stand behind Me is disloyal and unworthy of Me" were slogans impressed on the subconscious mind of the public with all the suggestive force of law, press, bema, rostrum, pulpit, and movie, all waving on high old glory, calling crusadei to the battlefield of Democracy in honor of "Courage, Cooties, and Heroes," and for the glory of "the blood-red cross of war." Secretary Lansing has well summed up the general mental state in his appeal: "Let us, as loyal citizens of the Republic, serve in this mighty crusade against Prussianism." For such a mental state can only be paralleled by the crusade mania of the Middle Ages, the mania which cost Europe millions of men, killed and crippled, devastations of populations and countries, followed by the no less terrible epidemic of the Black Plague which ravaged Europe and Asia from end to end, with the destruction of half the human race.

The bestialization produced by war and militant patriotism came openly to the front with all the horrors of savagery, rapine, deportation, atrocities, and the inhuman slaughter of millions of human beings for the glory of the Fatherland and Kultur and for "the making of the world fit for Democracy." Groups of scientists vied with each other in their supply of infernal machines and chemical poisons for wholesale slaughter of mankind. Poisons and poison-gases, more deadly than ever employed by savage man, poisons which even savages and barbarians scorned to use, were utilized triumphantly and jubilantly by Kultur and culture in their mad strife for supremacy. Man could not have fallen to a lower level of vice and depravity. To Aristotelian dictum was well justified in this strife of nations, in this ignoble world war: "A vicious man can do ten thousand

times as much harm as a beast." The chivalrous motto of Alexander of Macedon "σν κλίπτω τήν νίκην," was scorned by the generals of civilized nations. Atrocities of the most vicious kind were justified by the watchwords: "This is war!" "Might is Right." "Necessity knows no law." In this world-war nations fell to the lowest level of savagery. The frenzied, suggestible, gregarious, subconscious self, freed from all rational restraints, celebrated its delirious orgies, its corybantic bacchanalia, held its mad salto mortale over the grave of crucified humanity.

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This law, first formulated in "The Psychology of Suggestion," is termed by Professor Giddings in his "Sociology" as "The Law of Extent and Intensity of Social Action." Giddings phrases the Law as follows: "The Law of Extent and Intensity of Social Action is: Impulsive social action tends to extend and intensify in geometrical progression."

Our social status is a reversion to savagery of the most degenerate type, an atavistic lapse towards the paleolithic and neolithic man, only more brutal, because of the greater power for evil possessed by modern man. What Hun or Vandal ever dreamt of such colossal destruction! Over three hundred billions wasted by war and depredation, about seventeen to twenty million men lost by slaughter and disease! The fame of God's scourges, Attila, Jenghiz Khan, Batu, and Tamerlane pales and fades before the glories of modern warfare. In a few years Kultur and culture have caused more ruin to humanity than all the invasions of the yellow peril in the history of mankind.

Some future historian in describing and estimating our times will place us below the moral level of the Bushmen, the Hottentots, the Todas, and the Australian savages. He may say: "Towards the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century there took place a vast accumulation of wealth, due to a rapid development of applied science and practical arts. Instead, however, of improving their condition, European nations deteriorated intellectually and morally.

"Liberal education gave way to technical training. Science served on greed. Education became mechanical and military in character. The thinker gave way to the reporter, the scientist to the mechanic, the artist to the artisan, the genius to the Philistine. Industrial and commercial interests inspired by patriotism and chauvinism became the standard of nations. An insane frenzy of militarism obsessed the minds of men.

"The state enslaved the individual. Blind obedience became a virtue. Drill and discipline trained people into automatism of the subconscious with its abnormal suggestibility and extreme sensitivity to direct and indirect suggestions, intensified by brilliant parades, hypnotizing oratory, and by all the artifices of a militant chauvinistic press. Nations were thrown into a social trance, the subconscious came to the surface, yielded to the noxious suggestions, wriggled in hysterical convulsions of nationalism, became obsessed with the fury of homicidal mania, and plunged into the abyss of the world war with all its horrors and atrocities. Nations boasting of refinement and culture, of great achievements in philosophy and science and of general world 'Kultur' and culture broke treaties, attacked, destroyed, deported, and enslaved whole populations. Women and babes were drowned like rats in the middle of the ocean by sneaking submarines. Zeppelins and aeroplanes showered explosive missiles on defenceless people, on civilian populations. Nations gloried in such brutal acts. Every fiendish deed was greeted with an ever rising wave of patriotic enthusiasm. For such cowardly, inhuman, and diabolical acts, the craven miscreants were decorated and honored as heroes by their alleged superiors. Man could not have fallen to any lower level of vice and depravity.

"The very elements of nature were let loose for the ruin of nations. Man gloried in his fiendish, military, inventive power of depredation and destruction. Science supplied virus, venom, toxins, poison, gas, rifles, cannons, tanks, and long range guns. Hell was let loose on earth. Professors of philosophy and science carrying high the patriotic banner of Kultur and culture gloried in the system of compulsory, universal, military service, first made in Germany exulted in the degrading, vicious process of training by which the individual is hypnotized into submission to a brutal organization of military junkers, hallowed by the name of state and Fatherland, it was the darkest period in the history of mankind. Man was crazed with the lust of blood, frenzied with rapine and murder."

Such are the terrible consequences when in fear of invasion the subconscious becomes awakened to its irrational defence by the impulse of self-preservation and the fear instinct, the prestige of the gregarious aggregate, the overwhelming awe and terror of the herd, mob, community, the loss of individuality in the mob and the crowd, along with the conditions favorable to a dissociation of the upper, reflective self from the suggestible, automatic, reflex subconsciousness go to form the main sources of all mental epidemics, scourges, plagues, panics, frenzies, and manias, political, religious, and military. With the increase in mass of the human aggregate the mob-energy grows like the momentum of an avalanche in its downward course. Witness the overwhelming migratory obsession of swarming multitudes of hordes of barbarians, an obsession akin to the uncontrollable, migratory instinct of birds, or of buffaloes, an obsession which has seized periodically on barbaric tribes, such as the migrations of Semites, Aryans in the early dawn of history, the Lust-Wanderung of Celts, Goths, Normans, and Germans, Huns, Mongols, Tartars in the early ages of our era; the flood of Arabs, obsessed with a fervor of military, religious mania; the Crusades of mediæval European humanity, rolling waves after waves of crusaders in a fury of religious, delusional excitement, forcing their way towards the entrancing object, the grave of the Savior in Jerusalem; the bloody religious wars of the Reformation; the political revolutions in England and France with the terrible excesses of mob-rule; the mob spirit running riot in economical crisis, financial bubbles, industrial panics, religious revivals; Napoleonic wars; the recent exaltant, social mania of empire-building and world-dominion, infected by the most virulent or pestilential germs of triumphant militaristic nationalism which first seized on the imperial aggregates of Central Germanic tribes, and spread like a virulent miasma to other nations, wafting its poisonous emanations across land and oceans, culminating in the worst world-epidemic,—the so called world-war.

The central and centralized, imperial governments, guided by the big interests of the country, induced in their unfortunate subjects this last pestilential epidemic of military mania by means of a persistent course of direct and indirect suggestion in which the conditions of normal and abnormal suggestibility were specially emphasized, laying bare the social subconscious, stimulating in it the fear of invasion and attack by neighboring nations, stirring up the impulse of self-preservation, rousing the entranced, hypnotized mind of the populace to a frenzy of self-defense, while the junkers, the officers, the soldiers, the professors, the journalists of the middle-classes were entranced with beatific visions of world-dominion. Nothing stirs so much to the very depths of its soul the poor, naked, irrational subconscious as self and fear. Nothing is so suggestive, so appealing to the social subconscious a fear and self which alone have the power to set society into intense excitement of maniacal fury.

With the growth of social institutions there is an ever increasing tendency towards formation of rigid rules and regulations for almost every step, for every act in all walks of life. Man's behavior is prescribed for every occasion of life. He is commanded by direct and indirect suggestion what to say and how to say it, what to do and how to do it, what to wear and how to dress, what to eat and drink and what manners to have at the table and in company, he is prescribed what to believe and

what to think in fear of social condemnation and eternal damnation. Man is brow-beaten, leashed, muzzled, masked, and lashed by boards and councils, by leagues and societies, by church and state. Man is driven by orders and commands, rules and laws, customs and fashions. Man is crushed under the burden of statutes and terrorized by fear of taboos.

Aristotle takes it for granted that it is absurd and ludicrous to force a person to cure himself. He had no suspicion that many centuries later man will be forced into treatment by benevolent organizations, charity boards, philanthropic societies, hygienic and eugenic societies, boards of health, and municipal councils. In fear of disease and in the interest of his health man will be muzzled and masked like a vicious dog, and that without any murmur of complaint. Breathing freely will become a social offense, punished by fine and by jail in their communities of the free West. With a scanty supply of laws in Hellenic commonwealths or city states what an immense vista for an Aristotle, of that grand, complex, efficient machinery of law, turning out yearly thousands of laws and taboos for the paternalistic control and alleged welfare of the citizen! What a joy to watch our bureaucratic governments piling law on law fit for the wastebasket and the scrap heap! Edicts, ordinances, regulations are issued by the thousands by states, cities, towns, boroughs, organizations, societies, associations, and leagues for all imaginary human ills. Society staggers under the burden of laws and taboos. Individuality is stifled by the endless, massive excretions of its lawgivers. Our lawgivers take special pride in the ever active manufacture of new bills and laws. Recently even the legislators begin to object to the labor involved in the work on the ever growing mass of bills, introduced into the legislature of one state alone. Thus a senator of a western state complained that in one year alone over seventeen hundred bills had to pass through the mill of his legislature. Multiply that figure by the number of states, add the municipal edicts, and the numerous laws turned out by the federal government, and one can form some faint idea of the vast burden laid on the shoulders of the individual citizen. It were well if the legislators were specially instructed by their constituencies that instead of piling bills upon bills and laws upon laws, like Pelion on Ossa, they should repeal as many as they can. At the present stage of "law-mania" the rational legislator would be far more useful if he made up his mind to devote his time and energy to the clearing of the Augean stables of law products. The overproduction of laws is one of the great evils of modern civilization.

In one of the ancient Greek republics he who wished to introduce a new law had to appear before the popular assembly with a rope around his neck rope around his neck, probably as an emblem of the hangman and the criminal. We have hardly made an improvement by shifting the rope to the neck of the helpless citizen. We may possibly be forced to come round to the ancient Greek practice by putting once more the rope round the neck of the legislator,—and tighten it too. Traditions, laws, taboos, statutes, commandments, rules, regulations, ordinances, manners, and fashions, all enacted by an inordinate philanthropic zeal for the good and improvement of society and race, press heavily on individuality and originality, forcing them down into the general mire of mediocrity. The home, the school, the church, the club, business, profession, trade, and union, all insist on strict, correct conformity to standard; all demand authoritatively implicit obedience and submission to rule and regulation.

The individual is so effectively trained by the pressure of taboo, based on self and fear, that he comes to love the yoke that weighs him down to earth. Chained to his bench, like a criminal galley slave, he comes to love his gyves and manacles. The iron collar put around his neck becomes a mark of respectability, an ornament of civilization. Tarde finds that society is based on respect, (respectability I should say), a sort of an alloy of fear and love, fear that is loved. A respectable citizen is he who is fond of his bonds, stocks, and shekels, and comes to love his bonds, stocks and shackles of fears and taboos. In fact, he attacks and fights those who wish to free him from his social, religious, and political fetters. Some criticize justly the militaristic regime with its heavy weight of obedience and strict discipline, pressing on the individual. What is the burden of

militarism compared with the endless screw of the socio-static press ceaselessly and pitilessly forcing individuality into the narrow, crooked moulds of social mediocrity and respectable commonplace?

In "The Psychology of Suggestion" I pointed out an important law in Social Psychology, namely, that greatness of individuality is inversely proportional to the mass of the social aggregate. Great genius appeared not in the empire of Assyria, Babylonia, or Persia, but in the small city-states of Greece and Judea. It is not immense modern China that gives great men, but the small states of Chinese feudalism. This Law of Mass versus individuality falls in line with my work on the subconscious and its conditions of dissociation: Limitation of Voluntary Activity, Monotony, and other conditions, requisite for the weakening and final disaggregation of the primary, upper self from the lower, subconscious self leave the latter bereft of control and critical sense.

This law may be modified under conditions in which the individual is given freedom and more scope than in societies hitherto known to us. In this respect we may agree with the great French psychologist, Ribot, who in reviewing my work thinks that the law admits of exceptions. Professor Ross, however, seems to adopt the law without any qualification: "It is perhaps the dwarfing pressure of numbers" he writes "that explains why vast populous societies seem to produce small individualities, whereas little societies permit great men to arise. Compare great homogeneous aggregations, such as Egypt, China, Persia, Babylonia, India, with the diminutive communities of Judea, the Greek city-states, the Italian cities of the Middle Ages, the free towns of mediaeval Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Switzerland."

However the case may be with societies under widely different conditions of development the law of mass and individuality holds true of the social facts known to us. The law is of far greater importance than the psychologist and sociologist are inclined to admit. It is certainly important to remember this law when dealing with social progress. The individual is getting dwarfed and stunted in proportion as the social aggregate is getting larger and more organized. The larger the empire the more dwindles the mind of the citizen. This is especially true of empires formed by conquest in which the individual is reduced by military discipline to the role of an automaton, where the automatic subconscious is alone cultivated and is in direct relation with the external world, with the commands, orders, suggestions given to him by his superiors. Such empires soon crumble, sometimes in the life time of a single generation. The empire of Alexander Macedon, the empire of Charlemagne, the empires of Djenghis Khan and Tamerlane; in modern times the empire of Napoleon, the Russian and Ottoman empires are good illustrations.

The insecurity, the instability of militaristic empires is brought out strongly in aggregates held by force for a few generations: the catastrophe of the empire. The empire falls at one blow, and is gone forever. The Assyrian, the Persian, the Carthaginian in ancient times, the Austrian, the German, the Russian empire in our own times are cases in point. The empires go to pieces, they crumble into dust. From a superficial standpoint it may be said that an empire upheld by the sword perishes by the sword. This, however, is not the full truth. A deeper insight discloses the fact that the spirit of the empire building citizen has been dead long before the final collapse. In fact it is this death of individuality that is the real cause of the fall of the empire.

The fall of the empire is sometimes so sudden and so complete, and the spirit of individuality before its departure is so small and dwarfed, that no spirit is left to transmit the history of the imperial achievements. When a couple of centuries after the fall of the mighty Assyrian empire Xenophon passed the ruins of the once Nineveh the great, the capital of Assyria, the terror of nations, he was unable even to find out its name. Assyria was wiped out from the memory of man as if it had never existed. If it were not for Greek accounts, what would have been left of the great Persian empire, but a few rums and inscriptions on the rock of Behistan? If it were not for modern

excavations the very name of Assyria would have been like a dream of the past, long gone and forgotten. What would have been left of the Carthaginian empire, if not for the Greek and Roman historians? Those empires passed away at one single blow, and with the sudden collapse vanished all the glory of imperial power. But long before that fall the real glory had departed,—the glory of the individual. Empires may often look grand and magnificent, but they are built with poor material,—with small men and petty minds. Military aggregates or societies, held together by the sword are doomed to disolution at the moment of their birth. The destruction is not due so much to luxury and effeminacy, as is usually assumed, but to the dwarfing and suppression of the spirit of the free, living individuality which alone constitutes the active nucleus of social life.

With the growth of the social aggregate, social structure and functions become varied, differentiated, and rigid; social pressure increases, while individuality and originality are ever on the decrease, sinking to a uniform level of dead mediocrity and commonplace. There is limitation of the field of consciousness, limitation of voluntary activity, monotony, routine, and inhibitions, all growing with the increase of mass, structure, and social pressure on individual units. With the progressive intensification of these conditions the personal, uncritical consciousness gets more and more dissociated from the impersonal, automatic, reflex subconscious, and becomes subject to all sorts of absurd suggestions. If now some brilliant object fixes the involuntary attention of the subconscious mind of the social aggregate, the mental energy of the constituent units, becoming polarized, turning in one direction, develops a momentum, uncontrollable and overwhelming in its disastrous effects,—the subconscious self becomes the luckless hysterical actor in all the vulgar farces and horrible tragedies: of historical life.

Great empires, becoming gradually bureaucratized, institutionalized, differentiated, and ossified, carry within them the germs of decay and death. The growth of nations has, until the present time, been associated with a predominance of rigid structure over living function. When such lines and forms of organic development prevail, the individual, as the cell of the body, becomes soon senescent, drifting inevitably into age, decay, and death. The great biologist and embryologist, Professor Minot, describes this downward course of organic evolution, as the Law of Genetic Restriction: "The development runs in one direction, and ends in the production of structure, which, if it is pursued to its legitimate terminus, results in degeneration and death." Societies, developing on lines of organic growth, follow the Law of Genetic Restriction. The individual unit is more and more restricted to the narrow lines of growth of differentiation and specialization in which the individual is sacrificed to society and the state, and generally to the progressive development of the social organism,—as the phrase runs. Such societies, from the very nature of the course taken by their evolution, tend towards decay, death, and final dissolution. Just as the process of cytmorophosis, or cell development, in the evolution of the organism leads to an increase of cytoplasm with formation of rigid connective tissue and fibre, with a corresponding decrease of nucleoplasm, the ever living font of life and youth, the process ending in dissolution of both the cell and the organism, so the process undergone by the individual in social organic evolution by a gradual reduction of the living personality and predominance of the subconscious with its rigid Byzantine institutionalism and formalism results in destruction of individuality, corruption, and dissolution of society.

With the increase of social pressure on the individual, with the ever rising power of restriction of freedom of thought and expression, and loss of liberty of manifestation of originality and initiative due to an ever greater amount of legislation and regulation of the minutiae of individual life, true social progress diminishes, comes to a standstill, ending in decline, decay, and ruin. Society is doomed to an ignominious death as soon as the connective tissue of institutions and the ossified material of officialdom with its rank growth of unyielding red tape and formalism begin to spread, choking, and strangling the free, personal life of the individual. The ancient Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine, Arabian, Chinese empires, and in modern times the

sudden collapse of the French, Russian, German and Austrian empires warn us, by example, of what happens to nations, in spite of all their external splendor and apparent manifestations of greatness, when the private individual becomes restricted in thought and act by narrow, mean specialization, mean formalism, monotony of lines of action due to a legalized mesh of fibrinous tissue in a hypertrophied, cartilagenous, ossified structure of organized, and classified, governmental officialdom. History is strewn with the ruins of empires and with the remains of once living social organisms, because in the eagerness to build massive, rigid, and stable structures, the individual units became so bound and cemented by official tissue that paralysis of personal activities ensued. The whole social structure became decayed, and was finally destroyed by less organized, but more youthful societies in which the individual units were still vital, still having free scope for the manifestation of their energies. Brilliant as were those empires, magnificent as those social structures were to the external observer, they were rotten with corruption and decay, and were doomed to perish at the hands of the less advanced, more backward, but more vigorous tribes who were still alive with the living, nuclear energies of the individual.

In his description of the degenerate Byzantine Greeks Ribot tells us that their geniuses were mediocrities and their great men commonplace personalities. It was the cultivation of independent thought and the freedom of individuality that awakened the Greek mind to its achievements in art, science, and philosophy; it was the deadening Byzantine bureaucracy with its cut and dried theological discipline that dried up the sources of Greek genius. Society is on its downward course when it is building up a Byzantine empire with large institutions, immense organizations, and big corporations, but with small minds and dwarfed individualities. It is a sure symptom of social degeneration when administration is valued above individuality and social ceremonialism above originality. When the free soul of the individual is gone, the social organism gives up the ghost, and at best remains as an embalmed corpse, a warning to men in their craving for imperialism and their efforts at empire-building at the expense of the living, thinking individual. Imperial pomp is bought with the life-blood of man. Vain is imperial glory; for it is the symptom of disease and death of the social organism, grown fat with the lives of men. Society never appears so brilliant as when the end is nigh. It is like the dead lull before the coming storm. When the storm comes the imperial edifice collapses in a chaos of ruins.

The best and most precious treasure of humanity is the free, independent personal life of the individual. More than twenty-three centuries ago Aristotle, one of the greatest thinkers of humanity, made some important generalizations on the nature of man and society, generalizations the full significance of which have not been fully appreciated. His work was based on extensive studies of the great variety of Hellenic societies and their diversity of constitutions. It may be appropriate to quote here some of his statements:

"That form of social constitution is best in which every man is best, whoever he may be, and can act for the best, and live happily. Happiness is virtuous activity. The active life of thought (as we put it, the active life of the upper, critical consciousness) is the best for man and the citizen. Happiness is activity, and the actions of the wise, and the just (not the present business ideal of specialization, vocational, technical, professional or business efficiency of the greatest amount of marketable articles and luxuries) are the realization of what is good and noble. Not that a life of action must necessarily have a relation to other men (extolled at present, such as charitable, philanthropic, political, commercial, industrial, military, social) as some persons think, but much more the thoughts and contemplation which are free, independent, and complete in themselves. To man the life according to intellect is pleasant and best,—intellect constituting the essential nature of man." In other words, under a good constitution the upper, critical, rational, controlling consciousness should be cultivated both for the happiness of the individual and the general welfare of the community. "Happiness," Aristotle tells us, "is self-rule, self-government." Man should not be ruled, but self-ruled: ή εύδαιμούια τώυ αύτάρχωυ έστί. "Man should not be brought up for

business or for work as an end in itself, but for leisure. . . . For it is specially disgraceful to have such a poor education as to manifest excellent qualities in times of work and stress, but in the enjoyment of leisure to be no better than a slave. For it is not in the nature of a free man (a cultured man as we would put at present) to be always seeking after the useful. Education should be with a view to the enjoyment of leisure. I must repeat once and again the first principle of all action is leisure. Both are required, but leisure is better than occupation. Society should take care of the education of the individual on right principles. In most societies, however, good education on right principles is neglected, the people do as the Cyclops:Each rules his race, his neighbor not his careHeedless of others, to his own severe.

Society is not a community of living beings only (for the sake of making a living as we would say, for the sake of work and trade), society is a community of equals, aiming at the best life possible for each individual citizen. . . . Now in man reason is the end after which nature strives, so that the education of the citizen (in a good community under a good constitution) should be with a view to that end, namely, the cultivation of the mind, more especially of reason."

Thus Psychology, Sociology, and History go to confirm the principle that in a well ordered and progressive community the end, the telos, is the culture of the individual, a culture based on the cultivation of the rational mind, or the cultivation of the upper, controlling, critical personal consciousness of the individual citizen; the welfare of the community being not Imperial grandeur of war and trade, empire-building of the military Macedonian type, but entirely and wholly the development of man and the happiness of each individual citizen. The true aim of progress is not a beautifully organized bureaucracy with well organized departments for all walks of life in some great capital, adorned by pomp and display, or by ostentation of wealth and luxuries, but the simple, happy life of a highly cultured citizen. Protagoras' dictum: πάυτωυ μέτρου άυθρωπος Aristotle modifies into: παντων μέτρου άυθρωπος άγαθός. It is not man, as Protagoras claims, but the good man who is the measure of everything. It is not the citizen, or a taxpayer, or voter, or office-holder, but the cultivated, free individual who is the true aim of all social progress.

This type of society, described by Aristotle as the result of his profound studies of various forms of social life, this type of society after which humanity strives in all its social metamorphoses discarding one form after another as crude and inadequate for the purpose of a good social life, this type has for its sole object not the structure of society, the welfare of great institutions and the building of vast empires, but solely the highest development of the free, cultivated individual. Such a type of society the sole object of which is the happiness and cultivation of Man may be characterized as functional, or humanistic, based on the principle that in the universe there is nothing greater than Man, and in Man there is nothing greater than Mind or Reason. Societies whose object is the organization of a strong centralized structure, the State, with its empire-building tendencies at the expense of life and liberty of the individual components may, fron their nature, be characterized as organic, or structural.

In societies of the structural organic type centralization and organization with hypertrophy of structure are above rationalization ane individualization with an ever greater tendency to cleavage of the conscious self from the subconscious self. Roughly classified, civilized structural, organic societies may be theocratic, aristocratic, timocratic and democratic. In theocratic societies, the priests representing the conscious activity, usurp the government, such as in Egypt and India. In aristocratic societies the nobility of birth and wealth, representing the intelligence of the people, assume the role of social control, while the rest of the population are kept in bondage and ignorance. Such conditions are found in many Greek states, in the Roman state, and in the societies of the Middle Ages, as well as in the states of modern Europe before the revolutions, in England, Germany, France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. In timocratic societies the rich, or propertied

classes represent the conscious control, relegating the other classes to the regions of the passive subconscious. In democratic societies of modern times the power is in the hands of the people, really dominated by the middle classes, business men, professionals, labor aristocracy and their leaders who possess control of the masses which form the subconscious strata of social life activities. Thus throughout the forms and history of structural, organic societies there is present a cleavage of the conscious from the subconscious,—the conscious control of classes as against the subconscious activities of the masses.

Classes versus Masses may be characterized as the main cleavage of organic societies. That is why the whole history of humanity which, until our present times presents the evolution of societies, associations, and generally of social aggregates, based on structural organic lines, is full of conflicts of classes and masses. History is full of struggles of the powers of the conscious classes with the subconscious forces of the masses. This massive subconsciousness predominating in the type of organic societies, gives to the society as a whole the psychological tone of the subconsciousness, the character of which is suggestibility, normal and abnormal, subject to the nature, conditions, and laws of subconscious trance states. In other words the plane of cleavage in structural organic societies is along the lines of the conscwus and the subconscwus with consequent dissociation of the two. Hence, the ever present danger of predominance of abnormal suggestibility, and precipitation in a general state of social hypnosis. Social suggestibility and social somnambulism form the main traits of structural, organic societies.

From this standpoint we may well understand why Tarde and many other sociologists lay so much stress on social imitation and even somnambulism as the very nature of society; for imitation is but another term for what may be more fundamentally described as suggestibility.

As a matter of fact when the great sociologist, Tarde, comes to examine more closely the basis of social imitation, he falls back on social hypnotization as the nature of social life. This social hypnotization, as we have found, depends on the stage of the social dissociation of the upper, controlling self from the lower, suggestible, subconscious self, or mass-subconsciousness. "The social, like the hypnotic state" writes Tarde "is only a form of dream (Tarde should rather say trance-state), a dream of command and a dream of action. Both the somnambulist and the social man are possessed by the illusion that their ideas, all of which have been suggested to them, are spontaneous. . . . Because this magnetization (or hypnotization) has become more general or mutual we err in flattering ourselves that we have become less credulous and docile, less imitative than our ancestors. This is a fallacy, and we shall have to rid ourselves of it." Tarde comes to the conclusion that "Society is imitation, and imitation is a kind of somnambulism." There is a good deal of truth in Tarde's view of social life. What Tarde does not realize is the fact that his generalization holds true only of organically constituted societies, but not of all societies, and it is certainly not true of humanistic communities. Tarde's sociological generalization is but part of the truth. The definition of society in terms of hypnotization or somnambulism holds true of societies in which social dissociation is present. In other words, in structural, organic societies there is a weakening, or lack of development, or inhibition of the upper, critical self from the lower suggestible self with the consequent manifestation of subconscious elements and predominance of subconscious activities. In this condition, as we have pointed out, and which cannot be emphasized too much on account of its importance, holds good in most, if not all societies, known to us from history, societies in which the organic, institutional structure of centralization predominated over the freedom of individual activity and the critical independence of personality.

Where social life runs in moulds, hardened by civilization or specialization, crystallized in caste, class, group, league, and various other organizations of a highly complex structure, there the social aggregate tends to develop more and more connective tissue fibre of the inactive, supporting type.

This gradually crowds out the living elements, smothers the individual units, paralyzes the activities of the upper self with its controlling, rational consciousness, leaving exposed the lower, automatic consciousness with its characteristic abnormal suggestibility and docility to the stimuli and suggestions coming from the external environment, and results in a permanent state of trance hypnosis, subject to all forms of gregarious plagues and mental epidemics. For all organic societies are based on subconscious activities which are but feebly held in check by a weak-minded upper self. Such human aggregates run wild in fads, crazes, manias, epidemics, plagues, mobs, riots, wars, without in the least making any real progress or in the least improving their wretched social state. It is not the humanistic type of society, but the organic, subconscious type of society which, is the suggestible victim and miserable subject of hypnotization.

The fate of organic aggregates is sealed from the very start of their career. Organic societies, if left to themselves, may become stationary, or static, as it is sometimes termed, stagnating for centuries, like Egypt, India, China, and Byzantium, until destroyed by the onset of a young, vigorous society in which the structural elements have not yet gone far in their development, the living individual elements having still retained their social vitality and independent upper personal consciousness, so that the social self has not yet sunk into the decadent, massive, subconscious with its characteristic abnormal suggestibility, and its hypnotic trance state. This young aggressive aggregate, once it has taken the course of organic, social development is in its turn doomed to a similar fate. The ancient Babylonian and Hitite empires were destroyed by the Assyrian, the Assyrian and Egyptian empires by the Persian, the vast Persian empire by the Macedonian. After undergoing a process of segmentation the Macedonian empire succumbed to the iron grip of the Roman imperial rule. The Roman empire in its turn underwent a process of segmentation, in the western and eastern portion. The western portion fell a prey to the Germanic barbarians, while the eastern, the Byzantine empire, remained for centuries in a state of ossification, until destroyed by the onslaught of the Turks.

In modern times we witnessed the fall of the Chinese empire at the hands of the Japanese, the great crash of the mighty Russian and structurally well organized German empire, along with Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires, all falling together into heaps of ruins in the great hurricane of the world war.

As long as societies choose the course of organic growth, of differentiation and specialization, becoming more and more inflexible, unyielding, and rigid, developing an hypertrophy of social connective tissue—laws, regulations, ordinances, commands, commandments, rites, ceremonies, formalities, and all sorts of prohibitions and taboos, and becoming crystallized into leagues, associations, and organizations with their respective constitutions, rules, and by-rules, all tending to stifle and smother the individual consciousness, so long will society be doomed to a state of subconscious activity with a predisposition to social somnambulism, getting, in consequence, afflicted with various forms of social diseases, often malignant in character, subject to riots, mobs, mental epidemics, crazes, and war-manias, and if not reformed by some radical revolution into a humanistic social type, ending in decay and death. Complexity of social organization is accompanied by corresponding diminution of vitality and ultimate loss of life of the aggregate. As Professor Minot tersely puts it: "With complication of organization the cells lose something of their vitality, something of their possibilities of perpetuation; and as the organization of cells becomes higher and higher (that is more differentiated), this necessity for change (differentiation and organization) becomes more and more imperative. But it involves the end. Differentiation leads up to its inevitable conclusion—death." A social aggregate which has chosen the fatal path of organic evolution must succumb to the same law of organic development to which all organisms are subject, namely greater and greater organization, increase of structure, greater differentiation, decrease of critical, personal, consciousness, loss of individual liberty, increased activity of the subconscious forces, falling into a state of somnambulism which can only be redeemed by revolution or by death.

A chronological table will show the uninterrupted chain of European mental epidemics:Crusades— Pilgrimage epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1000 to 1095Crusade epidemic,Eastern and Western Crusades . . . . . . . . 1095 to 1270Children's Crusade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1095 to 1270Flagellant epidemic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1260 to 1348Black Death and Antisemitic mania . . . . 1348 Dancing mania— St. John's dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1374St. Vitus' dance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1418Tarantism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1470 To the end of the fifteenth century Demonophobia, or witchcraft mania . . . . 1488 To the end of the seventeenth century War mania— The Hundred Years' War . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1338 to 1453The Wars of the Roses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1455 to 1485The Hundred Years of Religious Wars . . . The Huguenot Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1562 to 1629The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day . . 1573The Thirty Years' War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1618 to 1648The War of Austrian Succession . . . . . . . . 1740 to 1748The Seven Years' War . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1756 to 1763The French Revolution and . . . . . . . . . . 1789 to 1815The Napoleonic Wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Imperialistic wars of modern times throughout the nineteenth century and ending with the catastrophe of the world war . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1914 to 1919Bringing about the fall of the Russian, Turkish, Austrian, and German empires. Speculative manias— Tulipomania . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1634The Mississippi Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1717The South Sea Bubble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1720And business bubbles to our own time. The speculative running a career from the highest excitement of business- revival, ending in a crisis of business depression in a cycle of ten years.

If society is to progress on a truly humanistic basis, without being subject to mental epidemics and virulent social diseases to which the subconscious falls an easy victim, the personal consciousness of every individual should be cultivated to the highest degree possible. Every phase of individuality and originality, no matter how eccentric, should not only be tolerated, but jealously guarded and protected from all assaults and oppressions. All manifestations of individuality and personality, no matter how opposed to our notions and foreign to all our tastes, ideas, beliefs and feelings, should be carefully left to grow and develop without any inhibitions, prohibitions, and punishments, nor branded by social custom and law as "dangerous, seditious, and subversive of the welfare of the state," should not be oppressed and persecuted by organized society and scourged by the scorpions of law and order. We must revert to the Hellenic ideal of a good citizen in a good society as expressed by Thucydides in the person of the greatest of statesmen, Pericles, and clearly stated by the greatest of thinkers, Aristotle: "The full development of a free individuality in a community of equals, aiming at the best life of each individual citizen."

By its famous proclamation that "All men are equals, and are, endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" the American Declaration of Independence has made a long step in the direction of the true progress of humanity. The framers of the American Constitution have without any qualifications, whether peace or war, declared the most fundamental elements, requisite for the development of a well-ordered, civilized society by proclaiming in the very first article of the amendments to the Constitution that: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." This is a fundamental limitation of congressional powers.

We must say to the credit of the American Congress that never in its history has it attempted to transgress this important right claimed by the Constitution, namely the freedom of speech, liberty of press, and freedom of popular assembly for the redress of grievances. It is certainly to the credit of Congress that no matter under what circumstances, peace or war, it guards jealously over this important right of the individual, freedom of expression iri word, in speech, in press, and in assembly. The heroes of the American Revolution fought and died in their struggle with English rule that Liberty should live in the American colonies, in the states of the Union. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Congress, in defending the fundamental rights of the people, is ever vigilant that this right of freedom of word, press, and assembly should not for a moment pass from the people which they represent. Congress sees to it that the humblest person in the land should enjoy this right under all circumstances, war or peace. No post-master, no censor, no attorney-general is permitted for a moment even to meddle with the inalienable right of expressing one's opinion, whether by spoken or by written word, as to the course of public affairs. Congress watches closely over all agencies that no law should be passed and enforced which should in any way interfere with the freedom of the individual and the liberty of speech, press, and assembly which are at the basis of the free American institutions. Not a single paper, not a single pamphlet was ever excluded from the mails, not a single person was ever brought before the courts, nor was any person ever sentenced to jail, nor even fined for freely expressing his opinion, in press or in word, no matter how damning they may be or antagonistic to the laws of that centralized, legislating body. Well may Congress be congratulated for realizing its mission, not passing any oriental, monarchial espionage laws that might in the least rob the individual of his inalienable right to liberty of expression in speech, in print, or assembly. Congress is the guardian spirit of American liberty, seeing to it that not a single law is enacted that may possibly prevent anyone giving his opinion freely in public. Congress is the guardian spirit of the country. Every person, however humble, and no matter what his opinion may be, is given full freedom of expression as demanded by the Constitution. For Congress, as the bearer of the spirit of the Constitution, fully realizes that no

civilized society may for a 'moment relinquish this great right of freedom of individuality and liberty of thought and expression by word, by press, and by assembly without sinking into a state of barbarism. Whether we stand at Armageddon and battle for 'the Lord', whether we fight for the ideal, or sit in the council of the great to make a world of empires fit for democracy, this liberty is like a sacred fire, jealously guarded, like a beacon shining on a hill for the humblest person in the land. For Congress in its anxiety to preserve the word and spirit of the Constitution fully realizes that freedom of individuality and liberty of expression in speech, press, assembly, being the basis of human progress, should be guarded and even specially cultivated before all else, by all well-ordered, progressive commonwealths.

No man is so low as to deserve oppression, no opinion is so mean as to merit suppression. As we look back to the history of the human race we almost invariably find that all fundamental changes of human nature may be traced in their origin to some one individual or group of men, often obscure and humble, whose opinions were regarded as antisocial and dangerous, on account of their extreme radicalism and deviation from the conventional traditions, customs, and beliefs. The Hebrew prophets who set justice above the Hebrew nation, and put righteousness above patriotism which was preached by the false prophets of that time, claiming loyalty to nationalism, were just the few men who dared to give expression to the small, still voice of human consciousness and conscience, and as such were the true bearers of man progress. These great harbingers of human justice were hunted and persecuted unto death by the false patriotic prophets who put loyalty to Israel and Judah above loyalty to humanity. The true country of the prophets was not soil, but soul. Their countrymen were the just and the righteous of the earth.

What man would have dared even in our modern times of free speech and free press, what man would have dared to claim the prophesy of Hosea: "Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies: because thou wouldst trust in thy way, in the multitude of thy mighty men. Therefore shall a tumult arise among thy people, and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled. . . . As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird. . . . Though they bring up their children, yet will I bereave them, that there shall not be a man left. . . . Ephraim is smitten, their root is dried up, they shall bear no fruit. . . . my God will cast them away. . . . They shall be wanderers among nations." Such words are not only unpatriotic, but they are also "seditious." When the Assyrian threatened the national integrity of Judah, Isaiah carried to his nation the following message:

Go unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievances which they have prescribed; to turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and that they may rob the fatherless! . . . . 0 Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the street." . . . Is not it a clear case of "sedition ?" Is it not giving aid and comfort to the enemy?"

When again the shadow of the later Babylonian empire: fell on the small kingdoms of Asia minor, and the Jewish state was in imminent danger of destruction, Jeremiah had the courage of proclaiming the patriotic prophets false. The true message to his nation was total national collapse which he claimed they fully deserved: "Lo, I will bring a nation against you from afar, 0 house of Israel, it is a mighty nation. . . . And they shall eat up thine harvest, and thy bread, which thy sons, and thy daughters should eat; they shall eat up thy flocks; they shall eat up the vines and thy fig trees; they shall impoverish thy fenced cities, wherein thou trustedst, with the sword. . . . And the carcasses of the people shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth." Even when the Chaldeans besieged the Jewish capital, Jeremiah declared to the king: "Thus saith the Lord; Behold I will turn back the weapons in your hands wherewith you fight against the Chaldeans

which besiege you, and I will assemble them into the midst of this city. And I myself will fight against you. . . . And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast; they shall die of a great pestilence." These are not patriotic speeches. From our standpoint they are not only full of sedition, but of the worst form of treason. Still it was Jeremiah who proved in the right, and the false prophets of nationalism and patriotism in the wrong. This is the soul of the prophet's burden: Justice is above my nation, and righteousness above my people.

The prophets were but few individuals among nations and tribes vibrant with nationalism of the narrowest type, but it was just these few chosen spirits and not the multitude of false patriots who gave voice to the tendencies of true human progress. The prophets were seized by the authorities, sentenced, mobbed, tormented, and killed, but their spirit lived, while kingdoms succumbed, empires vanished, and nations perished. The acts and decrees of the great Assyrian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian monarchs lie buried in the ruins and dust of their once magnificent palaces, but the living words of these few humble men, the prophets, ring loud and true across the gulf of ages. Insignificant as, those men might have been in the courts of a Sargon, Tiglath-Pileser, Esarhaddon, Cyrus, and Darius, it was nonetheless those lowly men who stood for human progress, and transmitted to humanity the precious treasures of human ideals.

The Gospel of Christ and his apostles ran counter to all Jewish tradition as represented by the Pharisees and Sadducees. Christianity conflicted with the imperial patriotism of the Romans. Cruel persecutions followed. The great historian, Tacitus, regarded the Christians with horror as we do anarchists and Bolsheviki, and he branded them as "the enemies of the human race." The mild Pliny in his report to emperor Trajan considers the Christians as deserving of punishments from a purely civic principle of subduing the obstinate and the obdurate. A quotation from Pliny's correspondence is both interesting and instructive as a warning to our own times: "The method I have observed," Pliny, as Governor of the province of Bythinia, reports to emperor Trajan "towards those who have been brought before me as Christians is this: I asked them whether they were Christians; if they admitted it, I repeated the question twice, and threatened them with punishment. If they persisted, I ordered them at once to be punished. For I was persuaded, whatever the nature of their opinions might be, a contumacious and inflexible obstinacy certainly deserved correction. . . . According to your commands, I forbade the meetings of any (Christian) assemblies. . . . I judged it necessary to endeavor to obtain the real truth, by putting two female slaves to torture, who were said to officiate in their religious rites, but all I could discover was evidence of an absurd and extravagant superstition. I deemed it expedient to adjourn all further proceedings in order to consult you. For it appears to me a matter highly deserving your consideration, more especially as great numbers must be involved in the danger of these persecutions. . . . In fact, this contagious superstition is not confined to the cities only, but has spread its infection among neighboring villages and country. Nevertheless, it still seems possible to restrain its progress." Pliny's opinion was the mildest statement made by a Roman official on the character of the despised Christians.

As the Christians grew in numbers they were no longer regarded in the light of superstitious, misguided people, but as people who were dangerous to the foundations and pillars of society. The Christians were accused of being cannibalistic, ghoulish in their religious services; it was charged that at their secret meetings they drank the blood of children as a sacrament, that they consumed the flesh of human victims as a sacrosanct piaculum, that they were drunk with human blood, and generally rejoiced in offering theanthropic victims to Christ, a crucified, criminal Jew. The Christians were abandoned as criminals and degenerates who hated mankind, who delighted in excess, in ruin and destruction of civilization. The Christians were accused of crimes more heinous and nefarious than those brought at present against anarchists, Bolsheviki, and I. W. W. Incendiary crimes in large cities throughout the empire, conflagrations in Rome, robberies, incest, foul murders of men, women, and children for sacrificial purposes were charged against those inhuman Christians who consorted with slaves and with criminals of the most abject and depraved kind,

belonging to the Spartacus group, full of sedition and treason, conspiring for the overthrow of the Roman government, and undermining the most sacred foundations of human life.

The writers of the day could not find words abusive enough to express the villainy and depravity of those Christian vipers who breathe poison and hatred for the human race, those Christian deniers of God and of all things divine, those cannibal atheists who delighted in the seduction of poor, ignorant, misguided slaves, those Christians who entertained the absurd superstitions of that degraded and debased, an abject race, the Jews, the Gypsies of the Roman world, those Christians who delighted in the desecration of all that is true, good, and beautiful, who enjoyed the profanation of all that is pure and holy in man. Christianity was a plague which threatened with infection the body-politic and with pollution the very sources of society, a fatal scourge that surely tended towards dissolution of all ties, sacred to family, society, and humanity. Christians were moral lepers. No punishment, no torture was adequate for such fiends in human shape. Such were the terrible charges brought against the Christians, accusations circulated among the populace by writers, by reliable witnesses, government agents, informers, professional spies and detectives, and by respectable citizens. The Christians were "the enemies of the human race," the sworn foes of all law and order, and as such, they were hunted by police, by the populace, they were mobbed, jailed, deported, impaled, crucified, thrown to wild beasts on the arena, or hanged as flaming torches in the public parks or in Caesar's gardens for the amusement of the people. Even the imperial, ethical philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, joined in the hunting down of "the superstitious" and dangerous Christians.

Pliny's assurance that the spread of Christianity could be stayed was not realized. Christianity could not be stayed by the force of edict and persecution. Christ and his small band of disciples triumphed; lowly and ignorant as they appeared to the haughty Roman patricians, mean as the Christians appeared to the aristocratic Sadducees and the learned doctors of the law, because Christianity originated among the poor and the lowly, the slaves and day-laborers, carpenters and fishermen, still it was just these few individuals who really constituted the advance guard of true human progress. What Tacitus, Pliny, Marcus Aurelius with all their culture deemed "an absurd and extravagant superstition, a contagion and infection" turned out to be the beacon alight of humanity. Those whom the great Romans regarded as "the enemies of the human race" we, who have the advantage of historical perspective, now glorify as saintly martyrs who have given their lives for the highest principles of humanity. The stone which the builders neglected hath become the corner stone.

No opinion should be disdained and scorned. No individuality should be suppressed and crushed. The manifestation of individuality and originally should in every well-ordered and progressive community not only be persecuted, but on the contrary it should be cherished, protected, and cultivated as the fons et origo of civilization and human progress.

If we wish social life not to become stationary and stagnant, we should give free scope to all individuality and originality, no matter how eccentric they may seem to us. We should allow free play to all opinions, doctrines, and expressions of human thought, no matter how absurd and contagious the superstitions may appear to us. New ideas, ideals, and beliefs should not be persecuted but should rather be left for discussion and criticism, because we should not assume that we are in possession of the whole truth, and that no further advance is possible. We may learn from other people who look at the world from a different angle, and thus may be able to see things in a different light which may either add to the truth which we already possess, or may even transform it by some new additional element or principle which at first may appear to us as bizarre and paradoxical.

Even such simple sciences as Geometry, Physics, and Astronomy were revolutionized by

principles which appeared quite absurd and paradoxical to the learned profession What was more absurd to an Egyptian Ahmes than the assumptions of surfaces without thickness, of lines without breadth, and of points without any dimensions whatever? The principle of inertia appeared in opposition to the commonsense of antiquity. Heavenly bodies must have the support of crystal spheres, the assumption that they revolve in space without any support seemed absurd. The assumption by Newton that the force of attraction is transmitted through space instantaneously and without any known medium appeared paradoxical even to such a mind as Leibnitz. It was not long ago when a well known professor in Physics in one of the greatest universities thought that there was not any more original work to be accomplished in the domain of physical science. Then came the Roentgen X-ray and the radio-active force which have revolutionized science. A physicist of high standing confessed to me that when rumors of the X-ray properties and of radioactive forces began to circulate in the papers as miracles of science, he sat down to write a series of scientific papers on the "extravagant superstitions" of the X-ray and radium. The existence of antipodes was a standing joke and an example of absurdity among the scientists of antiquity. When Mayers discovered the law of conservation of energy every scientific journal refused to publish his work, and the great discoverer died of a broken heart in a sanitarium. Ohm lost his position when he discovered his great law of electricity. Dr. Jenner lost his practice when he gave to the world his method of vaccination. These instances can be multiplied indefinitely. Men hate new ideas of a radical character and are terrified by radical innovations in practice, especially when the innovations are of a political, and more so when of a social, religious, or economic nature. It is told that a workman came to one of the Roman emperors, Trajan or Hadrian, with a newly discovered metal that looked just like silver. The emperor had the inventor arrested and had him beheaded, fearing that the new metal might undermine the silver currency of the empire. While we rarely deal out such rewards to inventors and discoverers, any new ideas of a radical or revolutionary character are still met with social ostracism and governmental persecution. This rooted tendency of disapprobation of new ideas and innovations as generally bad and harmful is well illustrated by the remark of a Chinese sage, in Confucius' Analects: "Nang-kung Kwoh, who was consulting Confucius, observed respecting I, the skillful archer, and Ngau who could propel a boat on dry land, that neither of them died a natural death; while Yu and Tsih, who with their own hands had labored at husbandry, came to wield imperial sway." This Chinese remark clearly reveals the fear not only of innovations, but also the fear of all originality, talent, and genius. The unusual individual comes to an untimely end. And the time was when the unusual was shunned as a Plague, and the unusual individual was actually put to death.

The value of freedom of opinion is by no means lessened even if the given opinion or examination turns out to be wholly false. For the true value of an opinion is not so much in its truth as in its freedom. In our search for truth we should be anxious for every ray of light that might possibly elucidate the subject from a different angle. The failure of the opinion in actually finding such an angle does not matter, more important is the open-mindedness which the free thinking man should constantly maintain. We must have as many opinions as possible to select from, true or false, or only partly so, and use our critical selective sense. The keeping alive of this critical selective sense is of the highest moment in man's rational life activity. In the rational equipment of the human mind it is of the utmost consequence to keep the edge of the critical sense bright and keen. In the course of examination of some new opinion which may afterwards be rejected some new sidelights may appear which may give a deeper insight into the nature of the subject, whether it be of a theoretical or practical character; some new views and modes of thought, new methods may be suggested which in their turn may result in the evolvement of new principles and important laws.

In the general history of science and in the history of each individual investigation we find this freedom of thought and critical sense ceaselessly at work. Rarely, if ever, do we strike in science the truth at a flash. We usually pass through a series of hypotheses, theories, speculations, and experimentations, often false or defective. Ever new lines of thought are struck out and new ways of

experimentation are undertaken only to be ejected again and again. They who have undertaken a series of experiments on any subject realize the amount of work requisite before even the preliminaries may be started well under way. There must go on a ceaseless selection, an active criticism which is merciless to itself, ever hostile to routine, ever awake to new points of view and better methods of work, ever welcoming a different, but truer and better way of handling and treating the facts, observations, and experiments, ever ready to modify and change the course of the work, now in one place, now in another, ever retracing the steps of the research now in one way, now in another, until some satisfactory and unitary point of view is gained. And still with all that labor one must always be ready to abandon the whole line as false and start on a new track, ever revising his work, ever criticizing each step in advance, ever doubtful, looking at the work as if it might be on the false track, allowing for error, alive to new facts which may contradict the methods of observation and experimentation or the apparently established facts, rejecting hypothesis and theories which are attractive, or which have become endeared to the heart of the investigator, either because they are his pet view, or because they fall in line with his previous works, or h cause in sheer desperation of finding a sure, true, definite path in the jungle of facts he decides to adhere to one course and follow up one trail which may be entirely misleading and end in a blind alley from which he must once more retrace his steps, and start all over again. Of all this the true investigator must be acutely conscious, if he wishes to track the truth. The truly indefatigable and earnest investigate must be keenly conscious of failures, shortcomings, both of method an result. He must look at his truth as if about to be false, and a falsehood as if about to be true. Everything is relative, and nothing is final. It is only by such an attitude of mind and such a mode of procedure that truth can be attained.

If ceaseless vigilance is the price of liberty, more so is it true that ceaseless criticism of ever new opinions and ever new views, however distasteful, bizarre, and paradoxical, is the price of truth. For we must keep in mind the fact that truth does not come as deus ex machina or like Athena out of the head of Zeus; but must be found after persistent, laborious, painstaking searching of heart, mind, and fact. Truth is in the deep, as a Greek sage puts it. One must dive again and again often bringing up nothing but brilliant falsehoods before the homely truths are found.

It is by a devious course of long search and patient testing of apparent truths and falsehoods that the investigator may be assured that he has got a hold of the truth, and even then he must be constantly on the lookout never to relinquish a re-examination of it so as to gain a understanding of its actual relationships, of its limitations and relativity, that the truth may not slip away after all by a dogmatic position and by the neglect of circumstances and unforseen conditions which he may have omitted to take into consideration, or by not bringing it into line with work and discoveries in other directions. By over-generalizing he may lose much that is vital in the truth and thus lay more stress on the false than on the true. Recent ruthless criticism of all that is dogmatic in Mathematics, Logic, Physics, Biology, and other sciences have resulted in new points of view and in the opening of new horizons to investigations which have revolutionized the sciences themselves. This sense of ceaseless active criticism must be kept alive and keen, if science and truth are to keep on advancing. It is due to this critical sense turned on the fundamental principles and postulates of science that such phenomenal progress has been made recently in the domain of science and human thought. This critical sense must be kept fresh and alive, if human thought and love of truth are not to fall, into a state of hebetude and desuetude.

The manifestation of the apparently false opinion keeps thought awake; it constantly challenges us, making us review again and again our established truths, and contributes to an ever deeper realization of what has been gained by severe thought and hard labor. The freedom of the seemingly false opinion and our tolerance of it and our willingness to meet with it in the open help test the validity of truth while keeping alive the critical sense which is the main spring of all advancement of human thought and is the vital point, the very soul, of all human progress. In a

certain sense it may be said that it is the function of the false to keep the truth alive. The suppression of the freedom of thought or the liberty of individual expression, whether in speech or in press, is the crushing of all true human progress. Thus science, Sociology, Social Psychology, all go to confirm the same central attitude towards the free manifestation of individuality in the life existence of a well-ordered, progressive commonwealth.

The great philosopher, logician, and economist, John Stuart Mill, known for his candor and moderation, entered a strong plea for the liberty of the individual. Mill's work 'On Liberty' is so well known that I almost hesitate to quote from it, and still the work is of such importance that I cannot resist the temptation of making a few quotations from it, even if they become somewhat lengthy: "People" Mill writes, genius a fine thing, if it enables a man to write an exciting poem, or paint a picture. But in its true sense, that of originality in thought and action, though no one says that it is not a thing to be admired, nearly all, at heart, think they can do very well without it. Unhappily this is top natural to be wondered at. Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of. They cannot see what it is to do for them. How should they? If they should see what it would do for them, it would, not be originality. The first service which originality has to render them is that of opening their eyes: which being once fully done, they would have a chance of being themselves original. Meanwhile, recollecting that nothing was ever yet done which someone was not the first to do; and that all things which exist are the fruits of originality let them be modest enough to believe that there is something s till left for it to accomplish, and assure themselves that they are the more in need of originality, the less they are conscious of the want.

"In sober truth whatever homage may be professed, or eve paid, to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind. . . . At present individuals are lost the crowd. . . . The thinking (of the masses) is done for them by men much like themselves, addressing them or speaking in their name, on the spur of the moment, through the newspapers. I am not complaining of all this. I do not assert that anything better is compatible, as a general rule, with the present low state of the human mind. But it does not hinder the government of mediocrity to be a mediocre government. . . . In this age of mass-action the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric. Eccentricity has always abounded where and when strength of character has abounded; and the amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage which it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time. There is only too great a tendency in the best beliefs and practices to degenerate into the mechanical; and unless there were a succession of persons whose ever recurring originality prevents the grounds of those beliefs and practices from becoming merely traditional, such dead matter would not resist the smallest shock from anything really alive, and there would be no reason why civilization should not die out, as in the Byzantine empire.

"It is not by wearing down into uniformity all that is individual, but by cultivating it and calling it forth, within the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others, that human beings become a noble and beautiful object of contemplation, and as the works partake the character of those who do them, by the same process human life also becomes rich, diversified and animating, furnishing more abundant aliment to high thoughts and elevating feelings, and strengthening the tie which binds every individual to the race infinitely better worth belonging to. In proportion to the development of this individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is therefore more capable of being valuable to others. There is a greater fullness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them.

"There is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion, peculiarly calculated to

make it intolerant of any marked demonstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also in inclinations; they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such as wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon. . . . There is a moral and prudential spirit abroad for the exercise of which there is no more inviting field than the moral and the prudential improvement of our fellow-creatures. These tendencies of the times cause the public to be more disposed than in former time periods to prescribe general rules of conduct, and endeavor to make everyone conform to the approved standard. Its ideal of character is to be without any marked character; to maim by compression, like a Chinese lady's foot, every part of human nature which stands out prominently, and tends to make the person markedly dissimilar in outline to commonplace humanity. Instead of great energies guided by vigorous reason, and strong feelings, strongly controlled by a conscientious will, its result is weak feelings and weak energies which therefore can be kept in outward conformity to rule without any strength either of will or of reason."

Thus we are brought once more to the same view from which we started that the essential factor in human progress is the cultivation of the upper controlling, critical, personal consciousness. "The only unfailing and permanent source of improvement" says Mill "is liberty, since by it there are as many possible, independent centres of improvement as there are individuals."

In these times of human agony, when the individual is crucified for social glory and national power, when men are sacrificed by the millions and their labor by the billions for the grandeur of the nation, when the world is made safe for all sorts of 'cracies' by fire and sword, may be well to give heed to the following reflections by Tocqueville and Tarde:

"In democratic societies" as Tocqueville remarks "majorities as well as 'capitals' have prestige. As citizens become more equal and more alike (as far as their subconscious is concerned) regarded from 1 he standpoint of Social Psychology) the tendency of each to believe blindly in a given man or class, diminishes. The disposition to believe the masses increases, and public opinion guides the masses more and more. Since the majority becomes the real political power, the universally recognized superior, its prestige is submitted to for the same reason as that of a monarch or nobility was formerly bowed down to. Moreover, in times of equality. (of the mediocre subconscious considered from the point of view of Social Psychology) men have no faith in one another, because of their mutual (subconscious, mediocre) likeness. This very resemblance, however, inspires them almost with all unlimited confidence in the judgment of the public. For it seems improbable to them that when all have the same amount of light, the truth should not be found on the side of the greatest number." "This appears logical" comments Tarde "and mathematical. If men are like units, then it is the greatest sum of these units which must be in the right. In reality this is an illusion, based on constant oversight of the role played by imitation. When an idea rises in triumph from the ballot-box, we should be less inclined to bow down before it, if we realized that nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of the votes that it polled were but echoes. Unanimities should be greatly distrusted. Nothing is a better indication of the impulse of imitation." In other words, with the increase of mental disaggregation in a crowd of (subconscious) mediocrities individuality and the critical self are at a minimum, the subconscious self is left unprotected, a target to the arrows of suggestion. Social suggestibility is at its maximum, and the bodypolitic is thrown into hysterical convulsions of mob-frenzies, into maniacal, nationalistic excitement with fixed paranoidal delusions of national grandeur, demoniacal obsessions of world-dominion, resulting in homicidal and suicidal world-wars.

What then is the remedy for all those human sufferings, virulent mental epidemics, and other severe social maladies that plague mankind in its aggregate capacity? Only one answer is given by science, by Biology, Sociology, and Social Psychology: Fortify the resistance of the individual by

freedom of individuality and by the full development of personality. Immunize the individual against social, mental plagues by the full development of his rational reflective self, controlling the suggestible, automatic subconscious with its reflex consciousness. Put no barriers to man's self expression, lay no chains on man, put no taboos on the human spirit. Do not, like the savage, run man's mind and skull into ugly shapes and distorted moulds of social traditions. Liberate man's spirit from the dark, narrow, and oppressive, social dungeon. Full freedom of individuality and cultivation of the critical rational self constitute the essential conditions of a healthy social consciousness. The full development of a synthetic unity of the conscious in control of the subconscious in a pure atmosphere of liberty is sure immunity against all mental plagues, and is at the same time the source and aim of all true human progress.

Here we may pause for the present. As far as our present purpose is concerned Social Psychology needs not take us any further. Perhaps, the words of Professor Minot's may be appropriated here where we have laid so much stress on the Logos, on Thought, on Reason, as being the savior of humanity: "The time, I hope, will come" says Professor Minot "when it will be generally understood that the investigators and thinkers of the world are those upon whom the world depends. I should like, indeed, to live to a time when it will be universally recognized that the military man and the government-maker are types which have survived from a previous condition of civilization, not ours; and when they will no longer be looked upon as heroes of mankind. In that future those persons who have really created our civilization will receive the recognition which is their due. Let these thoughts dwell long in your meditation, because it is a serious problem in all our civilization to-day how to secure due recognition of the value of thought, and how to encourage it. I believe every word spoken in support of that recognition which is due to the power of thought is a good word, and will help forward toward good results."

When the great American biologist made this earnest appeal to his countrymen had he had a foreboding of the approaching storm of the world-war with all the horrors of frenzied militarism which has obsessed deluded humanity?

One thing stands out clear and distinct, and this is,―the source and aim of true human progress are the cultivation and development of Man's self-ruling, rational, free individuality. This is also Man's happiness. For as the great Stagirite puts it: ή εύδαιμονία τών αύτάρχwn έσtί.

A STUDY OF THE MOBboris Sidis, 1898

I

THE NATURE OF THE MOB

        What is the nature of the mob? It is at one moment so humane, at another so savage, at one moment so heroic, at the next so cowardly, that it would seem at first glance as if it were governed by caprice, not by law. Yet there are certain conditions which favor the production of a mob, and a study of these conditions may help us to understand its apparently lawless nature. The examination of a few cases may disclose some of the factors which form the problem.

        In 1883, in the city of Ekaterinoslav, Russia. a Jewish merchant happened to quarrel with a peasant woman. "Murder! murder!" she screamed at the top of her voice. A crowd of idlers soon gathered about the two combatants. "Beat the Jews!" suggested someone in the crowd. A few stones flew in the direction of the Jew's store, more and more followed; then the mob made a rush for the building and destroyed it.

        At about the same time, in one of the suburbs of Nijni-Novgorod, the following incident occurred. A child fell into a ditch; a Jewess pitied it, took it in her arms, and carried it into the synagogue to warm it A Christian woman witnessed the scene, and began to cry out that a Christian child had had been kidnapped for sacrificial purposes. A crowd of about three thousand men gathered; a drunken fellow called out, "Beat the Jews!" Thereupon an attack was made, and the mob, after having demolished the Jewish synagogue proceeded after the manner peculiar to all Russian anti-Jewish riots, breaking into Jewish houses, killing, violating, and barbarously demolishing every person And thing they found in them.

        These cases clearly show that a mob is not formed of its own accord; it needs an instigator, a leader, who shall ferment the crowd and give it an

impulse. A mob, then, can be analyzed into two principal elements: a single person initiating, directing, and a crowd that follows and obeys blindly. We find a similar relation in the case of historical heroes and the masses directed by them. Blind obedience is the characteristic trait of the masses that follow a Cæsar or a Genghis Khan, and blind obedience is the striking feature of the mob that follows some intoxicated fellow or superstitious woman. Cæsar and the Russian drunkard, Napoleon I. and the stupid woman, are equally heroes in so far as they produce a common result. The difference between one hero and another is a quantitative one. Some heroes move masses on a greater scale and for a longer time than others do. The leaders of mobs, although they may be stupid, superstitious rascals, are still heroes―heroes of the moment.The question next arises, How does it happen that the crowd blindly obeys its hero? The cases given above do not show it clearly. It would therefore be well to cite some more cases of mobs, and then perhaps the mechanism of the mob will be detected more readily.

        At the beginning of the previous century, Madame de Krudener was a woman who possessed great influence. She was hysterical, and so affected by passion as to throw herself, in public, on her knees before a tenor singer. Afterwards, impelled by disappointment in love, she believed herself chosen to redeem humanity, and, possessed by this belief, delivered herself with a most fervid eloquence. She went to Basle, and turned the city upside down by preaching the speedy coming of the Christ. Twenty thousand pilgrims responded to her call. The Senate became alarmed, and banished her. She hastened to Baden, where four thousand people were waiting on the square to kiss her hands and her dress.

        Lazzaretti, an insane workingman, thought himself a prophet. The people, astonished at his changed mode of life, his inspired speech, his long, neglected beard, and grave bearing, flocked in crowds to hear him. A pilgrimage was organized, in which Lazzaretti, accompanied by priests and some of the influential among the laity, marched to different places. Wherever he went he was received by the people on their knees, and the parish priests kissed his face, his hands, and even his feet. In obedience divine commands, as he declared, he left his native city and went to Rome. On his return he found a great multitude awaiting him, attracted by both devotion and curiosity. Lazzaretti was then arrested by the civil authorities, hut shortly released, when he went away to France, "carried," as he said, "by divine power." He returned again to his native city and assembled a larger multitude than ever. One day, at the head of an immense crowd, he marched out to establish the "kingdom of God." He was dressed most fantastically, thereby greatly impressing his followers. He was shot down by a soldier, and the crowd immediately dispersed.

        The Portuguese king, Dom Pedro, was prostrated with grief over the loss of beloved wife. He became insane, and his insanity took the form of an irrepressible inclination to dance. He would go out into the streets late at night, and by the lurid light of torches, dance madly to the sound of pipes. The sleeping citizens, awakened by the noise, followed him, and, being gradually drawn into the circle the king and his servants, joined the dance, dancing sometimes the whole night through.

        Analyzing the cases here cited, we find crowds attracted and influenced by a strong sens[ation?], caused by persons in unusual states of mind; by madmen indeed, but it might just as well be by genuinely great men. Since our object is to find out the nature of the mob and the way it is set in motion, it is more interesting to take the cases of mobs whose heroes are insane persons, because then the personality of the hero is more or less eliminated, and only the method of setting the mob in motion and the nature of the mob itself remain as main points to consider. We may say with perfect assurance that a mob becomes formed under the influence of some strange event, be it the dream of a lunatic, the fiery speech of insane man, the screams of a superstitious woman, or the mad dance of a crazy king. A strong sudden excitement makes men obedient and causes them to lose their will, their personality, and makes them ready to play a blind obedience to an external command. Can we find an analogous state in the life of the individual? I think we can.

    "Hypnotization," says Binet, "can be produced by strong and sudden excitement of the senses. The patient comes hypnotized, and hence obedient to the hypnotizer." We find the same phenomenon in the ease of the m[?] the mob is hypnotized by a strong, sudden action, and becomes for a time obedient to him who hypnotized it; that is, to the ringleader, to the hero. As Krafft-Ebing tells us of a peculiar state which he observed in his patient, namely, fascination. "In this state the patient feels herself to be a pure automaton, and knows herself as absent from the body, existing only as an image the experimenter's eye." "This disappearance of the consciousness of personality," he adds, "is of great interest." It is of great interest in the study of mob, as we shall see further on. The form of hypnotism called fascination was first discovered by Donato, and has been described by Bremand. It is produced in men presumed to be perfectly healthy, and is effected by the subject fixing his eyes on a brilliant point. Thereupon he appears to fall into a sort of stupor; he follows the experimenter

        Bremand considers fascination as hypnotism in the lowest degree of intensity. A similar state, but of less intensity, we find in the mob when fascinated by its hero; and when this state is more intensified, we have something approaching the hypnotic state of fascination. What particularly characterizes the man of the mob is the entire loss of his personal self. In a dense crowd, not only is our body squeezed and pressed upon, but also our spirit. The individual self sinks sensibly in the crowd; it seems to get submerged in the fermenting spirit of the possible mob. The mob has a self of its own, and this self is the stronger the more it consumes of the individual self. It is true that this mob self is extremely changeable; but is not this so with the individual self, though in a lesser degree? This mysterious fact that the individual self sinks in the crowd needs explanation; and should such an explanation he found, it would throw strong light on the dark nature of the mob. In his investigation into the nature of the "self of selves" Professor William James advances a very important hypothesis: "Our entire feeling of spiritual activity, or what commonly passes by that name, is really a feeling of bodily activities whose exact nature is by most men overlooked. If anything gives us a strong sense of own individuality, it is surely our voluntary movements. We may say that the individual self grows and expands with the increase of the

variety and intensity of its voluntary movements; and conversely, the life of the individual self sinks and shrinks, with the increase of variety and intensity of voluntary movements occurring during this in mind, it is easy to understand why the individual sinks in the crowd. This sinking of personality in the crowd is due largely to pressure; it is the result of limitation of voluntary movements. Nowhere else, except perhaps in solitary confinement, are the voluntary movements of man so limited as they are in a crowd; and the greater the crowd is, the greater is this limitation, the lower sinks the individual self. Intensity of personality is in inverse proportion to the number of aggregated men. This law holds true not only in the case of crowds, but also in the case of highly organized masses. Great social organisms produce, as a rule, very small persons. Great men are not to be found in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Persia, but rather in the diminutive communities of ancient Greece and Judea. This limitation of voluntary movements is one of the prime conditions which help to hypnotize crowds and turn them into mobs. The individual becomes fascinated, and blindly obeys the hero. "Fascination," says Dr. Moll, "is induced by limitation of voluntary movements. The subject imitates every movement of the experimenter." A large crowd, on account of the cramping of voluntary movements, easily falls into a state of fascination, and is easily moved by a ringleader, or hero. Large gatherings of men carry within them the seed of the possible mob. The Russian government, knowing well by experience the conditions that favor the formation of mobs, prohibits all kinds of public gatherings; an assembly of only four or five men is strictly forbidden, because even such a small gathering is the possible nucleus of a mob.

        The very mode in which a crowd is formed is highly favorable to its hyponotization, and hence to its becoming a mob. At first a crowd is formed by some strange object or occurrence suddenly arresting the attention of men. Other men coming up are attracted by curiosity: they wish to learn the reason of the gathering; they fix their attention on the object that fascinates the crowd, are fascinated in their turn, and thus the crowd keeps on growing. With the increase of numbers grows the strength of fascination; the hypnotization increases in intensity, until, when a certain critical point is reached, the crowd becomes completely hypnotized, and is ready to obey blindly the commands of its hero; it is now a mob. Thus a mob is a hypnotized crowd.

        The hypnotic-like state of the mob throws much light on its mysterious capriciousness. The mob has no definite personality. Like a hypnotized person, it possesses a high degree of plasticity; it changes its personality with the change of its hero; its personality, as in the case of Krafft-Ebing's patient, lies in the eye of the experimenter, of the hero.

        A striking picture of a mob is drawn by Count Tolstoy in his novel, War and Peace. He represents Rostoptchin as the hero who is forming a crowd and stirring it up against an obscure individual, Verestchagin, who is under the suspicion of having betrayed Moscow to the French.

        "Raising his hand and turning to the crowd, Rostoptchin screamed at the top of his voice, 'Settle with him according to your judgment! I deliver him to you!'

        "The crowd remained silent, and only pressed on one another closer and closer. To bear the pressure of one another, to breathe in this stifling, contagious atmosphere, not to have the power to stir, and to expect something unknown, incomprehensible and terrible, became intolerable. Those who were in the front, who saw and heard everything that took place, all those stood with eyes full of fright, widely dilated, with open mouths; and straining their whole strength, they kept on their backs the pressure of those behind them. . . ."A tall fellow, with a petrified expression of face, with his hand raised and rigid, stood near Verestchagin. . . .Strike!' almost whispered the officer to his dragoons, and in front of the soldiers, with a face disfigured by ferocity, struck Verestchagin with the butt of his gun.

        "The tall fellow gripped with his hands the slender neck of Verestchagin, and with a wild cry they fell together under the feet of the surging, roaring mob. Some were striking and tearing Verestchagin, and some the tall fellow. And the cries of those who were crushed and of those who were trying to save the tall fellow only the more excited the ferocity of the mob. . . .

        "Only when the victim ceased moving, the mob began to move freely. Each one went up to the bloody, mangled corpse, looked at it, and drew back full of horror and amazement."

        We see here the gradual hypnotization of the crowd due to a strange phenomenon attracting the attention of people; the attention is fixed on the central scene of action, because the crowd becomes fascinated. The limitation of voluntary movements completely hypnotizes the people, and the crowd turns into a mob. The cataleptic condition of the tall fellow is a good symptom of this hypnotic state. We find Rostoptchin to be the first hero, who forms the mob, and the ferocious-looking dragoon to be the second hero, who brings the mob self into life. And when the crime was committed, each one of the mob went up to look at the work of his hands, but "drew back full of horror and amazement." The individual self was horrified at the work of the mob self. Once generated, the mob self possesses a strong attractive power and a great capacity of assimilation. It attracts fresh individuals, sucks out their personalities and quickly assimilates them. Weak individualities are especially in danger of it. This strange phenomenon can be well illustrated by a curious incident describing the riot of the military colonists in Russia in 1831, taken from the memoirs of Panæff:―"Whilst Sokoloff was fighting hard for his life, I saw a corporal lying on the piazza and crying bitterly. On my question, 'Why do you cry ?' he pointed in the direction of the mob, and exclaimed, 'Oh, they do not kill a commander, but a father!' I told him that instead of crying he should rather go to Sokoloff's aid. He rose at once, and ran to the help of his commander. A little later, when I came with a few soldiers to Sokoloff's help, I found the same corporal striking Sokoloff with a club. ' Wretch ! what are you doing? Have not you told me he was to you like a father?' To which he answered, 'It is such a time, your honor, that all the people strike him; why should I keep quiet?'" To take another interesting case. During the Russian anti-Jewish riots in 1881, the city of Berditchev, consisting mainly of Jewish inhabitants, suffered from Jewish mobs. One day, a Jewish mob of about fifteen thousand men, armed with clubs, butcher's-knives, and revolvers, marched

through the streets to the railway station, to look there for the "Katzapi."1 To

the surprise of intelligent people, many Christians participated in this Jewish mob.

        The body of the mob is not altogether structureless; it has a certain organization, although of a low kind. The mob possesses a nucleus, which is mostly formed in the centre of the crowd, but which is soon forced to the front, acting both as sensory and prehensible organs: The nucleus contains a nucleolinus within a nucleolus; that is, a hero with his devotees,―the originator and the guides. The may, however, be of a still higher organization. The nucleus may be differentiated into two parts, one possessing only sensory, and the other only prehensible functions, and so become the nucleolus with its nucleolinus. This was plainly seen in the Russian anti-Jewish riots, especially as they manifested themselves in Malorussia. A group of Katzapi usually formed the nucleus. This nucleus, however, soon became differentiated: some set an example of pillage, and some guarded the mob against external disturbances, giving signals to the active group of Katzapi,―to turn aside, to run, to walk slowly, to disperse, or to concentrate. The nucleolus with its nucleolinus also tended to divide into two parts, one possessing the function of willing, the other that of guiding. Some men, by raising an alarm, or by preaching inflammatory discourses to the crowd, fermented and formed the mob, while others laid out the plan of pillage and took command. Like all low organisms, the mob possesses an enormous power of propagation. Under favorable conditions, mobs multiply, grow, and spread with a truly amazing rapidity. The anti-Jewish riots in Russia furnish excellent illustrations: once a riot broke out in one place, it went on producing new disturbances throughout the whole country.

        To return, however, to the hero. We have seen that every mob must have its hero. The title "hero" applied to a drunkard who strongly smells of liquor and can scarcely stand on his feet, or to a stupid, superstitious old hag, seems incongruous enough when one considers the customary use of the term. If we look from the standpoint of the masses, all those are heroes whom the masses obey and follow, and between a great historical hero and a hero of the mob there is only a quantitative difference. Yet there must also be some qualitative difference between one hero and another. But assuming that there exists only a quantitative difference between Washington and the Russian hag of 1883, how shall we explain this very difference? Why is it that some men rise like bright, fixed stars on the sky of politics and religion, and keep for ages the attention of masses, whilst others are a kind of meteor? The difference between these two categories of heroes lies in the nature of the object by means of which they influence the masses. Great warriors, politicians, religious lawgivers, fix the attention of the people on their own exceptionally powerful personality, whilst a silly woman or a crazy king fixes the attention of the crowd on a stick, on a knife, or on a mad dance. In the case of really great men, the centre of attraction is their powerful personalities; in the case of mob heroes, the centre of attraction is the object, for their personalities are worthless. So long, then, as the vigorous personality of a great man preserves itself intact and remains strikingly brilliant, whether in written works or in tradition, so long will he, to use a technical term, fascinate bodies of men. Thus we find that the difference between historical heroes and mob heroes is not only quantitative, but also qualitative.

        Hypnotism, however, affords a deeper insight into the matter. There are two very different kinds of hypnotic states,―indifferent and elective somnambulism. In the first state, the subject remains calm, and may be approached, and even touched, without causing him to make any gesture of defense. The contractions proper to a state of somnambulism may be produced by anyone, or be produced by one person and destroyed by another; they do not depend on individual influence, and suggestion may be given by anyone of those present. But it is quite otherwise in the case of elective somnambulism: in this state the subject is attracted towards the experimenter; if the experimenter withdraws to a distance, the subject displays uneasiness and discomfort; he sometimes follows the experimenter with a sigh, and can rest only when by his side. "It is remarkable," says Krafft-Ebing, "that at the occurrence of hypnotic influence she [the patient] usually raises her eyes to the experimenter making his image into the darkness of the unknown hypnotic regions. . . . In this case only the experimenter's suggestions [commands] are effectual." In the case of great lawgivers, of great prophets, or of other great men, we may say that the hypnotization of the masses is elective; the image of the great leader is taken into "the unknown hypnotic regions" of his followers, and the latter cannot be influenced by anyone else. Quite different is it with the masses hypnotized by mob heroes: the hypnotic state here is of the indifferent kind; anyone, therefore, can influence and divert the crowd that follows mob heroes. That is why the heroes possessing great personalities are lasting, whilst the mob heroes, the heroes of worthless personalities, are but momentary.

 

II

THE SOURCE OF MOBS

        Our investigation thus far has touched only the surface of the problem. It is true that whenever great masses of men are in blind movement there must necessarily be some brilliant object that has arrested their attention. Still, it does not follow that every brilliant object possesses the power of moving men. Evidently, there must first be a constitutional predisposition in the masses to pass into the trance-like condition of the mob. What then is the cause of this predisposition? Again we must turn to the phenomena of hypnotism for the solution of this important but extremely difficult problem. Binet tells us that slight and prolonged stimuli of the same nature acting on the subject constitute one of the modes of producing the hypnotic state. Berenheim expresses himself more clearly. "Let us add," he says, "that, in the majority of passes, the monotonous wearying and continuous impression of one of senses produce a certain intellectual drowsiness, the prelude to sleep. The mind entirely absorbed by a quiet, uniform, and incessant perception becomes foreign to all other impressions; it is too feebly stimulated, and allows itself to become dull."

        This mode of hypnotization by monotony gives us some clue to the source of mobs. Wherever we find uniformity of life, there we invariably meet with mobs; wherever the environment is monotonous, there men are trained by their very mode of life to be good subjects for social hyponotization, for mobs. And not only are they thus prepared for hypnotization, they are frequently

hypnotized by the monotonous environment itself; they require only a hero to obey, to become a mob.

        Life is extremely monotonous in the Siberian province of Yakutsk. For whole months, as far as the eye can see, stretch wide plains of white dazzling snow. You may travel for miles and miles, for days and nights, and not find a single village, not meet a solitary human being, see no single sign of life,―the same painfully uniform plains of dazzling white snow stretch out on all sides. We should expect that men who live under such conditions would be hypnotized by the environment itself; and sure enough, we find there many cases of spontaneous hypnotization; men suffer from a sickness known as chorea imitatoria. Dr. Kashin was once the witness of the following curious incident. One of the divisions of the Transbaikalsky Cossack army formed of the natives, repeated, on the review, the command of the officer. The officer grew angry, began to swear, to threaten; but, to his great amazement, the soldiers repeated his oaths and threats. Dr. Kashin put an end to this tragi-comical scene by assuring the officer that the soldiers meditated no revolt, but that they were suffering from a sickness known in that place as olghindja. This sickness, under a somewhat different form, is widely spread among the native women.

        The plains of northern European Russia are almost as uniform in their nature as those of northern Siberia, and we find that the population of northern Russia suffers from many different forms of nervous derangement, and especially of such nervous diseases as spread by imitation. Thus Dr. Drjevetsky, in his Medical Topography of the Ust-Sisolsky Province, comes to the conclusion that in the principal hospital of Ust-Sisolsk "the number of patients suffering from nervous diseases is far greater than that of all Russian hospitals put together. . . . Hysterics and chorea magna are widely spread." Man, in northern Russia and Siberia is half hypnotized by the monotony of his environment.

        There is, however, another factor which is far more fundamental than monotony; it is a purely social factor, but it works with such a stupendous power and on such a large scale that it may truly be considered the great source of mobs. This factor is social pressure. Laws and regulations press on the individual from all sides. 'Whenever we attempts to rise above the level of commonplace life, immediately the social screw begins to work, and down is brought upon him the tremendous weight of the sociastatic press, and it squeezes him back into commonplace, frequently crushing him to death for his bold attempt. The individual's relations in life are fixed for him; he is told how he must put on his tie, and the way he must wear his coat; such should be the fashion of his dress on this particular occasion, and such should be the form of his hat; here must he nod his head, put on a solemn air, and there take off his hat, make a profound bow, and display a smile full of delight. Personality is suppressed in the individual by the rigidity of social organization; the individual becomes an automaton, a mere puppet. Under the enormous weight of the sociastatic press, under the crushing weight of economical, political, religious, and social regulations, there is no possibility for the individual to determine his own relations in life, to move freely; voluntary movements are suppressed, and a limitation of voluntary movements produces that peculiar hypnotic state of

fascination which is so highly favorable to the formation of mobs. Laws and mobs seem to be highly antagonistic, and still it is true that they are intimately connected. Laws may form mobs.

        There have been periods in human history when monotony and social pressure were ceaselessly at work, and mobs were then as plenty as blackberries. Such were the mediæval ages. In our own times there are unfortunate countries where these two factors are also constantly at work, and the number of mobs is there truly alarming. Russia offers us a fair example of such a country. The social, or, more properly, the political pressure in Russia is so great as to hamper all voluntary movements. A Russian cannot move a step without having first to ask the permission of the police. To start a society, to form a club, to print and distribute circulars or advertisements, to meet, to walk in a procession on the street, to deliver a lecture, to form a literary circle, to move from place to place, etc.,―all these things can be done only with the permission of the police. Manufacturers, business men, professional men, literary men, workingmen, cannot go to their work without having first obtained a permit from the police. Man lives, in Russia, the poor monotonous life of a worm. Individuality is suppressed, strictly prohibited; original thought is crushed; all must act in the way prescribed by the routine of the paternal government. "Russia," says Turgeneff, "is a great prison,"―a great prison where hypnotization is practiced on a grand scale.

        In a society where the sociostatic press is always at work, where political pressure is far stronger than even in the ancient despotic monarchies, since the Russian government is in possession of all modern improvements, where gray uniformity and drowsy monotony reign supreme, where hypnotization is the means for appeasing pain and putting people into a fool's paradise, obedience must be the rule. Blind, stupid obedience, that slavish obedience which is peculiar to hypnotized subjects, distinctly characterizes the subjects of the Czar. Russian servility is remarkably well reproduced in the following historical incident. Prince Sougorsky, ambassador to Germany in 1576, fell sick en route Courland. The duke of the province often inquired as to his health. The reply was always the same: "My health matters nothing, provided the sovereign's prospers." The duke, surprised, said, "How can you serve a tyrant with so much zeal?" He replied, "We Russians are always devoted to our Czars, good or cruel. My master [Ivan the terrible] impaled a man of mark for a slight fault, who for twenty-four hours, in his dying agonies, talked with his family, and without ceasing kept repeating, 'Great God, protect the Czar!'"

        The famous writer and investigator of Russian peasant life, G. Ouspensky, presents the peasant, when coming into town, as falling under the influence of the first scoundrel he meets, and committing shocking crimes at the command of the latter, without the least profit to himself, and with an indifference and childish innocence which are truly amazing. These facts, however, are not so inexplicable as Ouspensky would have them, if we only remember the crimes committed by hypnotized subjects at the suggestion of the experimenter.

        Russia is an immense theatre for hypnotic scenes. Bearing this in mind, we should expect to find in the history of Russia a great number of mob heroes, of pseudo czars, of pretenders. We have not to go far to look for them: the

pages of Russian history are studded with cases of mobs. In the history of no other European country can we find such an overwhelming multitude of pseudo emperors, prophets, virgins, Christs, and all kinds of pretenders influencing the current of national life, and bringing great masses into commotion. Russian history is a mob history. At the risk of wearying the patience of the reader, I give here a list of pretenders since the seventeenth century: pseudo Dmitri I, Dmitri II, Peter, August, Ivan, Lavrentius, Feodor, Clementius, Savelius, Semion, Vassili, Eroshka, Gavrilka, Martinka: a whole line of pretenders during the reign of Michael Feodorovitch. In the times of Alexius we find again four pretenders. The great popular uprising led by Stenks Rasin was not without its pretenders: it possessed a pseudo Czar Alexius and a pseudo Nicon the Patriarch. Then appeared a pseudo Czar Joannes (brother of Peter the Great), a few pseudo Alenuses (personating the son of Peter the Great). In the uprising of Pugatcheff appeared a

few claimants to the personality of Peter III (husband of Catherine II). In recent times (1825) the land of the Czar was blessed with a few pseudo Constantines (each pretending to be the brother of Nicholas I). In our own times Russia swarms with multitudes of pseudo apostles, holy virgins, and Christs. Russia is hypnotized by the monotony of its life and by the great social pressure it has to bear: hence its mobs.

        Social hynotization plays a great part the life of humanity. This social hypnotization, as all our adduced facts and arguments prove, is due to monotony of life and social pressure. It is an acknowledged fact that women are good hypnotic subjects. Now this fact cannot be explained by the greater weakness of the female organism, because experiments prove that weakness of organization is not at all a condition for speedt and good hypnotization. How then shall we explain it? It can be explained only by monotony and social pressure. For centuries the social pressure was brought to bear on women with special severity; their life was fixed for them by their fathers, husbands, eldest sons, by religions and by class regulations. All individuality, personality, was mercilessly, brutally destroyed in women. They were shut up in harems; at best they were strictly confined by tile boundaries of the family circle. Even in our own times, especially in European and Eastern countries, the sociostatic pressure has not ceased to work out its deadly effects on woman. Her life is full of regulations; she is formed and fashioned, bodily and mentally, according to a certain style and mode. She is confined to a narrow sphere of activity, where she passes a dull, monotonous life. For centuries the anvil on which monotony and social pressure have hammered with all their might and main, we need not wonder that woman has formed a strong predisposition to hypnotic states. Woman, in truth, is half hypnotized; hence the fact that, in comparison with man, woman is more gentle, more submissive, more obedient (obedience and modesty are her virtues), suffers more from nervous diseases (like the the Yakuti of Siberia and the northern Russians), is more inconstant, less original, more impressive, less reasonable, and more imitative.

        It is interesting to observe that the common people in general and soldiers in particular are excellent subjects for hypnotic purposes. Thus the soldiers of the Czar, as experiments show, have a strong predisposition to hypnotic

states.2 M. Liebault experimented on ten hundred and twelve persons, and

found only twenty-seven refractory. Dr. Berenheim remarks on this that "it is necessary to take into account the fact that M. Liebault operates chiefly upon the common people." The great pressure exerted on the lower social strata, and especially on soldiers, the tiresome, dull monotony of their life, predispose them to hypnotization, and hence to social hypnotization to the formation of mobs. Once again then, we are brought back to monotony and social pressure as the source of the mob.

Boris Sidis

 

___________________

1. A Malorussian term for Velikorussians. In all anti-Jewish riots Velikorussians were the ringleaders.2. I am informed by Prof. Münsterberg that the hypnotic predisposition is observed in the German soldier.

A STUDY OF MENTAL EPIDEMICSBoris Sidis

Century Magazine, 1896, 52, (ns 30), 849–853)

        In looking hack to the medieval ages, we find them to be times in which abnormal social phenomena were displayed on a grand scale―times teeming with mobs, riots, revolts; with blind movements of vast human masses; with terrible epidemics that ravaged Europe from end to end. They were ages peculiar for the strange, striking fact that whole cities, extensive provinces, great countries, were stricken by one disease. Men went mad in packs, by the thousands. An obscure individual in some remote country place had fits of hysterics, and soon all Europe was wriggling and struggling in convulsions of hysterical insanity. The dark ages were strange, peculiar―so, at least, do they appear to us, who consider ourselves vastly superior to the poor ignorant medieval peasant, burgher, knight, with their superstitious, religious fervor, and recurrent epidemic insanities. I am afraid, however, that a similar fate may overtake us. May not a future historian look to our own times with dismay, and perhaps with horror? He will represent our age as dark and cruel―an age of the blind, senseless Napoleonic wars, of great commercial crises, Black Fridays, Coxey armies and crazes of all sorts and descriptions.

        The sentinel posted by wasps becomes agitated at the sight of danger, and flies into the interior of the nest, buzzing violently; other wasps raise a

buzzing, and are thus put into the same state of emotion which the sentinel experiences: they become uneasy, angry, aggressive. Susceptibility to the movements of his companions by passing through the same processes is the only way by which the social brute tan become aware of the emotions that agitate his comrades. Susceptibility is the cement of the herd, the very soul of the primitive social group. A herd of sheep stand packed close together, looking stupidly into space; frighten them, and if one begins to run, frantic with terror, the rest are sure to follow, and a stampede ensues, each sheep scrupulously reproducing the identical movements of the one in front of it. Now, this susceptibility is nothing but what we, in relation to man, call suggestibility, which consists in the impressing on the mind of an idea, image, movement, which the person reproduces voluntarily or involuntarily. Suggestibility, then, is natural to man as a social animal. Under certain conditions this suggestibility, which is always present in man, may increase to an extraordinary degree, and the result is a stampede, a mob, an epidemic.

        "I protest," says Dr. Moll, a great authority in hypnotism, "against the terminology which has been to a great extent adopted, and which many doctors have helped to propagate, but which is none the less erroneous. It is often said that hypnotized persons are ‘asleep,’ and the two states have been partly identitied. I think this a misuse of words, since there are a whole series of hypnotic states in which not one symptom of sleep appears, and mistaken conclusions are often drawn from the mistaken terminology, with resulting confusion. Susceptibility to suggestion is the chief phenomenon of hypnosis." And he goes on to say that, "however strange and paradoxical the phenomena of hypnosis may appear to us at first sight, we may be sure that there is no absolute difference between hypnotic and non-hypnotic states." Man carries with him the germ of the possible mob, of the epidemic. As a social being he is naturally suggestible; but when this susceptibility to suggestion becomes under certain conditions abnormally intense, we may say that he is thrown into a hypnotic state. We know that a limitation of voluntary movement induces light hypnosis, which is characterized by inhibition of the will; the memory is unaffected; self-consciousness remains intact, and the subject is perfectly aware of all that goes on: a loss of voluntary movements is one of its chief phenomena. Keeping this in mind, we can understand to a certain extent medieval life. The medieval man was in a state of light hypnosis. This was induced in him by the great limitation of his voluntary movements, by the inhibition of his will, by the social pressure that was exerted on him by the great weight of authority to which his life was subjected. The life of the medieval man was regulated down to its least detail. The order, the guild, the commune, the church, had minute regulations for all exigencies of life. Nothing was left to individual enterprise. Even love had its rules: there were laws governing love-making, anti the treatment by a man of the lady of his heart. There were curious love trials, one of the lovers accusing the other of having trespassed some fixed rule of love. Society was divided and subdivided into numerous parts, each having its own fixed rules, each leading its own secluded, narrow, dwarfish life. Bound fast by the strings of authority, medieval men were reduced to a state of hypnotic automata.

        The religious ecstasy that animated the medieval man was especially favorable to his spontaneous self-hypnotization; for, as Ribot points out,

ecstasy is mono-ideism, the intense concentration of attention on one object,

an essential condition of hypnosis.1

        The most striking phenomenon in medieval history is that of the crusades, which agitated European nations for about two centuries, and cost them about seven million men. People were drawn by an irresistible longing toward the Holy Sepulcher, which fascinated their mental gaze, just as the butterfly is blindly dawn toward the candle. This attraction of devout Christians by the holy Sepulcher manifested itself in pilgrimages, which at first were rare, but gradually spread, and became a universal mania. Bishops abandoned their dioceses, princes their dominions, to visit the tomb of Christ. At the time of its highest tide, the flood of pilgrims was suddenly stopped by the Seljukian Turks, who conquered Palestine about 1076. As a maniac, when thwarted in his purpose, becomes raving and violent, so did Europe become when the flood-gates of torrent were stopped, and let to trickle through. European humanity fell into a fit of acute mania, which expressed itself in the savage ecstasy of the first crusade. Peter the Hermit and Pope Urban II were the heroes who first broke the ice, and directed the popular current to the conquest of the Holy Land. The fiery appeals of the emaciated, dwarfish hermit Peter carried everything before them. The frenzy which had unsettled the mind of the hermit was by him communicated to his hearers, and they became enraptured, entranced with the splendid schemes he unfolded. Meantime Pope Urban II convoked two councils, one after another; at the second council, that of Clermont, the pope addressed a multitude of thousands of people. His speech was at first listened to in solemn silence; gradually, however, as he proceeded, sobs broke. "Listen to nothing," he exclaimed, "but to the groans of Jerusalem! . . . And remember that the Lord has said, ‘He that will not take up his cross and follow me is unworthy of me.’ You are soldiers of the cross; wear then, on your breasts or on your shoulders, the blood-red sign of him who died for salvation of your soul!" Leaving the fields and towns, agricultural serfs and petty traders displayed intense eagerness to reach the Holy City. If a rational individual interfered with a word of warning, their only answer was the suggestion of the pope: "He that does not follow me is unworthy of me." Heinrich von Sybel, in speaking of the first crusade, tells us that "we can hardly understand such a state of mind. It was much as if a large army were now to embark in balloons in order to conquer an island between the earth and the moon, which was also expected tic contain the paradise. Swarms of men of different races, with their wives and daughters, with infants taken from the cradle, and grandsires on the verge of the grave, and many sick and dying, came from every direction, all of them ready led to the conquest of the Holy Land. Peter the Hermit, Walter the Penniless, and Gottschalk, became the heroes, the ringleaders of the mobs, which were cut to pieces before they reached Palestine. Then followed an army led by pilgrim princes, who succeeded in conquering the Holy Land, and founded there a Christian kingdom; but this kingdom was unstable, and it fell again and again into the hands of the unbelievers, and crusade after crusade was organized, each being a weaker copy of the preceding, until 1272, when the crusade epidemic was completely at an end, During the same period of time there were also Western crusades against the Arabians in Spain, and against the unfortunate Albigenses in southern France. In the crusade against the Albigenses, according to Albert von Stade, a peculiar religious mania broke out among women: thousands of

them, stark naked, and in deep silence as if stricken with dumbness, ran about the streets; in Luttich, many of them fell into convulsions of ecstasy.

        The abnormal suggestibility of medieval society was most clearly seen in the crusades of children. About 1212, between the fourth and fifth crusades, Stephen, a shepherd-boy at Cloyes, in imitation of his elders, began to preach to children of a holy war. Stephen soon became the rage of the day; the shrines were abandoned to listen to his words. He even worked miracles. The appeal of Stephen to the children to save the Sepulcher aroused in the young a longing to join him in the holy pilgrimage. The crusade epidemic rapidly spread among the little ones. Everywhere there arose children of ten years, and some oven as young as eight, who claimed to be prophets sent by Stephen in the name of God. When the "prophets" had gathered sufficient numbers, they began to march through towns and villages. Like a true epidemic, it spared neither boys nor girls: according to the statements of the chroniclers, there was a large proportion of little girls in the multitudes of hypnotized children. The king, Philip Augustus, by the advice of the University of Paris, issued an edict commanding the children to return to their homes; but the religious suggestions were stronger than the king’s command, and the children continued to assemble unimpeded. Fathers and mothers to bear upon the young all the influence they had to check this dangerous migration mania, but of no avail. Persuasions, threats, punishments, were as futile as the command. Bolts and bars could not hold the children. If shut up, they broke doors and windows, and rushed to places in the processions which take passing by. If the children were detained so that escape was impossible, they pined away like migratory birds kept in seclusion. In a village near Cologne, Nicolas, a boy of ten, began to play at crusade-preaching. Thousands of children flocked to him from all sides. As in France, all opposition was of no avail. Parents, friends, and pastors sought to restrain them by force or appeal; but the young ones pined, so that, as the chroniclers say, their lives were frequently endangered, as by disease, and it was necessary to allow them to depart. Hosts of children assembled in the city of Cologne to start on their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There they were divided into two armies, one under the leadership of Nicholas, the boy prophet, the other under some unknown leader. The armies of the little crusaders, like Coxey's army of our own times, were soon reduced in numbers by mere lack of food. After many tribulations, the army led by Nicholas, considerably reduced in size, reached Rome, where the pope, Innocent III, succeeded in diverting this stream of little pilgrims back to Germany. Ruined, degraded and ridiculed, the poor German children reached their homes; and when asked what they in reality wanted, the children, as if aroused from a narcotic state, answered that they did not know. The other German army had a worse fate. After untold sufferings and enormous loss of numbers, they reached Brindisi, where they were treated with extreme cruelty. The boys were seized by the citizens and sold into slavery, and the girls were maltreated and sold into dens of infamy. The French little crusaders met with a similar fate. When, after a long and fatiguing journey, they at last reached Marseilles, two pious merchants voluntarily offered to provide vessels to convey the children to Palestine. Half of the vessels suffered shipwreck, and the rest were directed to the shores of Africa, where the little pilgrims fell into the hands of the Turks and Arabians. The two pious merchants were slave-dealers.

        The medieval ages present us with an uninterrupted chain of epidemics. No sooner did the crusade mania abate than another epidemic took its place―that of the flagellants. The initiator, the hero of the solemn procession of flagellants is said to have been St. Anthony. In 1262 the flagellants appeared in Italy. "An unexampled spirit of remorse," writes the chronicler, "suddenly seized on the minds of the Italians. The fear of Christ fell on people noble and ignoble, old and young; and even children of five marched through the streets with no covering but a scarf around the waist. All carried a scourge of leathern thongs, which they applied to their bodies, amid sighs and tears, with such violence that blood flowed from the wounds. The flagellant epidemic spread into Germany, and penetrated even into Poland. As it was slowly dying out, there arose another terrible epidemic, the "black death" with its horrible persecutions of the Jews. No sooner was the black death over than another epidemic, the dancing-mania began to spread. In the year 1374, at Aix-la-Chapelle, men and women began suddenly to dance in public, on the streets and in the churches. In wild delirium, and for hours together, they continued dancing, until they fell to the ground in a state of exhaustion. While dancing they neither saw nor heard, being insensible to external impressions. From Aix-la-Chapelle, the epidemic spread to the Netherlands. A few months later it broke out at Cologne and at Metz. Peasants left their plows, mechanics their workshops, housewives their domestic duties to join the wild revels; girls and boys quitted their parents, and servants their masters, to look at those strange scenes, and greedily imbibed the poison of mental infection. In the year 1418 Strasburg was visited by this plague. St. Vitus was the patron saint of the dancing-mania, and his name was used as a contra-suggestion. The dancers were conducted to the chapel of St. Vitus, where they were usually cured of the disease. St. Vitus dance attacked people of all stations, the virulence of this plague decreased as time went on, until the great movement of the Reformation absorbed the attention and energy of Northern nations.

        In Italy the dancing-mania took a somewhat different form. The belief was widely spread that he who was bitten by a tarantula, a species of spider whose sting is no more harmful tutu that of the ordinary wasp fell dangerously ill, and could be cured only by dancing. By the end of the fifteenth century tarantism became the plague of Italy. Crowds of affected persons thronged the streets of Italian cities, and danced to the merry tune of the tarantella. Foreigners of every color, negroes, Gipsies, Spaniards, Albanians, were attacked by this plague. So irresistible was the power of social suggestion that even they who fully denied the effects of the tarantula's bite had to succumb to the prejudice of the age.

        The following chronological table may, perhaps, show best the unbroken chain of

 MEDIEVAL EPIDEMICS

 A. D.

Pilgrimage mania 1000 - 1095Crusade mania 1095 - 1272Flagellant mania  1260 - 1348

Black Death 1348 - 1356Persecutions of the Jews 1348 - 1383Dancing maniaSt. John's dance

St. Vitus's dance

Trarantism

 1374 - end 15th century

1418 - end 15th century

1470 - end 15th century

Social suggestibility is individual hypnotization written large. The laws of hypnotism work on a great scale in society. No hypnotic suggestion is effective unless it accords with the character, with the subconscious nature of the subject. The same holds true in the case of social hypnotization. Each nation has its own bent of mind, and suggestions, to be effective, must work in that direction. The Jew is a fair example. Religious emotions are at the basis of his character, and he is also highly susceptible to religious suggestions. The list of Jewish Messiahs is inordinately long. It would take too much space to recount the names of all the "saviors" among the Jews from the second destruction of the temple down to our own times. A few strong cases, however, will suffice. In the year 1666, on Rosch Haschanna (Jewish New Year), a Jew, by name Sabbathai Zevi, declared himself publicly as the long-expected Messiah. The Jewish populace was full of glee at hearing such happy news, and in the ardor of its belief, in the insanity of its religious intoxication, shouted fervently "Long live the Jewish king, our Messiah." A maniacal ecstasy took possession of the Jewish mind. Men, women, children fell fits of hysterics. Business men left their occupations, workmen their trades, and devoted themselves to prayer and penitence. The synagogues resounded with sighs, cries, and sobs for days and nights together. The religious mania became so furious that all the rabbis who opposed it had to save their lives by flight. Among the Persian Jews the excitement ran so high that all the Jewish husbandmen refused to labor in the fields. Even Christians regarded Sabbathai with awe, for this event took place in the apocalyptic year. The fame of Sabbathai spread throughout the world. In Poland, in Germany, in Holland, in England, the course of business was interrupted on the exchange by the gravest Jews breaking off to discuss this wonderful event. The Jews of Amsterdam sent inquiries to their agents in the Levant, and received the brief and emphatic reply, "It is he, and no other!"

        Wherever the messages of the Messiah came, there the Jews instituted fast-days according to the cabalistic regulations of Nathan the prophet, and afterward abandoned themselves to gross intemperance. The Jewish communities of Amsterdam and Hamburg were especially conspicuous for their absurd religious extravagances. In Amsterdam the Jews marched through the streets, carrying with them rolls of the torah, singing, leaping, and dancing as if possessed. Scenes still more turbulent, licentious, and wild occurred in Hamburg, Venice, Leghorn, Avignon and in many other cities of Italy, Germany, France, and Poland. The tide of religious mania rose so high that even such men as Isaac Aboab, Moses de Aguilar, Isaac Noar, the rich banker and writer

Abraham Pereira, and the Spinozist Dr. Benjamin Musaphia, became ardent adherents of the Messiah. Spinoza himself seemed to have followed these strange events with great interest. The tide of religious mania rose higher and higher. In all parts of the world prophets and prophetesses appeared, thus realizing the Jewish belief in the inspired nature of Messianic-times; men and women, boys and girls, wriggled in hysterical convulsions, screaming praises to the new Messiah; many went raving about in prophetic raptures, exclaiming, "Sabbathai Zevi is the true Messiah of the race of David; to him the crown and kingdom are given!" The Jews seemed to have gone mad. From all sides rich men came to Sabbathai, putting their wealth at his disposal. Many sold out their houses and all they possessed, and set out for Palestine. So great number of pilgrims that the price of passage was considerably raised. Traffic in the greatest commercial centers came to a complete standstill; most of the Jewish merchants and bankers liquidated their affairs. The belief in the divine mission of Sabbathai was made into a religious dogma of equal rank with that of the unity of God. Even when Sabbathai was compelled by the Sultan to accept Mohammedanism, the mystico-Messianic epidemic continued to rage with unabated fury. Many stubbornly rejected the fact of his apostasy it was his shade that had turned Mussulman.

        After Sabbathai's death a new prophet appeared by the name Michael Cordozo. His doctrine in spite of its manifest absurdity, spread like wildfire. "The Son of David," he said, "will not appear until all Israel is either holy or wicked." As the latter was by far the easier process, he recommended all true Israelites hasten the coming of the Messiah by turning Mohammedans. Great numbers, with pious zeal, complied with his advice.

        Turning now to the American, who somewhat resembles the Hebrew both in business ability and religiousness, we find social suggestion working in him on a larger and grander scale. The American is highly suggestible, and the short history of his national existence is full of instructive cases of mental epidemics. A few instances will, perhaps, suffice for our purpose. At the beginning of the present century a mania of religious revival swept over the continent of northern America, and reached its acme in the camp meetings of the "Kentucky revivals." The first camp-meeting in Kentucky was held at Cabin Creek, and continued four days and three nights. The scene was awful beyond description. The preaching, the praying, the singing, the shouting, the sobbing, the fits of convulsions, made of the camp a pandemonium. Religious suggestion soon affected the idle crowd of spectators, and acted with such virulence that those who tried to escape were either struck by convulsions on the way, or impelled to return by some unknown, irresistible power. The contagion spread with great rapidity, and spared neither age nor sex. The camp-meeting of Indian Creek, Harrison County, is especially interesting and instructive for its bringing clearly to light the terrible power of suggestion. The meeting was at first quiet and orderly. There was, of course, a good deal of praying, singing, and shouting, but still nothing extraordinary occurred. The suggestion, however, did not fail to come, and this time it was given by a child. A boy of twelve mounted a log, and raising his voice, began to preach. In a few moments he became the center of the religious mob. "Thus, O Sinners," he shouted, "shall you drop into hell, unless you forsake your sins and return to the Lord." At that moment some one fell to the ground in convulsions, and soon

the whole mob was struggling, wriggling, writhing, and "jerking." In some camp-meetings the religious mob took to dancing, and at last to barking like dogs. Men, women, and children assumed the posture of dogs, moving on all fours, growling, snapping the teeth, and barking.

        It would take volumes to recount all the mental epidemics religious manias, political plagues, speculative insanities, financial crazes and economical panics from which society in general and democracy in particular continually suffer. One thing stands out clear and distinct before the student of Social Psychology, and that is the extreme suggestibility of gregarious man. Man is a suggestible animal par excellence.

Boris Sidis

 

_________________

1. In my experiments in suggestion made in the psychological laboratory of Harvard College, I found that when the attention, in perfectly normal people, was concentrated on one point for some time, say twenty seconds, commands suddenly given at the end of that time were very often immediately carried out by the subject. Concentration of attention on one point is highly favorable to suggestibility.

Neurosis and EugenicsBoris Sidis, M.A., Ph.D., M.D.Sidis Psychotherapeutic Institute

Medical Review of Reviews,1915, 21, 587-594.

I

        The following discussion in the form of questions and answers may prove of interest to the physician and to the intelligent layman. The discussion occurred in the course of correspondence. A friend of mine thought the subject of sufficient importance to have it brought to the attention of the medical profession.

        The questions are as follows:

        "Are not all neuropathic conditions the results of a morbid, unstable nervous organism, the basis of which lies in a faulty heredity?

        "Are not weak nerves the cause of hysterical, neurasthenic and neuropathic affections in general?

        "Is not all neurosis due to defective parent stock?

        "If the occasions for fear, as some psychopathologists claim, were more frequent in primitive times than now, then the cave men must have had more psychopathic affections than civilized man.

        "Are religious sectarians justified in their claim that all diseases are nothing but imaginary fears of disease, mere "errors of the mortal mind"?

        To these questions the following answers are given:

II

    Psychopathic diseases are not hereditary―they are acquired characteristics, having their origin in the abnormal hypertrophied growth of the fear instinct which is at the root of the primal impulse of self preservation. This is proven by psychopathological studies of clinical cases; and it can be further demonstrated by experimental work in the laboratory even in the case of animals.1 "Weak nerves," "a run down, exhausted nervous system,"' whatever the terms may mean, may overlap psychopathic conditions, but the two are by no means equivalent, much less identical. Psychopathic states are not "weak nerves" or "fatigued nerves." Above all, there is no need to obscure the matter and resort to the much abused, mystical and mystifying factor of heredity. It is easy to shift all blames on former generations, where in most cases the fault is close at hand, namely, a debased environment, a defective training, and a vicious education.

        Under the rigorous conditions of primitive life individuals who have been unfortunate and have become affected with mental troubles and emotional afflictions of the fear instinct are mercilessly exterminated by the process of tribal and social selection. Each generation weeds out

the individuals who have been unfortunate enough to fall under unfavorable circumstances and have become mentally sick, suffering from acquired psychopathic disturbances. In primitive life the crippled, the maimed, the wounded, the sick fall by the way, and are left to perish a miserable death. In fact, the less fortunate, the wounded and the stricken in the battle of life, are attacked by their own companions―they are destroyed by the ruthless social brute. The gregarious brute has no sympathy with the pains and sufferings of the injured and the wounded. The faint and the ailing are destroyed by the herd.

        Civilization, on the other hand, tends more and more towards the preservation of psychopathic individuals. We no longer kill our sick and our weak, nor do we abandon them to a miserable, painful death―we take care of them, and cure them. Moreover, we prevent pathogenic factors from exercising a harmful, malign social selection of the "fit." We do our best to free ourselves from the blind, merciless, purposeless selection, produced by pathogenic microorganisms and by other noxious agencies. "We learn to improve the external environment.

        We do not condemn people to death because they are infected with smallpox, typhus, typhoid bacilli, or because of an infected appendix. We no longer regard them as sinful, unclean, accursed and tabooed. We vaccinate, inoculate, operate, and attempt to cure them. By sanitary and prophylactic measures we attempt to prevent the very occurrence of epidemics. Our valuation of individuals is along lines widely different from those of the stone age and the cave man. We value a Pascal, a Galileo, a Newton, a Darwin, a Pasteur, and a Helmholtz far above a Milo of Croton or an African Johnson.

        Civilization is in need of refined, delicate and sensitive organizations, just as it is in need of galvanometers, chronometers, telephones, wireless apparatuses, sensitive plates, and various chemical re-agents of a highly delicate character. We are beginning to appreciate delicate mechanisms and sensitive organizations. We shall also learn to train and guard our sensitive natures until they are strong and resistant the incident forces of an unfavorable environment. The recognition, the diagnosis, and the preservation of psychopathic individual account for the apparent increase of neurotics in civilized communities.

        It may be well to add that, although the occasions for sudden, intense, overwhelming fears are not so prevalent in organized societies as they are in primitive savage communities, the worries the anxieties, the various forms of slow grinding fears of a vague, marginal subconscious character, present in commercial and industrial nations, are even more effective in the production of psychopathic states than are the isolated occasions of intense frights in the primitive man of the paleolithic or neolithic periods.

III

        A brief outline of the classification of nervous and mental diseases, made by me in my various works, may be of help towards a clear understanding of the etiology and differential diagnosis of the neurotic affections under discussion.

        The different forms of nervous and mental diseases may be classified into Organic and Functional.

        By organic affections we mean to indicate pathological modifications of the neuron and its processes taking place in the very structure (probably the cytoreticulum) of the nerve cell. Under this category come such maladies as general paresis, dementia præcox, all mental and nervous affections of a degenerative and involutionary character. Such diseases are termed by me

Organopathies, or Necropathies.

        By functional affections we mean to indicate all neuron changes in which the functions of the neuron and its reactions to external and internal stimulations are involved in the pathological process without, however, affecting the anatomical structure of the nerve cell. The psychological changes are not permanent recovery of normal function is possible with the restitution of favorable conditions of nutrition and elimination.

        Functional nervous and mental diseases are in turn subdivided into Neuropathies and Psychopathies.

        Neuropathic diseases are disturbances of functioning activity, due to defective neuron metabolism, brought about by external stimuli, and more specially by harmful internal stimuli-glandular secretions, hormones, toxic and autotoxic agencies. The pathological, neuropathic process produces few, if any, anatomical changes in the structure of the neuron. The pathology of neuropathic diseases (probably of the cytoplasm) is essentially chemico-physiological in nature.

        Neuropathic diseases include maladies in which the neuron undergoes degenerative changes which at first may bring about an apparent increase, then an inhibition, and finally a complete suspension of neuron function, not terminating in the destruction of the neuron. Neuron restitution is possible. Such affections are produced by poisons, organic or inorganic, by auto toxic products, by hyposecretion or hypersecretion, or total absence of hormones in the economy of the organism. Here belong all the temporary, or recurrent maniacal, melancholic, and delusional states, puerperal mania, epileptic insanity, the mental aberrations of adolescent and climacteric periods, periodic insanity, alternating insanities, and in general all the mental affections at present known under the description of manic-depressive insanity.

        Where the disease depends not so much on the neuron itself as on the interrelation or neurons in a complex system, on association of systems of neurons, the condition is psychopathic in nature. In psychopathic troubles the neuron itself may remain unaffected, may be perfectly normal and healthy. The disorder is due to associations with systems of neurons which are usually not called into action by the function of that particular neuron or neuron system.

        By Organopathies or Necropathies we indicate a group or psychophysiological symptoms accompanied by structural, necrotic changes of the neuron, terminating in the ultimate death of the neuron systems involved in the pathological process.

        By Neuropathies we indicate a group of psychophysiological manifestation due to pathological functional neuron modifications, capable of restitution thru a more perfect, more normal metabolism.

        By Psychopathies we designate pathological phenomena of psychophysiological dissociation and disaggregation of neuron systems and their functions in clusters, the neuron itself and its special function remaining undamaged and untouched.

        The psychopathies are further subdivided into: Somopsychoses (Somatopsychoses) and Psychoneuroses or Neuropsychoses.

        The Somopsychoses are characterized by somatic symptoms, by disturbances of bodily functions, such as paralysis, contractures, convulsions, anesthesia, analgesia, hyperalgesia, and other sensory disturbances, as well as by intestinal, cardiac, respiratory and genito-urinary

affections.

        The Psychoneuroses or Neuropsychoses are characterized by mental symptoms. The patient's whole mind is occupied with mental troubles. Such conditions are found in all obsessions, fixed ideas, imperative impulses, emotional compulsions, and other allied mental and ncryous maladies.

        The somopsychoses simulate physical and organic nervous troubles. Thus, many "hysterical" forms simulate tabes, or paralysis agitans, hemiplegia, paraplegia, or epilepsy, while many of the neurasthenic, hypochondriacal, and their allied states simulate tumor or cancer of the stomach, intestinal obstructions and glandular derangements; cardiac, laryngeal, pneumonic, hepatic, splanchnic, ovarian, tubal, uterine, renal, and hundreds of other bodily afflictions.

        The neuropsychoses or psychoneuroses simulate all forms of mental disease, beginning with melancholia and mania and en1ingwith general paresis and dementia.

        Psychoneurosis and Somopsychosis are diseases of the subconsciousness, in the one the mental, in the other the physical symptoms predominate.

        Psychopathic states should be rigidly differentiated from all other neuroscs and psychoses, such as ncuropathies and organopathies or necropathics. (See my Symptomatology, Ch. XI.)

        The classification of nervous and mental diseases may be represented by the following diagram:

 

 

IV

        In my works I lay special stress on the fact that the psychopathic individual has a predisposition to dissociative states. Early experiences and training in childhood enter largely into the formation of such a predisposition. Still, there is no doubt that a sensitive nervous system is required―a brain susceptible to special stimuli of the external environment. This, of course, does not mean that the individual must suffer from stigmata of degeneration. On the contrary, it is quite possible, and in many patients we actually find it to be so, that the psychopathic individual may be even of a superior organization. It is the sensitivity and the delicacy of nervous organization that make the system susceptible to injurious stimulations to which a lower form of organization could be subjected with impunity. An ordinary clock can he handled roughly without disturbance of its internal workings, but the delicate and complicated mechanism of a chronometer requires careful handling and special, favorable conditions for its normal functioning. Unfavorable conditions are more apt to affect a highly complex mechanism than a roughly made instrument. It is quite probable that it is the superior minds and more highly complex mental and nervous organizations that are subject to psychopathic states or to states of dissociation. Of course, unstable minds are also subject to dissociative states, but we must never forget the fact that highly organized brains, on account of their very complexity, are apt to become unstable under unfavorable conditions. A predisposition to dissociation may occur either in degenerative minds or in minds superior to the average. Functional psychosis requires a long history of dissociated, subconscious shocks given to a highly or lowly organized nervous system dating back to early childhood.

        As Mosso puts it: "The vivid impression of a strong emotion may produce the same effects as a blow on the head or some physical shock." We may, however, say that no functional psychosis, whether somopsychosis or psychoneurosis, can ever be produced simply by physical shocks. In all functional psychoses there must be a mental background, and it is the mental background alone that produces the psychosis and determines the character of the psychopathic state."

        Fear is an important factor only in the etiology of psychopathic affections which include the somatopsychoses (or somopsychoses) and psychoneuroses.

        To regard fear as "mortal error," as do some ignorant and deluded sectarians, is absurd, and is certainly unscientific. Abnormal fear, which is the basis of all functional nervous or psychopathic maladies, is essentially a pathological process affecting the organs in general and the nervous system in particular in as definite a way as the invasion and infection of the organism by various species of bacteria, bacilli, and other microorganisms which attack the individual during his lifetime.

        Like infectious diseases, the deviations, abnormalities, and excesses of the fear instinct are acquired by the individual in the course of his relations with the external environment, and are as real and substantial as are syphilis, smallpox, diphtheria, cholera and the bubonic plague. To regard them as imaginary or to relegate them to the action of Providence or to heredity is theoretically a misconception, and practically a great danger to humanity.

V

        There is nowadays a veritable craze for heredity and eugenics. Biology is misconceived, misinterpreted, and misapplied to social problems, and to individual needs and ailments. Everything is ascribed to heredity, from folly and crime to scratches and sneezes. The goddess Heredity is invoked at each flea-bite―in morsu pullicis Deum invocare. Even war is supposed to be due to the omnipotent deity of Heredity. Superior races by their patriotism and loyalty destroy the weak and the helpless, and relentlessly exterminate all peaceful tribes. Such warlike stock comes of superior clay. The dominant races have some miraculous germ-plasm (chromatin) with wonderful dominant Hunits" (chromosomes) which, like a precious heritage, these races transmit unsullied and untarnished to their descendants. Wars, carnage, butcheries make for progress, culture and evolution. Our boasted civilization with its "scientific" business thoroughness and its ideal of "efficiency" attempts to carry into effect this quasi-evolutionary doctrine―this apotheosis of brute force under the aegis of science. The eugenic belief is really a recrudescence of the ancient savage superstition of the magic virtues of noble blood and of divine king stock.

        All nervous, mental, neuropathic, and psychopathic maladies are supposed to be a matter of heredity. If people are poor, ignorant, superstitious, stupid, degraded, brutal and sick, the eugenists unhesitatingly put it all up to poor stock. The eugenic remedy is as simple as it is believed to be efficacious: Introduce by legislation "efficient" laws favoring "eugenic" marriage, and teach the masses control of births. The select and chosen stock alone should multiply―the millennium is then bound to come. Such is the doctrine of our medico-biological sages.

        "Scientific" farmers and breeders of vegetables, fruits, and cattle are regarded as competent judges of human "breeders." Agriculturists and horticulturists set themselves up as advisers in "the business of raising good crops of efficient children." Bachelors, spinsters, and the childless generally, are specially versed in eugenic wisdom and pedagogics. All social ills and individual complaints are referred to one main source―heredity. With the introduction of eugenic legislation, with the sterilization of the socially unfit, among whom the greatest men and women may be

included, with the breeding of good "orthodox, common stock," and with the eugenic Malthusian control of births all evil and disease on earth will cease, while the Philistine "superman" will reign supreme for evermore.

        In the Middle Ages all diseases and epidemics, all wars, all social and private misfortunes were considered as visitations of Divine wrath. In modern times our would-be eugenic science refers all ills of the flesh and woes of the mind to an outraged Heredity. The dark ages had resort to prayers, fasts, and penitence, while our age childishly pins its faith to the miraculous virtues and rejuvenating, regenerative powers of legislative eugenic measures, and to the eugenic Malthusian control of births.

        Our scientists in eugenics gather hosts of facts showing by elaborate statistical figures that the family history of neurotics reveals stigmata of degeneration in the various members of the family. The eugenic inquirers do not stop for a moment to think over the fact that the same sort of evidence can be easily be brought the case of most people. In fact; the eugenists themselves, when inquiring into the pedigree of talent and genius, invariably find somewhere in the family some form of disease or degeneration. This sort of "scientific" evidence leads some eugenic speculators, without their noticing the reductio ad absurdum to the curious conclusion or generalization that degeneration is present in the family history of the best and the worst representatives of the human race.

        The so-called scientific method of the eugenists is radically faulty, in spite of the rich display of colored plates, stained tables, glittering biological speculations, brilliant mathematical formulae and complicated statistical calculations. The eugenists pile Ossa on Pelion of facts by the simple method of enumeration which Bacon and the thinkers coming after him have long ago condemned as puerile and futile. From the savage's belief in sympathetic, imitative magic with its consequent superstitions, omens, and taboos down to the articles of faith and dogmas of the eugenists we find the same faulty, primitive thought, guided by the puerile, imbecile method of simple enumeration, and controlled by the wisdom of the logical post hoc, ergo propter hoc. What would we say of the medical man who should claim that measles, mumps, cholera, typhoid fever, yellow fever, malaria, tetanus, and various other infectious diseases are hereditary by quoting learnedly long tables of statistics to the effect that for several generations members of the same family suffered from the same infectious diseases? What would we say of the medical advice forbidding marriage to individuals whose family history reveals the presence of exanthemata? We stamp out epidemics not by eugenic measures but by the cleansing of infectious filth and by the extermination of pathogenic microganisms.

        Every human being has a predisposition to smallpox, cholera, smallpox, bubonic plague, typhus fever, malaria, and to like infectious diseases, but there is no inherent necessity for everyone to fall a victim to the action of pathogenic organisms, if the preventive and sanitary conditions are good and proper. No one is immune against the action of bullets, cannon balls, shells, and torpedoes, or to the action of various poisons, organic and inorganic, but one is not doomed to be killed by them, if one does not expose himself to their deadly action. Every living organism is by the very nature of its cellular tissues predisposed to the wounding by sharp instruments, or to the burning action of fire, but this does not mean an inherent organic weakness to which the organism must necessarily submit and perish. We are all of us predisposed to get injured and possibly killed, when we fall down from a high place, or when we are run over by an automobile or by a locomotive, but there is no fatalistic necessity about such accidents, if care is taken that they should not occur.

        We may he predisposed to neurosis by the very nature of complexity, delicacy, and sensitivity

inherent in the structure of a highly organized nervous system, and still we may remain healthy and strong all our life long, provided we know how to keep away from noxious agencies. The creed of the inevitable fatality of neurosis is as much of a superstition as the Oriental belief in the fatalism of infectious diseases, plagues, and accidents of all kinds. Such fatalistic superstitions are dangerous, fatal, because they distract the attention from the actual causes and from the requisite prophylactic measures.

        We go far afield in search for the remote source of our troubles, when the cause is close at hand. We need only open our eyes to see the filth of our towns, the foul, loathsome slums of our cities, the miserable training, the wretched education given to our children, in order to realize at a glance the source of our ills and ailments. We should lay the guilt at the door of our social order. We starve our young. We starve our children physically and mentally. We piously sacrifice our tender children and the flower of our youth to the greedy, industrial Moloch of a military, despotic, rapacious plutocracy. Witness semi-civilized Europe with its lauded culture brutally shedding the blood of its youth and manhood on the altar of commercial patriotism! It is not heredity, it is the vicious conditions of life that stunt the physical, nervous, and mental growth at our young generation. When we are confronted with the miserable, degraded, crippled forms of our life, we fall back cheerfully on some remote grandparent and credulously take refuge in the magic panacea of eugenics.

VI

        The practical aspect is clear. Psychopathic neurosis in its two varieties, Somatopsychosis (Somopsychosis) and Psychoneurosis, is not hereditary, but acquired. We should not shift the blame on former generations and have resort to eugenics, but we must look to the improvement of mental hygienic conditions of early childhood, and to the proper education of the individual.

        It is easy to put the blame on grandparents―they are dead and cannot defend themselves. Could they arise from their graves, they could tell some bitter truths to their degenerate descendents who are so ready to shift responsibility to other people's shoulders. It is about time to face the truth fairly and squarely a truth which is brought out by recent investigations in psychopathology, that no matter where the fons et origo of neurosis be, whether in self-preservation and its accompanying fear instinct, the condition of life primordial, or in other forms of self-preservation, the formation of psychopathic neurosis with all its characteristic protean symptoms, is not hereditary, but acquired. Neurosis arises within the life cycle of the individual, it is due to faulty training and harmful experience of early child life.

        Future medicine will be largely prophylactic, preventive, sanitary, hygienic, dietetic. What holds true of medicine in general holds true of that particular branch of it that deals with neurosis. The treatment will become largely prophylactic, preventive, educational, or pedagogic. It is time that the medical and teaching professions should realize that functional neurosis is not congenital, not inborn, not hereditary, but is essentially the result of a defective education in early child life.

 

________________

1.  Sidis. The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases.

From: THE FOUNDATIONS OF NORMAL AND ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY

Boris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D.

© 1914

CHAPTER XXXI

THE PRINCIPLE OF RESERVE ENERGY

         We have pointed out the significance of inhibitions in keeping back the systemic neuron energy from fully being discharged under normal conditions of life, and we have also shown that the removal of inhibitions results in the full liberation of the accumulated neuron energy. This fact, so striking in the domain of recurrent psychomotor states, almost forces itself on the attention of the student of abnormal psychology. From such a fundamental fact of abnormal mental phenomena, we may draw some conclusions in regard to mental life in general. For, after all, the laws of pathology do not differ from those of physiology in general, the pathological really being the physiological under special conditions. The normal is either the usual, the habitual, the customary, or is, at best, an ideal construction of the variations of life more or less successfully adjusted to the conditions of the external environment.

        This adjustment, however, keeps on constantly shifting ground, continually changing the relative position of the normal and the abnormal. From this standpoint pathology is of the utmost importance in the study of organic life. The pathological being the normal out of place, the abnormal being the normal under special conditions, pathology that deals with the abnormal gives us a deep insight into the general laws of normal physiological activity. All the experiments in physiology consist practically in the production of so many pathological conditions and states. When the physiologist makes injections, sections and stimulations by various agencies, what else does he effect if not the production of the pathological, in order to learn the physiological action of the various tissues and organs? In psychopathological studies we follow the interrelations of mental phenomena under special conditions; it is the physiological method of experimentation by production of pathological variations; the conclusion arrived at in psychopathology should apply to mental life in general. What is this conclusion? It is the principle of potential subconscious energy or, more briefly stated, the principle of reserve energy.1

        The moment thresholds of our moment consciousness, or, put in physiological terms, the thresholds of our psycho-physiological systems, are usually raised, mental activity working in the

course of its development and growth of associative processes under ever-increasing inhibitions with ever-higher thresholds. It is enough to compare the educated, the civilized, with the uneducated or with the barbarian and the savage, to realize the truth of our statement. On account of the threshold and inhibitions, not the whole of the psycho-physiological energy possessed by the system or moment is manifested; in fact, but a very small portion is displayed in response to stimuli coming from the habitual environment. What becomes of the rest of unused energy? It is stored, reserve energy.

        Biologically regarded, we can well see the importance of such stored or reserve energy. In the struggle for existence, the organism whose energies are economically used and well guarded against waste will meet with better success in the process of survival of the fittest, or will have better chances in the process of natural selection. The high thresholds and inhibitions will prevent hasty and harmful reactions as well as useless waste of energy, unnecessary fatigue, and states of helpless exhaustion. Moreover, natural selection will favor organisms with ever greater stores of reserve energy which could be put forth under critical conditions of life. In fact, the higher the organization of the individual, the more varied and complex the external environment, the more valuable and even indispensable will such a store of reserve energy prove to be.

        The course of civilization and education, by continuously raising the thresholds and inhibitions, follows the line of natural selection, and keeps on increasing the disposable store of potential subconscious or reserve energy, both in the individual and the race. It is in this formation of an ever-greater and richer store of disposable, but well-guarded, reserve energy, that lies the superiority of the educated over the uneducated, and the supremacy of the higher over the lower races.

        Civilization and education are processes of economy of psycho-neural force, savings of mental energy. But what society is doing in a feeble way, natural selection has done far more effectively. What education and civilization are doing now on a small scale and for a brief period of time the process of survival of the fittest in the ever-raging struggle for existence has done for ages on a large scale. We should, therefore, expect that the natural reserve energy would far exceed that of the cultivated one. The brain and mind of the ancient German differed in nothing from his modern descendant, the German philosopher, and still what a difference in the manifestation of mental energy! The savage brain and mind do not differ from those of their civilized descendants, and still what an ocean of mental life separates the civilized man from his savage progenitor!

        It is against the evidence of biological sciences to suppose that the acquisitions of the cultivated brains have actually been transmitted from generation to generation. It is not likely that acquired characteristics brought about by social life will change so radically the brain in the course of some forty or fifty generations that separate the civilized man from his savage progenitor; and the trend of biological evidence hardly favors the transmission of such acquired characteristics.

        "There sits the savage," once exclaimed a friend of mine, an eminent neuro-pathologist, "with three quarters of his brain unused." Yes, there sits the savage with a brain far surpassing the needs of his environment, harboring powers of a Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, of a Shakespeare, Goethe, Darwin, and Newton. The ancient German and Briton hardly differed in their mental powers from their contemporaries, the civilized Egyptian and Babylonian. What, then did those Aryan savages do with their richly endowed mental energies? Nothing. The mental energy was lying fallow―it was reserve energy―energy for future use, for the use of future ages of coming civilization.

         But what about the cultivated man? Does he suffer from neurasthenia, from nervous impotence, because, as some would have it, on account of the strain of civilized life he has

exhausted his store of nervous energy? One may well ponder over the significant fact that it is the neurasthenic, the "psychasthenic" who is doing the world's work. We must remember that civilization is but of yesterday, and that the reserve energy is hardly touched upon.

        In the treatment of the phenomena of psycho-physiological dissociation, in the protean symptoms of nervous and mental exhaustion, we should not forget this biological principle of reserve energy, and should make attempts to use it. In many cases the inhibitions become too heavy and the thresholds too high. We must loosen the grip of some of the inhibitions and lower the thresholds, thus utilizing a fresh supply of reserve energy.

        The treatment of psychopathic diseases should be based on this biological principle of dormant reserve energy. In many cases the inhibitions become too heavy and the threshold too high. We must loosen the grip of the inhibitions and lower the thresholds, utilizing a fresh supply of dormant reserve energy.2

        A similar train of thought was developed by Dr. S. J. Meltzer, in his excellent paper on "The Factors of Safety in Animal Structure and Animal Economy." By a striking series of instructive facts, Dr. Meltzer points out that "all organs of the body are built on the plan of superabundance of structure and energy." I cannot resist the temptation of quoting Dr. Meltzer's conclusions at some length, because they so clearly elucidate our principle of reserve energy, which is all the more valuable, as Dr. Meltzer has formulated it independently on widely different grounds. "Of the supplies of energy to the animal, we see that oxygen is luxuriously supplied. The supply of carbohydrates and fats is apparently large enough to keep up a steady luxurious surplus. . . . The liberal ingestion of proteid might be another instance of the principle of abundance ruling the structure and energies of the animal body. There is, however, a theory that in just this single instance the minimum is meant by nature to be also the optimum. But it is a theory for the support of which there is not a single fact. On the contrary, some facts seem to indicate that Nature meant differently. Such facts are, for instance, the abundance of proteolytic enzymes in the digestive canal and the great capacity of the canal for absorption of proteids. Then there is the fact that proteid material is stored away for use in emergencies just as carbohydrates and fats are stored away. In starvation, nitrogenous products continue to be eliminated in the urine, which, according to Folin, are derived from exogenous sources, that is, from ingested proteid and not from broken-down organ tissues. An interesting example of storing away of proteid for future use is seen in the muscles of the salmon before they leave the sea for the river to spawn. According to Mescher the muscles are then large and the reproductive organs are small. In the river where the animals have to starve, the reproductive organs become large, while the muscles waste away. Here, in time of affluence, the muscles store up nutritive material for the purpose of maintaining the life of the animal during influence on the destiny of humanity. The constant wars and national misfortunes of the Jews released their reserve energy making of them a race of prophets, apostles and martyrs, deeply affecting the course of human civilization. The wars of the Reformation open a new era of free development of modern European civilization. The English, American, and French revolutions have released new supplies of energies and have opened a new arena for the free development of political, social, and industrial forces. In our own times we meet with the example of the Japanese, who, under the strain of great national danger, have released a reserve energy unsuspected in races of the Mongolian stock.

        Reserve energy becomes manifested under the influence of radical changes in the environment, just as we have found that psycho-physiological systems react and start into function under the influence of special conditions and special appropriate qualitative stimuli. In the study of functional nervous and mental diseases, in the study of neurasthenia, or psychasthenia, hysteria, and insistent or recurrent mental states, one becomes more and more impressed with the fact that beyond the

psycho-physiological limits of energy, available for the habitual adjustments to the ordinary external conditions of life, there is a vast store of reserve energy whose depths one cannot gauge.

Aus dem Keiche dieses GeisterreichesSchäumt ihm seine Unendlichkeit.

 

--------1. When this principle was formulated by me in a series of articles published in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for March and April, 1907, James sent me his article, "The Energies of Men," in which he developed a similar point of view, though on widely different lines. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to find myself in accord with the great American psychologist and philosopher.

 

2. The principle of reserve energy is of great importance in education. I hope to work out this subject elsewhere. I have also shown the importance of the principle of reserve energy in my work The Psychology of Laughter.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LAUGHTERBoris Sidis, Ph.D., M.D.

© 1913, 1919, 1923

PREFACE

        An inquiry into the main psychological principles that underlie laughter and its various manifestations presents a number of difficulties. There is a wide range of the ludicrous, beginning with the nursery rhymes of Mother Goose, the coarse sallies of the clown, the zany, the cartoonist, the mimic, and the joker, and ending with the classical productions of Aristophanes, Lucian, Juvenal, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Molière, Voltaire, Gogol, Thackeray and Dickens. The great Russian writer, Gogol, in his famous work "Dead Souls," lays special stress on the fact that a whole abyss separates the productions of elevated laughter from the contortions of the buffoon and the clown. No doubt Gogol is right: there is an abyss between the crude art of the buffoon and the "pearl of creative art" produced by the genius of comedy. Still the abyss can be bridged over. May we not similarly say that a whole abyss separates the crude idols of the stone age from the beautiful statues of a Phidias? The two extremes are, nevertheless, connected by a long series of intermediate steps. The abyss, however, as Gogol points out, is present. The difficulty is to bridge over the extremes and find the fundamental principles that underlie the almost infinite diversity of the manifestations of the ludicrous. Another difficulty lies in the fact that very little satisfactory and systematic work has been done in the domain of the psychology of laughter and the ludicrous. Theories have been advanced since the time of Aristotle,―but they have been fragmentary and abstract. Extensive and important as the domain of the ludicrous is in the life of mankind, the scientific investigator devotes but little time and space to this side of human activity. This may be partly due to the fact that the comic is regarded as superficial and trivial, or as dealing at best with the commonplace of life, possibly below the dignity of the scientific inquirer. Even a man like Bergson excludes comedy from the high sphere of art. He tells us that the nature of comedy is opposed to tragedy, drama, and other forms of art. According to Bergson, the sole object of true art

is the individual; not so comedy, which deals with the general, the typical. Art deals with individual things as they really are; while comedy, like life, is concerned with general characters, with types. Comedy is prosaic. In other words, comedy does not belong to the sphere of art. In spite of his remarkable acumen, Bergson is entirely wrong in his generalization. Both tragedy and comedy deal with types.

        Moreover, according to Bergson, we should have to exclude from the domain of art the comedies of Aristophanes, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Molière's dramatic works, Shakespeare's comic dramas, the humorous works of Dickens, Thackeray and Gogol. This will not do. We must agree with Gogol that the great artist or poet in his creations of laughter and the ludicrous may produce and has produced "pearls of creation," even if such pearls, have been cast away on contemporary readers. One cannot help agreeing with the apparently paradoxical statement of Plato in his "Symposium" that tragedy and comedy are intimately related, that the great dramatic poet can wield with equal force the incidents and types of tragedy and comedy. This is well exemplified in the dramatic works of Shakespeare. The extreme and fallacious view held by Bergson well illustrates the confused and chaotic state of the subject of the ludicrous.

         Still another difficulty lies in the disorganized and scattered condition of the material referring to laughter and the ludicrous. The material is rich, but this wealth makes the choice all the more difficult. To this should be added the fact that the material is so scattered that the labor of selection and sifting is arduous and appears almost insurmountable. I had to choose my examples of the ludicrous from the literature of various nations and different ages. It was difficult to decide as to the preference given to the selected material. Of course, it is desirable to give illustrations and make the analysis of examples from recent works, as they are more comprehensible to the reader. This was done as much as the scope of the work as well as circumstances permitted.

         In selecting my material for analysis from English and American writers I wished to utilize some illustrations from Bret Harte and Mark Twain. All citations, however, from these two American writers had to be dispensed with, because their publishers' permission could not be obtained.

         I trust the reader will form some notion of the difficulties with which I had to contend in this, work. At the same time he will be ready to accept my apology for not using quotations from two popular American writers.

 

BORIS SIDIS

Sidis Psychotherapeutic Institute, Portsmouth,

New Hampshire.

 

CHAPTER I

LAUGHTER

        The cause and nature of laughter have been examined by many thinkers, each one contributing

his mite to the analysis of this highly complex phenomenon. What is laughter? What is its source? Whence flow those rich manifestations of wit, the comic, the joke, the jest, irony, sarcasm, that, like ethereal light keep on playing on the surface of human life? What are the constituents, what is the mechanism of an event, of a phrase, of a comedy, that awaken in us a smile, or make our chest and limbs shake and heave with laughter?

        The particular essence which we discover in the funny and in the ridiculous is hard to analyze; it is as elusive as the delicate perfume of the rose and the violet. Many highly intelligent people when they are asked on the spur of the moment what it is specially that they find funny in a joke, in a comedy, or in a particular situation at which they laugh heartily, are unable to tell the special points that awaken in them merriment and laughter. They know it is funny; it is ridiculous. The ridiculous appears to exhale an essence which men directly perceive without being able to analyze the constituents. In fact, there are intellectual people who think that the fun of the joke is gone when touched by the scalpel of analysis. The comic is evidently something living, and, like the living, cannot be dissected without giving rise to symptoms of decay and death. The comic, like the beautiful, is to be enjoyed directly, intuitively, without analysis, without criticism. There is a unity, a living unity, which is directly perceived by the mind and reacted to by the living human organism. The analysis, the dissection of the constituent elements, means the killing, the death of the living unity of the comic.

        Still the difficulties may not be insurmountable, after all. We study the human body and its functions by means of anatomical investigations as well as physiological researches. We study the functions of the mind by means of physiological and psychopathological work, both experimental and observational. Why not do the same in the case of laughter? We can obtain the constituents by means of analysis, and their functions by means of psychological and psychopathological study of the facts. In this way we may be able to find some of the important elements that go to make up the the nature of the comic.

        It may be well to look for the general aspect of what we regard as ridiculous, funny, and amusing. Perhaps the psychological side may be more accessible and help us in the investigation of the subject. In the first place, all the different manifestations of the comic, the witty, and the ridiculous belong psychologically to that particular emotional side of our being which we class under joy. Whatever is joyful awakens in us, if not intense laughter, at least a smile, however flitting. We may observe it in undeveloped characters, or in people who lack self control. Anything which awakens in them the emotion of joy also arouses in them smiles and laughter; in many the laughter is almost uncontrollable. This is manifested in young people, especially children.

        Play that arouses the emotion of joy gives rise to smiles and laughter. Observe girls and boys, or children when in full active play: you will always find that along with the play there goes the manifestation of laughter. There may not be anything especially funny and comic, and still the laughter is often uncontrollable. Listen to the noisy laughter of schoolboys and schoolgirls at play, especially after they have been released from their lessons at school. The mirth and laughter of an audience at a comic play or in listening to the funny remarks of a favorite orator remind one of the play of unrestrained schoolboys and girls. We may, therefore, lay down the law that all unrestrained spontaneous activities of normal functions give rise to the emotion of joy with its expression of smiles and laughter. If we remember that play is the manifestation of spontaneous, unrestrained activity we can begin to understand the nature of laughter, which is one of the manifestations of the play instinct present not only in man, but in the whole animal world. We observe this play instinct in puppies, in kittens, and, in fact, in all young animals.

        If we inspect this play activity more closely, we find that it belongs to the type of artistic

activities. The word play is used for dramatic work and for ordinary play activities of animal life. Instrumental music, dancing, singing, dramatic plays, and all forms of æsthetic and artistic activities, as well as games, combats and contests, all belong to the same general root of the play instinct. We may possibly add that even the religious activities of man belong to the same class of human life activities, activities which have their root in the play instinct present alike in the kitten, puppy, squirrel and bird. Among the modern savages, ancient nations, the Greeks, the Israelites, we find alike that all those artistic activities having their source in the play instinct. In the Olympic games of the Greeks, the gladiatorial combats of the Romans, the religious psalms and songs of the Hebrews, the dances and poetry of the Australians, the Andamanese, the Bushmen, the Esquimaux, the religious temple performances of the Middle Ages, of the Hindoo dancing girls, the wild ecstatic whirling and dancing of the dervishes, as well as the singing and praising of the Lord in modern church services, we can see the connection of art, play, religion, and games.

        Football and church hymns are apparently disconnected, and still they are intimately related. They are offshoots of the same parent root, the play instinct. The minister may war on Sunday, play games on holidays, but he must know that the church service, however sacred and solemn, is the outcome of the game impulse and the satisfaction of the play instinct inherent in the animal, child and adult. The football player, the actor, and the priest are brothers of the same mother―the play instinct. Church services, religious ceremonies, theatrical plays, dancing balls, football and baseball games are intimately related; they are so many offshoots of the same parent stem. In all the processes of metamorphosis through which they have passed in the course of the ages they still at bottom keep on subserving the same function―the satisfaction of the animal play instinct of man.

        Laughter, smiling, and grinning are the external manifestations of the play instinct. Laughter be sublimated into a barely perceptible smile; the smile in its turn may become sublimated into a grin or an expression of satisfaction, or contentment, or the inner emotion of joy which accompanies the activity of the play instinct. Whatever gives us joy makes us laugh, or gives rise to an expression akin to laughter and smiles. A number of objects may give rise to the emotion of joy with its concomitant motor manifestations of smiles and laughter. What is common to all these objects is the fact that they all belong to the class of playthings. This we can easily observe in the case of little children who laugh and jump with joy when they keep on playing with their toys. Adult life is not in any way different: adults laugh and are amused with their toys, but the toys are more disguised and far more complex. We must have our toys and our playthings to amuse us and to make us laugh. The character of toys, however, changes with the nation, age, and environment. The character of the plaything also changes with the age of the individual. In spite, however, of all the various changes the plaything undergoes, it must still preserve its nature of a plaything. We laugh in play. The play instinct must remain dominant.

        A few passages from the great biologist, Darwin may be to the point:

        "Joy, when intense, leads to various purposeless movements―to dancing about, clapping the hands, stamping, etc., and to loud laughter. Laughter seems primarily to be the expression of mere joy or happiness. . . . A man smiles―and smiling, as well she see, graduates into laughter―at meeting an old friend in the street, as he does at any trifling pleasure, such as smelling a sweet perfume. Laura Bridgman, from her blindness and deafness, could not have acquired any expression through imitation, yet when a letter from a beloved friend was communicated to her by gesture-language she ‘laughed and clapped her hands, and the color mounted to her cheeks.’ On other occasions she has been seen to stamp for joy.

        "Idiots and imbecile persons likewise afford good evidence that laughter or smiling primarily expresses mere happiness or joy. . . . There is a large class of idiots who are persistently joyous and

benign, and who are constantly laughing or smiling. Their countenances often exhibit a stereotyped smile; their joyousness is increased, and they grin, chuckle, or giggle whenever food is placed before them, or when they are caressed, are shown bright colors, or hear music. Some of them laugh more than usual when they walk about or attempt any muscular exertion. The joyousness of most of these idiots cannot possibly be associated, as Dr. Browne remarks, with any distinct ideas: they simply feel pleasure, and express it by laughter or smiles. With imbeciles rather higher in the scale of personal vanity seems to be the commonest cause of laughter, and next to this pleasure arising from the approbation of their conduct.

        "From the fact that a child can hardly tickle itself, or in a much less degree than when tickled by another person, it seems that the precise point to be touched must not be known; so with the mind, something unexpected―a novel or incongruous idea which breaks through an habitual train of though―appears to be a strong element in the ludicrous.

        "The sound of laughter is produced by a deep inspiration followed by short, interrupted, spasmodic contractions of the chest, and especially of the diaphragm. . . . From the shaking of the body the head nods to and fro. The lower jaw often quivers up and down, as is likewise the case with some species of baboons when they are much pleased.

        "During laughter the mouth is opened more or less widely, with the corners drawn much backward; and the upper lip is somewhat raised. The drawing back of the corners is best seen in moderate laughter, and especially in a broad smile―the latter epithet showing how the mouth is widened.

        "In laughing and broadly smiling the cheeks and the upper lip are much raised, the nose appears to be shortened, and the skin on the bridge becomes finely wrinkled in transverse lines, with the other oblique longitudinal lines on the sides. The upper front teeth are commonly exposed. A well-marked naso-labial fold is formed, which runs from the wing of each nostril to the corner of the mouth; and this fold is often double in old persons.

        "A bright and sparkling eye is characteristic of a pleased or amused state of mind, as is the retraction of the corners of the mouth and upper lip with the wrinkles thus produced. Even the eyes of microcephalous idiots, who are so degraded that they never learn to speak, brighten slightly when they are pleased. . . . According to Dr. Piderit, who has discussed this point more fully than any other writer, the tenseness may be largely attributed to the eyeballs becoming filled with blood and other fluids, from the acceleration of the circulation, consequent on the excitement of pleasure.

        "A man in high spirits, though he may not actually smile, commonly exhibits some tendency to the retraction of the corners of his mouth. From the excitement of pleasure the circulation becomes more rapid; the eyes are bright, and the color of the face rises. The brain, becoming stimulated by the increased flow of blood, reacts on the mental powers; lively ideas pass still more rapidly through the mind, and the affections are warmed. I heard a child, a little under four years old, when asked what was meant by being in good spirits, answer, ‘It is laughing, talking, kissing.’

        "Savages sometimes express their satisfaction, not only by smiling, but by gestures derived from the pleasure of eating. Thus Mr. Wedgwood quotes Petherick that the negroes on the Upper Nile began a general rubbing of their bellies when he displayed his beads; and Leichhardt says that the Australians smacked and clacked their mouths at the sight of his horses and bullocks, and more especially of his kangaroo dogs. The Greenlanders, ‘when they affirm anything with pleasure, suck down air with a certain sound’; and this may be an imitation of the act of swallowing savory food.

        "Laughter is frequently employed in a forced manner to conceal or mask some other state of mind, even anger. We often see persons laughing in order to conceal their shame or shyness. When a person purses up his mouth, as if to prevent the possibility of smile, though there is nothing to excite one, or nothing to prevent is free indulgence, an affected, solemn, or pedantic expression is given; but of such hybrid expressions nothing more need here be said. In case of derision a real or pretended smile or laugh is often blended with the expression proper to contempt and this may pass into angry contempt or scorn. In such cases the meaning of the laugh or smile is to show the offending person that he excites only amusement."

        All these quotations from Darwin’s "The Expression of the Emotions" clearly indicate the intimate relation of joy, satisfaction, laughter, and smiles.

 

CHAPTER II

ART, RELIGION, AND CHILD GAMES

        What changes does the play element undergo from the toys of the child to the jokes, jests, banterings, and comedy of the adult? In all of them we observe the artistic activity manifesting itself as free unrestrained energy. This, however, is too general a statement. We must go more into detail and find out what there is in the object of merriment that unloosens the pent-up energies resulting in the psychomotor activities of laughter. The spent energy, as in all artistic activities, should be felt by the person who exercises it as not tending to any useful aim. The energy must be spent for its own sake: for the love of it. The child in with its doll, the adult playing his games, must feel that they are not for a certain purpose; but the purpose, as in all art, must be the very activity itself. The painter in working on his picture, the sculptor in chiseling his statue, the novelist in working on his book, must feel the same love of the activity itself, irrespective of any ultimate gain. The activity itself must be its own purpose.

        Even in the play instinct manifested as religion, the games, the songs, the hymns, the worship, the prayers, must be for some ultimate infinite aim outside the sordid cares of life; they must be for the love of the Infinite, for the love of God. "Love thy God with all thy heart" is the commandment of religion; in the highest form of religious worship it is love irrespective of all earthly gain. This statement appears irreverent, since it puts religions in the same category with play and games. In the course of our exposition we shall realize the full meaning of this principle of the play instinct underlying man's artistic activity which has its root in the animal play instinct. We shall find that the play instinct is probably the most fundamental instinct of animal life-it gives rise to the highest activities characteristic of human life. The play instinct is one of the broadest, the deepest of human interests that work in man, giving rise to the highest artistic, moral, and intellectual life of which the human mind is capable.

        "Out of the mouths of babes we may learn wisdom," as the Bible puts it. Let us return to the little ones and attempt to scrutinize their simple play and games. We may find in them some of the elements which enter as constituents in the laughter, wit, and the comic of the fully developed adult life. When the little girl plays with her dolls, or the boy plays his games, what we observe most casually is the fact that there is a complete lack of consciousness of effort. The play is carried on with ease, with gracefulness. Even if there is any effort present it is only for the observer: the child that carries out the game has no consciousness of effort, there is not the least trace of irksomeness.

This lack of consciousness of effort and lack of irksomeness are found in the games of the adult, although such games may to the external observer appear difficult. In this respect even severe games, like football or baseball, may be learned so as to have them executed with no consciousness of intense effort. This also holds true in the highly complex and difficult artistic works, such as music, painting, and sculpture. In fact, it may be said that this law holds true in the whole domain of play, with its joy and the consequent inner laughter. In the work of the mathematician when he solves a difficult problem, in the work of the inventor, in the play of chess, as well as in other games, the more difficulties are overcome, the more the joy elements are present, the more we see bubbles of laughter rising to the surface of mental life. The great poet Sophocles makes Electra say of her mother Clytemnestra that she is "triumphantly laughing at what she has done." Similarly the poet in Job says: "Wilt thou give strength to the horse? Wilt thou clothe his neck with thunder? He will not be dismayed and he will laugh at fear." We may then formulate the following law: If an act is carried out in a playful way, the more difficulties that playful act embodies, the more there is of inner joy; the more interesting and exciting the game, the more intense the psychomotor reactions, the more will the manifestations of merriment and laughter appear. This is the secret of the intense allurements of games which are accompanied with danger.

        Nations in which the intellectual and artistic sides are undeveloped look for enjoyment, merriment, and laughter in gross and dangerous games. Witness the gladiatorial games of the ancient Romans, the bull fights of the Spaniards, and the football of the American populace. The whole fun of the game is danger overcome, made easy and playful.

        Many hide this craving for games of danger, this ferocious element, under the guise of training. Such games, it is claimed, train the man. What such games really train is the brutal, animal play instinct. We may possibly formulate another related law: The more material civilization becomes developed, and the craving for play grows, the greater is the demand of having the difficult and the impossible enacted with ease. We demand more and more difficult feats of the clown, of the actor, of the prestidgitateur, of the racers, and of the prize fighters. The technique rises with civilization. What a country bumpkin regards with admiration and laughs at with great joy the city man regards with contempt. We demand of the circus man and the animals with which he plays at great danger of life more and more difficult feats executed and with greater ease and grace. We may, therefore, finally express the law: The lower the intellectual element in a given civilized community, the more will the dangerous elements predominate in their games.

        This may possibly fall under the Weber-Fechner law that while the sensations grow in an arithmetical progression the stimuli grow in a geometrical progression. However, whether the last law be true or not of the whole emotional life, our law remains true; namely, that enjoyment and its psychomotor manifestations, laughter, grow with the difficulties embodied in the act that gives rise to merriment and laughter. The ease with which the difficult or dangerous feat is carried out arouses joy with its accompanying smiles and laughter.

        In his dance, in his jump, in his gambol, it is the ease with which the motions are executed that gives the child such joy, over which he delights in peals of laughter. In his choice of the ball the young child specially delights and laughs of the skips of the light ball that rebounds with ease. The balloon that skips and floats about he greets with merry laughter. The child will not choose anything clumsy, heavy, unwieldy, or irksome to handle: there is no fun in it. He wants the laughter of enjoyment of triumph. This laughter of triumph runs though all the stages of life. When we triumph over some difficulty after a period of long hard work, we laugh. We laugh, when news is brought to us which we hardly believe could have happened. The actor or singer cannot help laughing after a successful play; the grave professor smiles when he solves his problem; the banker, speculator, and financier smile when their plans and schemes have been successfully carried out. The politician, the statesman has his grim smile after a successful campaign, and the general has his grin after a

triumphant battle. This is the laughter of triumph.

        And Miriam the prophetess took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath been thrown into the sea.

        We have here the joy, song, and laughter of triumph.

CHAPTER III

THE LUDICROUS

        We may now reverse the process. Suppose the child in playing with the ball sees one who does not know how to catch it; misses it every time; knocks himself against the ball without getting hold of it; slips, falls down, picks himself up and runs after the ball without being able to catch it. In short, the person is awkward, clumsy, finds difficulties where there are none. Friction appears where there should be smoothness; hardship is manifest where ease and grace are expected. The child laughs the laughter of triumph, not with the person, but at the person; from the height of hi supposed efficiency or ideal of efficiency the child laughs the laughter of triumph at the supposed deficiencies of the person—the person is ridiculed. Any supposed deficiency in appearance, in person, or in action is laughed at—is ridiculed. We are now in the domain of the comic. Children in school ridicule any clumsiness, awkwardness, or any personal deficiency; they make merry over the lame, the hunchback, the cross-eyed, the blind. For that matter, we find the same amusements among the uncultivated who make merry the bodily defects of their neighbors and acquaintances.

        Old Homer, when he wishes to ridicule Thersites, presents the ancient demagogue as:

        . . . ill favored beyond all men that came to Ilios. Bandy-legged was he, and lame of one foot, and his shoulders rounded, arched down over his chest; and over them his head was warped, and a scantly stubble sprouted on it.

        Victor Hugo in his "Notre Dame de Paris," represents the crowd bursting into a thunder of applause and shouts of convulsive, derisive laughter at the sight of the ugly, misshapen, one-eyed, bandy-legged, huge-headed, splay-footed, thick-nosed, horseshoe-mouthed, double-humped, deformed monster hunchback, Quasimodo.

        When the great Russian writer, Gogol, wishes to ridicule the type he represents by Sobakevitch he makes the latter look defective, awkward, and clumsy.

        Sobakevitch looked like a medium sized bear. To complete this resemblance his coat was the color of a bear’s fur; his sleeves were long; his trousers were large; he was flat-footed, walked both awry and askew, and trod constantly upon the feet of other people. His face shone like a bright copper coin.

        There are many faces over whose formation Nature did not pause long in thought, nor employ any delicate instruments, but simply hewed them at full sweep of her arm; she grasped her axe, a

nose appeared; she grasped it again—the lips appeared; with a big auger she formed the eyes; and without planning it down, she loosed the figure in the world, saying: "Let it have life."

        Even refined and cultivated people cannot suppress a smile when they hear one stammer. This Shakespeare in his "Merry Wives of Windsor" makes his characters ridiculous by representing Sir Hugh Evans, the parson, as defective in speech, and Sir John Falstaff as defective in bodily appearance. "Very goot," says Evans, "I will make a prief in my notebook." Of Fallstaff Mrs. Ford says: "What a tempest, I trow, threew this whale, with so many tons of oil in his belly, ashore at Windsor?" As Sir Evans, the parson, is awkward in his speech, so Falstaff, the fat man, is clumsy in his body. Both of them, on account of such clumsiness, are exposed by Shakespeare as objects of ridicule.

        The following jokes about stammerers may illustrate our point:

        A stutterer once asked one of the guards in a railway station: "How f-f-f-f-far is it t-t-t-t-to C-C-C-C-Cambridge?"

        The guard did not answer.

        The stutterer repeated his question; again the guard remained silent. The stutterer became angry and turned to the next guard, "I shall r-r-rep-p-p-port t-t-that m-m-m-man. I asked him h-h-how f-f-f-far it w-w-wwas t-t-t-to C-C-C-C-Cambridge and he r-r-r-ref-f-fused t-t-t-t-to answer."

        The guard gave the information and then turned to the first silent and asked him why he did not give the required information.

        "D-D-D-D-Do you t-t-t-think I want m-m-m-m-my b-b-b-b-b-blamed head kn-n-n-n-ocked off?"

        A gentleman, stammering much in his speech, laid down a winning card; and then said to his partner, "How s-s-s-sa-ay you now, w-w-was not t-t-this c-c-c-c-card p-p-p-p-passing we-we-well l-l-l-laid?"

        "Yes," says the other, "it was well laid, but it needs not half the cackling."

        I have found out a gig-gig-gift for my fuf-fuf-fair,

        I have found out where the rattle-snakes bub-bub-breed;

        Will you co-co-come, and I’ll show you the bub-bub-bear,

        And the lions and tit-tit-tigers at fuf-fuf-feed.

        I know where the co-co-cockatoo’s song

        Makes mum-mum-melody through the sweet vale;

        Where the mum-monkeys gig-gig-grin all the day long

        Or gracefully swing by the tit-tit-tail.

        You shall pip-play, dear, some did-did-delicate joke

        With the bub-bub-bear on the tit-tit-top of his pip-pip-pip-pole;

        But observe, ‘tis forbidden to pip-poke

        At the bub-bub-bear with your pip-pip-pink pip-pip-pip-pip-parasol!

        You shall see the huge elephant pip-pip play,

        You shall gig-gig-graze on the stit-stit-stately racoon;

        And then did-dear, together we’ll stray

        To the cage of the bub-bub-blue faced bab-bab-boon.

        You wished (I r-r-remember it well,

        And I lul-lul-loved you the m-m-more for the wish)

        To witness the bub-bub-beautiful pip-pip-pelican swallow

        The l-l-live little fuf-fuf-fish!

        Molière does not hesitate to utilize the defect of stammering to enhance physical and mental awkwardness, and hence the comical side, of the characters represented. Our dime museums still keep on amusing the public with their proverbial fat men. The stoutness and fatness of Falstaff are utilized by Shakespeare to enhance the comic situations in which Falstaff is put.

        What is it specially that is comic in the fat man? It is the clumsiness, the awkwardness, the angularity, the unwieldy form and mass; "a whale," as Shakespeare puts it; "a whale," as Gogol characterizes one of his comic heroes. The difficulties, instead of being eased, the angularities, instead of being rounded out, are visible and protruding at all points. What looks to us clumsy, awkward, and restrained is ludicrous. What is accompanied with effort, with friction, and with great difficulty where such are not expected, is regarded as ludicrous. And this ease holds true in the

plays of the child, the games of the populace, the feats of the acrobat, the play of the comedian, and the delicate play of the wit. When difficulties and clumsiness are discerned where there should be ease and grace in the manifestation of energy and action, there we see the ridiculous, and we laugh.

        We enjoy and laugh when we are conscious of our spontaneous activity; when our inner energies bubble up freely to the surface of life. We laugh at others when we find them wanting, when we find in them lack of energy, lack of adaptation, clumsiness, awkwardness, clownishness. We laugh at the brogue, at dialect, at foreigners talking our language. The same anecdote appears to us more ridiculous when we present in the incorrect and clumsy way spoken by an Irishman or by a Dutchman.

        The following anecdote, for instance, appears more funny when expressed in the lingo of the foreigner:

        A German farmer lost his horse and wished to insert and advertisement in the paper. When he came to the editor, the editor asked him what he should put in the paper; the farmer answered, "Yust vat I told you. Vun night, de udder day, a week ago, last month, I heard me a noise by the front middle of the pack yard vich did not used to be. So I jumps the ped oud und runs mit der door out, und ven I see, I finds that my pig iron mare, he is tied loose and running mit der stabble off. Whoever prings him pack shall pay five dollars reward."

        Many a comic author avails himself of the peculiar, broken, corrupt speech of the countryman or of the foreigner to make the public laugh. We can well see where the ridiculous side lies―it is in the clumsiness, the awkwardness of speech. It is the same condition which is found in the case of the stammerer and sutterer. However the case may be, difficulties brought to the foreground, clumsiness, and awkwardness, where the hearer or observer demands or expects ease and grace, excite merriment and laughter.

        The law of the difficult manifested in the comic, instead of the expected ease, grace, and almost automatic adaptation and adjustment, is well brought out in Mark Twain’s burlesque comments on the German language.

        The compounding of words has been the theme of ridicule since the time of Aristophanes, who concocted a word in imitation of the long words of the speculative sophistry of his countrymen, made up of seventy-seven syllables, and meaning simple hash. Writers in different countries have ridiculed the Germans for their addiction to the habit of compounding long words which are impossible to pronounce without choking and loss of breath. Thus German scientists invented formidable terms:

FRAUENSCHENSTEHLENMONOMANIE

LAUTIRANSCHAUUNGSUNTERRICHTSMETODE

        Hegel has among his many terms:

SICHINSICHSELBSTREFLECTIEREN

SICHSELBSTERHALTENDE

KAUSALZUSAMMENHANG

ANUNDFÜRSICHSEIEN

ABSOLUTALLGEMEINE

INSICHZURÜCKGEGANGENSEIN.

 

        Schopenhauer ridiculed with great vigor the long-winded German style:

        "The German weaves his sentences together into one sentence which he twists and crosses, and crosses and twists again; because he wants to say six things all at once, expressed in a high-flown, bombastic language in order to communicate the simplest thought. The long German sentence is involved and full of parentheses like so many boxes one enclosed within another, all padded out like stuffed geese, overburdening the reader’s memory, weakening his understanding and hindering his judgment. . . . This kind of sentence furnishes the reader with mere half-phrases which he is then called upon to collect carefully and store up in his memory as though they were the pieces of a torn letter which the reader has to put together to make sense. . . . The writer breaks up his principal sentence into little pieces, for the sole purpose of pushing into the gaps thus made two or three other thoughts by way of parenthesis, thereby unnecessarily and wantonly confusing the reader."

        The vagueness and unintelligibility of German philosophy and especially of Hegelian philosophical speculation have been often ridiculed for their meaningless jargon. The Hegelians heap words, sentences, and paragraphs and expect the reader to supply the meaning. I give here a translation from that conundrum of Hegelian philosophical dialectics, a kind of metaphysical Pilgrim’s Progress, "Die Phänomenologie des Geistes." The book contains about six hundred pages, with a preface of fifty-eight, and an introduction of twenty-four pages, all closely printed in Gothic type. The passage from the preface:

        "The spiritual alone is the actual; it is the being or Initselfbeing (Ansichseiende),―the self-contained and determined,―the Otherbeing (Anderseien) or Forselfbeing (Fürsichseien)—and in that determination or its Outerbeing in itself remaining: or it is in and for itself. This Inandforitselfbeing (Anundfürsichseien) is only at first for us or in itself, it is the spiritual substance. It must also be for itself, must be the knowledge of the spiritual and must be the knowledge of itself as spirit, it must be its own object, but as much immediate or sublimated, in itself reflected object. It is for itself but for us, in so far as its spiritual content is manifested through itself; in so far however as it is for itself, it is for self, so it is self-manifested, the pure concept, at the same time its own objective element wherein it has its being, and it is in this way in its own being for itself in self-reflected object."

        We may take a couple of examples from Hegel’s chapter on Perception (Wahrnehmung):

        The this is thus given as not this, or as subliminated, and therewith not nothing, but a definite nothing, or a nothing having a content, namely, the this (Das Dieses ist also gesetzt, als nicht dieses, oder als aufgehoben und damit nicht Nichts, sondern ein bestimmtes Nichts, oder ein Nichts von einem Inhalte nämlichen dem Diesen).

        The thing is one, in itself reflected; it is for itself but it is also for another; and it is also another for itself as it is for another (Das Ding ist Eins, in sich reflectiert; es ist zwar für sich; aber es ist auch für ein Anderes; und zwar ist es ein ANderes für sich, als es für Anderes ist).

        The italics are Hegel’s. The sense is chiefly in the suggestive power of the italics.

        Such metaphysical speculations are recommended by some Hegelians as the profoundest wisdom of modern idealistic philosophy. One is reminded of the semi-Platonic, semi-Hegelian definition of love: "Love is the ideality of the relativity of reality of an infinitesimal part of the infinite totality of the Absolute Being."

        All these examples fully illustrate my view of the subject of laughter in general and of the ludicrous in particular. May we not put the matter thus: There is laughter of enjoyment, the more difficult becomes easy; but the more the easy is difficult, the more occasion for laughter, or derision. We laugh in a state of enjoyment when the difficult is accomplished with ease, and we laugh again when the easy is accomplished with difficulty. Shall we say that the one is the ascending laughter, the laughter of triumph, and the other the reverse, the descending laughter, the laughter over the defeated? We shall return to this view again and consider it more closely: meanwhile it is advisable to approach the matter under consideration from a slightly different standpoint, which may open to us a new horizon.

        When we laugh over our triumph or over the defeat of our opponents does it no mean the triumph and defeat in regard to certain difficulties? Such difficulties are supposed to be possible to overcome by the average person belonging to a certain class of which a certain amount of energy as a reaction to external stimuli is required.

        We require of laborers a certain amount or quantity of work, and of artists a certain amount of skill and talent, just as we require of the school boy and the school girl a certain amount of study and knowledge which vary as the grades are higher and as the school belongs to the higher branches of education. This is the standard, the norm required, a norm to which man must be adapted in his social environment.

        Standards vary with different with different levels of society and with various countries and ages. We require of the actor a certain amount and quality of acting, a certain amount of a definite quality of knowledge and practice of the worker, of the engineer, of the lawyer, of the soldier, of the physician, of the artist, of the business man, of the clerk, and of the minister. This requirement varies with each country and each age. There is a tacitly assumed level in each society to which man and woman must conform. To be able to rise above that level and manifest more than the usual amount and quality of energy gives rise to the smile of satisfaction or to the laughter of enjoyment. A fall below that level arouses in the spectator the converse laughter, the laughter of the comic, the laughter of derision. May we not assert that the reason man laughs is because he is a being of standards, norms, ideas, and ideals? May we not take a step further and assert that laughter is essentially human, inasmuch as it has reference to established standards and ideals?

        Moreover, we may say that laughter is essentially social, as it is in relation to the standards of different social groups varying with each country, society, and age. In spite of his extraordinary comic genius, Aristophanes remains sadly neglected, and all the wit of Lucian remains unappreciated except by the scholar. Standards, ideals, given by training, social, moral, religious, all these guide men in their thoughts, beliefs, and action. These standards form the social level for the individual in each given age and community. It is Pindar, I think, who tells us that is the tyrant of man.

        May we not say that it is custom or standard given by society that guides the taste of the individual, and anything deviating from the custom, anything uncustomary, is regarded as strange and ridiculous? How many times do we hear old and young fogies tell us when something is

propounded to them: "How peculiar, how strange, whoever heard of such a thing!" The Chinaman regards a woman with large feet as ridiculous; we in return laugh over the bandaged feet of the refined Chinese ladies and the long, twisted nails of their gentlemen. The American laughs at the Chinese pig-tails, and the true Chinaman ridicules the close-cropped European. The Northmen laugh at the Greco-Roman skirts and robes, while the Greco-Roman ridicules the trousered barbarian. The Englishman and the American, like Mark Twain, ridicule the German language and manners, and the German returns it to the same coin. As in the lower grades of development child laugh at defects and deviations from the human form, so in the more developed grades of human life people laugh at deviations from custom and use. What is not customary, what is not usual, is laughed at.

        The more restricted a society or social group becomes, the more it becomes separated from the rest of human societies and from other social groups, the more that isolated society or group will find ludicrous the customs and manners of people with whom they happen to be thrown into social contact. Observe how the exclusive Greek or Hebrew rails at the barbarian and the Gentile; how the Chinaman mocks at the European "red barbarian," and the European in turn ridicules John, the Chinaman.

        We laugh at the clown because he dresses differently from other people: he wears striped suits with red spots, caps with bells, paints his face in patches with striking colors that call the child’s attention as being different from the color of the people. The merry-andrew, the zany, Punch and Judy, are greeted by children and the uncultivated with peals of laughter, because the dresses, the squeaking voices, differ from the usual—from the customary. Why do we amuse the public in our theaters and summer gardens by bringing onstage actors imitating the speech, dress and actions of foreigners? Because foreigners live differently from us, that is not customary, and hence funny. This source of using the foreigner, or with us the bringing the Dutchman or some familiar nationality on stage as an object of ridicule, is often exploited by the comic writer. In fact, this source of the comic is as old as Aristophanes, who brought before the Greeks the Persian barbarians, Sham-Artabas, or the Great King’s eye, and utilized this device to make the Greek populace laugh. The device is simple and is based on the principle that we are ready to ridicule what is foreign to us, what we regard as not conforming to use and custom. All deviations from the standard molds, all variations and changes from the usual may become objects of laughter.

CHAPTER IV

LAUGHTER AND NOVELTY

            Funny pictures, caricatures, cartoons, illustrations that so amuse our populace and are in such a demand in our newspapers, magazines, and reviews, political and social cartoons, like merry-andrews and clowns, employ various devices in their technique, all based on the fundamental principle: the deviation from the customary, the habitual, and the usual. The cartoonist, like the clown in our popular amusement places, plays on the fundamental principle inherent in every human breast: laughter and ridicule at what is regarded as deviations, abnormalities. The cartoonist makes the body small, the head inordinately large, the nose long, the chin protruding, the teeth like tusks. By disfigurements, distortions, deformations, defects, blemishes, and malformations the cartoonist manages to heap ridicule on persons and situations he wishes to revile. Variations from the accepted standard of the normal are regarded as defects, fit for laughter and ridicule.

            The production of defects, like all artistic work, must appear as having independent value,

not associated with any thing useful, but like all play, the enjoyment forms so to say a closed circle. The play is enjoyed as play, no matter whether or no it makes the observer better, wiser, or more successful in life. All those effects may come, but they are not directly aimed at by play and art.

            The defects are regarded by the observer from a purely artistic standpoint, having deep subconscious associations with fundamental human sympathies and moral life. We laugh at other people; we ridicule their shortcomings and defects, because we regard them as being below the customary standard accepted in the particular age and class of society.

            We can understand why new ideas, new views, new reforms are so pitilessly ridiculed. Custom is the soul of society. What deviates from custom is a laughing stock, a butt for ridicule. Aristophanes in his "Clouds" ridicules Socrates and the new-fangled ideas of the Sophists. The Jew, the Christian, the Mohammedan, and the various monotheistic sects ridicule one another; each one is the truth and salvation, each one regards the other as deviating from the custom and usage prevalent in that particular sect and faith. Even a Napoleon ridiculed the proposition of railroads. It was not long ago when people turned their noses at automobiles as being fit for upstarts only. The flying machine and similar radical changes and inventions introduced into social life have passed through the same process of ridicule. In our newspapers, which reflect the opinions and views of the crowd, of mediocrity, any new work, any new theory is held up to ridicule by the pen of the reporter, the pencil of the editor, and the brush of the pseudo-artist, the cartoonist. Instance, the sardonic laughter of the press over the discovery of the hook-worm, the "germ of laziness," in the South.

            Changes, reforms in dress, in education, politics, industry, economy, art, and science, if such changes be not trivial, but radical, excite merriment in the public and their representative wiseacres. Guilds and castes, classes and professions are especially averse to the new. The new may prove a poisonous enzyme fermenting and transforming the whole social organization. The sect, the profession, the class are unconsciously inimical to the new-born change which is exposed to ridicule and is thus effectually suppressed.

            Plato is aware of the fact that all novelties and reforms lend themselves readily to ridicule. Man is essentially conservative and is kept within the path of custom, as a planet within its orbit. In his "Republic" Plato says:

              Not long ago since it was thought discreditable and ridiculous among the Greeks, as it is now among most barbarian nations, for men to be seen naked. And when the Cretans first, and after them the Lacedaemonians, began the practice of gymnastic exercises, the wits of the time had it in their power to make sport of those novelties. But when experience had shown that it was better to strip than to cover up the body and when the ridiculous effect which this plan had to the eye had given way before the arguments establishing its superiority, it was at the same time, as I imagine, demonstrated that he is a fool who thinks any thing ridiculous but that which is evil, and who attempts to raise a laugh by assuming any object to be ridiculous but which is unwise and evil.

            We can realize the reason why all novelty is distasteful to man, especially if it is totally unfamiliar. Man is married to habit. Custom and routine govern his actions, his beliefs, his hopes, and his life. All barbaric and ancient societies are based on custom, which takes the place of law and is consecrated by religion. In fact, custom is religion. As Bagehot has pointed out long ago, the greater part of humanity at present, and formerly the whole of mankind, hated and despised novelty. Change is looked upon as bad and wicked; reform is immoral and ungodly. The greatest of evils, such as cannibalism, human sacrifice, slavery, human degradation in all its atrocious forms, political and economical, are all consecrated by long habit and custom of ages. In fact, our law goes

by custom and precedent, no matter how absurd. The same holds true in the methods of training the young. Man is a creature of habit, a slave of custom. What is unhabitual, uncustomary is irrational, absurd, and stupid, and hence, ludicrous.

 

CHAPTER V

RIDICULE AND SOCIAL DECADENCE

        Old worn-out ideals, beliefs, and decrepit institutions meet with ridicule. Thus Lucian jibes at the worn-out ancient deities and myths; the Humanists in various pamphlets such as the "Epistolae Virorum Obscurum" ridicule the Catholic church; Voltaire makes merry over the supposed glories and optimistic views of the philosophers of the eighteenth century; Bernard de Mandeville ridicule the optimistic ethic of Shaftsbury and of the Cambridge idealists.

        Perhaps a few examples taken from the writings of Lucian and Aristophanes may best illustrate our point of view.

        In his "Icaro-Menippus" Lucian directs his shafts of poignant ridicule against the metaphysical and philosophical speculations, as well as against the whole fabric of ancient tradition and religious beliefs. He jeers at the philosopher, and hobnobs with the once mighty Zeus.

        "I engaged them (the philosophers)," Menippus tells his friend, "to teach me the perfect knowledge of the universe; but so far were they from removing my ignorance, that they only threw me into greater doubt and uncertainty by puzzling me with atoms, vacuums, beginnings, ends, ideas, forms, and so forth. The worst of all was that though none agreed with the rest in what they advanced, but were all of contrary opinions, yet did every one of them expect that I should embrace his tenets and subscribe to his doctrine." Menippus became an aeronaut, an aetheronaut would probably be more correct, by taking an eagle's wing and that of a vulture and flew to Olympus to visit Jupiter. Lucian takes here the occasion to put the course and turmoil of human life in a ludicrous light.        I had much to; to relate it to you is impossible. . . . The Getae at war, the Scythians traveling in their caravans, the Egyptians tilling their fields, the Phoenicians merchandising, the Cilicians robbing and plundering, the Spartans flogging their children, and the Athenians perpetually quarreling and going to law with one another. 

        When all this was going on at the same time you may imagine what a strange scene it appeared to me. It was just as if a number of singers were met together, every one singing his own song, each striving to drown other's voice by bawling as loud as he could. You may well fancy what kind of a concert this would make.

Friend. Truly ridiculous and confused, no doubt.

Menippus. And yet such, my friend, are all the poor performers upon earth, and such is the discordant music of human life. Not only are the voices all dissonant and inharmonious, but the forms and habits differ, they move in various directions and agree in nothing, till at length the great master of the choir drives every one from the stage, and tells him he is no longer wanted there. In this wide extensive theater, full of variations and shapes and forms, everything was a matter of laughter and ridicule. . . .

You have so often seen a crowd of ants running to and fro and out of their city, some turning up a bit of dung, others dragging a bean, shell, or running away with half a grain of wheat. I have no doubt but they have architects, demagogues, senators, musicians and philosophers among them.

Menippus appears before Jupiter, who is treated by the adventurer with a most patronizing familiarity. The conversation that follows is full of jests and jibes on the petty character of that august divinity, the father of the gods.As we went along, he asked me several questions about earthly matters, such as "How much corn is there at present in Greece? Had you had a hard winter last year? Did your cabbages need rain? Is any of Phidias` family alive now? What is the reason that the Athenians have left off sacrificing to me for so many years? Do the think of building up the Olympian temple again?" When I had answered all these questions, "Pray Menippus," said he, "what does mankind really think of me?" "How should they think of you," said I, "but with the utmost veneration that you are the great sovereign of the gods?" "There you jest."

Nothing can be more ludicrous than this jesting conversation, this patronizing familiarity and small gossip with the mighty father of gods and men. Jupiter complains that his altars are as cold and neglected as Plato's laws or the syllogisms of Chrysippus. 

        The most ludicrous scene is the description of Jupiter attending to business and petitions.

We came to the place where the petitions were to be heard. Here we found several holes with covers to them. Jupiter goes from hole to hole, removes the lid from each hole listening to the various prayers, petitions, vows, news gossip. There is a sort of a chimney with a lid for the fumes of sacrifice to ascend to the abode of the gods.After the business is over Menippus is invited to dinner. The description is full of fun and mockery.Ceres served us with bread, Bacchus with wine, Hercules handed about the flesh, Venus scattered myrtles and Neptune brought us fish. I got slyly a little nectar and ambrosia; for my friend Ganymede, if he saw Jove looking another way, would frequently throw me in a cup or two.

Nothing could be more fatal to the dignity and prestige of the ancient religions than this jovial hobnobbing with the Olympic deities, the jesting and bantering with father Jove. 

Far more powerful is Aristophanes, the greatest comic writer of all ages. In his "Clouds" Aristophanes represents Strepsiades, burdened by debts, coming to Socrates' Reflectory, or thinking shop, to be instructed in the not-paying-your-creditors argument.

Strep. Teach me, and I will swear by the gods to pay you your fees.

Socrates. What gods? Gods don't pass current here.Socrates tells Strepsiades that Zeus is out of date, and that the only deites worshiped are the Clouds, an ironical allusion to the cloudy speculations of philosophy. Socrates is represented hanging in a basket between earth and heaven invoking his deities-the Clouds. The Clouds come and greet the philosopher thus:Be welcome, high priest of all trumpery trifles, you veteran hunter of words clever and subtle!

Explain the request you desire us to grant you, to no one we hearken as well as to you.So great is your wisdom and so solemn your glances as we watch your proud strutting

along in the streets.

Soc. You won't believe in any gods besides ours-Clouds, Chaos and Tongue?

Strep. I won't even speak to the rest, if I should meet them.

Clouds. Tell us plainly what you want.

Strep. I want to be the cleverest speaker in Greece.

Clouds. So you shall; no man shall carry more resolutions to the assembly.

Strep. I don't care about resolutions in the assembly; I want to slip through my creditor's hands.When the old man Strepsiades finds the Socratic sophistry too difficult to learn his son Pheidipedes goes to the Socratic "Reflectory." When Pheidipedes comes home he attacks the old paternal rule and tells his father:It was man that made the law and why should not I make a new law that the sons beat their fathers. The cock and other animals punish their fathers, and there is no difference between them and us, except that they do not prepare resolutions and decrees in the assembly.

        In this way does Aristophanes rail and laugh at the new ideas of the Sophists and the Socratic reforms of individual inquiry, criticism, and analysis. At the same time he lashes with his sharp raillery and mordant ridicule the Athenian assembly for its love of oratory and the introduction of ever new resolutions and bills. Aristophanes ridicules the new ways of education and the extreme, democratic changes incident to the political life of the Athenian commonwealth. He takes his stand on the old modes of life, on the old forms of education and training, on the old religious beliefs and customs that have produced the heroes of Marathon.

        In ridiculing Athenian politics Aristophanes gives directions to the Sausage-seller how to defeat Cleon, the Athenian political leader, and to manage the people:

The easiest thing in the world. Do just as you have been doing. Mangle and mash everything. Flavor and spice to suit the people's taste. You have got every qualification for a demagogue. You have a vile voice, you have a low disposition and unscrupulous character.

        The contest that follows may well remind one of the American political campaign between Roosevelt and Taft for the highest office in the land.

Cleon. I'll outbawl and undo you.

Sausage-Seller. I'll out-scream and out-squall you. Never do I blush and blink.

Cleon. When I'm dealing, I can swear to things that are not. And, though people heard and saw, I care not.

        Compare with the new "National Hymn" made in mockery of Roosevelt and his followers, the so-called Bull Moose Progressive Party:

No matter though he said,He never could be ledTo run again;We know now it was a

bluff,Or some such other stuffAs guff or puff or fluffIn his brain.

        Here is the prayer with which the Sausage-seller opens his campaign in the Senate: 

Hear me, O powers of Fraud and Boobydom, and ye spirits of the market and the street, the places where I was bred, and thou, great Impudence, hear me, and help, giving me courage, and a ready tongue and a shameless voice.

        Aristophanes ridicules the Athenian politics in the same way as the modern cartoonist ridicules the presidential campaign by representing the two presidential candidates, riding to Chicago on the Monopoly Limited with the Trust as their guardian, calling each other names and almost coming to blows. As in the modern political campaign, the Sausage-seller accuses Cleon: 

Thanks to the dust you kick up, Demos can see nothing of what is going on.

Cleon. O my dear Demos, don't believe him. You have never had a better friend or a more watchful one. Haven't I kept you up? Haven't I watched night and day and discovered schemes, treasons, plots and conspiracies? (Corresponding to the scheming of the modern trust.)

Sausage-Seller. Oh yes, we all know what you mean by your treason and plots. You are just like the fellows that fish in troubled waters.

        Both Cleon and the Sausage-seller declare their intense love and affection for Demos, their supposed master:

Cleon. If I should advise youAgainst what is best for your comfort and interest,May I suffer and perish.

Sausage-Seller. O Demos,No man can more adore youWith so tender a care.

        Who cannot read in the eternal ridicule on political campaigning carried on in the democratic countries where Demos is the master? Even a superficial glance at the quotations from Aristophanes discloses the fact that the characters, institutions, and new ideas ridiculed are regarded as defective, as wanting in the common social and moral principles of every day life. The characters represented are found to be ludicrous, because we are made to realize the inferiority of the persons, institutions, and ideas with regard to the accepted standards of life. Defects where merits should be expected, lack of adjustment where more perfect adaptation is looked for, inferiority to the ordinary level of life where superiority should be expected, all such relations constitute the main conditions under which objects, physical and ideal, are made ridiculous in the eyes of the external observer. This statement in its turn can be further reduced to the more general principle of lack of energy when an abundance of it is expected, of difficulties, awkwardness, and clumsiness where there should be ease, grace, and manifestations of energy in response to the external and internal stimuli and situations.

CHAPTER VI

DEVIATIONS AND THE LUDICROUS

        Whenever we can prick a vital point in our neighbor, whenever we can find a weak spot in our fellow beings, in their manners, beliefs, institutions, and ideals, there we invariably find the ludicrous. For while e enjoy the spontaneous laughter of free activity and unimpeded manifestation of energy we also feel our superiority by the detection of defects, imperfections, and weakness in our fellow beings, or in the manners which they have, or in the views and beliefs which they entertain. The social brute attacks and kills its weak associate, while man hits his neighbor’s weak spots with jibes, ridicule, and laughter.

        It is quite probable that laughter, in addition to the fact of its being one of the important psychomotor manifestations of the play instinct, may also be of some use in the biological process of organic social growth. All variations that fall below the average social level have somehow to be corrected and possibly eliminated.

        Now when a variation is positively harmful to social life then society defends itself by penalties and punishments. Variations, however, occur all the time in social life, and their tendency is at first uncertain. Many of the variations from the standard can possibly be punished as sins and crimes. It is true that in many ancient barbaric and savage societies change and variation are regarded as sinful and criminal. Man must live up to the average standard, any deviation from which is strictly punished by law. Life is prescribed to its very minutiae, even to the cut of the dress, the kind and manner of food and relations with other people. Still, even under such conditions variations will occur, variations which cannot possibly be provided against. Society wishes to be immune from changes, and especially from uncertain changes, the old way is certain and safe, while a new may possibly lead to some harmful results. The only sure protection is to guard against all possible changes and variations, however slight and apparently harmless.

        Who can foresee whither a variation may tend? May not a given variation be of a harmful, inferior type and tend gradually to disintegrate, to degrade the quality of social life? Variations are risky and dangerous, better not to try them. Life, however, cannot be arrested, variations do occur in societies and tribes, however rigid and stationary their social status. Variations cannot be exactly treated as sinful and criminal, since many of them are quite slight and inoffensive. There are again some that may prove useful. On the whole, however, changes are suspicious, especially if they do not coincide with custom and religion. Something must be done to counteract and destroy the very germ of possible serious changes, or slight eccentricities. Slight eccentricities and trivial changes do not deserve punishment or the use of social force. Society possesses a powerful weapon to kill the germs of variations, to nip them in their bud. This weapon is ridicule. Slight, inoffensive variations are treated as inferior, as below the average level, below the normal; such variations or mutations are treated with ridicule; they are regarded as inferior to the normal type and laughed at.

        Society does not find it convenient to undertake forcible suppression of slight, incubating, individual mutations; it does not wish to set in motion the machinery of law and order, the judge, the policeman, the solider, the court, the prison, and the barrack in order to punish small changes, insignificant mutation and trivial eccentricities; they are all put down below the normal and covered with ridicule. Such a powerful solvent is ridicule that few variations or mutations can withstand it. Only mutations of great vigor and vitality can survive the scathing lightening of laughter and ridicule. Few men and women have the hardihood to withstand that peculiar ostracism expressed in social ridicule. Man is gregarious; he must go with the crowd. In fact we may say that man is more afraid of social ridicule than of actual sever punishment. Society can thus kill innovations, mutations, without any severity, without any shedding of blood as the inquisitorial phrase runs; it can smother all new-fangled things and have its laugh and fun beside. Why punish, why not laugh?

        To be classed with rejected, with the inferior, with the abnormal is humiliating to the average

man, and more so to the average woman. The average "normal" man and woman dread ridicule. The power of ridicule is so potent, the fear of it is so overwhelming that the stoutest of heart turns coward and runs. Neither persecution nor social ostracism can equal in repressive force social jibe and jeer. The true hero is he who can ignore social ridicule.

        Persecution is a homage paid to the persecuted. For society sees in the persecuted a power to be reckoned with of which it is afraid, but laughter is an innocent merry-making at the expense of the insignificant, the weak, the defective, the inferior, and the trivial. Such an attitude of our neighbors to us is so humiliating that few can bear it. Society thus possesses an amusing and powerful means for the control of variations, deviations and eccentricities. Man can hardly remain unscathed by the social lye, by the powerful solvent of social ridicule. Laughter is an efficient instrument, inexpensive and apparently mild. "Great enlargement of mind," Pascal tells us, "not less than extreme limitation of faculty is charged with folly. Nothing obtains currency but mediocrity. The multitude have established their order of things and are on the alert to let no one escape who attempts to break through at either end . . ." Neither Hamlet mad nor Hamlet genius can escape the detection and revenge of established order.

        There are, however, times when decadence sets into the social organism; social rigidity relaxes; then the individual turns on society and repays it in its own coin. Genius discerns the weak spots of the social constitution, of enfeebled institutions, of worn out ideas, decaying ideals and beliefs. With the power of his genius the individual brings those defects and faults clearly before the social mind. Like the wasp he stings the social caterpillar in the weakest, in the most vital and most tender points of social organization. Society wriggles in laughter, but it bears the attack often without retaliation. Society is served with its own medicine; it is wounded by its own most powerful weapon. Such a condition is an indication of grave social changes.

        The weapon of ridicule is employed by all great reformative movements, such as Humanism, the Reformation, the Renaissance, the English and the French revolutions. The ridicule which the individual turns on society indicates decay of old structures and presages the birth of a new order of things. Under such conditions we find Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopedaedists of the eighteenth century. Like Aristophanes, Voltaire made people laugh. The great Greek comic writer ridiculed the new order from the standpoint of the old one, while the great French philosopher made France Europe laugh away their old worn out institutions and obsolete beliefs. Aristophanes could only see before him a degenerated Greece with all its glory in the past, while Voltaire saw before him a rejuvenated Europe and France with all their greatness in the future.

        Perhaps a few examples taken from Voltaire may best elucidate our standpoint:

         "How can you prefer senseless stories that mean nothing?"

        "That is just why we read them," answered the ladies.

         This is a good comment on the literature produced and consumed by the ladies of our own times.

         Zadig followed the noble maxim of Zoroaster: When thou eatest give something to the dogs, even though they should bite thee. Instructed in the sciences of the ancient Chaldeans, he was not ignorant of such principles of natural philosophy as were then known, and knew as much of metaphysics as has been known in any age, that is to say, next to nothing. He was firmly persuaded that the year consisted of 365 days and a quarter, and when the leading magi of his time told him with contemptuous arrogance that he entertained dangerous opinions and that it was a proof of

hostility to the government to believe that the sun turned on its own axis, he held his peace without showing either anger or disdain.

         Zadig’s matrimonial troubles are no less interesting.

         He fell in love with the admirable Semira. A nobleman, who imagined himself in love with Semira, because he thought himself a better man and was envious and jealous of Zadig, made an attempt to carry of Semira by force, Zadig defended her. Semira pierced the sky with her lamentations. She cried aloud, "My dear husband! They are tearing me from him who is the idol of my heart." Zadig at the risk of his life and with a deep wound in his eye finally succeeded in resucing Semira. Zadig’s wounded eye became worse and gave cause for alarm. Semira’s only prayer was that he might be healed. A messenger was sent for Hermes, the famous physician. The physician declared that Zadig would lose his eye, if fortelling the day and hour of this sad event. "If it had been the right eye," said he, "I might have cured it; but injuries to the left eye are incurable."

        All Babylon admired the profound scientific research of Hermes. Two days afterwards the eye was well again. Hermes wrote a book in which he proved that Zadig ought not to have been cured; but Zadig did not read it. After he got well he found that Semira, objecting to one-eyed people, had in haste married the man who had attempted to carry her off by force. Zadig then chose Azora, who came of the best stock and was the best behaved girl in the city. He married, lived wither for a month in all the bliss of a most tender union; the only faults he observed in her were a little giddiness and a strong tendency to find out that the handsomest young men had always the most intelligence and virtue.

        Azora tells Zadig, "I went to console the young widow, Cosrou, who two days ago raised a tomb to her young husband beside the stream which form the boundary of this meadow. She vowed in her grief that she would dwell beside that tomb as long as the stream flowed by."

        "Well," said Zadig, "a truly estimable woman who really loved her husband!"

        "Ah!" returned Azora, "if you only knew how she was occupied when I paid her my visit."

        "How then, fair Azora?"

        "She was diverting the course of the brook."

        Azora broke out into violent reproaches against the young widow. This ostentatious display of virtue was displeasing to Zadig.

        He had a friend named Cador who was one of those young men in whom his wife found more merit and integrity than in others. Zadig took him into his confidence and secured his fidelity as far as possible by means of a considerable present. Zadig fell sick, died and was put into a coffin. Cador made love to the young widow and made her go to the tomb to cut off with a razor Zadig’s nose. When Azora was about to carry out her intention Zadig suddenly got up, and holding his nose with one hand, stopped the razor with the other. "Madam," he said, "do not cry out against young Cosrou; your intention of cutting off my nose is as bad as that of turning aside a stream."

        Zadig was arrested for showing his wisdom in the detection of the escaped queen’s dog and the king’s horse. He was again arrested for not answering questions about an escaped state prisoner whom he happened by chance to notice through the window. For this offence he was condemned to pay fifty pieces of gold, and he thanked his judges for their leniency, according to the custom of

Babylon.

        "Good Heavens!" said Zadig to himself, "what a pity it is when one takes a walk in the wood through which the queen’s bitch and the king’s horse have passed! How dangerous it is to stand at a window! and how difficult it is to be happy in this world!"

         In ridiculing the religious beliefs and devotions, Voltaire tells that while in Benares in passing a fakir, he happened to sneeze. The sneeze awakened the fakir who was in a trance.

         "Where am I?" said he, "what a horrible fall I have had! I can no longer see the tip of my nose; the celestial light has vanished."

        "If I am the cause," said I, "that you see at last beyond the tip of your nose, here is a rupee to repair the damage that I have committed; recover your celestial light."

        My friend Omri brought me into the cell of one of the most famous gymnosophists, whose name was Bababec. He was as naked as an ape and, having a chain round his neck which must have weighed more than sixty pounds, was seated on a wooden chair neatly furnished with sharp little nails which ran into his posteriors. Many women came to consult him as an oracle on family affairs and he enjoyed the highest reputation.

        "Do you think, father," said the former, "that after my soul has undergone transmigration I may be able to reach the abode of Brahma?"

        "That depends," said the fakir, "what is your manner of life?"

        "I endeavor," said Omri, "to be a good citizen, a good husband and a good friend."

        "Do you ever drive nails into your bottom?" asked the Brahmin.

        "Never, reverend father."

        "I am sorry for it," replied the fakir, "you certainly will not enter the nineteenth heaven and that is a pity."

        "Into which heaven do you expect to go, Mr. Bababec?"

        "Into the thirty-fifth."

        "You are a droll fellow," replied Omri, "to expect a higher lodging,—that expectation can only proceed from an inordinate ambition. You damn those who seek for honor in this life, why do you aim at honors for yourself in the next? . . . I reckon that man is worth a hundred times more who sows pot-herbs or plants trees than the tribe of you and your fellows who look at the tip of their noses, carry a pack-saddle to show the extreme nobility of their souls."

        Having spoken thus, Omri soothed, coaxed, persuaded at last induced Bababec to leave his nails and his chain and there, to come home with him and lead a respectable life. They scoured him well, they rubbed him all over with perfumed essences, they clothed him decently and he lived for a fortnight in a thoroughly rational way, manifesting that he was a hundred times happier than before. But he lost credit with the people, and the women came no more to consult him; so he left Omri and

betook himself once more to his nails in order to recover reputation.

         Thus Voltaire makes merry over religion, its beliefs and its saints.

        In his "Plato’s Dreams" Voltaire tells us that Demogorgon had as his share the morsel of mud which we call Earth; and having arranged it in the manner in which we see it to-day, he claimed to have created a masterpiece. He was criticized by one of his brother genii as follows:

         You have accomplished a fine piece of work. Your onion and artichoke are very good, but I cannot conceive what your idea could have been in covering the earth with so many deadly plants, unless you intended to poison the inhabitants. Moreover, it appears that you have some thirty different kinds of monkeys, a much greater number of dogs and only four or five varieties of the human race. It is true that you have given the last animal what you are pleased to call reason in all conscience. This reason of yours is too ridiculous and is not far removed from madness. Besides it seems to me that you do not set much store by this animal, seeing you have given it so many enemies, such remedies, so many passions and so little wisdom. You have no wish apparently that many of those creatures should remain alive; for, without mentioning the other dangers to which you expose them, you have contrived so well that some day the small pox will carry off regularly every year the tenth part of mankind, and its twin sisters will taint the life in the nine parts left. As if that was still not enough you have so disposed the course of events that one half of the survivors will be occupied in law-suits, and the other half in mutual slaughter. They will doubtless be much obliged to you, and you have surely achieved a splendid masterpiece.

        In his "Candid" he ridicules the Leibnitzian preestablished harmony and the shallow optimism of the eighteenth century. Pangloss, the professor of optimism, says:

         Things cannot be otherwise than they are; for everything being made for a certain end, the end for which everything is made is necessarily the best end. Our legs are clearly intended for shoes and stockings and so we have them. Pigs were made to be eaten and so we eat pork all the year round. Consequently, those who have asserted that all is well have said what is silly; they should have said of everything that is, that it is the best that could possibly be.

        Private misfortunes, Pangloss teaches, promote the public good, so that the more private misfortunes there are the better it is for the world. Pain and misfortune engender happiness and joy.

        Across the channel, in England, Bernard de Madeville ridiculed English ethical optimism, rampant among the nobility and universities, in essays entitled "Private Vices Public Benefits," for which he earned the name Man-Devil.

        Voltaire would hardly have modified his attacks on optimism, though he might have expressed them in a more scientific biological form had he lived in our century of the glorification of competition and sanctification of the principle o the struggle for existence and the elimination of the weak.

        If we examine the work of Aristophanes and Voltaire, separated as they are by a chasm of more than a score of centuries, we find that with their penetrating genius they have discovered the weak points in the lives of their contemporaries, and that they have inserted the sting of ridicule in the most vulnerable parts of the social organism. Out of the dark depths of unconsciousness of social automatisms, habits, customs and beliefs they have dragged to the light of consciousness the symptoms and processes of mental, moral, and social decay. Laughter at institutions and beliefs is an indication of social degeneracy and regeneracy.

        From the superior standpoints occupied by those great men of genius they were able to see the inferiority of the prominent and governing personalities, they were enabled to disclose to the view of their contemporaries the low state of the institutions and beliefs which they attacked by their ridicule. Aristophanes shows the defects, the shortcomings, the inferiority of the Sophists, of the Demos, of the political boss, of the demagogue; while Voltaire reveals the grave failures, the grave faults, the blemishes of the then reigning shallow, optimistic philosophy, the low state of social organization of the times, the crudities of the moral and religious beliefs, the emptiness of accepted opinions, the hollowness of creeds and faiths hallowed by tradition and authority of state and church.

        In both writers we find that the high are leveled to the ground, the strong are shown to be weak, the superior are found to be really inferior. Both of them reveal to the gaze of the observer difficulties, hardships, troubles, defects, deformities, incompetency, awkwardness, clumsiness, deceit, profligacy, vice where there should have been high-mindedness, ease, grace, nobility, superiority, goodness, health, growth, and strength.

        Persons, institutions, and beliefs exposed to ridicule are treated with respect by society for their supposed superiority and virtue. This respect, this belief in superiority and virtue, is shown to be unfounded and treated with ridicule. The object or subject laughed at is covered by social tradition with a cloak of dignity, superiority, and righteousness. The purpose of ridicule is the tearing aside the cloak of assumed dignity, thus exposing the object in its full nakedness. The defects and weaknesses of the ridiculed object, whether person, institution, or belief, are exposed to the view of the external observer. Hence the shame awakened in the person against whom the jest, joke, or ridicule is directed.

        The ridiculed person may even be conscious of his shortcomings, but he may still parade them under the garb of merits and virtues, under the cloak of superior nature, position, birth, or wealth. Man craves for the homage, for the respect of his fellow beings. Man hungers for praise, for fame. In the average man such a craving may not be intense, but there is present an intense regard for the opinion of one’s neighbor or one’s friends. We may lay down as a social law that men, and especially women, fear the disapprobation of their fellow-beings; they fear disapprobation all the more when it is given to them in the form of disrespect as expressed by ridicule. For ridicule means disapprobation, humiliation; it means inferiority, degradation. Ridicule means the placing of the person below the level of the class to which he belongs by birth, connection, occupation, education, and training. Ridicule is like social ostracism and, possibly worse, it is like cutting the member from the social body. To be ignored by one’s neighbors and friends is by no means a matter of indifference, but to become an object of ridicule is unbearable to gregarious man. As the poet puts it: Ferreus est, si quis, quod sinit alter, amat. Iron-hearted is he who loves what others leave.

        As a gregarious animal man is in terror of social disapprobation. Man is afraid "to lose face," as the Chinaman puts it. The greatest, the most intense fear that haunts men, and possibly more so women, throughout their whole life, is to lose their social standing, to fall below the given social requirements. One hardly realizes what a potent instrument of ridicule is in the hands of society, class, caste, and profession. In many cases fear of social ridicule amounts almost to a panic. Many a case of nervous trouble known as psychnoneurosis takes its origin in fear, in panic of a possible moral fall below the traditional social requirements. The conservative social forces never lose their grip on the individual; they are always ready to choke him at the least offence. Moreover, through education and social suggestion those social forces work on the consciousness and conscience of the individual himself. The possible degradation becomes of a fear of conscience.

        In my "Psychology of Suggestion" I have pointed out: "The rules, the customs, the laws of

society are categorical, imperative, absolute. One must obey them on pain of death (it may be social death, it may be ridicule). Blind obedience is a social virtue." "The vast majority of persons," Galton tells us, "of our race have a natural tendency to shrink from the responsibility of standing and acting alone; they exalt the vox populi, even when they know it to be the utterance of a mob of nobodies, into the vox Dei, and they are willing slaves to tradition, authority, and custom." In the same volume of mine I point out what a depressing influence society exercises on the individual:

        "With the growth and civilization of society institutions become more stable, laws more rigid, and individuality is more and more crushed out, and the poor, barren sub-waking self is exposed in all its nakedness to the vicissitudes of the external world. In civilized society laws and regulations press on the individual from all sides. Whenever one attempts to rise above the dead level of commonplace life instantly the social screw begins to work, and down is brought upon him the tremendous weight of the socio-static press, and it squeezes him back in the mire of mediocrity, frequently crushing him to death for his bold attempt. Man’s relations in life are determined and fixed for him; he is told how to put on his tie, and the way he must wear his coat; such should be the fashion of his dress on this particular occasion, and such should be the form of his hat; here must he nod his head, put on a solemn air; and there take off his hat, make a profound bow, and display a smile full of delight. Personality is suppressed by the rigidity of social organization; the cultivated, civilized individual is an automaton, a mere puppet.

        "Under the enormous weight of the socio-static press, under the crushing pressure of economical, political, and religious regulations there is no possibility for the individual to determine his own relations in life; there is no possibility for him to move, live, and think freely; the personal self sinks, the suggestible, the subconscious, social, impersonal self rises to the surface, gets trained and cultivated, and becomes the hysterical actor in all the tragedies of historical life. . . ." The individual fears the power of society. Like a child, man runs in terror when society turns to him its comic mask. Laughter and ridicule are weapons which society finds potent enough to strike terror into the hearts of its disobedient children.

        No less potent, however, is ridicule in the hands of the reformative or, more truly to say, formative social forces. While Aristophanes represents the power of ridicule on the side of the conservative social forces, Voltaire represents the dissolving power of ridicule, directed by the formative forces of society.

        Deviations and variations from the usual, customary standard arouse laughter, but not all of them are ludicrous. Deviations and variations toward the superior are by no means subject to ridicule: only those deviations are ridiculed that can be shown to be defects, variations toward the abnormal, toward the inferior type of life. Saints, martyrs, and men of genius are not ridiculed, if we recognize them as superior. Men are respected and revered as great, as geniuses in the domain of social, mental, and moral life, if they live up to the highest ideal current in that particular society. Should, however, different, ideals appear the men who live up to the old ideals would be regarded as inferior and become the subject of ridicule, as Don Quixote after the ideal of chivalry has passed away.

        When the substance of the old society has become eaten out, and when, like a caterpillar in its chrysalis, the new order is ready to emerge, the old skin is broken through by the light, airy touches of sarcasm, irony, satire, and ridicule. Such, for instance, we find the case to be in the days of the first Christian era, when Lucian ridiculed the ancient beliefs, myths, and old gods; such we find the times of the Reformation and Humanism. When at the end of the eighteenth century the mediaeval institutions and beliefs fell into decreptitude and decay, preserving apparently their outward healthy aspect, we find Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists making merry over them. Like furniture devoured

by South American ants, nothing but the exterior shell remained of the mediaeval institutions. Ridicule gave the final blow and the whole structure crumbled into dust. Ridicule shows the old things as being but the semblance of reality, falsehood disguised as truth, solemn social relation as conventionalities, deceptions and simulacra of life.

        Things and persons that have an important and solemn aspect and are shown to be unimportant and trivial are laughed at. In other words, things are ludicrous when we show the superior to be really the inferior. This is why imitations of the sacred, the elevated, the solemn, grand, devotional and ceremonial easily lend themselves to ridicule and mockery. The grand is ludicrous when it is regarded as pomposity, and the holy is ridiculous when it is looked upon as common and vulgar; the pure is impure and polluted; even wit may be turned into ridicule by relating it to buffoonery. Ridicule and mockery are dangerous weapons to wield, as they may be turned against the very people who use them.

    The degradation of the solemn and superior by raising the base, the inferior and the trivial so that the latter imitate in appearance the former gives rise to parody and travesty of which we give the following examples:

    A tavern-keeper offended by his negligence the lawyers who crowded his tavern. With one accord the lawyers forsook the tavern leaving behind them the following parody on the Declaration of Independence:

        "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for a half-hungry, half-fed, imposed-on set of men, to dissolve the bonds of the landlord and boarder, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which have impelled them to separation.

        "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created with mouths and stomachs; and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, etc."

         As another example we may take a parody on Poe’s "Raven":

         Once upon a midnight chilling, as I held my feet unwilling

        O’er a tub of scalding water, at a heat of ninety-four;

        Nervously a toe in dipping, dripping, slipping, then out-skipping

        Suddenly there came a ripping whipping, at my chamber’s door—

         "’Tis the second floor," I mutter’d, "flipping at my chamber’s door,

        Wants a light—and nothing more!"

         Ah! distinctly I remember, it was a the chill November,

        And each cuticle and member was with Influenza sore;

        Falt’ringly I stirred the gruel, steaming creaming o’er the fuel,

        And anon removed the jewel that each frosted nostril bore,

         Wiped away the trembling jewel that each reddened nostril bore—

        Nameless here for evermore!

         And I recollect a certain draught that fanned the window curtain,

        Chill’d me, filled me with a horror of two steps across the floor;

        And besides, I’d got my feet in, and a most refreshing heat in,

        To myself I sat repeating—"If I answer to the door—

        Rise to let the ruffian in who seems to want to burst the door,

        I’ll be – that and something more."

CHAPTER VIIRIDICULE AND THE SUBCONSCIOUS

        While persons, classes, professions, institutions, beliefs are divested of their dignity, while they are thrown down from the superior position which the occupy in the eyes of the public, the public itself must be prepared to appreciate the funny and the ridiculous side of what is made an object of laughter. A Protestant, a Jew, a Mohammedan may enjoy a joke at the expense of Catholicism; a Catholic may laugh at some ludicrous aspect of some other faith. A good Catholic, however, will be horrified by a joke or anecdote on the Catholic faith; a religious person will be shocked at a jest at the expense of religion. As the ancient Greek put it, "We should praise the Athenians in Athens." "We here in America," our ex-president tells us, "hold in our hands the hope of the world."

        One cannot help agreeing with the Heraclitean paradigm: "Fools, even when they hear the truth, are like deaf men; of them the proverb holds true: being present they are absent."

        In order to appreciate joke the audience must already regard the object of the joke with lack of reverence. The audience must subconsciously be prepared to look upon the object of ridicule as inferior. The Humanists could ridicule mediaeval ideas, the Reformers could rail the religious beliefs of the Catholic Church, the French Encyclopaedists could treat lightly of the French institutions and beliefs, because the latter were already subconsciously undermined in the mind of the French nation. In order, then, that ridicule may successfully bring out the inferiority of the

ridiculed object the public must be willing to accept such a relation of inferiority, nay, has already formed beforehand that view of inferiority subconsciously. The ridicule brings to the surface what has already been present in the subconscious region of the mind. As the great artist brings to the surface of consciousness the ideal of his time and gives expression to the subconscious strivings of his contemporaries, so does the great comic writer give expression to the subconscious views of his fellow-men in regard to ideals, beliefs, and institutions that are in the process of degeneration and generation, and of which the people are as yet unconscious, or but vaguely conscious.

        Such subconscious preparedness is one of the most fundamental conditions of the ludicrous. Aristophanes rails at the nascent ideas of cosmopolitanism against which the narrow spirit of Athenian aristocratic, exclusive democracy fought so desperately. In his "Frogs," however, he does not hesitate to treat irrelevantly the old religious beliefs; he makes a burlesque and farce of Bacchus and of Hades; Aeschylus is made a laughing stock for his clumsy, heavy, pompous, didactic verses. In his "Birds" Aristophanes, no less than the later irreverent Lucian and Voltaire, banters about the sacred, ancient, mythological beliefs; he holds up the gods for the amusement of his countrymen. The jokes of Aristophanes were keenly appreciated by the Greeks, because he expressed the subconscious tendencies of the Hellenic world.

        The Greeks, like the Hebrews, were exclusive in regard to all other nations. They were not in sympathy with the high and broad humanitarian morality taught by Socrates. Even Aristotle, the greatest thinker of antiquity, was Greek at heart; he maintained that the Greeks were masters by nature, and that all other nations, included by him under the disparaging term of barbarians, were the legitimate prey of the Hellenes, and especially of the highly intellectual and refined Athenians. The Greeks divided the world of mankind into Hellenes and aliens or barbarians, just as the Jew regarded himself as the chosen people of Yahweh, and regarded all other nations as benighted pagans, heathen, and Goim. Socrates, preaching in streets, market places, and gymnasia of Athens, could not have chosen a more unfavorable environment for the dissemination of his humanitarian philosophy. Like the ancient Hebrew prophets, with Jesus and the Apostles as their culmination, Socrates preached his cosmopolitan, humanitarian philosophy to a crowd that was called upon, in the name of a higher ideal, to renounce their privileges as superiors and put themselves on a level with the inferiors, barbarians and slaves. We know the bitter opposition of the Greeks and the Macedonians to the leveling and cosmopolitan spirit of Alexander of Macedon. Aristophanes, in addressing himself to the Greeks in his biting invective, in his ridicule at the newfangled ways of extreme, democratic institutions, at new ideas and ideals, found a sympathizing audience in the Athenian Demos whom he cajoled, whom he laughed at, but with whose interests he was in the deepest sympathy.

        The ancient mythology was internally decaying among the ancient Greeks. The Athenian could not help laughing when Aristophanes directed his jibe against the old-fashioned, antiquated myths and old wives’ tales, as Plato characterized them. The keen mind of the ancient Greek could not accept literally and in good faith the stories and nursery-tales told him by the nurse-slaves, nor could he have faith in the holy legends related to him by his own mother and sister—all the more so as the Greek cherished a feeling of contempt for all women as inferiors to men in general and to gentlemen in particular. The Athenians were thus prepared subconsciously for the sharp, critical, overwhelming ridicule, scoffing, raillery, derision, and mockery of the Aristophanic plays and comedies.

        When the ancient faith died among the nations of the Greco-Roman world they enjoyed the jibes of Lucian against their gods. When the Catholic faith weakened in many European countries the people began to enjoy stories and anecdotes about priests and religion. When the mediaeval institutions, with their ideals and beliefs, began to totter the great French philosopher and satirist injected into them the poison of his raillery, and the whole of France and Europe were convulsed

with laughter at the agonizing writhing of the old decaying order. Aristophanes, Lucian, Voltaire gave expression to the subconscious stirrings of the spirit of the times. The comic writer points out the weak, the inferior aspects of the object or subject which he makes the butt of his ridicule, but the people who are made to laugh must first of all be in deep, subconscious sympathy with the views of the scoffer. In military and theocratic societies the merchant, the trader, is an object of ridicule. In modern business communities the learned man, the thinker, is regarded as a ludicrous figure. Novels and stories have been written to that effect for the amusement of the practical business man.

        Ghosts are usually regarded with awe and with fear. A number of stories of ghosts and apparitions has [sic] been written to arouse the feeling of awe. The ghost is regarded as something mysterious, awe-inspiring and belonging to a supernormal world far superior to our material earthly existence. Harking back to our religious fears of old, ghosts belong to the superior divine world of spirits and gods. Ghosts have been worshipped by mankind as gods. This belief still lingers in our faith and is still deeply imbedded in our subconscious life. With the awakening, however, of the modern spirit of inquiry and scepticism, the world of ghosts has fallen into disrepute with the more educated classes. Accordingly w find that ghosts are treated with irreverence and are held to the ridicule of the subconsciously unbelieving crowd. To make a burlesque of a spectre is no longer a sacrilege as it would have been regarded in early ages of spirit worship. The spectres and ghosts begin to be utilized as material for the amusement of the multitude. Thus Thomas Ingoldsby, in the "The Ingoldsby Legends," ridicules the usual ghost stories by regarding them as dreams and silly nightmares.

 

"’Tis known how much dead gentlefolks eschew

The appalling sound of ‘Cock-a-doodle-do!’"

 

        In another story, "The Spectre of Tappington," the ghost is made to steal breeches and various other articles of apparel. When the victim regards the matter as a practical joke to his friend, the latter laughs:

        "Laugh as you will, Tom, be as incredulous as you please. One fact is incontestable—the breeches are gone! I am reduced to my regimentals and if these go, to-morrow! I must borrow of you!"

        Rochefoucauld says, "There is something in the misfortunes of our very best friends that does not displease us; certainly we can most of us laugh at their petty inconveniences, till called upon to supply them."

        The ghost is further put in a ridiculous light when the servant, in his Irish dialect, relates the way he has met with the apparition:

        "Sure then, and it’s meself will tell your honor the rights of it," said the ghost-seer. "Meself and Miss Pauline, sir,—or Miss Pauline and meself, for the ladies come first anyhow,—we got tired of the hobstroppylous skrimaging among the ould servants, that didn’t know a joke when they seen one; and we went out to look at the comet,—that’s the Rory-Bory-Ale-House, they calls him in this country,—and we walked upon the lawn,—and divel of any ale house there was there at all; and Miss Pauline said it was because of the shrubbery maybe, and why wouldn’t we see it better

beyonst the trees, and so we went to the trees, but sorrow a comet did meself there, barring a big ghost instead of it."

        "A ghost, and what sot of a ghost, Barney?"

        "Och, then divil a lie, I’ll tell your honor, a tall ould gentleman he was, all in white, with a shovel on his shoulder, and a big torch in his fist,—though what he wanted with that it’s meself can’t tell, for his eyes were like giglamps, let alone the moon and the comet, which wasn’t there at all:—and ‘Barney,’ says he to me,—‘Cause why he knew me,—‘Barney,’ says he, ‘what is it you’re doing with the colleen there, Barney?’—divil a word did I say. Miss Pauline screeched and cried murther in French, and ran off with herself; and of course meself was in a mighty hurry after the lady, and had no time to stop palavering with him anyway; so I dispersed at once, and the ghost vanished in a flame of fire!"

        Frank Stockton with American levity, free from tradition and superstition, treats ghosts with contempt and covers them with ridicule. In his story, "The Transferred Ghost," he makes ghosts look for positions as his countrymen do for government places, and one of such ghostly place hunters gets himself into trouble by obtaining in his haste an extremely uncomfortable position to a vigorous old man who refuses to die. The poor ghost is full of terror of the old man and is haunted by the very presence of the living reality. The tables are thus turned, the ghost is haunted by the living. The superior is lowered and becomes inferior. At the same time there is a by-play of misapprehension in the conservation between the ghost and the principal character—the young lady present thinks that the words directed to the unseen and inaudible ghost are meant for her. The ghost finally finds his rest when he gets transferred to another position.

        A similar play of the comic we find in Stockton’s "The Spectre Mortgage." The superior dignities and moral elevation associated with ghosts are treated with similar frivolity, ghosts are reduced from their high position which they claim in the fancy and beliefs of the people. The ghost is an old buck, he makes love to a young lady who laughs at the poor devil, he collapses as soon as he discovers the young lady was only fooling with him. This is accompanied with a by-play of misapprehension between lovers, a situation which enhances the comic play.

        From our present vantage ground we can well see how our theory of the ludicrous agrees with the theory of Bain: "The degradation of some personal interest possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion." In fact, the idea of inferiority must already be lodged subconsciously in the mind of the audience that laughs at the joke. Unless a bond of sympathy be established between the audience and the person who ridicules, the ridicule is a failure.

        There is apparently no sympathy for the object or subject of ridicule in the lower form of the comic. Such a feeling seems to destroy the success of ridicule, there must be a subconscious tie of sympathy between the man who makes the comic sally and the audience. In the lower forms of comic art what the comic writer or the man who laughs at somebody or at something guards against the awakening of sympathy or pity. Such emotions are the antitoxin of the low stages of the ludicrous. The merits, virtues, pain, and suffering of the butt of ridicule are put in the background, and only the demerits, the failings, the failures, the defects, the shortcomings are in the foreground before the audience. The audience in this respect is distracted form all other consideration.

        Perhaps we may say that in all art a slight of hypnoid-like state must be induced in the audience. In the theater where comic plays are presented the conditions of hypnoidization are favored by the distraction of attention from all other objects, from all other qualities of the object against which the comic is directed. Then there is again the fixation of attention and limitation of

voluntary movements which form the main conditions n the process of induction of subconscious states.

        Our view of the comic includes all other theories proposed since the time of Aristotle for the explanation of the ludicrous, the funny, the comic. "The ridiculous," says Aristotle in his "Poetics," "is a certain error, and turpitude unattended with pain and destruction. Thus, for instance, a ridiculous face is something deformed and distorted without pain." Here Aristotle points out the fact that the ridiculous deals with making the subject of ridicule inferior, and he also refers to the fact that the sympathy of he hearer is not awakened. When the object is made ridiculous the fact of its pain and misery or destruction which may result should be put in the background. The joke, ridicule, or comedy must be presented in its artistic garb with no harmful consequences to the butt of ridicule. Like all art, the comic must be performed for its own sake with no special purpose except the higher ideal requirements of abundance of energy, of ease and grace absent in the object laughed at.

        The motive which forms the source out of which the ridiculous arises is disguised and hidden from direct view. Bain corrects Aristotle’s definition by adding that Aristotle would have been nearer the mark, if he had expressed it "as causing something to appear mean that was formerly dignified; for to depict what is already under a settled estimate of meanness has little power to raise a laugh."

        Hobbes maintains that "Laughter is a sudden glory arising from sudden conceptions of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly." This theory fully agrees with our own, only Hobbes gives give it in a short definition which he has left without any further development.

        We shall, however, see further that, although Aristotle and Hobbes are right in the main, there are other and higher aspects of the ludicrous which do not fully fall within the frames of their definition. We cannot help agreeing with Bain when he says that "the comic is fed by false or faded dignities; by affection and hypocrisy; by unmeaning and hollow pomp."

 

CHAPTER VIII

THE LUDICROUS AND RESERVE ENERGY

        We may now once more return to a close scrutiny of the ludicrous. We have shown that we laugh at any deviation from the customary, from the normal, but, as we have pointed out, the lower forms of the comic do not awaken any other emotion except the sense of the ludicrous. The one who ridicules, the comic-writer, anaesthetizes his audience so that no attention should be paid to anything else. Any thing, any action, or any saying that manifestly falls below the social or the normal human standard is an object of ridicule. Why do we laugh at the defective, at the abnormal? Because, as we have shown, we feel our superiority, we feel that we are normal, that we possess the power, the energy which the object of ridicule lacks. Such a feeling of superiority is joyful, and we have the psychomotor manifestation characteristic of joy, namely, smiles and laughter, at the expense of another person. We feel bigger, because another one is belittled; we feel the joy of superiority, because another one has been made inferior; we are raised, because another has been humiliated. "It is sweet," sings Lucretius, "when one on the great sea the winds trouble its waters, to behold from land another’s deep distress; not that it is a please and delight that any should be afflicted, but because it is sweet to see from what evils you are yourself exempt." This exemption

from evil or inferiority detected by the comic in another is one of the main factors in laughter.

        We must, however, also take into consideration the response of a normal amount of energy to an external stimulus found to be inferior in character. The superabundant, spontaneous overflow of unused energies gives rise to joy and its accompaniment, laughter. When we expect the normal and are adjusted to respond to it by an amount of energy, and then the subnormal is discovered, the amount of energy that is left goes into the overflow, giving rise to laughter.

        We have shown than any amount of superabundant energy, as in the case of children and vigorous people, gives rise to joy and laughter. Hence, when some source of reserve energy is tapped by an appropriate stimulus the result is joy and consequent laughter. In fact, we may say that any release of reserve energy is the source of all laughter. This holds true in the case of laughter due to the manifestation of animal spirits and sheer joy of living in growing animals, children, and healthy, vigorous people. What the joker, the comic writer, does is to release sources of reserve energy.

        When there is apparent difficulty, ease is shown to be present; where dignity is expected with its restraint and stiffness, lightness and freedom are shown to be possible; where there is resistance, there no opposition is shown; and where apparently effort is required, there relaxation is amply sufficient; where strength is expected, there weakness is proven; and where overwhelming effects of superior merits and qualities are expected, there weakness is proven; and where overwhelming effects of superior merits and qualities are expected, there are found demerits and defects. The superfluous energy in response to the stimulus is found superabundant and the overflow comes out in the hilarious laughter.

        The disposition to see all those states may have been subconsciously in the observer for some time, but passed unnoticed. This disposition is revealed by the appropriate joke or ridicule made by the person who first notices the changed attitude and has the power and the courage to express the subconscious changes. It is like water on a still, frosty day, a stone thrown into the liquid freezes the whole surface. The least motion brings about the crystallization into ice, the disposition to which was prepared by the low temperature of the water. The joke brings to light the disposition of the soul; the joke tumbles down structures hoary with age, but all rotten within. The structure appears strong superficially, it is good to look upon, but the first shock of ridicule shows weakness, and at the same time release subconscious energies which are for the first time brought to light by the laughing impact of the bearing down ridicule. We may lay it down as a law that whatever reveals weakness in an object of superior standing and releases in the audience subconscious sources of hidden reserve energy is a fit subject for laughter and ridicule.

     Conversely, as we have pointed out, when under ordinary normal circumstances, more energy is spent where less energy is requisite, the object is a matter of ridicule—the observer regards the object as ludicrous.

        This, however, does not mean that Freud and his followers are right in claiming that economy of energy is itself a groundwork of the ridiculous and the comic. It is not the economy that is the cause of laughter; on the contrary, the waste of energy may be very great and still the pleasure of the feeling of joy with its accompanying manifestations of laughter may be present. In fact, where economy is required there is little occasion for laughter. Laughter is the outburst of power, of manifestation of inner energy. In fact, the consciousness of waste, the consciousness that such extravagance is possible for us, the assurance that we possess great supplies of energy, such a state of consciousness is the very source of the feeling of superiority and joy, it is the main cause of laughter, ridicule, and the comic.

        Play is the manifestation of inner subconscious energies which have been laying dormant during our ordinary humdrum daily activities. The play of the comic is no exception. We laugh when hidden reserve energies are awakened in us. We laugh from the very joy of living. Animals and children in the exuberance of energy are hilarious and boisterous. Even serious-minded adults become full of joy and laugh when the tide of inner reserve energy keeps beating on their otherwise gray and monotonous shores of life.

        We do not wish for any economy of energy in our life of joyful activities—such economy is good for business, in manufacture, industry, and general occupation of life. There is no economy in the joys of our playful activities.

        In the ludicrous the important element is not economy. In fact, where such economy is present laughter is absent. The joys of laughter never go with economy of energy. It is the consciousness of the ease of expenditure, of waste of energy that forms the joy of laughter and the merriment of the comic. The very waste of energy with ease and grace, the consciousness of untold riches, the unconsciousness of all else that may take place afterward, these form the very backbone, the very essence of inner joy and laughter.

        Where there is relief from all economy of energy, wherever we can spend with ease and with grace al we will, there joy of laughter is present. As the smiling roses in June, as the gladsome summer fields, as glades full of daisies and buttercups and marigolds, as the rich green of the grass and the living limbs of the trees waving their rich vestments of leaves in the summer sunshine, and fanned by southern winds, come not out of the thrifty economy of some artificial greenhouse, nor from the parsimony of some commercial hothouse, but out of the exuberant womb of Mother Nature, out of the vast storehouse of the sun’s energy, where expenditure is not counted, whence endless hosts of life proceed, countless masses of rich vegetation, mighty trunks, starlike flowers, green foliage, and juicy fruits grow, bud, bloom, and ripen, so it is with laughter. Laughter comes not out of economy, but out of abundance.

        Consciousness of reserve energy gives rise to joy and merriment with their concomitant manifestations of smiling and laughing. Whenever and wherever a stimulus can tap a source of reserve energy which is mentally experienced as an abundance, joy and laughter come to life. There is no economy and no niggardliness in the source of laughter. Laughter is born of lavishness and dies with thriftiness. Out of ease, out of abundance laughter grows, flowers, and ripens its golden fruit. "They who sow in tears shall reap in joy" sings the psalmist. "Weeping walks he who draws the burden, but he comes with singing who carries the sheaves." The economy of sowing is sad, but the lavishness of the crop is full of mirth, joy, and laughter.

        This agrees with the Spencerian doctrine that any great accession of energy chooses laughter as its outlet. The laughter that goes with the ludicrous is present when anything regarded consciously as superior and subconsciously as inferior finds its expression of inferiority in the consciousness of the hearer or of the observer. The great task of comedy and of every amusement is to be able to tap ever new sources of latent, subconscious, reserve energy.

        We can well understand why Groos connects the enjoyment of the comic with the fighting instinct. There is a forward, assailing element in the comic and laughter. It is the daring to find inferiority and blemishes where until now there have been respect, reverence, and even fear. Laughter would never have come from the mere pointing out of defects, failures, and shortcomings; it mainly comes from exuberance of spirits, from latent reserve, subconscious energy which it awakens to activity. This reserve energy making man more active, more daring in regard to superior persons and objects of life, giving rise to the feeling of joy of life which accompanies the free

manifestation of subconscious reserve energy, making man feel more courageous, more energetic, and apparently careless as to consequences, greatly resembles the fighting instinct.

        There is no need, however, to identify such a state with the fighting instinct, no more than an inventor or scientific discoverer should be literally identified with a scout or a spy. Under the influence of superabundant energy, under the influence of the manifestation of reserve energy, man can attempt more than in his ordinary normal condition. There is no more of the fighting instinct in it than there are actual aggression and fight in the self-sacrifice of martyrs for their beliefs and ideas, or in the preaching of Socrates, Jesus, and Buddha to a sinful, erring world. Laughter and the fighting instinct are akin only in so far as both of them are manifestations of superabundant energy. They differ fundamentally, inasmuch as fight involves a tendency to destruction of the object fought against, while in the ridiculous or the comic the tendency to destruction must, even in malicious laughter, be kept in the background, an in most cases must be completely absent from the consciousness of the audience. As Aristotle has pointed out long, "the ridiculous is a certain error and turpitude unattended with pain and destruction."

CHAPTER IX

FREEDOM AND LAUGHTER

         We have pointed out that laughter and ridicule and their various species deal with free, unimpeded activity. When activity is impeded, forced, constrained, and a relief sets in, we have an outburst of accumulated energy held in restraint, and the result is play, joy, with its psychomotor manifestations of smiles and laughter. From this point of view we may say that relief from constraint of the cares and serious work forced on us by the conditions of life and struggle for existence is an outlet for energy which, instead of going on useful work, for a definite purpose of life, flows out and is transformed into play, joy, laughter—the enjoyment of the ridiculous and the comic. May we not agree with those writers who regard laughter and the comic as the outcome of relief from constraints of the drudgeries and monotony of life, as relaxation from all the worries which business and cares of life carry with them? The child freed from school is released from bondage, the energy kept in constraint by the teacher, work and study, becomes unobstructed, the attention kept in a state of tension and concentration gets emancipated from restraints; there is a feeling of relief—the inner energies are free, unimpeded. The result is the feeling of joy with consequent jumping, running, leaping, and boisterous laughter.

        When the business man or student wishes to get free from his cares, drudgery, and seriousness of work he resorts to games and plays which give the needed relaxation. The games, the theaters with their comic, plays, places of amusement, clubs with heir mirth, jokes, jests and anecdotes smooth out the cares, the crow’s feet, the wrinkles on the brow of many a worker whose occupation is either monotonous or full of earnestness, of seriousness, effort and concentration of attention. Like school boys and school girls, men of the factory, the office, the shop and the store become free agents and are no longer hindered and cramped by rule and regulation of business and trade. Free scope is given to their cramped state of mental activity. Relaxation from constraint gives rise to free unimpeded activity; hence joy and laughter. Relaxation goes with free activity.

        The ridiculous and the comic have within them this aspect of relaxation. The mind feels soothed and relaxed by the comic, the joke, the pun, the anecdote, the amusing story, and the fable. There is a release from pressure of limitations, conditions, regulations, and efforts of conforming oneself to and squeezing one’s individuality into a definite frame. When the consciousness of such

effort is gone, there is relief, and the feeling of relaxation is present.

        We can compare the comic and laughter with rest. In fact, we may go further and compare laughter with sleep; not with the sleep in which the senses and consciousness are inactive, but with the sleep state in which mental activities are present. May we not compare the ludicrous with the dream? The dream occurs during the rest state, during sleep. And what is sleep but a release from all the troubles and trammels of waking life?

        In my work on "Sleep" I have shown that "we go to sleep when we relinquish our hold on the relations of our external environment. We fall asleep when our consciousness is fagged, when we wish no longer to enter into communication with the external world, when we lose interest in our surroundings. When our interest in external existence fags and fades away we go to sleep. When our interests in the external world cease we draw up the bridges, so to say, interrupt all external communication, as far as it is possible, and become isolated in our activity and inner dream life. We fall asleep when the vital interests in external being have fallen into the background; we awake when those interests are aroused. When the struggle for existence ceases we repair to our castle and battlements.

        "Sleep is the interruption of our intercourse with the external world; it is the laying down of our arms for a respite in the struggle of life. Sleep is a truce with the world. When all psychomotor reactions to the stimuli of external environment cease we sleep. We sleep because we are no longer interested to take an active part in the battle of life. From a teleological standpoint we may say that is a dismissal of the external world with all its vicissitudes, troubles, and paints. We cease to desire, we cease to react, and we sleep and ream in peace." As Heraclitus puts it: "Those who are awake have one world in common; those who are asleep retire every one to a private world of his own."

        We have further shown that sleep is brought about "by a mass of impressions possessing little or no variability, by limitations, or by relative withdrawal of stimulations, or, what is the same, by monotony of stimulations and limitations of voluntary movements." The thresholds in regard to stimuli coming from the external environment are raised, that is—it becomes more and more difficult for external stimuli to reach consciousness; the person, or the animal falls into sleep. The hold on external life is gone, there is complete relaxation, both physical and mental. The sleeper reacts neither with muscle, nor with sense, nor with intellect to the various impressions that come crowding on him from all sides. The hold on external life is relinquished and the state is one of passivity and relaxation.

        The sudden release or relief from a great strain is apt to make people laugh at the least occasion. In wars and forced marches where there are great strain and danger soldiers have been known to laugh at the most trivial accident and remark. In school, in the lecture room, in court, in the popular assembly, in church any trivial incident calls forth laughter. The more dignified the surroundings are, the more solemn the circumstances, the more will the trivial appeal to use as ridiculous. On such occasions the mind is tuned to the serious, and there is a subexcitement of potential, subconscious reserve energy which is stimulated to life in order to respond to the occasion. When the trivial appears the strain of the immense amount of subexcited, subconscious, nervous energy is relieved, the amount of energy overflows the smaller muscles of the face and of respiration, the tension is relived, and the result is laughter. This is akin to Spencer’s view of laughter that it is the relief of a strain, and also to that Kant, who maintains that "Laughter is the result of expectation which suddenly ends in nothing." We may lay it down as a law that relief from a great strain is an important aid to laughter. That is why often a flat remark made by a dull schoolmaster or by heavy-witted professor in the college room excites laughter—it is the relief from the strain of the schoolroom.

        Similarly a trifling incident in a church, such as the bark of a dog or the sneeze of the minister or of one of the congregation in the middle of a solemn hymn, excites smiles and laughter. There is the contrast of the solemn and the insignificant, the superior and the inferior, the excellent and the base. There is relief from a strenuous state and release of subconscious energy adjusted and tuned to a high occasion, energy no longer needed, now spent in free activity of joy, overflowing the small, delicate muscles of face and respiration, and manifested as smiles and laughter. A situation that brings about relief of a psycho-physiological state of high tension appears as contrast giving rise to laughter and the ludicrous. We may, therefore, lay it down as a law that the significant and the insignificant, the noble and the ignoble, the grave and the gay, the heroic and the grotesque, the unusual and the usual, the superior and the inferior, when juxtaposed, raise laughter.

        In the ludicrous and the comic we let go the earnestness, the seriousness of life; we get free from the limitations and the harassing hindrances of the external world—business, work, trade is forgotten. The monotony of the humdrum routine of life is left behind. When we are no longer in contact with the actual facts, as far as our interests are concerned, we are let loose from all rules, laws, regulations, manners, and customs to which we have to conform. We rise above the requirements of life. With an activity unimpeded by the conditions of the external environment, unclogged by the hard, material facts of daily life, we are freed from the bondage of authority and control. The external world with its hard, unwieldy realities no longer troubles us. We become free agents. We soar in the air of spiritual freedom, ease, grace, and power of superabundance of energy. We bask in the light and the warmth radiating from the depths of our spirit. We laugh as we watch the sparkle, the rainbow colors, the kaleidoscopic display of rising and bursting of resplendent bubbles playing above the ocean of life.

        In comedy and laughter there is letting go of the realities of life; there is present a relaxation from the persistent concentration on the problems which life sets before us; there is relief from the seriousness, irksomeness, and grinding demanded by the authoritative, despotic decrees of the autocracy of the external environment; there is liberation from the limiting, controlling, regulating social surroundings. We spin and weave airy webs out of severe, inflexible realities, and destroy them like soap bubbles, like gossamer and cobweb, with a smile and a laugh. We take liberties with stern realities, circumvent them, transcend them, play with them, and laugh at them. As in a dream, or, rather in a day reverie, we are no longer at the mercy of the external world. We spin the yarn or web of lie as fancy and caprice please. In this respect the play of the comic and the life of dream and reverie are alike.

        There is, however, an important difference between the comic and the dream. The dream is an inconsistent rambling due to the lagging, sluggishness, and gradual loss of tenacity of mental power; it like the tottering walk, the incoherent speech and thought of the drunkard. The dream is a fanciful weaving of the mind due to mental paralysis and dissociation of consciousness. Dreams and reveries are due to the feeble grasp on the shuttle of active waking life. The comic, however, may even have a firmer hold on reality than waking life; it may display a wider view and deeper understanding of the complications and snarls presented to us by external surroundings. In the comic as in art we let our fancy work untrammeled by hard reality and oppressive social life. Our fancy works with greater and freer ease and energy than it does in the monotony of the tasks set to us by our daily occupations requisite for the maintenance of life. The sordid requirements of life no longer concern us. We enjoy the life of the free. Like the gods on Olympus, we laugh from the very joy of the sense of freedom. Laughter is born of surcharge of power, of superabundance of energy.

        When there is manifestation of reserve energy where none has been expected then laughter comes to the foreground. We laugh the triumphant, jubilant laughter when ease, facility, dexterity, and grace emerge out of difficulty, awkwardness, and perplexity. The sense of the ridiculous, on the contrary, appears, when awkwardness, perplexity, and uneasiness arise where ease and facility are

expected. We laugh from surcharge of energy, and we laugh from opposite state in cases where such energy is found wanting. We laugh from strength and we laugh at weakness. Laughter arises from the sense of freedom of mental activities. We laugh from consciousness of our superior power when we see the weakness of the inferior.

        When there is actual delight in the inferiority, in the humiliation of another person, ridicule passes into the lower forms of sneering, sarcasm, scoffing, and jeering. The obscene and scurrilous joke belongs also to the lower forms of mental activities, inasmuch as the obscene takes delight in the humiliation of the person ridiculed, stimulates the sexual instinct, and arouses sexual energy. Many such obscene jokes are found in Shakespeare, especially in his comedy "Measure for Measure," the plot of which is laid in Vienna, full of vice, licentiousness, lewdry, and bawdry, the very city in which Freud, by the irony of fate, centuries afterward, developed his "scientific" sexual theories. However the case may be, it remains true that laughter arises from the consciousness of our own superiority.

CHAPTER X

THE LUDICROUS AND THE INFERIOR

         The sense of the ridiculous, taking its origin in laughter at what is regarded as weakness and defects, may develop in its gradual transformation, as it is becoming more and more complex with the growth of personality and individuality. When we pierce the illusions of life which are maintained with the whole force of religious and social sanctions, we laugh and see the ridiculous in the reality of social relations. We laugh at what is regarded as all-important reality. We laugh at illusions which are taken seriously as realities. The requirements of social conventionalities impose illusions on us which we regard as realities, which are worshiped as idols and divinities. The disillusionment with social life played as with stern reality is the domain of the comic in the higher sphere of human culture. Beginning with the child that makes merry at the game of imitation and make-believe, and ending with Aristophanes, Lucian, Voltaire, and Molière, who laugh and make the observers roar at the make-believe of the play of adults in social, political, religious, and family life, we find the same state of laughter at disillusionment of what is regarded as stern reality. We laugh at the real unreality or unreal reality. To quote from Schopenhauer:

         Oh, for some Asmodeus of morality, to make not only roofs and walls transparent to his favorites, but also to lift the veil of dissimulation, fraud, hypocrisy, pretence, falsehood and deception, which is spread over all things! To show how little true honesty there is in the world, and how often, even where it is least to be expected, behind all the exterior outwork of virtue, secretly and in the innermost recesses, unrighteousness sits at the helm! It is just on this account that so many men of the better kind have four-footed friends: for, to be sure, how is a man to get relief from the endless dissimulation, falsity and malice of mankind, if there were no dogs into whose honest faces he could look without distrust?

        For what is our civilized world but a big masquerade? where you meet knights, priests, soldiers, men of learning, barristers, clergymen, philosophers, and I don’t know what all! But they are not what they pretend to be; they are only masks, and, as a rule, behind the masks you will find money-makers. One man, I suppose, puts on the masks of law, which he has borrowed for the purpose from a barrister, only in order to be able to give another man a sound drubbing; a second

has chosen the mask of patriotism and the public welfare with similar intent; a third takes religion or purity of doctrine. For all sorts of purposes, men have often put on the mask of philosophy, and even of philanthropy, and I know not what besides. Women have a smaller choice. As a rule they avail themselves of the mask of morality, modesty, domesticity, and humility. Then there are general masks, without any particular character attaching to them, like dominoes. They may be met with anywhere; and of this sort are the strict rectitude, the courtesy, the sincere sympathy, the smiling friendship, that people profess. The whole of these masks as a rule are merely, as I have said, a disguise for some industry, commerce, or speculation.

        It is necessary that a man should be apprised early in life that it is a masquerade in which he finds himself. For otherwise there are many things which he will fail to understand and put with, nay, at which he will be completely puzzled, and that man longest of all whose heart is made of better clay. Such, for instance, is the favor that villainy finds; the neglect that merit, even the rarest and the greatest, suffers at the hands of those of the same profession; the hatred of truth and great capacity; the ignorance of scholars in their own province; and the fact that true wares are almost always despised and the merely specious ones in request. Therefore let even the young be instructed betimes that in this masquerade the apples are of wax, the flowers of silk, the fish of pasteboard, and that all things—yes, all things—are toys and trifles; and that of two men whom he may see earnestly engaged in business, one is supplying spurious goods and the other paying for them in false coin.

         We have seen that the comic deals with disillusionment of what is regarded as stern reality, with disenchantment of the false glories of life, with bringing down of the sham superior to the level of the inferior, with the revelation of defects where dignity and perfection were believed to exist. The school boy makes game of his master, and the subject finds amusement in the anecdotes about the king, the monarch, and the autocrat. The higher, the more dignified and commanding the personages, the greater the comic effect when ridicule is directed against them. The higher are humbled, their greatness is shown to be a snare and delusion. This brings us face to face with the most essential and characteristic of human failings which often form the theme of the ridiculous, namely, conceit, stimulation, and vanity. As Schopenhauer tersely puts it: "Nothing is of greater moment to man than the gratification of his vanity, and no wound is more painful than that which is inflicted on it."

        There are people who are so intensely subjective, so morbidly introspective, that their only interest and attention are concentrated on themselves. "They always think," says Schopenhauer, "of their own case as soon as any remark is made. Their whole attention is engrossed and absorbed by the merest chance reference which appears to affect them personally, be it never so remote. The outcome is that they are totally unable of forming any true objective view of things. They cannot admit any validity in arguments which tell against their interest or their vanity. They are so touchy, so readily offended, insulted or annoyed that no matter how impersonal the matter of discussion may be you must be extremely careful of your remarks which may possibly hurt the tender feelings of those worthy and sensitive individuals. . . . Fine, subtle and witty sayings as well as true and striking observations are lost upon them. But they are most tenderly sensitive to anything that may in the slightest way disturb their petty vanity or may reflect prejudicially in the most remote and indirect way on their exceedingly precious selves. They resemble the little dog upon whose toes you are apt to tread inadvertently; you know it by the shrill bark the little cur sets up; they resemble the sick man covered with wounds and boils who must be handled with great care."

        In vanity the person displays before others external advantages, such as wealth, titles, nobility, office, or some other external possessions by which he wishes to indicate his superiority over his fellows. In conceit the person claims to be of superior nature, having some artistic, intellectual, moral, and physical virtues not possessed by his fellow beings; his superiority is one of personality,

of body, of mind, or of both. In his comedy, "Much Ado About Nothing," Shakespeare plays with vanity and conceit as manifested in the characters of Beatrice and Benedict.

        The noble and the ignoble, the superior and the inferior, the rational and the irrational are common constituents of the ludicrous. They may be contrasted in different persons, or they may be found in the same person. The abnormal hides in the superior or the normal, the noble or rational covers or disguises the ignoble and irrational. When such a relation is discovered the effect is invariably ludicrous. The discovery of the contrast relation of superior and inferior constitutes the art of the comic and the power of ridicule.

        The force of irony consists just in the fact that the inferior is described in terms of the superior. Ambiguity of words and of thought is often used to that effect. The normal, supernormal, or the superior is spoken of, while the underlying suggestion is inferiority. The effect is greater the closer the inferior is made to resemble the superior. Irony is a form of dramatic act— the inferior is made to mimic the superior. The more successfully the mimicking is carried through, the more closely the copy resembles the original, so that the two are confused and one is taken for the other, the greater the success of the irony as a form of ridicule.

        Irony reaches its climax of success when the original itself takes the mimicked copy of the superior with all the indirect suggestions of inferiority as a flattering picture of itself, or rather of what it intends to appear and is not.

        The meaning of irony is dissemblance, and dissembling is the force of irony. We disapprove and contemn under the form of regard, respect and praise. Irony kills with faint praise. Irony is essentially dissemblance. We convey by it the very reverse of what we say. We say great when we mean small; good when we mean evil; success when we mean failure; wise when we mean silly and stupid. We feign to think as the original thinks of himself. The more closely the ideal conception of the original is imitated, so that the original takes it as a true imitation of his ideal self, the more effective is the force of the irony. The bystanders or the audience are supposed to know all the while in what direction the shafts of ridicule are thrown. The more unconscious the butt of irony is, the more successful is the irony and the greater is the force of ridicule.

        And now, when we come to think about it, may we not regard irony and the comic as forms of reaction to the dissemblance, subconscious or conscious, of the original—a dissemblance, whether hypocritical or naïve, in which the original presents himself as a true and actual incarnation of the ideal? Irony reacts to semblance by a conscious dissemblance in which the original is exposed in its true nature to the public gaze. Irony counteracts semblance by dissemblance.

        There is nothing so effective against vanity, the quintessence of all human infirmities and faults, as irony. It gives the hypocrite and the vain the praise and the glory which they crave and adds the string of showing their utter worthlessness:

The qualities three that in a bee we meet—In the ironical never should fail—The body should always be active and sweet,And the sting should be left in the tail.

         In all comic the climax must be present. The climax is that which clinches the train of thought and at the same time gives the final sting. In irony, however, the poison of the sting runs like an undercurrent through the body of thought; it may come out suddenly with a lash and sting and once more plunge and disappear below the surface. This sudden coming to the surface in the form of a climax, leaving its sting and disappearing below the surface, out of sight, is characteristic of irony.

        Excellent examples may be found in the delicate Socratic irony. To quote from Plato’s "Dialogues":

I should like to know what you think about another definition of temperance, which I just now remember to have heard from someone, who said that "temperance is doing our own business." Was he right who affirmed that?

You young monster! I said; this is what Critias, or some philosopher, has told you.

Someone else, then, said Critias; for certainly I have not.

But what matter, said Charmides, from whom I heard this?

No matter at all, I replied; for the point is not who said the words, but whether they are true or not . . .

Then, as I was just saying, he who declared that temperance is a man doing his own business had another and a hidden meaning; for I do not think that he could have been such a fool as to mean this. Was he a fool who told you, Charmides?

Nay, he replied, I certainly thought him a very wise man.

Then I am quite certain that he put forth his definition as a riddle, thinking that no one would know the meaning of the words "doing his own business."

I dare say, he replied.

And what is the meaning of a man doing his own business? Can you tell me?

Indeed, I cannot; and I should not wonder if the man himself who used this phrase did not understand what he was saying. Whereupon he laughed slyly and looked at Critias.

Critias had long been showing uneasiness, for he felt that he had a reputation to maintain with Charmides and the rest of the company. He had, however, hitherto managed to retrain himself; but now he could no longer forbear, and I am convinced of the truth of the suspicion which I entertained at the time, that Charmides had heard this answer about temperance from Critias. And Charmides, who did not want to answer himself, but to make Critias answer, tried to stir him up. He went on pointing out that he had neen refuted, at which Critias grew angry, and appeared, as I thought, inclined to quarrel with him; just as a poet might quarrel with an actor who spoiled his poems in repeating them. . . .

 

In another of his "Dialogues" Plato ridicules the Sophists:

And you and your brother, Dionysodorus, I said of all men who are now living are most likely to stimulate him to philosophy and to the study of virtue.

Yes, Socrates, I rather think that we are.

Then I wish that you would be good enough to defer the other part of the exhibition, and only try to persuade the youth whom you see here that he ought to be a philosopher and study virtue. Exhibit that, and you will confer a great favor on me and on every one present; for the fact is I and all of us are extremely anxious that he should become truly good. His name is Clenias, and he is the son of Axiochus, and grandson of the old Alcibiades, cousin of the Alcibiades that now is. He is quite young, and we are naturally afraid that someone may get the start of us, and turn his mind in a wrong direction, and he may be ruined. Your visit, therefore, is most happily timed; and I hope that you will make a trial of the young man, and converse with him in our presence, if you have no objections.

These were pretty nearly the expressions which I used; and Euthydemus, in a manly and at the same time encouraging tone, replied: There can be no objection, Socrates, if the young man is only willing to answer questions.

He is quite accustomed to do so, I replied; for his friends often come and ask him questions and argue with him; and therefore he is quite at home in answering.

What followed, Crito, how can I rightly narrate? For not slight is the task of rehearsing infinite wisdom, and therefore, like the poets, I ought to commence my relation with an invocation to the Memory and the Muses. Now Euthymedes, if I remember rightly, began nearly as follows: O Clenias, are those who learn the wise or the ignorant?

The youth, overpowered by the question, blushed, and in his perplexity looked at me for help; and I, knowing that he was disconcerted, said: Take courage, Clenias, and answer like a man whichever you think; for my belief is that you will derive the greatest benefit from their questions.

Whichever he answers, said Dionysodurs, learning forward so as to catch my ear, his face beaming with laughter, I prophesy that he will be refuted, Socrates. . . .

At these words the followers of Euthydemus, of whom I spoke, like a chorus at the bidding of their director, laughed and cheered. Then before the youth had time to recover his breath, Dionysodorus cleverly took him in hand, and said: Yes, Clenias; and when the grammar-master dictated anything to you, were they the wise boys or the unlearned who learned the dictation?

The wise, replied Clenias.

Then after all the wise are the learners and not the unlearned; and your last answer to Euthydemus was wrong.

Then once more the admirers of the two heroes, in an ecstasy at their wisdom, gave vent to another peal of laughter, while the rest of us were silent and amazed. Euthydemus, observing this, determined to persevere with the youth; and in order to heighten the effect went on asking another similar question, which might be compared to the double turn of an expert dancer. Do those, said he, who learn learn what they know, or what they do not know? . . .

The word was hardly out of his mouth when Dionysodurs took up the argument, like a ball which he caught, and had another throw at the youth. Clenias, he said, Euthydemus is deceiving you. For tell me now, is not learning acquiring knowledge of that which one learns?

Euthydemus was proceeding to give the youth a third; but I knew that he was in dee water, and therefore, as I wanted to give him a respite lest he should be disheartened, I said to him consolingly: You must not be surprised, Clenias, at the singularity of their mode of speech: this I say because you may not understand what the two strangers are doing with you; they are only initiating you after the manner of the Corybantes in the mysteries; and this answers to the enthronement, which, if you have ever been initiated, is, as you will know, accompanied by dancing and sport; and now they are just dancing and prancing about you, and will next proceed to initiate you; imagine then that you have gone through the first part of the sophistical ritual, which, as Prodicus says, begins with initiation into the correct use of terms.

And now, Euthydemus and Dionysodurs, I think that we have had enough of this. Will you let me see you explaining to the young man how he is to apply himself to the study of virtue and wisdom? And I will first show you what I conceive to be the nature of the task, and what sort of a discourse I desire to hear; and if I do this in a very inartistic and ridiculous manner, do not laugh at me, for I only venture to improvise before you, because I am eager to hear your wisdom: and I must therefore ask you and your disciples to refrain from laughing.

        This is in the vein of the subtle Socratic irony.

        A few specimens of biting irony passing into sarcasm in which the lash of ridicule is more evident may be taken from the writings of Pascal:

The mind of the greatest man in the world is not so independent of circumstances as to prevent his being disturbed by the most insignificant noise. The report of a cannon is not requisite to break the chain of his thoughts; the creaking of a weather-cock or of a pulley will suffice. Why should you be surprised that he cannot reason well just now? How, let me ask, is he to put his thoughts together, as long as that fly is buzzing about his ears? If you wish him to find out the truth, pray dive away the insect that holds his reason in

check, and disturbs that powerful understanding which governs cities and kingdoms.

Why do you murder me? A strange question! Do you not live on the other side of the water? If you lived on this side, my good Sir, I should indeed be an assassin for killing you; but you live on the side: I am acting, therefore, I am like a man of honor, and everything is as it should be.

Cromwell as on the point of overturning all Christendom; the royal family would have been ruined, and his own permanently established, if a small piece of gravel had not lodged in his ureter. Rome herself was ready to tremble before him, but this small grain, of no consequence elsewhere, stopping in this particular part, he dies, his family are reduced, and the king is restored.

Pascal ridicules the importance of human affairs and the greatness of historical events:

Whoever would fully measure the vanity of human life must consider the causes and the effects of the passion of love. If the nose of Cleopatra had been shorter the whole face of the earth would have been different.

        There is not only a light on the royal personages playing such important rôles in historical life of mankind, but also on the assumed importance of the historical events themselves. The ridicule is brought about by the play on those of Cleopatra and the face of the earth.

        We may quote from Schopenhauer a few caustic remarks in which irony throws off its disguise and the chastisement of ridicule appears in full force, passing into strong, frank, blunt satire.

Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing much to say, you must try to give the matter a general turn, and then talk against that. If you are called upon to say why a particular physical hypothesis cannot be accepted, you may speak of the infallibility of human knowledge, and give various illustrations of it.

If you know that you to reply to the arguments which your opponent advances, you may, by a fine stroke of irony, declare yourself to be an incompetent judge: "What you now say passes my poor powers of comprehension; it may be all very true, but I can’t understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it." In this way you insinuate to the bystanders, with whom you are in good repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense.

         Goethe says somewhere that man is not without a vein of veneration. To satisfy this impulse to venerate, even in those who have no sense for what is really worthy, substitutes are provided in the shape of princes and princely families, nobles, titles, orders, and money-bags.

        As a specimen of irony on American bigotry and religious revivalism we may take the following sermon:

I may say to you, my brethring, that I am not an edicated man an’ I am not one of them as believes that edication is necessary for a gospel minister, for I believe the Lord edicates his preachers jest as he wants ’em to be edicated: an’ although I say it that

oughtn’t to say it, yet in the state of Indianny, whar I live, thar’s no man as gits bigger congregregations nor what I gits.

Thar may be some here to-day, my brethring, as don’t know what persuasion I am uv. Well I must say to you, my brethring, that I’m a Hard Shell Baptist. Thar’s some folks as don’t like the Hard Shell Baptist, but I’d rather have a hard shell as no shell at all. You see me here to-day, my brethering, dressed up in fine clothes; you mout think I was proud, my brethering, and although I’ve been a preacher of the gospel for twenty years an’ although I’m capting of the flatboat that lies at your landing I’m not proud, my brethring.

I am not gwine to tell edzactly whar my tex may be found; suffice to say, it’s in the leds of the Bible, and you’ll find it somewhar in between the first chapter of the book of Generations and the last chapter of the book of Revolutions, and ef you’ll go and search the Scriptures, you’ll not only find my tex thar, but a great many other texes as will do you good to read, and my tex, when you shill find it, you shill find it to read thus:

"And he played on a har uv a thousand strings—sperits uv jest men made perfeck."

My tex, my brethring, leads me to speak of sperits. Now, thar’s a great many kinds of sperits in the world—in the fuss place, thar’s the sperits as some folks call ghosts, and thar’s the sperits uv turpentine, and thar’s the sperits as some folks call liquor, an’ I’ve got as good an artikel of them kind of sperits on my flatboat as ever was fotch down the Mississippi River; but thar’s a great many other kinds of sperits, for the tex says, "He played on a harp uv a t-h-o-u-s-and strings, sperits uv jest men made perfeck."

But I’ll tell you the kind uv sperits as is ment in the tex, is fire. That’s the kind uv sperits as is ment in the tex, my brethring. Now thar’s a great many kinds of fire in the world. In the fuss place thar’s the common kind of fire you light your cigar or pipe with, and then thar’s foxfire and campfire, fire before you’re ready, and fire and fall back, and many other kinds uv fire, for the tex says, "He played on the harp of a thousand strings, sperits uv jest men made perfeck."

But I’ll tell you the kind of fire as is ment in the tex, my brethring—it’s Hell Fire! an’ that’s the kind uv fire as a great many uv you’ll come to, ef you don’t do better nor what you have been doin’—for "He played on a harp uv a thousand strings, sperits uv jest men made perfeck."

Now, the different sorts of fire in the world may be likened unto the different persuasions of the Christians in the world. In the first place we have the Piscapalions, an’ they are a high sailin’ and high-falutin’ set, and they may be likened unto a turkey buzzard, that flies up into the air, and he goes up, and up, and up, till he looks no bigger than your finger nail, and the fust thing you know, he cums down, and is a fillin’ himself on the carkiss of a dead hoss by the side of the road and "He played on a harp uv a thousand strings, sperits uv jest men made perfeck."

And then thar’s the Methodis, and they may be likened unto the squirril runnin’ up into

a tree, for the Methodis believes in gwine on from one degree to another, and finally on to perfection, and the squirril goes up and up, and up, and up, and he jumps from limb to limb, and branch to branch, and the fust thing you know he falls, and down he cums, kerflumix, and that’s like the Methodis, for they is allers fallen from grace, ah! and "He played on a harp uv a thousand strings, sperits uv jest men made perfeck."

And then, my brethring, thar’s the Baptist, ah! and they have been likened unto a possum on a ‘simmon tree, and thenders may roll and the earth may quake, but that possum clings thar still, ah! and you may shake one foot loose, and the other’s thar, and you may shake all feet loose, and he laps his tail around the limb, and clings and he clings furever, for "He played on a harp uv a thousand strings, sperits uv jest men made perfeck."

        This close imitation of the conceit, vanity, ignorance, and stupidity of itinerant preachers is an excellent irony on the type of sermons delivered at American religious camps and revival meetings.

        Another example of irony keyed to a higher pitch may be taken from Swift’s immortal "Gulliver’s Travels:"

The emperors of Blefuscu did frequently expostulate by their ambassadors, accusing us of making a schism in religion, by offending against a fundamental doctrine of our great prophet Lustrog in the fifty-fourth chapter of the Blundecral (which is their Al-Koran). This, however, is thought to be a mere strain upon the text; for the words are these: that all true believers shall break their eggs at the convenient end.

         This bit of irony on the stupid trivialities of religious dogmas is a stroke of genius.

CHAPTER XI

VANITY AND THE PRINCIPLES OF RIDICULE

        In vanity, conceit, and excessive pride generally superior qualities, virtues, and merits are claimed by the persons affected by such mental states. Such persons act as superiors in regard to other people who have as yet to find out whether such superiority is real, and whether there is any substance to it, or whether it is all but a shadow. The very doubt that arises in the mind of the beholder as to the reality of such claims and, therefore, appropriateness of such behavior predisposes to the possibility of ridicule. The claims of superiority may turn out to be a false idea, a sort of delusion. The person affected by illusory claims shows weakness, defects. He is regarded as living below the normal, thus becoming an object of ridicule.

        Persons that claim superiority must also meet with a response, inasmuch as the superiority is related to a state of inferiority in other people. Now few would care to be subject to a state of inferiority, unless there is sufficient cause and reason. Wherever, therefore, claims of superiority are put forwards there is a possibility for laughter and derision. This is especially true in the case of vanity. The vain person is anxious for the approval and recognition of his superiority by his neighbor. As soon, however, as the neighbor becomes aware of the fact that his recognition is looked for he immediately feels his superiority over the vain person. The tables are thus turned and the subject of vanity becomes an object of ridicule.

        Conceit and pride have an exaggerated ego for their foundation. The self-complacency, the extreme selfishness, and often the disregard of the persons’ wishes, desires, sufferings, and aspirations deprive the vain of all sympathy, and hence they become fit objects of the comic wit who can see through the hollowness of their claims. The vain and conceited are greedy for other people’s opinions and praise. No sooner is this dependence discovered than they become the playthings of their neighbor’s game. The neighbors become conscious that all these proud and vain peacocks display ostentatiously their gorgeous tails for the edification and amusement of their acquaintances. The vain and the conceited become dependent on those whom they regard as inferior and fall below the level of the very people whom they affect to despise―they are humiliated by their would-be inferiors―the game is turned against them.

        As soon as the inferiors refuse to acknowledge themselves as being on a lower level, as soon as they refuse to bow before the alleged superiority, and repudiate all claims of illusive paramount excellence, as soon as the vain person is not recognized and even regarded as supercilious, he who struts about in a self-devised cloak of honor, in a cloud of glory, becomes an object of derision, jest, and ridicule. That is why all ceremonies, solemnities, manners, and mannerisms whether of church, state, office, title, rank, sect, class, or caste become vulnerable as soon as their vain pomposity is exhibited to the view of the people whom they wish to cast under the spell of their superior charms, virtues, and merits. The charm is dispelled by a joke and a laugh. The delusions of grandeur and conceit are dispersed by rays of smiles and laughter.

        The comic effects become more intensified by the fact that, although vanity, conceit, and pride, with their mannerisms and ceremonies, are consciously displayed for the benefit of the external observers so as to obtain their admiration and thus make them feel their inferior position, there is another side to it, namely, the unconsciousness of the attitude taken by the actors in the play. The people, after all, may not be impressed by the superior airs and may regard the whole situation as a form of horse play.

        The vain person is not conscious of his vanity and does not realize that other people see through his motives and understand the pettiness of his condition and dependence of his position on the good will of his neighbor. The selfishness and self-glorification of the conceited and proud man prevent him from understanding his supposed inferiors and exclude him from sympathy with the lives and motives of his fellow men. This lack of understanding and sympathy produces not only an antagonism, but also a lack of comprehension of the feelings and effects of the esteem and respect after which the vain and conceited ardently strive. Hence many of their action appear in the eyes of the outside world as lacking in adjustment to circumstances. Their striking attitudes are regarded as inferior and are met with laughter and ridicule.

        The governing classes in plutocratic societies are specially apt to be affected by the malady of vanity and conceit. The purse-proud parvenu is, therefore, an inexhaustible theme for the comic writer. Aristotle in his Rhetoric gives an excellent description of the rich upstart, a psychological description which furnishes the reason why the rich man is exposed to ridicule.

        Anyone, without any great penetration, may distinguish the disposition consequent on wealth; for (its possessors) are insolent and overbearing, from being tainted in a certain way by the getting of their wealth. For they are affected as though they possessed every good; since wealth is a sort of standard of the worth of other things; whence everything seems to be purchasable by it. And they are affectedly delicate and purse-proud; they are thus delicate on account of their luxurious lives, and the display they make of their prosperity. They are purse-proud and violate the rules of good breeding, from the circumstances that every one is wont to dwell upon that which is beloved and admired by him, and because they think that others are emulous of that, of which they are

themselves. But at the same time they are thus affected reasonably enough; for many are they who need the aid of men of property. Whence, too, that remark of Simonides addressed to the wife of Hiero respecting the wealthy and wise; for when she asked him, "whether it were better to have been born wealthy or wise," he replied "wealthy; for," he said, "he used to see the wise hanging on at the doors of the wealthy." And (it is a characteristic of the rich) that they esteem themselves worthy of being in office; for they consider themselves possessed of that on account of which they are entitled to be in office. And, in a word, the disposition of the rich is that of a fool amid of prosperity.

        The unconsciousness of their shallowness, vacancy, and frivolity makes the vain and conceited person specially weak in the eyes of their neighbors. Faults and defects are unconsciously displayed for the amusement of the world. What makes their condition all the lower and hence more ludicrous is the fact that the very defects are paraded as virtues of which the possessors are so conceitedly proud. The weakness and the inferiority become all the more prominent as the vain person remains under the illusion that the neighbor takes his weakness for strength and his defects for excelling virtues. This illusion of his belief in his own strength, and the delusion that his neighbor is under the same illusion, make the position of the vain and conceited person all the more ludicrous. One cannot help agreeing with Schopenhauer:

        The only genuine superiority is that of the mind and character; all other kinds are fictitious, affected, false; and it is good to make them feel that it is so, when they try to show off before the superiority that is true.

        And still, while vanity, conceit, and false pride form the material of many a comical situation, and many a comic writer has utilized these failings of human nature as subjects for his work, these states are by no means the only factors that call down ridicule upon their possessors. They are the streams that come from the source of all human ridicule – the inner inferiority of what is regarded as superior and excellent, and the recognition of the unreality of what is believed as an excelling form of reality. However, the case may be, it remains true that play with realities of life, now regarding the realities as illusions, now detecting the illusions regarded as realities and making merry over them and rising superior to them, will ever remain the subject of the comic. To laugh at the infirmities of human nature, to prick social, moral, religious, and family bubbles and see them explode will ever remain the joy and the essence of the ludicrous. The comic in all ages and in all societies, as well as in all stages of human development, will always consist in the play with apparently contrasting, contradictory combinations of the superior and the inferior, the real and the unreal, the actual and the illusory.

        This brings out another important element in the play of the ridiculous. We do not laugh at material, inanimate objects, inasmuch as we cannot find there any superiority or inferiority. We rarely laugh at landscapes or scenery or at material objects in general. Wherever we find such laughter always discover that we presuppose some agency behind the ludicrous. We may laugh at some illusions made for us by somebody or by some tricks of sleight of hand, but they all represent the work or presence of some human activity. We may laugh at some animal and its tricks. This brought about by our imagining the presence of some human agency.

        We may laugh at animals transformed by artificial human taste and the deformities brought in them under the belief of a greater improvement and enhancement of the beautiful. We may laugh at animals when we imagine something working in them similar to the human spirit. This is done only in so far as we humanize them and demand of the brute creation a certain standard. We laugh at the tricks of a pig, of a horse, of an elephant, or of a monkey, because we can easily imagine them to come near the individuality of man.

        Again, an animal in an unnatural position or when put under some unusual conditions making it look clumsy, awkward, and below the ease and freedom of adjustment characteristic of the species will be regarded as ridiculous. Thus a dog drinking beer and becoming unsteady and frisky, pigs eating decayed grapes and becoming intoxicated and wobbly on their legs remind one of the maladjustments of a drunkard and are objects of laughter. People may have a fit of uproarious laughter on seeing a pig with a tin can on his snout. The tin can on the hog’s snout, the squealing, the helpless running about, the contortions of his whole body, all that makes the crowd roar with laughter. What is funny to the crowd is the condition of the hog, his inferior state of adjustment, his helplessness, his inability to get rid of the tin can. Such a helpless state is regarded as ludicrous because of the association, though vague and subconscious, with the ludicrousness of man under similar circumstances. Clumsiness, awkwardness, and helplessness in harmless struggle are ludicrous in man, and by transference are ludicrous in animals.

        We may remind the reader of the ludicrousness of the man and the woman in the nursery tale which represents them with sausages sticking to their noses. In the comic the factor of personification plays an important part. Things and objects are laughed at in proportion as they are personified and found inferior to the average accepted animal and more especially human standard. We may formulate the law of transference: When objects, situations, and persons appear ridiculous, any other similar objects, situations, and persons appear ridiculous by association. Like waves in a liquid, laughter travels and spreads by the process of transference. An animal dressed up in man’s clothing appears to many people an object of laughter; a hog in a night cap is an object of ridicule. The reason is that when we see a pig dressed we think of a man reduced to the inferior place of the pig. We get a mental picture of a hog-man. A man seen on the street in a night cap is regarded as placed in an inferior position because of the unusual sight and association of the night cap with weakness, sleep, and helplessness, but a hog under such circumstances is laughed at because we think of man being ludicrous with a night cap on. The ludicrous effect is intensified as the hog emphasizes the inferiority of the situation.

        Jacobs, the English humorist, brings about ludicrous effects in a story of a captain who drank away his clothes and who had to appear before his crew and the people on deck in the garments of a woman. Even the great Shakespeare does not hesitate to utilize a similar situation to amuse his public. In his "Merry Wives of Windsor" Shakespeare puts Falstaff in a ludicrous position in having him escape the wrath of the husbands by dressing him in the garments of the old woman. We can well see the reason why such a situation appears ludicrous from the crowd of spectators. For, besides the fact that the use and custom are against being dressed in feminine attire, the awkwardness and clumsiness of the fit and the way the dress is handled by a man unused to it add considerably to the ludicrous effect.

        Above all, however, a woman is associated in the popular mind with weakness and inferiority, and a man in woman’s dress awakens associations of weakness and effeminacy. A man in a woman’s dress calls up the image of a woman, and by association the image of woman forms the compound of man-woman, and effeminate man. The inferior situation of the person becomes an object of ridicule. Thus we find that the law of personification and the principle of transference play an important rôle in the creations of the comic. The ludicrous is essentially human, and by principle of transference play is carried into ever higher and more complex spheres and relations. At the basis, however, of all the ludicrous we find present relations of inferiority. A series of examples in which the inferiority of bad habits or of defective intelligence, misapprehension, ignorance, or moral baseness is pointed out will best illustrate our point:

        "Well, Pat, my lad," said the kindly doctor, "you must drink this stuff. I’m afraid it’s a case of kill or cure with you know, my lad."

        "Well, I don’t care if it kills me, so long as it cures me in the end," said Pat. "Gimme the bottle."

        "What you need, madam, is oxygen. Once every afternoon for your inhalations. They will cost you $4.00 each."

        "I know that other doctor didn’t understand my case," declared the fashionable patient. "He told me all I needed was plain fresh air."

        An Irishman was once serving in a regiment in India. Not liking the climate, Pat tried to evolve a trick by which he could get home. Accordingly he went to the doctor and complained that his eyesight was bad. The doctor looked at him for a while and then said:

        "How can you prove to me that your eyesight is bad?"

        Pat looked about the room and at last said: "Well, Doctor, you see that nail on the wall?"

        "Yes," replied the doctor.

        "Well, then," said Pat, "I can’t."

        The British Medical Journal selects a few of the most amusing blunders made by applicants for life insurance:

        Mother died in infancy.

        Father went to bed feeling well and next morning woke up dead.

        Applicant has never been fatally sick.

        Father died suddenly; nothing serious.

        Grandmother died from gunshot caused by an arrow shot by an Indian.

        Mother’s last illness was chronic rheumatism, but she was cured before death.

        Said the gentleman who had been reading birth and death statistics: "Do you know, James, that every time I breathe a man dies?"

        "Then," said James, "why don’t you chew cloves?"

        "I don’t like your heart action," the doctor said, applying the stethoscope again. "You have had some trouble with angina pectoris."

        "You’re partly right," said the young man, sheepishly, "only that wasn’t her name."

        "Is the man dangerously wounded?" asked the police sergeant.

        "Two of the wounds are mortal," replied the Irish surgeon, "but the third can be cured,

provided the man keeps strictly quiet at least six weeks."

        An Irish traveler who loved tenderly his wife and his children once declared with enthusiasm that the best thing about going away from my home was getting back again!

        "Oi congratulate yez, Moik; it’s a father I hear yez do be."

        "Sure, an’ it’s two fathers Oi’m afther bein’. It’s twins, b-gorry."

        The following verses bring out well the relation of inferiority present in ridicule:

At a tavern one nightMessers. More, Strange, and WrightMet, good cheer and good thoughts to exchange.Says More, "Of us threeThe whole town will agreeThere is only one knave, and that’s Strange!""Yet," says Strange, rather sore,"I’m sure there’s one More,A most terrible knave, and a bite,Who cheated his mother,His sister, and brother.""Oh, yes," replied More, "that is Wright."

        "When Mr. Casey died he left all he had to the orphan asylum."

        "Indeed! That was nice of him. What did he leave?"

        "His twelve children."

        An Irishman gave his advice to an English friend:

        "Wherever you see a head, hit it!"

        A peasant, undersized but wrathful, and with his shillelagh grasped threateningly in his hand, was going about the fair asking, "Who struck Buckley? Show me the man who struck Buckley?" But when a stalwart and dangerous looking man stepped forward saying, "'Twas I," the little peasant looked and said more quietly, "Well, afther all perhaps Buckley desarved it."

        "Phwat koind of a wreck wor it, Pat?" queried Larry after a railway accident.

        "Th’conductor said it wor tilliscope," replied Pat.

        "A tilliscope?" said Larry. "Bedad, Oi guess that’s phoy Oi seen so many stars."

        "Why do thim false eyes be made of glass now?" asked Mike.

        "Sure, an’ how else could they say throo’ ‘em, ye thickhead?" answered Pat.

        "Phat a blessing it is," said Pat, "that night never comes on till late in the day, when a man is all toired out, and he could not work any more, at all, even if it was morning!"

        An astronomer was trying to explain to an Irishman that the earth is round but Pat would not believe it. After some discussion the astronomer said, "Now where does the sun rise?"

        "In the east," said Pat.

        "And where does it set?"

        "Sure, in the west."

        "Then how does the sun manage to get back to the east?"

        Pat scratched his head for a few seconds and looked perplexed. At last his face lighted up, and he shouted triumphantly: "Sure, sir, it slips back in the dark."

        "I don’t know that you’re the man whose name is on this check," said the bank cashier. "You’ll have to be identified before I can give you the money."

        "Oidentifoyed, is it?" replied Pat. "Sure, thin, cast yer eye on this bit of fotygar, an’ ye’ll see that it’s meself entoirely."

        "Oi’d like a job wid ye, sor," said an Irishman to a foreman in a factory.

        "Well, I don’t know. There isn’t much doing just at present. I don’t think I could keep you busy," said the foreman.

        "Indade, sor," answered Pat, in a reassuring tone, "it’ull take very little to kape me busy."

        "'Tis a fine pitcher you have of the old man, it is," said an Irishwoman to her neighbor, who had just been left a widow.

        "Isn’t it?" replied the widow. "It is thot natural yez can almost hear him swear."

        The principle of blending may be pointed out here. This consists in the procedure of blending the superior and the inferior into such an inextricable mesh that the two cannot be separated. Instead of sharply contrasting the light and shade of the superior and of the inferior the two are so united that they appear to form a whole. The base and the mean are interconnected with the good and the excellent. As a matter of fact, the superior and the inferior are not entirely blended. Now the one, now the other appears to view and suddenly disappears. There is rapid kaleidoscopic change of the great and the little, of the low and the high. The law of interchange is really operative here, but in such way that there is rapid change from the high to the low and from the base to the good, so that the whole movement appears to the mental eye as one continuous whole in which the constituent elements are intimately blended. The base is expressed in terms of the pure and the noble, while the lofty and the good are debased and degraded. The whole, in order to appear ludicrous, must give the immediate impression of inferiority. In fact, in order to convey the ludicrous aspect of the whole, the suggestion of inferiority must be evident and overwhelming. The following negro sermon (by W.H. Levinson) may be taken as a fair example of the workings of the law of blending in the domain of the ludicrous:

Deluded Lams, you will find my tex for dis ebenin in de Lemontations ob Solomon Moore, de Poet, when he sat down on a cold frosty nite and tort on de coldness ob his world. It am in very blank wors and reads dus:

I nebber habA piece of bread, nicely butteredO’re, but jis as I was gwane

To take a bite, it fell swat on deFloor, and always butter sideDown.My frens, dar’s no use denying it, dis world am a deceitful tretcherous back biting world, an sometimes I tink I will jis role up my slebes and take hold ob de but end ob it and reform it alto gedder; but den web I see how berry little progress Brudders Greely and Beecher hab made towards it, I git as sick as de monkey who eat up de segar, ob de job, and I refrain, and sing off de notion. Dis-appointment am jis as sure to follow a feller in dis life as an unpaid washwoman; and jis as you tink your prospecks am brightest, and you got ebery ting cut and dried for success in it, sumfin steps up and laffs you out ob temper, or else sets you a blubberin’ in dispair, and you can no more avert it than you can coax a hungry hog from a pail ob swill by showing him a dogseartype likeness ob he granfadder. We got to take it, jis like de meezles, de small pox, and de shingles.

My frens, we can no more understand de ways ob Providence, dan can a cow understand de signboards along de raleroad, warning hr to "look out for de locomotif," and we heed what little we know about as much as a bullefant wood de barking ob a whiffit pup. But some ob dese days whiffit, dat you disdain so much, will turn into de bullefant, and de fust ting you know he will swat you on de coconut wid he trunk and smash you down. Den, when you am prostitute on a bed ob sickness, you will turn up de wites ob you eyes, like an egg in a pot of coffee, and say, "Oh! dat I had heeded de barkin of Providence!"

        The good intentions, the religious feelings, the enthusiasm and moral earnestness are all interwoven with the most inapt and inappropriate illustrations, while the whole sermon is put in a ludicrous light by the marked negro dialect. The sermon presents a blend of the good and the base expressed in a mean, ignoble form.

        In his story "A Piece of Red Calico" Stockton presents the ludicrous character of a man who tries to match a piece of red calico for his wife. Such an insignificant affair in the eyes of an ordinary mortal is found to be accompanied with petty, insurmountable difficulties which begin to pile as the poor man keeps on chasing after his piece of calico and is finally glad to get away with anything he can obtain. Starting out with some trivial trifle the apparent insignificance grows in extensity and intensity, expands in magnitude and dimension and finally collapses like an overblown bubble. This is the principle of accumulation, in fact, we may term the mechanism of this form of the jocose as the bubble of absurdity.

        As another example of the bubble of absurdity and folly used for the manifestation of the inner character of the ludicrous may be taken the story "Our Fire-Screen" by the same writer. The lady of the house makes a pretty fire screen and the cabinetmaker constructs a fashionable frame in the Eastlake style. This frame, though stylish, is out of harmony with the rest of the furniture. Two uncomfortable chairs of the Eastlake fashion are brought to fit the frame. This in its turn is out of harmony with the other furniture. The result is that all the other furniture is sold to the brother-in-law, Tom, who keeps on laughing at the fashionable taste and who buys up the modern comfortable furniture as soon as the Eastlake medieval furniture, inlaid with tiles, is being installed. The furniture in its turn does not harmonize with the modern house. The house is rebuilt in the old style. Then the landscape has to be altered to fit the house. Home becomes more and more uncomfortable as it is getting more and more Eastlake and stylish. Finally the climax comes when Tom suggests that in order to bring about more complete harmony the modern dress should be discarded in favor of an Eastlake suit with pegs and with tiles in the back. This last joke pointing out the absurdity of the whole situation is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. Tom’s modern house with the same old furniture is bought by the fashionable couple who now thoroughly enjoy their own

discarded furniture. The full-blown bubble of folly has collapsed.

        This method of blowing of the bubble of folly and absurdity with all its play of iridescent colors, until it finally bursts, this heaping of absurdities until they accumulate and form a pile which collapses on account of its inner absurd instability, this method of bringing the absurd to a climax by increasing its extension and intension, is quite common with many comic writers. We find it in the immortal comedies of Aristophanes, in his "Clouds," in which he ridicules the sophistic philosophy of his time; we find it in "The Frogs," in which he heaps scorn on the tragic poets, Aeschylus and Euripides; we find it again in his immortal burlesque "The Congress of Women," in which Aristophanes with all the titanic power of his comic genius rails at the whole political structure of the Athenian commonwealth and holds up to the ridicule of his contemporaries what twenty-four centuries later will agitate the civilized world,―the campaign of woman suffrage now carried on with so much bluster, swagger, and storm.

        In Lucian again we meet with the same method of ridicule. Thus in "The True History" or in his "Trips to the Moon," he rails and scoff at the histories and traditions of his time by piling preposterous nonsense on stupid absurdities. In his introduction to "The True Histories," he says:

        I do not blame (writers) for their falsehoods, seeing that the custom has been sometimes authorized, even by the pretenders to philosophy. I only wonder that they should expect to be believed. Being incited by a ridiculous vanity to transmit something to posterity I turned my thoughts towards falsehood. I shall at least tell one thing true, when I tell you that I lie and I mean to speak not a word of truth. Know ye, therefore, that I am going to write about what I never saw myself, nor experienced, nor so much as heard from anybody else, and what is more, of such things as neither are, nor even can be.

        Then Lucian gives full rein to his exuberant fancy. He tells of rivers of wine full of fish, of the mark left by Hercules’ footstep, a mark that measured about an acre, he describes beautiful women growing like vines out of the soil. The limbs of women "are perfect from the waist, only from the tops of the fingers[’] branches sprung out like full grapes. They would not suffer us to taste the grapes, but when anybody attempted it, cried out as if they were hurt." He describes minutely the war between Endymion, the king of the moon, and Phaeton, the king of the sun. He gives the most absurd description of the battle array and the most ludicrous names of the warriors, such as flea-archers, millet-darters, mushroom-men, acorn-dogs and garlic fighters. The battalions fight with garlic and radishes as their arms. Even the Biblical Jonah’s whale is present. The whale, however, is expanded and puffed up on the comic Lucian scale, it is fifteen hundred stadia in length (a stadium is about six hundred feet). The whale came near "and swallowed us up at once, ship and all. He did not, however, crush with his teeth,―the vessel luckily slipped through one of the interstices." Even the miracle of walking on waves of the sea is not unknown to this irrelevant comic writer. In his droll way he tells us how he arrived at a "green and briny sea, where we saw a great number of men running backwards and forwards, resembling ourselves in every part, except the feet which were all of cork." Lucian then scoffingly tells of his visit to Paradise.

        The whole city was of gold and the walls of emerald. The seven gates were all made of one trunk of the cinnamon tree, the pavement, within the walls, of ivory, the temples of beryl, the altars of one large amethyst. Round the city flowed a river of the most precious ointment. The baths instead of water were filled with warm dew. For clothes they wear spider’s web. They have no bodies, but only the appearance of them, insensible to the touch, and without flesh, yet they stand, taste, move, and speak.

        Piling absurdity upon absurdity, he derides the beliefs and traditions current in his time and

brings discredit on the credulity of his contemporaries.

        Cervantes, in ridiculing the chivalry of the Middle Ages, makes Don Quixote, the knight-errant, work himself up to a pitch of knightly phrenzy in which he loses his wits so completely as to regard the inferior under the glamo[u]r of the sublime and the superior. He takes a country inn for a castle, the servant girls for princesses, the innkeeper as the lord of the castle. He fights windmills, regarding them as transformed giants, and attacks herds of sheep under the idea that they are enchanted armies. Cervantes keeps on heaping absurd incidents in which the folly of the hero is exposed to the reader. In weaving his web of glory around prosaic things the ridiculous character of the knight of the sorrowful figure of La Mancha stands out in an even clearer light with the accumulation of absurd events and with the thickening of the plot of a supersensuous ideal folly.

        Similarly Voltaire, when ridiculing the shallow optimistic philosophy of the eighteenth century, makes Candide and Professor Pangloss pass through all sorts of painful situations, exposing with ever greater power and emphasis the weakness, the silliness, the stupidity of professional optimism. The vast accumulation of mishaps, misfortunes and suffering in his best of all possible worlds is concluded by Pangloss’ remark:

"All events are inextricably linked together this best of all possible worlds; for look you, if you had not been driven out of a magnificent castle by hearty kicks for presuming to make love to Miss Cunegund, if you had not been put into the Inquisition, if you had never run your sword through the Baron or lost all your sheep from the fine country of El Dorado, you would not be here now eating candied citrons and pistachio-nuts."

"Well said!" answered Candide, "but we must attend to our garden."

The full blown bubble of optimism made up of pain, privation and suffering bursts and vanishes.

        We may point out another important principle of the ludicrous, that of interchange. Any interchange of cause and effect of antecedents and consequences associated with the relation of superior and inferior arouses the sense of the ludicrous. Thus Stockton, in his humorous description of the haunted ghost, also in his direction or instructions given to the young American youth as to how to bring up parents, makes us laugh at the interchange of relations of superior and inferior. The superior reduced to the inferior, or the inferior raised playfully to the level of the superior gives rise to the ludicrous. In short, any interchange of places in a series or in different series of events in the contrasting relationship of superior and inferior is the cause of laughter. Falling into a pit dug for others, being caught into a trap laid for one’s neighbor, being entangled in a net intended for your friend or enemy, all that is a source of amusement. Any fooling with others and being fooled in turn cannot help awaken the sense of the ludicrous.

        We have here a double play on fooling, human folly is double exposed to the view of the observer and hence hilarious laughter. The ghost from haunting the living is haunted by the living, the cheat is deceived by his own well-laid schemes, the intriguer is caught in the network of his own intrigues, the "wise" are entangled in the meshes of their own conceit and folly, the joke is turned on the joker; all such play of interchange of relations is sure to raise in us the laughter of ridicule. Any interchange of links in series of events, giving rise to associations of inferiority, arouses laughter. Many comical situations are brought about by this principle of interchange.

        When by association a series of events becomes firmly fixed in the mind, such as manners, customs and beliefs, any change in the sequence of the events, any variation in the order fixed by association of contiguity, a form into which the human mind easily drifts, arouses in the mind the

sense of the ludicrous. The philistine regards all variations from his accepted routine of life as something inherently absurd, silly and ridiculous. On the other hand, nothing forms such a good subject for the comic as the narrow-minded, hide-bound, Lilliputian philistine when viewed from the heights of talent and genius. Society and its ideal average, normal mediocrity with its pleasing, mannerly, commonplace platitudes may have its fling of jeering at genius for not conforming to social usage and for breaking away from the well-trodden paths of social ruts. Far more effective and deadly are the stones of ridicule cast by the hand of genius at the Philistine Goliath, strong in his brute social power, but dull of wits. Social laughter is momentary, soon burns itself out and passes away like the fire and smokes of straw, but genius shakes the very skies with it lasting, inextinguishable laughter.

CHAPTER XII

THE COMIC IN LITERATURE

        Shakespeare in his comedies uses inferior, humiliating, clumsy, and awkward situations to throw ridicule on the characters which he wishes to make comic: Thus in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" Shakespeare makes Falstaff relate to Master Brook the adventures passed through with Mistress Ford.

Fal. The peaking Cornute her husband, Master Brook, dwelling in a continual 'larum of jealousy, comes in the instant of our encounter, after we had embraced, kissed, protested and, as it were, spoke the prologue of our comedy; and at his heels a rabble of his companions; thither provoked and instigated by his distemper, and, forsooth, to search his house for his wife's love.

Ford.  What, while you were there?

Fal.    While I was there.

Ford.    And did he search for you, and did not find you?

Fal.     You shall hear.  As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford's approach; and, in her inventions and Ford's wife's distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.

Ford.  A buck-basket!

Fal.  By the Lord, a buck-basket―rammed me in with foul shirts and smocks, sacks, foul stockings, greasy napkins; " that, Master Brook, there was the rankest compound of villainous smell ever offended nostril.

        The ridiculous situation in which Falstaff is put by the humiliation and discomfiture of his adventure with Mistress Ford is all the more enhanced by his relating all that to Mr. Brook, who is no other than Mr. Ford, the lady's husband in disguise. Falstaff unconsciously tells of his humiliating and, hence, ridiculous situation to the very man whom he would least have cared to

meet.

Fal. Nay, you shall hear, Master Brook, what I have suffered. Being thus crammed in the basket, a couple of Ford's knaves, his hands, were called forth by their mistress to carry me in the name of the foul clothes to Datchet-lane: they took me on their shoulders; met the jealous knave their master in the door, who asked them once or twice what they had in their basket: I quaked for fear, lest the lunatic-knave would have searched it; but fate, ordaining he should be cuckold, held his hand. Well: on went he for a search, and away went I for foul clothes. But mark the sequel, Master Brook: I suffered the pangs of three several deaths; first, an intolerable fright, to be detected with a jealous rotten bellwether; next, to be compassed, like a good bilbo, in the circumference of a peck, hilt to point, heel to head; and then, to be stopped in, like a strong distillation, with stinking clothes that fretted in their own grease: think of that,―a man of my kidney,―think of that,―that am as subject to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution and thaw; it was a miracle to 'scape suffocation. And in the height of this bath, when I was more than half stewed in grease, like a Dutch dish, to be thrown into the Thames, and cooled, glowing , hot in that surge like a horse-shoe; think of that,―hissing hot,―think of that, Master Brook.

        Of his next adventure with Mrs. Ford, Falstaff tells Mr. Brook:

"I went to her, Master Brook, as you see, like a poor old man: but I came from her, Master Brook, like a poor old woman. That same knave Ford, her husband, hath the finest mad devil of jealousy in him, Master Brook, that ever governed frenzy. I will tell you.―he beat me grievously, in the shape of a woman, for in the shape of man, Master Brook, I fear not Goliath with a weaver's beam."

        Shakespeare tells us here why to dress like a woman is comic, because it is inferior, it means to be unmanly, cowardly, to be inferior to the high dignity of manhood. The beating of an old woman by a strong man appears to have been quite comical in the time of Shakespeare. It was the expression of the superior way of triumph over an old witch. The lack of sympathy, the brutality of that age may be illustrated by the following anecdote taken from a book on old English jokes:

         A witch being at the stake to be burnt, she saw her son there and, being very dry, desired him to give her drink. "No, Mother," says the son, "'twill do you wrong; far the dryer you be, you'll burn all the better."

        In the enchanting fairy-comedy, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Shakespeare represents the elf king Oberon as putting Titania, the fairy queen, in an inferior and hence ludicrous condition by throwing a charm on her and having her fall in love with the vulgar clown-weaver, Bottom, on whom the merry Puck claps an ass's hoad. Bottom sings his asinine song:

The ousel cock so black of hue,    With orange-tawny bill,The throstle with his note so true,    The wren with little quill.

        Tita. [Awaking] What Angel wakes me from my flowery, bed?

        Bot. [Sings]

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark,    The plain song cuckoo gray,Whose note full

many a man doth mark,    And dares not answer nay;―

for, indeed, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird? who would give a bird the lie, though he cry "cuckoo" never so ?

        Tita. I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:

                    Mine ear is much enamour'd of thy note;

                    So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;

                    And thy fair virtue's force perforce doth move me On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee.

        Crowned with a chaplet of flowers Bottom's asinine head reposes on the graceful bosom of the fairy queen. Here Shakespeare avails himself of the still lower form of degradation by making the delicate and exquisite fairy queen fall in love with a hairy ass, a vulgar, low fellow and brute, thus depriving her of all appreciation of the good, true, and the beautiful. In fact, he makes her all the lower and all the more ridiculous by putting the little fairy queen in the position of taking the low, the inferior, the vulgar as the superior, excellent, and refined. Nothing can be more ridiculous than matching a fairy and an ass, nothing can be more ludicrous than vulgar taste in a fairy. As the Bible puts it: "As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman without taste and discretion." The contrast emphasizes difference of superior and inferior.

        When Homer in his masterly strokes of genius pictures the ludicrous, clumsy, awkward, and ungainly form of the cyclop, Polyphemus, he gives the outlines of the monster in a few humorous lines:

A form enormous! far unlike the raceOf human birth, in stature, or in face;As some lone mountain's monstrous growth he stoodCrowned with rough thickets, and a nodding wood.

        Ulysses conceives the idea of making the cyclop drunk with wine:

        Such was the wine; to quench whose fervent stream        Scarce twenty measures from the living stream To cool one cup sufficed.

        Ulysses then persuades the monster to taste of the wine:

        "Cyclop; since human flesh has been thy feast, Now drain this goblet, potent to digest!"        He heard, he took, and pouring down his throat, Delighted, swill'd the large luxurious draught. "More! give me more!" (he cried); "the boon be thine,        Whoe'er thou art that bear'st celestial wine! Declare thy name; not mortal is this juice,        But this descended from the bless'd abodes,       A rill of nectar, streaming from the gods"        He said, and greedy grasped the heady bowl, Thrice drained, and poured the deluge on his soul.        His sense lay covered with the dozy fume;        While thus my fraudful speech I reassume        "Thy promised boon, O Cyclap ! now I claim        And plead my title, Noman is my name."

        The generosity of the monster is then humorously set forth :

        The giant then: "Our promised grace receive,        The hospitable boon we mean to give:        When all thy wretched crew have felt my power, Noman shall be the last I will devour."         When Ulysses with his companions deprive the monster of his eyesight; the cyclop,

With voice like thunder, and a direful yellCalls the cyclops that around him dwell.

        The cyclops come,        Inquire the cause, and crowd the cavern door:        "What hurts thee, Polyphemus? What strange affright        Thus breaks our slumbers, and disturbs the night?            Does any mortal, in the unguarded hour            Of sleep oppress thee, or by fraud or power?            Or thieves insidious thy fair flock surprise?" Thus they: the cyclop from his den replies: "Friends, Noman kills me; Noman, in the hour Of sleep, oppresses me with fraudful power."            "If Noman hurt thee, but the hand divine            Inflicts diseases, it fits to resign:            To Jove or thy father Neptune pray,"            The brethren cried, and instant strode away.

        Thus does Homer amuse his hearers with the clumsy, ungainly figure of the brutal, stupid monster by drawing a picture of the inferior, savage type of man-cyclop to the delight and ridicule of his Homeric audience.

        In "The Tempest" Shakespeare, under different circumstances, draws a similar scene of the drunken monster Caliban:

        The drunken sailor Stephano finds the cowering and trembling monster Caliban:

Ste. This is some monster of the isle with four legs, who hath got, as I take it, an ague. . . . I will give him some relief if it be but for that.  . . .He shall taste of my bottle. . . .Come on your ways; open your mouth; here is that which will give language to you, cat: open your mouth; this will shake your shaking, I can tell you, and that soundly: you cannot tell who's your friend: open your chops again.

        Under the influence of drink Caliban gets a ludicrous fit of exaltation, displaying his low, mean type:

Cal. [Aside] That's a brave god, and bears celestial liquor: I will kneel to him. . . .I'll swear, upon that bottle, to be thy true subject; for the liquor is not earthly.Trincudo (the jester) O Stephano, hast any more of this? Ste. The whole butt, man: my cellar is in a rock by the sea-side, where my wine is hid. How now, moon-calf ! how does thine ague?Cal. Hast thou not dropped from heaven?Ste. Out o' the moon, I do assure thee; I was the man i' the moon when time was.Cal.      I have seen thee in her and I do adore thee : my mistress show'd me thee, and thy dog, and thy bush. Ste. Come, swear to that; kiss the book: I will furnish it anon with new contents: swear.Trin. By this good light, this is a very shallow monster! I afeard of him! A very weak monster! The man i' the moon! A most credulous monster! Well drawn, monster, in good sooth!Cal. I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island; and I will kiss thy foot: I prithee, be my god.Trin. By this light, a most perfidious and drunken monster l when's god's asleep, he'll rob him o' his bottle.Cal.  It kiss thy foot; I'll swear myself thy subject.Ste. Come on then; down, and swear.Trin. I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-headed monster.

        We realize once more how Shakespeare, following Homer, has his sport of the ugly, ungainly monstrosity of a Caliban by making him resemble man, and then depriving him of all human qualities. The image of a degraded, low, mean, and drunken man-Caliban is pictured before the eyes of the spectators and stirs up derision and ridicule.

        In a similar ludicrous way Swift treats the classic story of Baucis and Philemon, who, for their goodness and piety, have been changed by Jupiter into a linden tree and an oak. The miracle occurs to two wandering saints, the house being changed into a church, of which Philemon is made the parson:

They scarce had spoke, when fair and soft,The roof began to mount aloft;Aloft rose every beam and rafter;The heavy wall climb'd slowly after.The chimney widen'd, and grew higher,Became a steeple with a spire.The kettle to the tog was hoist,And there stood fasten'd to a joist,But with the upside down, to show its inclination for below:In vain; for a superior force Applied at bottom stops its course:Doom'd ever in suspense to dwell,'Tis now no kettle, but a bell.

        Thus in his humorous way does Swift ridicule the classic story and the church miracles by interweaving a Miraculous story of saints and holy church with the pagan myth, interrelating the chimney with the church steeple and lofty spire, converting the profane inverted kitchen kettle into the consecrated bell. The saint, the heavy climbing of the wall after the beam and rafter, the church, the bell, and the kettle with its "inclination for below" all become intertwined in the miraculous myth. The whole forms an excellent parody in which the solemn, the majestic, and the sacred are reduced to the low, mean state of the vulgar pot and kettle.

        Similarly Heine, in his "Ideas," writes:

        I was once asked six times in succession, "Henri, what ' is the French for the faith?" And six times, ever more weepingly, I replied, "It is called, le credit." And after the seventh question, with his cheeks of a red deep cherry rage color, my furious examiner cried, "It is la religion!" and there was a rain of blows and a thunder of laughter from all my schoolmates.

        In another place Heine writes:

       The Berliner appeared to listen to me somewhat distractedly―more attractive objects had drawn his attention―and he finally interrupted me with the words, "Excuse me, if you please, if I interrupt you, but will you be so kind as to tell me what sort of a dog that is which runs there?" "That is another puppy."        "Ah, you don't understand me. I refer to the great white shaggy dog without a tail."        "My dear sir, that is the dog of the modern Alcibiades."        "But," exclaimed the Berliner, "where is then the modern Alcibiades himself ?"        "To tell the plain truth," I replied, "the office is not as yet occupied and we have so far only his dog."

        In the first sally Heine ridicules religion by associating it with the lower form of business credit. Religion with its high claims, unworldly views, ideals, and beliefs is reduced to sordid credit, business, and cash in the second sally Heine ridicules the politics and statesmen of his day by having them go to the dogs. The ridicule is all the stronger by bringing in the illustrious classical name of Alcibiades and then leaving in his place his proverbial tailless dog. Where there should have been a superior statesman, like Alcibiades, there we only find a puppy without a tail. In both cases the ridicule consists in showing a low, mean vulgarity where there should have been superiority and excellence. We laugh because we find the shadow instead of the substance, the vulgar instead of the sacred, the tail instead of the body, and where there should have been the man we only find a cur. The grand ideals of faith are based on commercial credit and the statesman is represented by a dog.

CHAPTER XIII

AMERICAN RIDICULE

        In America ridicule has taken the turn towards blunt humor. This is largely due to the absence of revered traditions, fixed customs, unalterable habits and, above all, to the absence of intolerance so characteristic of American life.

        Mark Twain ridicules Congress as fools and associates Jesus with broken pitchers, with miraculous gathering of water in mantles, with the schoolmaster, the birch, and whippings.

        In another place Mark Twain ridicules the Biblical stories and the hypocritical interest in Biblical subjects as well as the credulity, the gullibility of the religious public. Mark Twain travels in Palestine and is shown the center of the earth and the tomb of Adam! His comments are not exactly inspired by reverence and piety.

        Benjamin Franklin, with his true Yankee humor, tells of a sectarian who modestly claims:

       It had pleased God to enlighten our minds so as to see that some doctrines which were esteemed truths were errors, and that others which we had esteemed errors were real truths. From time to time he has pleased to afford us further light, and our principles have been improving and our errors diminishing. This modesty in a sect is perhaps a single instance in the history of mankind, every other sect supposing itself in possession of all truths, and those which differ are so far in the wrong; like a man traveling in foggy weather, those at some distance before him on the road he sees wrapped up in the fog as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side, but near him all appears clear, though, in truth, he is as much in the fog as any of them.

        In a comic way Benjamin Franklin holds up to ridicule the sermons of his countrymen:

        We had for a chaplain a zealous Presbyterian minister, Mr. Beatty, who complained to me that the men (soldiers) did not generally attend his prayers and exhortations. When they enlisted, they were promised, besides pay and provisions, a gill of rum a day, which was punctually served out to them, one half in the morning, and the other half in the evening; and I observed they were as punctual in attending to receive it; upon which I said to Mr. Beatty: "It is, perhaps, below the dignity of your profession to act as steward of the rum, but if you were to deal it out and only just after prayers, you would have them all about you." He liked the thought, undertook the task, and, with the help of a few hands to measure out the liquor, executed it to satisfaction and never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended; so that I thought this method preferable to the punishment inflicted by some military laws for non-attendance on divine service.

     We offer two more examples of Franklin's ridicule on the sharp, unscrupulous bargain driving of the unctuous quaker, pious puritan, and his sanctimonious countrymen:

       In going through the Indian country to carry a message from our governor to the council at Onondaga, he (Conrad Weiser) called at the habitation of Canassetego, an old acquaintance, who embraced him, spread furs for him, some boiled beans and venison and mixed some rum and water for his drink. When he was well refreshed and had lit his pipe, Canassetego began to converse with him; asked him how he had fared the many years since they had seen each other, whence he then came, what occasioned his journey, etc. Conrad answered all his questions, and when the discourse had begun to flag the Indian, to continue it, said:

      "Conrad, you have lived long among the white people and know something of their customs. I have been sometimes at Albany, and have observed that once in seven days they shut up their shops

and assemble all in the great house. Tell me what it is for. What do they do there?" "They meet there," “says Conrad, "to hear and learn good things." "I do not doubt," says the Indian, "that they tell you so―they have told me the same; but I doubt the truth of what they say, and I will tell you my reasons. I went lately to Albany to sell my skins and buy blankets, knives, powder, rum, etc. You know I used generally to deal with Hans Hanson, but I was a little inclined this time to try some other merchants. However, I called first upon Hans and asked him what he would give for beaver.

        He said he could not give any more than four shillings a pound; ‘But,' says he, ‘I cannot talk on business now: this is the day when we meet together to learn good things, and I am going to meeting.' So I thought to myself, ‘Since I cannot do any business to-day, I may as well go to the meeting, too,' and I went with him. There stood up a man in black and began to talk to the people very angrily. I did not understand what he said; but, perceiving that he looked much at me and at Hanson, I imagined he was angry at seeing me there; so I went out, sat down near the house, struck fire and lit my pipe, waiting till the meeting should break up. I thought, too, that the man had mentioned something of beaver, and I suspected it might be the subject of their meeting. So when they came out I accosted my merchant,―'Well, Hans,' says I, ‘I hope you have agreed to give more than four shillings a pound.' ‘No,' says he; ‘I cannot give more than three shillings and sixpence.' Then I spoke to several dealers, but they all sang the same song―three and sixpence―three and sixpence. This made it clear to me that my suspicion was right; and that, whatever they pretended of meeting to learn good things, the real purpose was to consult how to cheat Indians in the price of beaver. Consider but a little, Conrad, and you must be of my opinion. If they met so often to learn good things, they would certainly have learned some before this time. But they are still ignorant. You know our practice. If a white man in traveling through our country enters one of our cabins, we all treat him as I treat you: we dry him if he is wet; we warm him if he is cold and give him meat and drink that he may allay his thirst and hunger; and we spread soft furs for him to rest and sleep on. We demand nothing in return.   But if I go into a white man's house at Albany and ask for victuals and drink, they say: ‘Where is your money?' and if I have none they say: `Get out, you Indian dog!' You see they have not learned those little good things that we need no meetings to be instructed in, because our mothers taught them to us when we were children; and therefore it is impossible their meetings should be, as they say, for any such purpose or have any such effect: they are only to contrive the cheating of Indians in the price of beaver."

        The following story is in the true Franklin style on the dogmatic, authoritative faith of missionaries as well as on their self-contentment and conceit:

        A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded―such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple, the coming of Christ to repair the mise his miracles and sufferings, etc.

        When he had finish an Indian orator stood up to thank him. "What you have told us," says he, "is all very good. It is indeed bad eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those we have heard from ours. In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on, and, if their hunting was unsuccessful, they were starving. Two of our hunters having killed a deer made a fire in the woods to broil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds and seat herself an that hill which you see yonder among the Blue Mountains. They said to each other: ‘It is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broili venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to he They presented her with the tongue, she was pleased with the taste, of it and said: `Your kindness shall be rewarded; come to this place after thirteen moons, and you will something

that will be of great benefit in nourishing you; and your children to the latest generations: They did so, and to their surprise found plants they had never seen fore, but which from that ancient time have been cultivat among us to our great advantage. Where her right hand had touched the ground they found maize; where her left hand had touched it they found kidney-beans." The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said: "What delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and falsehood." The Indian, offended, replied: "My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instruct you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practice those rules, believed all your stories; why do you refuse to believe ours?"

        The comments of the Indian on Sunday services and the story about the missionary are in the true Socratic vein of irony and ridicule.

       Possibly no one can so well appreciate the characteristic faults and comic traits of a nation as the best representatives of the nation itself.

        Washington Irving, now the classic in all American schools, saw clearly through the business aptitudes of his countrymen. In his story "The Devil and Tom Walker," Tom's wife tried to drive s bargain with the devil, but she had the worst of it. Tom and the devil began to haggle over terms. Finally the devil proposed to Tom to turn usurer, to form a kind of money trust, a form of trust which has of late become so powerful in the land. Tom was eager to start into business at once. He promised to charge rates double of what the very devil would ask, to extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive merchants into bankruptcy and generally to drive them to the devil.

        These overreaching Yankee dealings which have recently given rise to all the forms of trusts and monopolies which, like a nightmare, weigh so heavily on the heart of the people and have a mortal grip on the very life of the nation, are comically foreshadowed in the burlesque on the sharp business dealings of the early American itinerant speculators, the ancestors of our modern king financiers, oil magnates, steel princes and coal barons who now, like rulers of old, claim the privilege of divine authority.

        We may take the following passage by Goodrich: "Have you got Young's Night Thoughts?" "Plenty."

        "Let me see one."

        Here I showed Mr. Fleecer the book.

        "This is not the right kind," said he, "I want that edition that's got the picter at the beginning of a gal walken out by starlight, called 'Contemplation."' I handed by customer another copy,―he then went on, "Aye, this is a That are picter there, is a very material p'int, Doctor. The young fellers down in Kentucky think it's a walloping kind of story, you know, about some gal that's in love. They look at that title-page, and see, ‘Night Thoughts, by Alexander Young.' Well, that seems as if it meant something queer. So they look to the frontispiece, and see a female all wrapped up in a cloak, goen out very sly, with nothing under heaven but the stars to see what she's about. ‘Hush hush,' I say, and look round as if afeard that somebody would hear us. And then I shut up the book, and put it into my chist, and deliberately lock the lid. Then the feller becomes rampacious. He begs, and wheedles, and flatters and at last he swears. I shake my head. Finally he takes out a five-dollar bill; I slip it into my pocket and tell him not to let anybody know who sold it to him, and not to take off the brown paper kiver till he gets shut up tight in his own room. I then say, 'Good-day, Mister,' and clear out like chain lightning, for the next county."

        "You seem to be pleased with your recollection Fleecer."

        "Well, I can't help snickering when I think of them fellers. Why, Bleech, I sold more than tew hundred of them Night Thoughts, for five dollars apiece, in Kentucky last winter and all the fellers bought 'em under the idea that 'twas some queer story, too good to be altogether decent."

        "So you cheated 'em, ha?"

        "I cheated 'em? Not I, indeed! If they were cheated at all, they cheated themselves, I guess. I didn't tell 'em' no lie. Couldn't they see for themselves ? Haven't they got eyes? Why, what should a feller du? They come smellin’ about like rats arter cheese, and ax me if I haint got some rowdy books: I show 'em the ‘Sky Lark' and 'Peregrine Pickle,’ and so on, but they want something better. Well, now, as I told you afore, I'm a deacon's son, and I don't like to sell ‘Tom Paine,' and ‘Volney's Ruins,' and that sort o' thing. So thinks I to myself―I'll play them sparks a Yankee trick. They want some rowdy books, and I'll sell 'em something pious. In this way they get some good, and in course of providence, they may be convarted. Well, the first one I tried, it worked like ginger. He bought the book at a tavern. Arter he'd got it he couldn't hardly wait, he was so fairse to read it. So he went into a room, and I peeped through the key hole. He began at the title-page, and then he looked at the figger of Miss Contemplation walking forth among the stars. I could see his mouth water. Then he turned to the first part, and begun to read. I heerd him as plain as Doctor Belcher's sarmon; it went pretty much like this,

        (Reads)

The Complaint. Night I'―

        "'Good―that's natural,' says he.

        (Reads)

‘On Life, Death, and Immortality.'―

        "’Whew! I suppose it's some feller in love, and is going to cut his throat.'

        (Reads)

        ‘Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep!

        He, like the world, his ready visit pays,

        When fortune smiles,’―

        "'That's all gammon!'

        (Reads)

        ‘Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,'―

        "'What in nater is the fellow at?'

        (Reads)

        ‘The bell strikes one; we take no note of time,'―

        "Why, that's exactly what the parson said in his sarmon last Sunday!"'

        He turns over several pages. (Reads)

        ‘Night II. On Time, Death and Friendship.

                ‘When the cock crowed, he wept,! ―

        "'By Saint Peter, I'm gummed! That d―d Yankee peddler has sold me a psalm-book, or something of the kind, and made me believe it was a rowdy. The infernal hypocrite! And so I've paid five dollars for a psalm-book Well, it's a good joke, and the fellow desarves his money for his ingenuity.  He, he, he! ho, ho, ho! I must laugh; tho' I'm as mad as a snapping-turtle. Zachary! If I could get his nose betwixt my thumb and finger, I'd make him sing every line in the book to a tune of my own. To sell me a psalm-book!―the canting, whining, blue-light peddler! Fire and brimstone! It makes me sweat to think on't. And he did it so sly, too―the wooden-nutmeg rascal I wish I could catch him!'

        "By this time, I thought it best to make myself scarce. I had paid my bill, and my horse and wagon were all ready; for I had calculated upon a bit of a breeze. I mounted my box, and having axed the landlord the way to Lexington, I took the opposite direction to throw my psalm-book friend off the scent, in case he was inclined for a chase; so I pursued my journey and got clear. I met the fellow about six months arter, at Nashville; I was going to ax him if he had a psalm-book to part with, but he looked so plaguey hard at me, that I cocked my beaver over my right eye, and squinted with my left and walked on.  Sen then, I haint seen him."

        Bret Harte humorously pictures the rude life of the American West, the shrewdness of the Yankee, and the sharp way his countryman makes use of publicity, craving for sensationalism, advertisement, and shallow curiosity about worthless trifles and gossip.

        One cannot help viewing in a ludicrous light the passion that has seized so uncontrollably on the mind of the mind of the American, the passion for sensation, news, trifling newspaper gossip, insatiate love of notoriety, and unshakable faith in the great utility of advertisement. The advertising spirit is in the land and the people worship it with all their heart and with all their soul. One even reads "scientific" researches by American scientists on the subject of advertisement! More than half the value of American goods consists in the immense waste spent on the crying out their virtues. This holds true not only of commercial lines, but also of political, moral, and religious. The American public is like one vast howling mob in which every one tries to outdo and outbawl his neighbor. The nation is a vast multitude obsessed by the demoniacal spirit of advertisement, notoriety, curiosity, small gossip, and sensationalism, while really important news and live facts are omitted, ignored, and suppressed by the advertising spirit of money and large business interests.

        In his story, "An Apostle of the Tules," Bret Harte shows that under the cloak of religious revival there are only animality, brutality, and degradation. He shows in the revivalist, Brother Silas, the dull, emotional, hysterical, sickly, and inferior type of mind, saturated by the spirit of mediocre self-contentment, vanity, and conceit. Where we should expect a spiritual expression we only find a "stolid face, heavy, animal, and unintelligent." Nero expounding the truths of Christianity, the gladiator punctuating the Sermon on the Mount with a sword in his hand, the prize-

fighter holding revival meetings and illustrating Christian humility by boxing matches and prize fights, these are in accord with American revival meetings. In this story Bret Harte shows the inferior under the garb of the superior and hence the derisive laughter.

CHAPTER XIV

RIDICULE, MALICE, AND THE HUMANE

        In the hunting out of the mean, the vulgar, and inferior under the dignified cloak of the great and the superior is there necessarily present an element of malice? Does ridicule disclose a mean, low, and malicious trait inhuman nature? Does ridicule consist not only in revealing the mean side of the object laughed at, but also of persons who make merry over the defects and shortcomings of others? In other words, is ridicule necessarily the outcome of malice?

        Some writers claim that the comic and the ludicrous flow from the malicious in human character. There no comic without malice. Thus Spiller gives the following definition of the comic: "The comic implies a humiliating situation where the sense of malice is aroused so far as it satisfies and mechanically occupies the attention." It is claimed that the comic writer displays his narrow-mindedness in his lack of sympathy, in his of realization of his common nature with the rest humanity.

        While there is some truth in the assertion that a number of jokes and comic situations have a malicious element in them, still on the whole the statement is incorrect; it is specially false of the higher manifestation of the comic and the ridiculous. Children and men in the lower stages of development, such as we find in the case of savages and barbarians, find enjoyment in the comic and in the ridiculous without any regard to the special humiliation of any particular persons and classes. There is just laughter at funny situations, comic saws, and plays. In so far as there is play with the serious side of life the malicious element is completely absent.

        There is comic play with the dignified and the sacred out of the exuberance of life. The inner sources of reserve energy are let free and man can see himself stronger, better, and superior to what he had been before. There is laughter, both as the result of the consciousness of his former weakness and shortcomings as well as from the present sense of power and play. "All pleasure," as Schopenhauer rightly puts it, "is derived from the use and consciousness of power." The malicious element is here entirely absent, and one who looks for fun, ridicule, and the ludicrous from the narrow standpoint of malice misses the fun of the play. There may be malicious laughter, but it is not true, conversely, that all comic laughter is malicious.

        There is the comic laughter at the fun of play. The child puts himself in an inferior position, as in the game of blind man's buff, to satisfy himself and his playmates in the manifestation of reserve energy which comes pouring forth to the surface of their active life. Man often laughs at himself for his own amusement and for the amusement of his fellow men. There is certainly no malice in that; there is the sense of one's limitations which is at the bottom of such self-derisive laughter.

        At the same time there is present the sense of the spiritual transcendence of the limitations, the sense that annuls such limitations by the consciousness of that fact. We may play at a game and laugh at ourselves and have others laugh at our clumsy, awkward, and ineffectual efforts. Many

children and adults obtain immense pleasure from such games. They laugh uproariously at ea effort and consequent failure. There is not the least sign or feeling of malice about it.

        As we reach the highest forms of comic art the personal element becomes more and more eliminated and ridicule is directed against impersonal ideas, ideals, beliefs, and institutions. What underlies such ridicule is the righteous indignation against snares, deceptions, and illusions that veil truth and reality from the gaze of humanity. Laughter at the ludicrous is far from being malicious, in fact, it is directed against evil and malicious elements. This is the main power of the comic drama and of all comic wit. All the examples brought above from the immortal Aristophanes to Lucian, Cervantes, Voltaire, and others, go to prove the important function of comic art in social life.

        If tragedy, according to Aristotle, purges one of evil passions through sympathy with suffering, comedy purges the spectator or the hearer from the evils of life by means of sympathetic laughter. Laughter is direct against the inferior from the standpoint of the superior who is thus purified from all sense of malice. Laughter purges the superior from anger and vindictiveness with the inferior.

        In the higher forms of art ridicule flows from a source of recognition of a higher principle which is seen by the writer or poet who communicates his ideas, feelings, and ideals to the spectators, the audience, or the readers. Ridicule comes from a deep experience, from a profound knowledge of truth, and from a sympathy with human life. Through laughter man becomes purged of animal malice and rises to the highest forms human sympathy and divine love.

        The prophet Isaiah thunders his ridicule and invective against idol worshippers, both Israelite and Gentile, from the heights of monotheism which he has reached and to which he is anxious to lift up his fellow men: 

        The carpenter stretcheth out his rule; he marketh it out with the line; he fitteth with planes, and he marketh it out with the compass, and maketh it after the figure of a man according to the beauty of a man; that it may remain in the house.

        He heweth him down cedars, and taketh the cypress and the oak, which he strengtheneth for himself among the trees of the forest: he planteth an ash and the rain doth nourish it.

        Then shall it be for a man to burn: for he will take thereof, and warm himself; yea, he kindleth it, and baketh bread; yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh a graven image, and falleth down thereto.

        He burneth part thereof in the fire; with part thereof he eateth flesh; he roasteth roast, and is satisfied; yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Ah, I am warm, I have seen the fire.

        And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god. 

        The genius of the prophet places rightly the cause of the ludicrous when he tells us: 

        And none considereth in his heart, neither is there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have burned part of it in the fire; yea, also I have baked bread upon the coals thereof; I have roasted flesh, and eaten it; and shall I make the residue thereof an abomination? Shall I down to the stock of a tree?  

        After the prophet has poured out the vials of ridicule on the idol worshippers he exclaims: 

        Sing, O ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it; should ye lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forest, and every tree therein: for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and glorified himself in Israel.

        Thus saith the Lord, thy Redeemer, and He that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself.

        I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I redeemed thee. 

        In another place the prophet takes up the same mockery and ridicule of idol-worship: 

        They lavish gold out of the bag, and weigh silver in the balance, and hire a goldsmith; and he maketh it a god, and they fall down, yea, they worship.

        They bear him upon the shoulder, they carry him, and set him in his place, and he standeth; from his place should he not be removed: yea, one shall cry unto him, yet can he not answer, nor save him out of his trouble. 

        The prophet soon becomes serious and declares the source whence the power of his ridicule has come: 

        Remember this, and shew yourselves men: bring it again to mind, O ye transgressors.

        Remember the former things of old: for I am God and there is none else: I am God and there is none but me,

        Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand. 

        Thus we find that ridicule may flow from the highest levels attained by man and may in turn give rise to love, mercy and forgiveness.

        Even Christ with his deep love and sympathy for erring humanity uses the potent tool of ridicule against the Pharisees and the false prophets: 

        Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

        Ye shall know them by their fruits . . .  

        And he adds the mordant ridicule: 

        Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?  

        One cannot help finding ridicule in the casting out of devils: 

        So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine. 

        Now adds the Evangelist: 

        And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus; and, when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts. 

        Christ ridicules the rich man by the metaphor of the camel and the needle. 

        It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. 

        Jesus heaps ridicule on the Pharisees, their vanity, conceit, and hypocrisy, by characterizing them as "blind guides which strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.” He compares the Scribes, the Pharisees, and the hypocrites to men who clean the cup on the outside and leave filth in the inside. Finally He likens them to white sepulchers beautiful on the outside and on the inside full of rot.   From the highest point of moral life reached by Christ nothing looked so small, so mean, and so low as conceit, vanity, and hypocrisy personified by him in the Scribe and the Pharisee. This meanness Christ pierces with the sharp shafts of his pointed ridicule. 

        When the woman of Canaan, a poor pagan woman came and worshipped him, saying, "Lord, help me," he humorously assumed the dignity of the aristocratic, exclusive Jew and scorned her with ridicule. 

        It is not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs. 

        Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which are from their masters' table.  

        Thus the poor woman in her agony of grief replied and the love and pity for which the Gospels characterize Jesus stood revealed behind the veil of ridicule on Gentile and especially on the Canaanite. 

        Then Jesus answered and said unto her: O woman great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt. 

        In his more playful moods, when Peter, one of favorite disciples, rebukes him for trying to challenge the scribes, the elders, and the priests in their own dens, Jesus replies: 

        Get thee behind me, Satan. 

       Behind the ridicule, or, rather, banter of Jesus there was no malice, there were pity, sympathy, and love for his persecutors, the Scribes and the Pharisees, on whom, however, he did not hesitate to pour the vials of his most invective ridicule. Ridicule may flow from the purest source of human love.

        Laughter, when free from all distressing and sad emotions, is essentially human, and, what is more, is humanizing, for it is the beginning of reconciliation with our opponents. When we can laugh we are ready to forgive. Laughter is the beginning of love. Only he can truly laugh who can

survey things from ever rising mountain tops of human sympathy and love.

        To assert, then, as some do, with Hobbes that laughter, ridicule, and wit are intimately related to, and even their root in, the feeling of malice is to misunderstand one of the most fundamental of human functions. Even the laughter of derision and scorn has the divine in it, not only because, as we have just pointed out, it indicates a higher standpoint, at least a recognition of fact that he who is laughed at is on a lower plane of development, whether animal or human, but also because is the gleam of peace in a smile, however inimical, provided there is willingness on the scorned side to accept the olive branch of peace. If the ridiculed person is not proud, touchy, selfish, conceited, and vain the recognition of the ridicule is the best form of reconciliation and the formation of a deeper love. When Aristophanes ridiculed Socrates and his school, Socrates stood up the middle of the play that the people could compare the copy with the original. The Canaanite woman attracted the love of Christ when she humbly acknowledged the ridicule directed against her. Laughter, when taken in the spirit of recognition of shortcomings and reconciliation, makes for the best of friendship and the deepest form of human love.

        In the comic, as in all art, man is taken out of his narrow shell and made to transcend the limits of his individuality. Instead of being occupied with the constant harrowing cares and troubles of every-day life, with the struggle for existence and the fears of self-preservation, he is taken to a higher, freer region where the light of the sun is not dimmed by cloud and fear, where beauty never fades, where, fed on divine nectar of mirth and ambrosia of laughter, the joy of life ever fills the heart of man. Pain, misery, and sorrow touched by the magic wand of laughter, raising suffering and distressed men to the lofty regions of inexpressible joy by awakening the feeling of the power of the human individuality. Like tragedy, comedy sounds the depths of the human personality and reveals sources of human reserve energy of which man in his every-day life mains entirely unaware.

        Tragedy represents man struggling with overwhelming fate and misfortune, "a thinking reed resisting and opposing the elemental forces." The spectator catches a glimpse of the subconscious reserve energy stretching far into infinity. This glimpse is sufficient to have him lifted out of his narrow, individual cell from he which looks on the world. The bonds of individuality are momentarily broken and the person feels himself in harmony, in union, in deep sympathy with unhappiness a misfortune, a sympathy which purges away all the evil passions, as fire purifies gold from all dross. In tragedy the person becomes free from all fear of the blind, mental forces; he becomes a free spirit.

      In comedy the spirit of the human personality recognizes itself through joy.  The individual is lifted to a higher standpoint, to loftier regions from which, like the Olympic gods, he can look down rejoicingly on the doings of men. Man is lifted above the cares of humdrum life; he sees the struggles, the fears, the pains, the misfortunes, the distresses as trivial, small, and mean. Like the Olympic gods, he passes his time in joy and laughter. Man moves freely without fear, with a smile and with laughter, above the worldly elements of chance, accident, fortune, and misfortune. What is all that to him? He laughs in joy and cares little for the turmoil chaos of life. He sees nothing but the smiling light of the funny and the humorous. As the Bible puts it:  

        And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. 

        In the darkness of man's life laughter is the light of the spirit.  Through the comic the spirit of man moves above the darkness of the deep. Man soars above the gloomy void of existence, and smiles and laughs in joy.

        In the comic man transcends the evil spirit of dark malice, and from the depth of his subconsciousness there heave up forces, energies, higher views, and principles which make him recognize imperfections, defects, faults. Man can laugh at them through the ease and grace with which they are overcome and transcended. The malicious element when present must be hidden and transformed by a deeper insight and higher standard of life in order to gain the sympathy of laughter. The prickles of ridicule guard the joy of life and beauty of the mirth of laughter. Mirth, like Venus, may be born of the foam of life, but under the foam there are the depths of the ocean of being over which smile and laughter hover playfully.

CHAPTER XV 

THE MECHANICAL AND THE STUPID 

        Bergson, in his remarkable essay on laughter, claims that the ridiculous is present wherever the automatic, the absent-minded, the rigid, or the mechanical is detected in the flexible, ever adjusting spirit of the living; in other words, the ridiculous is the finding or revelation of the rigid, automatic mechanism that takes up its abode in the living soul. He studies the work of many comic writers, he analyzes jokes and witticisms and tries in all of them to find the mechanical behind life activity. Bergson lays down the law: “The attitudes, gestures, and movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportions as that body reminds one of a mere machine.” “Something mechanical encrusted upon the living.” “The body taking precedence of the soul. Matter seeking to outdo the mind, the letter aiming at ousting the spirit.” “The laughable is something mechanical in something living.” According to Bergson, “comedy combines events so as to introduce mechanism into the outer forms of life.” “What is essentially laughable is what is done automatically.” “Absentmindedness is always comical.” “Any arrangement of acts and events is comic which gives us, in a single combination, the illusion of life and the distinct impression of a mechanical arrangement.” “Inside the person we must distinctly perceive, as though through a glass, a set-up mechanism. The originality of a comic artist is thus expressed in the special kind of life he imparts to a mere puppet.”

        It is true that mechanism in life is a factor in the ludicrous, but it is not true when we assert the universal proposition that the ludicrous is nothing but the mechanical in life. Bergson got hold of only one of the factors of the ludicrous. It is true that the detection of the mechanical, of routine in life is a source of ridicule, it is, however, only one of the many streams from which ridicule is drawn, but it is not the only one.

        Moreover, the stream has not been traced to its source. The mechanical in life is ludicrous not as mere mechanical, but because it is in relation to an inferior form of existence. The mechanical, the routine is ludicrous, because it is associated with deformities, meanness, triviality, debasement, frivolity, and inferiority. Bergson lays down the law: “We laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing.” True, but do we not laugh ever time when a person gives us the impression of being an animal, a brute, an ass?

        We do not certainly think of mechanism when we compare a person to a cow, an ass, or a mule. The mechanical in life may be granted to be ludicrous, but it is by no means true that in every joke, pun, humor, and wit we are to look for the rigid, the mechanical. We laugh whenever we can detect the inferior under the cloak of the superior, whenever we can show the low, the mean, the base under the guise of the superior. We laugh when we can discern the fool’s cap under the crown of the monarch, when we can see the ass’s head on a Bottom’s body, conditions hidden from us in

the case of persons who happen to fascinate us by their superficial manners of dignity. We Laugh, not only at the man of routine, but laugh all the more when we can discern in the respectable, dignified, moral, and religious man the scoundrel, the knave, and the rouge. We laugh whenever we discover the illusory under the veil of reality. We laugh whenever a low form of life attempts to impress us by superior airs. We laugh at meanness, mediocrity, vanity, and conceit.

        Perhaps we may now further advance in our search for the nature of the ludicrous. We have pointed out that the finding of the inferior under the guise of the superior, discerning the low form under the veil of the higher is the essence of the ludicrous. Defects, deviations from the normal, from the ordinary standard accepted in the given community—low states, mean conditions of life paraded as merits and virtues, vanity, and conceit in the garb of respectability and dignity, all are good subjects for ridicule. The high form is shown to be illusory, deceptive. The person ridiculed is unconscious of his defects and shortcomings, and thinks that his low form is really a high one. All his actions, sayings, and mental activity flow from that source of unconsciousness, the unawareness of his low condition. In fact, he even regards his low state as the very best and the highest. Failures are taken by him as successes, and demerits are regarded as virtues.

       In its more developed forms the naïve, unconscious state rises to extreme vanity and conceit. He cannot see himself as others see him. He is cursed with the delusion of parading the inferior as the superior, he takes the low as the high, the mean as the dignified. Is not the ludicrous a form of mental blindness?

       There is no need to go far to look for this mental defect. Like dirt, it is ever present, we must constantly purify and clean ourselves from it. The ridiculous is something that takes direct possession of the soul and strikes at the very kernel of the human personality. Ridicule purifies the soul encrusted with moral dirt.

        What defects acts so as to paralyze a person into unconsciousness of his own defects and failures? Is it not a defect of intelligence, a want of the reasoning powers? And still the defect, though mental, and affecting the reasoning capacities, must not be of the nature of a mental malady. For otherwise our pity would be aroused and we would regard it rather as a misfortune which would be more tragic than comic. The mental defect must be of such a character as can be corrected, or as something that may be rectified by the person. In short, the subject of ridicule is foolishness, stupidity, ignorance.

        When we come to examine closely the sources of ridicule we find that possibly nothing so much answers the purpose of the comic as the dull of wit and the stupid. The boor, the yokel, the silly, the weakminded will ever form the theme of comedy and anecdote. It is the fool who is ridiculed. Whoever acts the superior being unconscious of his real inferiority or thinks that others cannot see it, while it is patent to everybody that he is below the average social standards of intellect, he is a fool and he is laughed at for his stupidity.

        An ignorant fellow who tries to pass off as a learned professor or as a great scholar, even if he is conscious of his ignorance, but is unconscious of the fact that others can see through him, is a fit subject for ridicule. He is stupid and a fool.

        The ludicrous side becomes even more enhanced if he is convinced that he is really a learned man and acts and talks accordingly, thus being doubly ignorant, ignorant of his own conditions and ignorant of the attitude that others have toward him. He is doubly foolish and the laughter at him is irresistible.

       In cases where the cause of the ridicule is not clearly shown a little examination reveals the fact that it is the fool and human folly generally that excite the merriment and ridicule of people, they are the constant topic of the joker, the punster, the wit, and even the earnest prophet, psalmist, and Christ. The central character of comedy is the fool, and the subject of the comic is human folly. Human folly, under all its disguises and in all the endless forms of vanity, conceit, arrogance, false pride, false overestimation of self and things, institutions, manners, beliefs, and ideals all defects and faults of the human soul that come under the categories of silliness, pig-headedness, asinity, are the subject of the comic and the ludicrous.

        Cervantes lays his finger on the cause of the ludicrous by telling us plainly the source whence flow all the comic manifestations of that Divine Comedy in which is penned the immortal type of Don Quixote: 

        This gentleman (Don Quixote) gave himself up to the reading of tales of chivalry. Among them all none pleased him so much as those love speeches and challenges, where in several places he found written: “The reason of the unreasonable treatment of my reason in such wise, that with reason I complain of your beauty,” and also when he read: “The high heaven of your divinity which divinely fortifies you with the stars making you meritorious of the merit merited by your greatness.” With this kind of language the poor gentleman lost his wits. In short, he so bewildered himself in this kind of study that his brain was dried up in such a manner that he came to lose his wits. 

        Aristophanes, in ridiculing Socrates, makes him occupy himself with silly questions such as: 

        The other day Socrates asked his disciple how many feet of its own feet a flea could jump. The disciple solved the problem in the cleverest way. He melted some wax; then took the flea and dipped its feet into the wax. When this was cold, the flea had slippers on; these he undid, and measured the stance. 

       The scrupulous exactness of this silly investigation reminds one of similar clever investigations carried out in many modern scientific laboratories, physical and psychological. 

        How many a noteworthy thing [Heine writes] can be adduced on ancient asses as opposed to the modern. How intelligent were the former and, ah! how stupid are the latter. How reasonably for instance spoke the ass of Balaam . . . . The modern asses are great asses. The antique assess—who had reached such a pitch of refinement—would turn in their graves could they hear how people talk about their descendants. Once “Ass” was an honorable title, signifying as much as “Court Counselor,” “Baron,” “Doctor of Philosophy.” 

        In ridiculing the stupidity of German ideas Heine writes: 

        My washerwoman complains that the Reverend Mr. S. has been putting “ideas” into the head of her daughter, which have made her foolish and unreasonable. The coachman Patterson grumbles out on every occasion, “That’s an idea! that’s an idea!” Yesterday he was regularly vexed when I inquired what sort of a thing he imagined an idea to be. And vexedly did he growl “an idea is an idea! an idea is any d—d nonsense that a man gets into his head.” It is in this sense that the word is used, as a title of a book, by the Court Counselor Heeren in Göttingen. 

        Heine tells us that the sources of his ridicule are the fool and human folly: 

        I really became cheerful when I reflect that all these fools whom I see here can be used in my writings; they are cash down, ready money. I feel like a diamond in cotton. The Lord hath blessed

me, the fool crop has turned out uncommonly well this year, and like a good landlord I consume only a few at a time, and lay up the best for the future. Like a rich, plump merchant who rubbing his hands with genial joy wanders here and there amid chests, bales, boxes, and casks, even so do I wander around my people. Ye are all my own! Ye are all equally dear to me and I love ye, as ye yourselves love your own gold, and that is more than a little. Oh! How I laughed from my heart when I lately heard that one of my people had asserted with concern that he knew not how I could live, or what means I had—and yet he himself is such a first rate fool that I could live from him alone as on a capital. 

        Lack of intelligence, mediocrity, narrow-mindedness, stupidity, have always been the butt of ridicule. Even philosophers have castigated the philistine.

        Schopenhauer’s description of the small, narrow mind of mediocrity, keen for insignificant, inessential, practical points, may be interesting: 

        A philistine is a person with a small “normal” amount of intellect and with no mental needs. . . . A philistine is a person who is seriously occupied with realities which are no realities. . . . The philistine has no desire to gain knowledge for its own sake, he has no experience of true aesthetic pleasure. . . His real pleasures are of a practical and sensual character. . . . If the luxuries of life are heaped upon the philistine he becomes bored, and against boredom he has a great many fancied remedies—balls, theaters, parties, clubs, cards, games, traveling, and so on. . . . The peculiar characteristic of the philistine is a dull, dry kind of gravity akin to that of brutes. 

        Matthew Arnold, in his “Essays,” writes on the subject: 

     “Philistines! Perhaps we have not the words because we have so much of the thing. . . . I think we had much better take the term Philistine itself.” A philistine is a “man who regards the possession of practical conveniences as something sufficient in itself, or something that compensates for the absence or surrender of the idea of reason.” “Philistia has come to be thought by us the true Land of Promise, and it’s anything but that; the born lover of ideas, the born hater of common places, must feel in this country, that the sky over his head is of brass and iron.” 

    Perhaps the best expression of the ludicrous triviality and banal commonplace of silly, meaningless platitudes is conveyed by the following verse from “Mother Goose”: 

        When Bessie Brooks and Tommy Snooks        Went out on a Sunday,        Said Tommy Snooks to Bessie Brooks        “Tomorrow will be Monday.” 

        The philistine is laughed at as the fool.

        When Falstaff is entrapped for the last time by Mrs. Ford and pinched and burned by the supposed fairies, Mrs. Ford finally, in a burst of laughter, exclaims: 

         Sir John, we have had ill luck; we could never meet. I will never take you for my love again; but I will always count you my dear.      Fal. I do begin to perceive that I am made an ass.     Ford. Ay, and an ox, too; both the proofs are extant. 

        Shakespeare, in his “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” raises the laugh on Quince in the prologue before the Athenian duke, Theseus, by making the poet carpenter stop on the wrong points and thus convey the reverse meaning of what was intended. The speech is ridiculed by having it turned through wrong stops into nonsense.

Enter Quince for the Prologue.

Pro.  If we offend thee, it is with our good will.That you should think, we come not to offend,But with good will. To show our simple skill,That is the true beginning of our end.Consider, then, we come, as minding to content you,We do not come, as minding to content you,Our true intent is. All for your delight,We are not here. That you should here repent you,The actors are at hand; and, by their show,You shall know all, that you are like to know.

The.  This fellow does not stand upon points. . . .His speech was like a tangled chain; nothing impaired,but all disordered. . . .

        Shakespeare then presents the silly prologue, introduces the characters of the play, and tells the whole stupid plot, full of dull, meaningless alliterations such as:

Whereat, with blade, with bloody blameful blade,He bravely broach’d his boiling bloody breast;And Thisby, tarrying in mulberry shade,His dagger drew, and died. For all the rest,Let Lion, Moonshine, Wall, and lovers twainAt large discourse, while here they do remain.

Exeunt Prologue, Pyramus, Thisbe, Lion, and Moonshine.

The. I wonder if the lion be to speak.Demetrius. No wonder, my lord: on lion may, whenmany asses do.

        Here ridicule consists in making of the actors fools and asses. Thus Pyramus, the lover of Thisbe:

O grim-look’d night! O night with hue so black!O night, whichever art when day is not! 

        The wall introduces itself as “one Snout by name.” Through this Snout, the wall, “the wittiest partition that I have ever heard discourse,” the two lovers make love. Queen Hippolita comments:

This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard.         When the Lion and Moonshine enter Theseus remarks:

Here come two noble beasts in, a man and a lion.         The Lion introduces himself to the audience:

You, ladies, you, whose gentle hearts do fearThe smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor,May now perchance both quake and tremble here,When lion rough in wildest rage doth roar,Then know that I, one Snug the joiner, amA lion-fell, nor else no lion’s dam;For, if I should as lion come in strifeInto this place, ‘twere pity on my life.

      Moonshine introduces himself:

All that I have to say is to tell you that the lanthorn is the moon; I, the man I’ the moon; this thorn-bush, my thorn-bush;and this dog, my dog.         When Pyramus stabs himself he declares:

Thus die I, thus, thus.Now I am deadNow I am fled. . . . 

        On this comical death Theseus comments:

With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover, and prove an ass.           The whole of this comic play turns on the stupidity of the performers and the silliness of the tragedy which they intend to present and which is thus made into a comedy. The tragedy has become a comedy when shown to be silly and stupid. The intelligence of the performers is below the normal, their mental activity is inferior to that of the average person. Lack of consciousness of that fact on the part of the actors makes the play all the more comic. The comic sounds the depths of human folly.

        We may quote from Daudet’s “Tartarin on the Alps”:

“What a queer country this Switzerland is!” exclaimed Tartairn.Bompard began to laugh.“There is no Switzerland any more.” . . .“Switzerland at the present time is nothing but an immense Kursaal, to which people crowd for amusement from all parts of the world; and which is exploited by a wealthy company possessed of thousands of millions.“You will not find a corner which is not fixed up and machined like the floor beneath the stage in the Opera: waterfalls lighted up, turnstiles at the entrances of glaciers, and for ascent of mountains, railways—either the hydraulic or funicular.“At the bottom of the crevasses there is always present a porter who is able to assist you up again, who will brush your clothes, shake off the snow, and respectfully inquire whether ‘Monsieur has any luggage?’” . . .

        On ascending Mont Blanc, the cowardly Bompard became frightened out of his wits:

“Tartarin,” Bompard exclaimed, “I hope that you have had enough of this ludicrous expedition.”        The great man opened his eyes with some anxiety in them.

        “What are you chattering about?”

        Bompard drew a picture of the thousand terrible deaths which menaced them.

        Tartarin interrupted him—

        “You joker! And the company? Is not Mont Blanc managed by a Company?”

        “What! did you believe all that? Why, it was only a guying. Among people of Tarascon, of course—you know that what we say is—is” 

        When on Mont Blanc the “brave” Tartarin is full of fear and trepidation of death; he makes his confession: 

        “Forgive me; yes yes, forgive me. I have often been unkind to you: I have treated you as a liar—”

        “What does that matter?”

        “Listen to me, friend; I have never killed a lion!”

        “That does not surprise me at all,” replied Bompard, quickly. “But why worry yourself about such a trifle?” 

        What Daudet specially regards as ludicrous is vanity, conceit, deceit, folly, mendacity, simulation, silliness, stupidity and absurdity.

CHAPTER XVI

HOLY WRITS AND THE SAGES 

        The sacred Scriptures use ridicule as their weapon and take the fool as the target at whom the shafts of scorn are directed with power and sure aim. The psalmist sings: 

        The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. God looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand.

        They have gone back.

        Surely men of low degree are a lie: to be laid in the balance, they are altogether lighter than vanity.

        Fools because of their transgressions, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted. 

        The Proverbs specially abound in derision and ridicule at the expense of the ignorant, the vain and the foolish. 

        A foolish woman is clamorous, she is simple and knoweth nothing.

        The way of a fool is right in his own eyes. In the mouth of the foolish is a rod of pride.

        Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom.

        Let a bear robbed of her whelps meet a man, rather than a fool in his folly.

        Speak not in the ears of a fool, for he will despise thy wisdom. 

        The writer of the Proverbs apparently discriminates between the fool as the simpleton and the arrogant fool. The treatment of the arrogant fool is: "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit," while that of the fool-simpleton: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him." Of the fool's wit the Proverbs pointedly remark: 

        The legs of the lame are not equal, so is a parable in the mouth of fools.

        As he that bindeth a stone in a sling, so is he who giveth honor to a fool.

        The great God that formed all things rewardeth the fool.

        As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth his folly.

        Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope of a fool than of him. The sluggard is wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason.

        Even the mild Christ did not hesitate to use the fool as his butt. We all know the parable of the foolish virgins. We are not surprised to find Schopenhauer having his fling: 

        A wise man is wise only on condition of living in a world of fools.

        We find in the world of mankind, from a moral standpoint, villainy and baseness, and, from an intellectual standpoint, incapacity and stupidity. Stupid people are generally malicious for the very same reason that the ugly and deformed are.  

        The fool, the defective, and even the physically deformed are put into the same category. This, however, is but the maxim of a pessimist. The fool is not necessarily malicious, but he is certainly ludicrous. Ignorance, silliness, lack of wit, stupidity, naïveté, stolidity, sluggishness, misapprehension, error of understanding will always be fit subjects for the shafts of ridicule and in everlasting themes of the comic.

        The "Al Koran" is not without its laugh. Thus Mohammed tells us: 

        When the Prophet entrusted as a secret unto one of wives a certain accident; and when she disclosed the same, and God made it known unto him; he acquainted her with part of what she had done and forbore to upbraid her with the other part thereof. And when he had acquainted her therewith, she said, Who hath discovered this to thee? He answered, the knowing, the sagacious God hath discovered it unto me. 

        The Hindoo Scriptures ridicule the priests thus: 

        After lying still for a year, these Brahmans, the frogs, have uttered their voices, inspired by the rain-god! 

        In the like vein is the "Upanishad," which compares the priests, the Brahmans, who circle round the holy fire, each holding the robe of him who walks before him, to a row of puppies, each holding in his mouth his predecessor's tail.

        The holy Brahmans are compared to frogs and puppies.

        The Dhammapada of the Buddhists says: 

        If a fool be associated with a wise man, even all his life, he will perceive the truth as little as a spoon perceives the taste of soup. 

        The Chinaman is grave and serious. Confucius is a Chinaman par excellence, as he practically formulated the rules of Chinese "proprieties," and has formed the mold in which Chinese character and civilization have been cast for over two thousand years. In the "Analects” we find the Chinese sage, Confucius, occasionally relaxing his grave demeanor and a smile and a laugh playing on his stern countenance at the sight of man's shortcomings: 

        Blade, but no bloom, or else bloom, but no produce—ay, that is the way with some.

        Whenever Tez-Kunz drew comparisons from others, Master would say, "Ah, how wise and great you must have become! Now I have no time to do that!" 

        Students of old fixed their eyes upon themselves; now they learn with their eyes upon others. 

        Of Wei-shang-Kau he said: 

        Who calls him straightforward? A person once begged some vinegar of him, and he begged it from a neighbor and then presented him with it!  

        "The blossom is out on the cherry tree,

        With a flutter on every spray.

        Dost think that my thoughts go not out to thee,

        Ah, why art thou far away!" 

        Commenting on these lines the Master said, “There can hardly have been much thought going out!' What does distance signify?" 

        Tsz-lu propounded a question about ministering to spirits (of the departed). The Master replied, “Where there is scarcely the ability to minister to (living) men how shall there be ability to minister to the spirits?",

        On his venturing to put a question concerning death he answered, "Where there is scarcely any knowledge of life, how shall there be any about death?"

        Through the intervention of Tzu-1u, Tsz-kau was being appointed governor of Pi. "You are spoiling a good man's son," said the Master. 

        Tsz-kung was consulting him, and asked, "What say you of a person who was liked by all in his village?" 

        "That will scarcely do," he answered.

        "What then, if they all disliked him?"

        “That, too," said he, "is scarcely enough. Better if he were liked by the good folk in the village, and disliked by the bad." 

        The sage Epictetus holds up moral and mental defects to ridicule. The following extracts from Epictetus are taken at random: 

        If we all applied ourselves as heartily to our proper business as the old fellows at Rome do to their schemes; perhaps we, too, might make some proficiency. I know a man older than I am, and who is now superintendent of provisions at Rome. When he passed through this place on his return

from exile, what an account did he give me of his former life! and how did he promise that in the future, when he was got back, he would apply himself to nothing but how to spend the remainder of his days in repose and tranquillity. "For how few have I now remaining!" "You will not do it," said I. "When you are once got within the smell of Rome, you will forget all this, and, if you can but once again gain admittance to court, you will go in heartily rejoiced and thank God." "If you ever find me, Epictetus," said he, "putting one foot into the court, think of me whatever you please." How, after all, did he act? Before he entered the city he was met by a billet from Cæsar. On receiving it he forgot all his former resolutions, and has ever since been heaping up one encumbrance upon another. I should be glad now to have an opportunity of putting him in mind of his discourse upon the road, and of saying, How much more clever, a prophet am I than you! 

        A person was talking to me one day about the priesthood of Augustus. I say to him, "Let the thing alone, friend: you will be at great expense for nothing." "But my name," says he, "will be written in the annals." "Will you stand by, then, and tell those who read them, 'I am the person whose name is written there'? But, if you could tell everyone so now, what will you do when you are dead?" "My name will remain." "Write it upon a stone and it will remain just as well." "But pray, what remembrance will there be of you out of Nicopolis?" "But I shall wear a crown of gold." "If your heart is quite set upon a crown, take and put on one of roses, for it will make the prettier appearance." 

        Such a one is happy. He walks with a numerous train. Well, I join myself with the crowd, and I, too, walk with a numerous train. 

        An acquaintance of mine, for no reason, had determined to starve himself to death. I went the third day, and inquired what was the matter. He answered, "I am determined." Well: but what is your motive? for, if your determination be right, we will stay and assist your departure; but, if unreasonable, change it*"We ought to keep our determinations." What do you mean, sir? not all; but such as are right. Else, if you should just now take it into your head that it is right, if you think fit, do not change; but persist, and say, "We ought to keep our determinations."

        With difficulty this person was, however, at last convinced; but there are some at present whom there is no convincing. So that now I think I understand, what before I did not, the meaning of that common saying, that a fool will neither bend nor break. May it never fall to my lot to be a wise, that is an intractable, fool for my friend.

        There are some things which men confess with ease; others, with difficulty. No one, for instance, will confess himself a fool, or a blockhead; but, on the contrary, you will hear every one say, "I wish my fortune was equal to my mind." But they easily confess themselves fearful, and say, "I am somewhat timorous, I confess; but in other respects you will not find me a fool." 

        Do you not often see little dogs caressing and playing with each other, that you would say nothing could be more friendly; but to learn what this friendship is, throw a bit of meat between them, and you will see. Do you, too, throw a bit of an estate between you and your son, and you will see that he will quickly wish you underground, and you him; and then you, no doubt, on the other hand, will exclaim, "What a son I have brought up! He would bury me alive!" Throw in a pretty girl, and the old fellow and the young one will both fall in love with her. 

        Were not Eteocles and Polynices born of the same mother and of the same father? Were they not brought up, and did they not live and eat and sleep together? Did they not kiss and fondle each other? So that anyone who saw them would have laughed at all the paradoxes which philosophers utter about love. And yet, when a kingdom, or bit of meat, was thrown betwixt them, see what and

how eagerly they wish to kill each other. 

        Even the stoic, Marcus Aurelius, is not above the use ridicule.  Thus he tells us in his "Meditations":  

        Wheresoever thou mayest live, there it is in thy power to be well and happy. But thou mayest live at the Court? There then also mayest thou live well and happy. 

        Schopenhauer is lavish in ridicule. Of the many examples found in his writings we may take the one in which he contrasts the successful, "clever man" with the intellectual man who, in the opinion of the world, appears as lacking in "common" sense: 

        The clever man, when he converses, will think less of what he is saying than of the person with whom he is speaking; for then he is sure to say nothing which he will afterwards regret; he is sure not to lay himself open nor to commit an indiscretion. But his conversation will never be particularly interesting.

        An intellectual man readily does the opposite, and with him the person with whom he converses is often no more than the mere occasion of a monologue; and it often happens that the other then makes up for his subordinate rôle by lying in wait for the man of intellect, and drawing his secrets out of him. 

        Even the meek Tolstoy with his doctrine of non-resistance to evil cannot resist the use of ridicule in the chastisement of human folly and conceit: 

        Lately William II ordered a new throne for himself with some special ornaments, and, dressing himself up in a white uniform with patches, in tight trousers, and in a hat with a bird on it, and throwing a red mantle over it, came out to his subjects. He seated himself on the throne with full assurance that this was a necessary and important act. His subjects saw nothing funny in all this, they even found the spectacle very majestic. 

        The Puritan, Bunyan, in his "Pilgrim's Progress” avails himself of the power of ridicule: 

        World. Why, in yonder village (the village is named Morality) there dwells a gentleman whose name is Legality, a very judicious man, and a man of a very good name, that has skill to help men off with such burdens as thine is from their shoulders; yea, to my knowledge, he hath done a great deal of good this way; aye, and besides, he hath skill to cure those that are somewhat crazed in their wits with their burdens. To him, as I said, thou mayest go, and be helped presently. His house is not quite a mile from this place; and if he should not be at home himself, he hath a pretty young man to his son, whose name is Civility, that can do it (to speak on) as well as the old gentleman himself: there, I say, thou mayest be eased of thy burden; and if thou are not minded to go back to thy former inhabitation, as indeed I would not wish thee, thou mayest send for thy wife and children to thee to this village, where there are houses now standing empty, one of which thou mayest have at a reasonable rate: provision is there also cheap and good; and that which will make thy life the more happy is to be sure there thou shalt live by honest neighbors, credit and good fashion.

        They also showed him some of the engines with which some of his servants had done wonderful things. They showed him Moses' rod; the hammer and nail with which which slew Sisera; the pitchers, trumpets, and lamps, too, with which Gideon put to flight the armies of Midian. Then they showed him the ox-goad wherewith Shamgar slew six hundred men. They showed him also the jawbone with which Sampson did such mighty feats. They showed him, moreover, the sling

and stone with which David slew Goliath of Gath; and the sword also with which their Lord will kill the men of sin, in the day that he shall rise up to the prey. They showed him, besides, many excellent things, with which Christian was much delighted. This done, they went to their rest again. 

        Talk. What you will. I will talk of things heavenly, or things earthly; things moral, or things evangelical; things sacred, or things profane; things past, or things to come; things foreign, or things at home; things more essential or things circumstantial; provided that all be done to our profit. 

        Now did Faithful begin to wonder; and stepping to Christian (for he walked all this while by himself), he said to him, but softly, What a brave companion we have got! Surely, this man will make a very excellent pilgrim.

        At this Christian modestly smiled and said, This man with whom you are so taken, will beguile with this tonge of his twenty of them that know him not.

        Faith. Do you know him then?

        Chr. Know him? Yes, better than he knows himself.

        Faith. Pray, what is he?

        Chr. His name is Talkative: he dwelleth in our town. I wonder that you should be a stranger to him; consider that our town is large.

        Faith. Whose son is he? And whereabouts doth he dwell ?

        Chr. He is a son of one Say-well. He dwelt in Prating Row; and he is known to all that are acquainted with him by the name of Talkative of Prating Row; and, not withstanding his fine tongue, he is but a sorry fellow.

        Faith. Well, he seems to be a very pretty man.

        Chr. That is to them that have not a thorough acquaintance with him, for he is best abroad; near he is ugly enough. Your saying that he is a pretty man brings to my mind what I have observed in the work of a painter, whose pictures show best at a distance, but very near more unpleasing.

Faith. But I am ready to think you do but jest, because you smiled.

        Chr. God forbid that I should jest (though I smile in this matter, or that I should accuse any falsely. I will give you a further discovery of him. This man is for any company, and for any talk; as he talketh now with you, so will he talk when he is on the ale-bench; and the more drink he hath in his crown, the more of these things he hath in his mouth. Religion hath no place in his heart, or house, or conversation; all he hath lieth in his tongue, his religion is to make a noise therewith. 

        And now to the second part of the question, which concerns the tradesman you mentioned. Suppose such an one have but a poor employ in the world, but by becoming religious he may mend his market, perhaps get a rich wife, or more and far better customers to his shop; for my part, I see no reason but this may be lawfully done. For why?

        I. To become religious is a virtue, by what means soever a man becomes so.

        2. Nor is it unlawful to get a rich wife, or more custom to my shop.

        3. Besides, the man that gets these by becoming religious gets that which is good of them that are good, by becoming good himself; so then here are a good wife, and customers, and good gain, and all these by becoming religious, which is good; therefore, to become religious to all these is a good and profitable design.

        The fatter the sow is, the more she desires the mire; the fatter the ox is, the more gamesomely he goes to the slaughter; and the more healthy the lustful man is, the more prone he is unto evil. 

        In all the extracts from "Pilgrim's Progress" we find how Bunyan with all his earnest Puritanic zeal employs ridicule in behalf of religion. We further realize that ridicule consists in assimilating the irreligious, the ungodly, the immoral, the rogue, the babbler, and the hypocrite with silliness, stupidity, meanness, conceit, deceit, and vulgarity*with the pig, the sow, and the mire.

 

CHAPTER XVII

IGNORANCE AND THE LUDICROUS  

        The ignorant and the foolish form the subject matter of the comic; they are the legitimate laughing-stock of the world. If people are unaware of their ignorance, and are naïve in their statements, the effect is ludicrous, and all the more effective when they deliver themselves about their ignorance with the infallibility of the Grand Llama.

        We smile at the city woman who was surprised at seeing the process of milking for the first time. "Why,” she said, "I thought a cow was milked by the twisting of its tail."

        When the telegraph was first introduced, the most ludicrous ideas were entertained as to its manner of working. It was thought that the letter carrier would run on the wires and carry his mailbag with great ease. Others thought that the wires would be used for the purpose of dragging mail from station to station. “Wife," said a man, "I don't see for my part, how they send letters on them wires without tearin' 'em all to bits.” “Oh,” you stupid!" exclaimed the more intellectual helpmeet "Why they don't send the paper, they just send the writin' in a fluid state." 

        A little darkey saw a piece of newspaper that had blown up on one of the telegraph wires and caught there. He ran into the house in great excitement and cried: “Come quick! Dem wires done buss and done let all the news out!" 

        An Irishman heard that when one sense is underdeveloped the other is overdeveloped. "I observed it, too," he said, "when one leg is shorter the other one is longer." 

      A Sunday school teacher asks one of the boys, "How many commandments are there, Tom?" Tom thinks and answers, "Perhaps a hundred!" Tom then asks one of the boys what is the number of the commandments. The boy answers promptly, "Ten!"        "Oh, go on!" exclaims Tommy, "I told the teacher there was a hundred and he was dissatisfied!" 

        A doctor examined a young lady and told her that her liver was not in good order.        "I trust," replied the lady, "that my, other liver is all right.” 

        A doctor examined a patient and tapped him on the left side of the abdomen. The patient in his curiosity asked the doctor what he was looking for.        "I examine your spleen," answered the doctor.        "Why," exclaimed the patient, "I thought the spleen was in the head!" 

        Doctor: "Do you have noises in your head?"        Patient: "Sure, Oi have thim all the time an' sometimes I can hear thim fifty feet away!" '  

        "Mamma," exclaimed the little city boy, "the cows chew gum!” 

      The ignorance and shortcomings of physicians are ridiculed in the following anecdote: 

        A father brings his dumb child to the doctor for diagnosis. The child is mute. The doctor's diagnosis is that she is mute, because she lost the power of speech. When the father asks for further information, the doctor tells him that it is because she has lost control of the faculty of articulation. 

        A surgeon amputated a leg of one of his patients. “Is there any hope now?" asked a friend anxiously. "Not the least," said the doctor. "Why, then, make him suffer by the operation?" "Why, sir, can a physician tell a patient at once that he is doomed? We must jolly him a little.”  

        The Greek epigram on a physician is well pointed: The sun shines on his successes and the earth covers his failures. 

        Similarly, ignorance, in giving faulty definitions, excites our merriment, as, for instance, the school boy who told the teacher that the side opposite the right angle of a triangle is termed "hippopotamus"; or that a mountain range is a large-sized cooking stove. A similar definition is that the pyramids (Pyrenees) are a range of mountains between France and Spain.

        If we analyze such jokes more closely, we find much that is regarded as ignorance is really silliness, dullness, and stupidity. It is, after all, the fool and his folly that are ridiculed. As Heine puts it tersely: "The folly of my fellow mortals will live forever. For there is one wisdom, and it hath its fixed limits, but there are a thousand illimitable follies. The learned casuist and carer for souls, Schuup, even saith that in the world there are more fools than human beings."

Ignorance, stupidity, and folly are the Trimurti of the comic.

        Feigned ignorance where the stupidity of the other person is revealed is frequently a subject of the ludicrous.

        Feigning of ignorance expressed in a delicate form of ridicule elevated to the sublime regions of philosophy is found in the "Dialogues" of the great philosopher and artist, Plato. We may take for examination a few examples. Socrates ridicules the Sophist, Protagoras, and his enthusiastic admirers: 

       Last night or rather very early in the morning, Hippocrates gave a tremendous thump with his staff at my door; some one opened it and he came rushing in and bawled out: Socrates, are you awake or asleep?        I knew his voice and said: Hippocrates, is that you? and do you bring any news?        Good news, he said; nothing but good.        Delightful, I said; but what is the news? and why have you come hither at this unearthly hour?        He drew nearer to me and said: Protagaras is come.  (Socrates took it coolly). Yes, I replied, he came two years ago. Have you only just heard of his arrival?        Yes, by the gods, he said, but not until yesterday morning. Protagoras is come. I

was going to you at once, and then I thought that the night was far spent. But the moment sleep left me, I got up and came hither direct.        I, who know the very courageous madness of the man, said: What is the matter? Has Protagoras robbed you of anything?        He replied laughing: Yes, indeed, he has, Socrates, of wisdom which he keeps from me.        But surely, I said, if you give him money, and make friends with him, he will make you as wise as himself.      After some discussion, in which Socrates makes Hippocrates look sheepish for the rash decision to be instructed by a Sophist; he finally takes the young man over to the house of the wealthy Callias, where Protagoras stays as a guest. With one artistic touch Plato ridicules the Sophists who crowd at the doors of wealthy people.       And I think that the doorkeeper, who was a eunuch, and who was probably annoyed at the great inroad of the Sophists, must have heard us talking. At any rate, when we knocked at the door, and he opened and saw us, grumbled: They are Sophists*he is not at home; and instantly gave the door a hearty bang with both his hands. Again we knocked, and he answered without opening: Did you hear me say that he is not at home, fellows? But, my friend, I said, you need not be alarmed; for we are not Sophists, and we are not come to see Callias; but we want to see Protagoras; and I must request you to announce us. At last, after a good deal of difficulty, the man was persuaded to open the door.        When we entered Protagoras was taking a walk in the court. A train of listeners followed him; the greater part of them appeared to be strangers whom Protagaras had brought with him out of the various cities visited by him in his journeys, he, like Orpheus, attracting them by his voice and they following.

       Plato thus ridicules the magic which Protagoras exercises on the stupefied men, and then represents the ludicrous scene of the folly, of the adoration of the master, and of the blind, irrational following commanded by the archsophist.

        Nothing delighted me more than the precision of their movements: they took such care never to come in his way at all; but when he and those who were with him turned back, then the band of listeners parted regularly on either side; he was always in front, and they wheeled round and took their places behind him in perfect order.       After the introduction is over and Protagoras finds that a new wealthy pupil is brought to him he exhibits his skill in oratory by going off into a long and windy oration which Socrates ridicules with his powerful, though delicate and almost imperceptible irony and humor.        Protagaras ended.       So charming left his voice, that I the while Thought him still speaking, still stood fixed to hear.        At length when the truth dawned upon me that he had really finished, not without difficulty I began to collect myself, and, looking at Hippocrates, I said to him: O son of  Apollodorus, haw deeply grateful I am to you for having brought me hither; I would not have missed the speech of Protagoras for a great deal.      Then with his refined, delicate irony Socrates proceeds to entangle Protagoras in the meshes of his dialectic.        I have one small difficulty which I am sure that Protagoras will easily explain, as he has already explained so much. If a man were to go and consult Pericles or any of our great speakers about these same matters, he might perhaps hear as fine a discourse; but then when one has a question to ask of any of them, like books, they can neither answer nor ask: and if anyone challenges the least particular of their speech, they go ringing on in a long harangue, like brazen pots which when they are struck continue to sound unless someone puts his hand upon them; whereas our friend, Protagoras, can not only make a good speech, as he has already shown, but when he is asked a question, he can answer briefly; and when he asks, he will wait and hear the answer and this is a very rare gift.         After Protagoras is caught in the net of Socratic dialectics he refuses to continue the discussion, the other great Sophists present exhort him not to interrupt the argument. At the same time they take occasion to show off, and hit Protagoras, the famous Sophist. Plato, with his genius for the humorous, depicts this sophistic vanity intertwined with the feelings of rivalry. Plato takes occasion to ridicule the finely spun cobwebs, distinctions, and platitudes for which Prodicus was so famous, and also the well-known Hippias with his cosmopolitanism, meanwhile exhibiting the Sophists in a ludicrous light."        Prodicus said: Those who are present at such discussions ought to be impartial hearers of both the speakers, remembering however that impartiality is not the same as equality, for both sides

should be impartially heard, and yet an equal meed should not be assigned to both of them; but to the wiser a higher meed should be given, and a lower to the less wise. And I as well as Critias would beg you, Protagoras and Socrates, to grant our request, which is that you will argue with one another and not wrangle; for friends argue with friends out of good will, but only adversaries and enemies wrangle. And then our meeting will be delightful; for in this way you, who are the speakers, will be most likely to win esteem, and not praise only, among us who are your audience; for esteem is a sincere conviction of the hearers' souls, but praise is often an insincere _expression of men uttering falsehoods contrary to their convictions. And thus we who are the hearers will be gratified and not pleased; for gratification is of the mind when receiving wisdom and knowledge, but pleasure is of the body when eating or experiencing some other bodily delight. Thus spoke Prodicus, and Socrates adds "many of the company applauded his words."

        This speech made by Prodicus reminds one of the silly pedantic themes and briefs made by instructors and professors of English composition in our "foremost" American colleges.

        A little volume on English composition, used as a text-book in one of the leading Eastern colleges, among other recipes for literary style, or the concoction of fine English phrases and polite letter-writing, gives gravely the advice that in a letter "The salutation should be written flush (? !) with the left-hand margin." As a climax the book concludes with directions as to the all-important position of the postage-stamp (!): "The postage-stamp should be attached in the upper right-hand corner. It should be right side up, and its edges should be parallel to the edges of the paper." ( !)

        Here is a specimen of rules on "briefing," taken from a college text-book on argumentation, an interesting specimen of logical acumen and clearness of thought: "In briefing the refutation always state the first assertion that is to be refuted with such connectives, as, ‘Although it is urged . . . yet the conclusion is unsound, for . . .,' ‘Although the case is cited . . . yet the case is irrelevant, for . . .' " Whatever our modern educational institutions lack, they are not deficient in a certain amount of unconscious dry humor.

        Plato then ridicules the grandiloquent, cosmopolitan sage Hippias: 

        All of you who are here present I reckon to be kinsmen and friends and fellow citizens, by nature and not by law; for by nature like is akin to like, whereas law is the tyrant of mankind, and often compels us to do many things which are against nature. How great would be the disgrace then, if we, who know the nature of things, and are the, wisest of Hellenes, and who, bearing such a high character, are met together in this city, which is the metropolis of wisdom, and in the greatest and most glorious house of this city should have nothing to show worthy of this height of dignity, but should only quarrel with one another like the meanest of mankind! Let us be your peacemakers. And, do not you, Socrates, aim at this precise and extreme brevity in discourse, but loosen and let go the reins of speech, that your words may be grander and more becoming to you. (And here is a stab at his rival Pratagoras.) Neither do you, Protagoras, go forth on the gale with every sail set out of sight of land, into an ocean of words. 

        In "Euthydemus" Plato again ridicules the Sophists by comparing them to prize-fighters and boxers, the idols of our American public, crowds and mobs. 

     Crito. Neither of them are known to me, Socrates; they are a new importation of Sophists, as I should imagine. Of what country are they and what is the line of their wisdom?        Soc. As to their origin, I believe that they are natives of this part of the world, and have migrated from Chios to Thurii; they were driven out from Thurii and have been living for many years past in these regions. As to their wisdom, about which you ask, Crito, they are wonderful*consummate! I never knew

what the true boxer and athlete was before; they are simply made up of fighting, not like the two Acharnanian brothers, who fight with their bodies only, but this pair of brothers, besides being perfect in the use of their bodies, are invincible in every sort of warfare. For they are capital in fighting in armor, and will teach the art to anyone who pays them. They are also most skilful in legal warfare; they themselves will plead and teach others to speak and compose speeches which will have an effect upon the courts. And this was only the beginning of their wisdom, but they have at last carried out the athletic art to the very end, and have mastered the only mode of fighting which had hitherto been neglected by them. No one dares even to stand up against them, such is their skill in the war of words, that they can refute any proposition whether true or false.         Socrates then goes on with his story, in which he holds up the two Sophists to ridicule:         I saluted the brothers, whom I had not seen for a long time: and then I said to Cleinias: Here are two wise men, wise not only in a small, but in a large way of wisdom, for they know all about war*all that a good general ought to know about the array and command of an army, and the whole art of fighting in armor; and they know about law, too, and can teach a man how to use the weapons of the courts when he is injured.        They heard me say this, but only despised me. I observed that they looked at one another, and both of them laughed; and then Euthydemus said: Those, Socrates, are matters which we no longer pursue seriously; to us, they are secondary occupations.        Indeed, I said, if such occupations are regarded by you as secondary, what must the principal one be; tell me I beseech you what the noble study is?        The teaching of virtue, Socrates, he replied, is our principal occupation; and we believe we can impart it better and quicker than any man.        My God! I said, and where did you learn that? I always imagined, as I was saying just now, your chief accomplishment to be the art of fighting, in armor. But now if you really have the other knowledge, O forgive me: I address you as I would superior beings, and ask you to pardon the impiety of my former expressions. But are you quite sure about it? The promise is so vast that a feeling of incredulity steals over me.        You may take our word, Socrates, for the fact.  

        Thus does Plato in the person of Socrates expose to ridicule the conceit and folly of the "wise" Sophists. The whole Socratic irony consists in the fact that by the method of self-humiliation and reasoning he exposes self-delusion and the imposition of the Sophists who claim wisdom while manifesting only conceit and folly. What Socrates ridicules is the sham wisdom, the stupidity of the Sophists.

       In his "Symposium," which is full of the fire of genius, both from an artistic and philosophical standpoint, Plato handles the more delicate shades of the ludicrous with the consummate skill of an artist. At a banquet given by Agathon, among many other speakers, the physician, Eryximachus, delivers his speech on love, which, according to him, is the harmony of opposites. Meanwhile Aristophanes, the great comic writer is seized by a fit of the hiccoughs, which is treated by Eryximachus. When the physician is through with his speech on the harmony of love he turns to Aristophanes saying: 

        You, Aristophanes, may now supply the omission or take some other line of commendation; for I perceive that you are rid of the hiccough.        Yes, said Aristophanes, the hiccough is gone; not however until I applied the sneezing; and I wonder whether the harmony of the body has a love of such noises and ticklings, for I no sooner applied the sneezing than I was cured.        Eryximachus said: Beware, friend Aristophanes; although you are going to speak, you are making fun of me and I shall have to watch your speech and see whether I cannot have a laugh at you.         You are quite right, said Aristophanes, laughing. I will unsay my words; but do you please not to watch me, as I fear that in the speech which I am about to make, instead of others laughing with me, which is the manner born of our muse, I shall only be laughed at.       Aristophanes, then in his humorous way, represents the perfect primeval man spinning like a top and running on all fours, something like the monstrous half beastly gods of the barbarians, with four hands, two faces, and Janus-like in form. When these men, half human, half brutes, became too insolent Zeus, with Greek

cunning and Aristophanic humor, splits them in two.        "Men," said the father of gods, "shall continue to exist, but I will cut them in two and then they will diminish in strength and be increased in numbers; this will have the advantage of making them more profitable to us. They shall walk upright and if they continue insolent and will not be quiet I will split them again and they shall hop on a single leg." Each of us when separated, having one side only like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half.        With comic piety Aristophanes calls on men to be reverent and obedient to the gods.        If we are not obedient to the gods, there is a danger that we shall be split up again and go about in basso-relievo, like the profile figures having only half a nose, and that we shall be like tallies. Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that we may avoid evil and obtain the good.        In spite of all his conservatism Aristophanes cannot help having his jibe at gods, men, and the feeling of piety so dear to the ancients, and he concludes:        This, Eryximachus, is my discourse of love which I must beg you to leave unassailed by the shafts of your ridicule.        The physician hardly could make the oration more comic. The human and divine were both, with the semi-serious laughter characteristic of the subtle intellect of the Greek, presented in a self-seeking, ignoble, animal-like, jumping-jack-like, and stupid aspect. The primeval "perfect" man spins on all fours; then man is split, like a fish, always looking for his missing mate. The future man may go about in basso relievo, be a mere profile of man with half a nose, while the gods will reap the profit of multiplied sacrifices.

        Plato then ridicules the pompous style of the rhetoric of Gorgias and his disciples. He represents it as a melodramatic, and meaningless piling of words and hemming of sentences without rhyme or reason. And concludes Agathon's Gorgian speech on love with the following dithyrambic: 

        Love is the fairest, best, and the cause of what is fairest and best: And there comes into my mind a line of poetry in which he is said to be the god who        Gives peace on earth and calms the stormy deep,        Who stills the winds and bids the sufferer sleep. 

        This is he who empties men of disaffection and fills them with affection, who makes them to meet together at banquets such as these: in sacrifice, feasts, dances, he is our lord, who sends courtesy and sends away discourtesy, who gives kindness ever, and never gives unkindness; the friend of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the gods; desired by those who have no part in him, and precious to those who have the better in him; parent of delicacy, luxury, desire, fondness, softness, grace; regardful of the good, regardless of the evil; in every work, wish, fear*saviour, pilot, comrade, helper; glory of gods and men, leader, best and brightest: in whose footsteps let every man follow, sweetly singing in his honor and joining in that sweet strain with which love charms the souls of gods and men.        At the end of the speech there was the usual cheer. Socrates, with his customary ironical bantering, humor and ridicule, exclaims in mock confusion: 

        Why, my dear friend, must not I or any one be in a strait who has to speak after he has heard such a rich and varied discourse? I am especially struck with the beauty of the concluding words*who could listen to them without amazement? When I reflected on the immeasurable inferiority of my own powers, I was ready to run away for shame, if there had been a possibility of escape. For I was reminded of Gorgias, and at the end of his speech I fancied that Agathon was shaking at me the Gorginian or Gorgonian head of the great master of rhetoric, which was simply to turn me and my speech into stone, as Homer says, and strike me dumb. 

        By pointing out his own foolishness he really hints at the folly of the Sophists and their ignorance of the subject under discussion. 

        And then I perceived how foolish I had been in consenting to take my turn with you in praising love, and saying that I, too, was a master of the art, when I really had no conception how anything ought to be praised. For in my simplicity I imagined that the topics of praise should be true. And I felt quite proud, thinking that I knew the nature of true praise, and should speak well. Whereas I now see that the intention was to attribute to Love every species of greatness and glory, whether really belonging to him or not, without regard to truth or falsehood*that was no matter. For the original proposal seems to have been not that each of you should really praise Love, but only that you should appear to praise him. And so you attribute to Love every imaginable form of praise which can be gathered anywhere; and you say "he is all this" and the "cause of all that," making him appear the fairest and the best of all to those who knew him not, for you cannot impose upon those who know him. 

       Here Socrates, in his ridicule, lays bare the source of the comic imposition, stupidity, and folly.

        Plato concludes his "Symposium" with the playful irony: 

        Aristodemus was only half awake (all of the carousers fell asleep and he did not hear the beginning of the discourse led by Socrates and listened to by Agathon and Aristophanes). The chief thing which Aristodemus remembered was Socrates compelling the other two to acknowledge that the genius of comedy was the same as that of tragedy, and that the true artist in tragedy was an artist in comedy also. To this they were constrained to assent, being drowsy, and not quite following the argument.  

        The mean, the low, and the ignoble, the defective, and the proud, conceited, ignorant, and the foolish, unaware of themselves, are legitimate prey for the se search-light of one who has superior insight. They are ludicrous subjects for the merriment and laughter of the spectator. Wherever we find lack of judgment and intelligence, where such are expected, we cannot restrain our smiles and laughter. Ignorance, naïve silliness, imbecility, absentmindedness, absurdity, foolishness, human folly in general form the ingredients of the ludicrous and the comic. In our analysis of jokes, jests, puns, banter, burlesque, humor, raillery, anecdotes, farce, fun, irony, and witticisms we find that it is the witless and the fool who form the central characters of laughter.

        As illustrations we may take the following jokes:  

        During a discussion at a meeting a speaker mentioned the extraordinary circumstance that, in China, if a man were condemned to death he could easily hire a substitute to die for him; "and I believe," continued the debater, "that many poor fellows get their living by acting as substitutes in that way:" 

        "How far is it to Cork?" asked a stranger.        "Six miles," was the reply; "but, sure, if you walk fast you can make it in four." 

        An Irish officer, who had been in India many years and enjoyed the best of health, could not bear to hear the Indian climate run down as it usually is.       "A lot of young fellows," he said, "come out here, and they drink and they eat, and they eat and they drink, and they die. And then they go home and say that it was the climate that did it!" 

       "Sure," said Pat, pointing toward his heart, "'twas here where I was struck with the inimies' bullet, and***”        "Ay, man," interrupted Sandy, "if ye had been shot through the heart you wad a been kilt."        "Begorra, ye spalpeen," retorted Pat, "at the toime I was shot me heart was in me mouth." 

        An officer, who was inspecting his company, spied one private whose shirt was sadly begrimed.        "Patrick O'Flynn!" called the captain.       "Here, your honor!" promptly responded Patrick, with his hand to his cap.        "How long do you wear a shirt?"        "Twenty-eight inches," was the rejoinder.

        An Irishman, who was to undergo trial for theft, was being comforted by his priest.        "Keep up your heart, Dennis, my boy. Take my word for it, you'll get justice."        "Troth, yer riverence," replied Dennis in an undertone, "an' that's just what I'm afraid of." 

        In all these examples we find ignorance, stupidity, and imbecility exposed to laughter and ridicule. The fool and his folly are at the very heart of the ludicrous.

CHAPTER XVIII

SUGGESTION AND THE COMIC

        We have referred to the fact that the appreciation of a joke or of anything ridiculous depends on the audience. The same joke which sends one audience into convulsions of uproarious laughter meets with indifference and even disapprobation and hisses from a crowd under different circumstances. Education, race, religion, nationality, industrial and political interests, class and professional prejudices must all be taken into consideration. An ancient Hebrew, Greek, Roman, modern European, Chinaman, Hindoo, Zulu, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Mohammedan, capitalist, workman, artist, physician, engineer, all of them have their special jokes, pleasantries, and play, which appeal to particular people and to no others.

         Conditions and circumstances should be taken into consideration. On solemn occasions, in cases of devotion and loyalty, or in times of grief and misfortune, the making of jokes and manifestations of mirth and laughter are not only unappreciated, but are even resented. "As, the grating of the pot under a pot so is the laughter of fools." Jests and jokes out of time and place not only show the absence of sympathy, but also the lack of understanding, and are often turned against the person who made them. The laughter-rousing activity, like all human activities, must have its function and fit into the general organic system of social relations. The joke must not be offensive to the people in whom we wish arouse laughter. The joke should be made at the proper time and when the people are ready for the ludicrous.

        The social element and the psychological moment are possibly the most important factors in the appreciation of the ludicrous. There are times when people are ready to burst out into laughter at the slightest provocation. It remains for man to tap his audience, take aim and fire off his joke or jest at the proper moment. When a person makes a joke without regard to the social element and to the psychological moment the joke falls flat and person is regarded as lacking in taste, tact, and understanding. He is regarded as a fool and people laugh, not with him, but at him. In other words, the joke is like a suggestion which must take into account the character of the person's suggestibility in order to release the special subconscious energies and get good effect.

        In the comic and the ludicrous the currents of thought may be analogous and parallel, or they may be opposite, but there must be suggestiveness which leads to the relations of contrasted superiority and inferiority.

        A lusty young man after he had been married a few months began to fail, and grew very feeble. One day, seeing a butcher run over a ploughed field after a bull, he asked the reason of it.

        "Why," says the butcher, "it is to tame him."        "Oh," says the fellow, "let him be married; if that don’t tame him I'll be hanged."

        We have here a play on analogy of associations with strong suggestions of the state of the fellow and ridicule on marriage.

        An Irishman was standing pear the railroad, when a freight train passed. There was a green flag on the rear of the caboose. The Irishman asked the man standing nearest him what that green flag meant. The man said: "It means another coming." A few days later, the man met the Irishman and his wife. They were wheeling a baby carriage. The carriage had a green flag on it.

        A witness in a law-case was asked: "On what authority do you swear to the mare's age?"         "On the best authority."        "Then why don't you say what it is?" urged the impatient lawyer."I had it from the mare's own mouth."

        Here we have a play on association by analogy and a suggestion of the lawyer's stupidity.

        "These things in the room are very dusty," said a mistress to her servant girl.         "If you please, ma'am," said the girl, "it is not the things that are dirty, it is the nasty sun that comes in and shows the dust on the things."

        We find here the elements of opposition and analogy with a strong suggestion of stupidity.

        The same is found in the anecdote of the man who fed his hens on sawdust to have them lay wooden planks. A similar example is found in the story of the Irishman who fed his hens on sawdust and then said that the young chicks had wooden legs and that one of the chicks was a woodpecker. Here the analogy is carried all through the anecdote, giving rise to absurdities.

        The joke is often represented as a dramatic play in which the state of inferiority is played now on one, and now on the other of the dramatis personæ. The following may be taken as examples:

        An Irishman who was hit with a brick engaged a lawyer to put in a claim for $100. The claim was granted. The lawyer gave Pat $10. Pat with the money in his hand kept on looking hard at the bills.        "What is the matter?" said the lawyer.       "Begorra," said Pat, "I was just wondering who got hit with the brick―you or I."

        A man walking along the street of a village stepped in a hole in the sidewalk and broke his leg. He engaged a famous lawyer, brought suit against the village for one thousand dollars and won the case.        After the claim was settled the lawyer sent for his client and handed him one dollar.        The man examined the dollar carefully.  Then he looked up at the lawyer and said: "What's the matter with this dollar? Is it a counterfeit?"

        Pat met the village doctor, who was a sportsman, who was carrying his gun.        "Shure, Doctor," he said, "ye're a careful man, if your physic misses 'em, ye always carry yer gun:'

        "Well, nurse," said the doctor, "did my prescription prove effective?"        "Shure, an' it did, sorr," was the reply. "He died that morning as quiet as a lamb."

        "Don't you know that the sun will injure your brain if you expose it in that manner?" said a priest to a who was busily working on the roadside with his head under the broiling sun. The man wiped the sweat off his forehead and looked at the clergyman. "Do you think I’d be doin' this all day, if I had any brains?" he said, and he gave the handle another turn.

        Speaking of her boy to the priest the doting mother said, "There isn't in the barony, yer riv'rence, a cleverer lad nor Tom. Look at thim," pointing to two small chairs in the cabin. "He made thim out of his own head; and, fair, he has enough wood left to make me a big armchair."

        Waiting till Pat came out of the saloon the priest accosted him thus, "Pat, didn't you hear me calling?"        "Yes, your riverence, I did, but―but I had only the price of one."

        A priest, discoursing one Sunday on the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, said in error that five people had been fed with 5,000 loaves and two small fishes. It having come to the priest's knowledge that his mistake had given rise to a large amount of controversy (one Murphy declared particularly that he himself could do such a miracle), he (the clergyman) decided to rectify the mistake. Next Sunday, on concluding his sermon, he said, "I should have told you last Sunday that 5,000 people had been fed with five loaves and two small fishes." Looking down on Mr. Murphy, he said, "You could not do that, Mr. Murphy, could you?"        "Ah! sure yer riv'rence, I could aisily," he replied. "How would you do it, Mr. Murphy?"        "Why I'd give them what was left over from last Sunday," answered Mr. Murphy.

        "Now, Pat," said a magistrate sympathetically to an "old offender," "what brought you here again?"        "Two policemen, sor," was the laconic reply. "Drunk, I suppose?" queried the magistrate.        "Yes, sor," said Pat without relaxing a muscle, "both av them."

        Two witnesses were at the Assizes in a case which concerned long continued poultry stealing. As usual  nothing could be got from them in the way of evidence until the nearly baffled prosecuting counsel asked in angry tone of voice, "Will you swear on your soul, Pat Murphy, that Mike Hooligan has never to your knowledge stolen chickens?"        The responsibility of this was too much even for Pat. "Bedad, I would hardly swear by my soul," he said, "but I do know that, if I was a chicken and Mike about, I’d roost high."

        An individual of somewhat doubtful appearance was applying for a situation as a van driver. On being asked for references, he mentioned one of the dealer's old hands who was called in and questioned as to the applicant’s honesty. The referee rubbed his chin meditatively for amoment, and said, "Honest? Well, guv'nor, his honesty has been proved agin and agin. Faith, he's bin tried sivin toimes for stealing, and eschaped ivery toime!" The applicant was not engaged.

        "How about reference?" inquired another mistress, after she had talked matters over with an applicant for a situation.        "Oh, Oi like yer looks, mum," said the applicant, "and Oi won't ask yez for any."

        "Bridget, I don't hardly think it is the thing for you to entertain company in the kitchen."        "Don't ye worry, mum.   Sure, an' I wouldn't be afther deproivin' ye of the parlor."

        "Goodness, Jane, what a kitchen!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "Every pot, pan, and dish is dirty, the table perfect litter, and―why, it will take you all night to clean things up! What have you been doing?"        "Sure, ma'am, explained Jane, "the young ladies has just been showin' me how they bile a pertater at their cookery school."

        "Is Mrs. Wicks at home?" asked a caller.        "No, mum," said Bridget.        "Oh, I'm very sorry," said the caller.        "So am I, mum, but she's really out this time."

        "And remember, Bridget, there are two things that I must insist upon―truthfulness and obedience!"        "Yes, mum," said Bridget, pointedly. "And when you tell me to tell the ladies you're out when you're in, which shall it be, mum?"

        "Tintion !" exclaimed the sergeant to the platoon, "front face, and tind to rowl call! As many of ye as is prisint will say ‘Here' and as many of yez as is not prisint will say 'Absent.'"

        "If ye was to be stung by a wasp, Pat, phat would ye do first?" asked Mrs. Murphy.        "Howl, bedad !" was Pat's laconic reply.

        "Are ye much hurt, Pat?" inquired Mike of his companion, who had met with an accident. "Do ye want a docthor ?"        "A docthor, ye fule," exclaimed Pat. "After being runned over by a throlley car?   Phat Oi want is a lawyer."

        An Irish navvy once changed his lodgings. The following morning, when he got up, his new landlady asked him how he had slept.        "Not a wink," said Pat, as he began scratching himself. "Why! what's the matter? There's not a single flea in the house!" snapped the landlady indignantly.        "No, be jabers," replied Pat, "they're all married got children."

        At a favorite watering place two Irishmen went out in a small boat, and one of them jumped into the water to have a swim. After indulging to his heart's content he was making for the boat when his companion picked up the towel, and threw it overboard to him, saying, “Shureif ye come in jist now, yez will wet the boat, so yez l better dry yerself where yez are before coming aboard."

        "Pat, why didn't you wipe the cobwebs off this champagne bottle before you brought it to the table?" said host.        "Well, sor," replied Pat, "I thought I'd better not, as I saw you putting them on only last night, sor."

        The following series of jokes may, with benefit, be studied. The inner meaning of the ludicrous is disclosed on the basis of my theory of implied relation of superior and the inferior:

        A man once received as a present from a sea captain a fine specimen of the bird which sailors call the "laughing jackass." As he was carrying it home, he met a brawny navvy, who stopped and said to him, "What kind of bird is that, sor?"        "That's a laughing-jackass!" explained the owner genially.        But Pat was not to be taken in with any story of kind, and, with a twinkle in the eye, he responded, "It’s not yerself; it's the burrd Oi mane, sor!"

        An Irish peasant, who was anxious to know what a phrenologist was, inquired of a friend, and received the answer, "Why a person that can tell by the feel of the bumps on your head what kind of a man you are."        "Bumps on me head, is it!" exclaimed the peasant. “Begor, then, they'd tell him more what kind of a woman my wife is!"

        "Why don't you get your ears cropped?" cried a big cabman to an Irishman who was trudging after a drove of donkeys. "They are a precious sight too long for a man."        "Are they?" said Paddy, turning round and looking his assailant fully in the face. "Then, be jabers, yours are much too short for an ass!"

        "Are there any fish in the pool to-day?" asked a gentleman of an Irish peasant.        "Fish is it?" said the peasant. "It's fair polluted with them!"

        A man who was much annoyed at Pat's muttering one day said, "Pat, does it never occur to you that your constant talk and muttering to yourself are a great annoyance to people who happen to be about? Why do you talk to yourself?"        "Shure, sir, Oi have two raysons for that."        "What are your reasons?"        "Wan of thim is that Oi like to talk to a sinsible man and the other is that Oi like to hear a sinsible man talk.”

        Edmund Burke was one day addressing a crowd in favor of the abolition of slavery. In spite of his eloquent appeals the crowd began to get hostile, and at last a rotten egg caught him full in the face. He calmly wiped his face and quietly said, "I always said that the arguments in favor of slavery were rather unsound!" The crowd roared, and from that time he was unmolested.

        Barry Sullivan, the tragedian, was playing in "Richard III." When the actor came to the lines, "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!" someone in the pit called "Would a donkey do, Mr. Sullivan?"        "Yes," responded the tragedian, turning quickly on the interrupter. "Please come round to the stage room."

        "And who is it lives there, Mike, in that big stone house?" inquired a tourist.         "Why," replied Mike, "that old gentleman I was telling you of, that died so suddint last winter."

        An Irishman on weighing his pig exclaimed, "It don’t not weigh as much as I expected, and I never though it would."

        Mike, on opening his pay envelope, exclaimed, “Faith that's the stingiest man I ever worked for."        "Phwat's the matter wid ye; didn't ye git as much as ye expected?" asked a fellow workman.        "Yis," was the reply, "but I was countin' on gittin more than I expected."

        "'Tis very fortunate," remarked Mr. Grady wisely, "that hay be not as hivy as coal."        "For whoy, Pat?"        "Shure a ton of the stuff would weigh so much that a poor man could not afford to kape a cow."

        An Irish squire, seeing a man who was engaged in painting a gate on his estate working away with unusual energy, asked, "What are you in such a hurry for, Murphy?”        "Sure, I want to get through before me paint runs out,” was the reply.

        The published report of an Irish benevolent society says, "Notwithstanding the large amount paid for medicine and medical attendance, very few deaths occurred during the year."

        "My britheren," said an Irish preacher on one occasion, "there are some German philosophers who say there is no Resurrection, and, me britheren, it, would be better for them German philosophers if, like Judas Iscariot, they had never been born."

        An Irishman was one day hurrying along a country road in the south of Ireland, when he was met by a friend who exclaimed, "Why, Patrick, what's all your hurry to-day ?"        "Och, be jabers," replied Pat, without stopping, "I've got a long way to go, and I want to git there before I'm tired out."

        "There's a man in the dinin' room, sor, makin' trouble because he can't have his regular seat,"

said a waiter, addressing a hotel proprietor.        "Go back, Mike, and propitiate him," said the proprietor.        "Look here, misther," said the waiter to the guest a little later, "if yez don't like the way things is run in this house, get out or I'll propitiate yez pretty lively."

        In all those examples, when closely studied and their character fully realized from the standpoint of suggestiveness and allusion, we invariably find that the subject of laughter is mental failure, stupidity, human folly, whether individual or social.

CHAPTER XIX

THE LUDICROUS AND THE LAW OF SUGGESTION

        When a mental process, instead of attaining its aim, suggests the reverse inference of what has been intended, the laugh is raised by the failure and by the mental stupidity of the person. The following is an example:

        A committee was accused of not attending to its work assiduously; only one half of the committee was doing any work, the others being idle. One of the members of the committee, an Irishman, undertook in a meeting the defence of the committee. "We are accused," he exclaimed, "that only one half of the committee is doing work, the other half being idle; as a matter of fact the reverse is the case."

        We often find that the comic writer or speaker avails himself of suggestiveness and double play. There is first present the joke or the comic situation, and this is further emphasized by its lack of comprehension which reveals the stupidity of the person who manifests it by some foolish or absurd remark. The manifestation of the double play heightens the sense of the ludicrous.

        "To make a slow horse fast," advised a wag, "is not to give him anything to eat."        "Would not the poor beast die?" asked an English with much concern.

        An American in playing golf with an Englishman jestingly that in the United States golf balls squeak when they are lost. The Englishman was amazed at such a remarkable invention. An hour later he came to the American and told him that the invention was really extraordinary, but he could not understand how the golf ball knew when it was lost.

        Often the stupidity of the person ridiculed is manifested by having him repeat a joke. The repetition is so constructed that the point of the joke is lost or even completely perverted. This is a form of dramatic play. In the first place, a joke is introduced, thus arousing the sense of the ludicrous; and, in the second place, a character is introduced on the scene, which is raised to a climax of the ludicrous by dullness of understanding. The ludicrous is emphasized by a process of double ridicule. The factor of suggestiveness runs all through the play.

        We may take the following anecdote directed against the Englishman:

       An American and Englishman chanced to pass by a small country station and saw an announcement "Ten miles to town. They who cannot read should ask the gateman." The American laughed and the Englishman followed suit. On his arrival home the Englishman told of the notice and exclaimed: "How silly! Suppose the gateman were not there."

       Uncle Will reads the London Times in his office. Enters young Henry.       "Why, uncle," exclaims Henry, "I see you are behind the Times!"      Uncle Will laughs at the joke. In the evening, at dinner, Uncle Will repeats the joke to his wife, "Mary, a fine joke Henry made this morning. I read the paper and Henry said, ‘Why, uncle, I see you are behind the newspaper."' Uncle Will wondered why Mary did not laugh.

        An Englishman saw an inscription on a tombstone" "Here lies an honest lawyer." No name was given, because the lawyer's name was Strange and every passerby, on seeing the inscription, would exclaim, "How Strange!" On coming home the Englishman related his experience of the nameless epitaph of the lawyer, Strange: "'Here lies an honest lawyer.' Everybody who will pass by will exclaim, ‘How peculiar!"'

        Jack laughed at Harry's coat because it was too short. On which Harry remarked that it would be long enough before he got another one. Later on Jack communicated the joke to his friend Tom."Tom," he said, "I heard a capital joke made by Harry. I told Harry that his coat was too short, and he said that it would be a long time before he got another."        "Where is the joke," asked Tom.        "Ah," exclaimed Jack, "but it was an excellent joke when Harry made it."

        A man named Herring fell into a ditch. A wag passing by said: "There, Herring, you are in a fine pickle." A gentleman thick of wits heard it and told the story to friends.       "A man by name Herring fell into a ditch and a fellow passed by and said: ‘There, Herring, you are in a fine condition.'       "Well," observed one of the company, "where is the joke?"       "It was a good one when I heard it."

        We have pointed out before that a joke falls flat if addressed to people who have not the proper training, knowledge, and experience. The comedies of Aristophanes will hardly be appreciated by a Hindoo or by a Chinaman, nor would Boccaccio or Voltaire have been appreciated by a Greek or Roman audience. One must take into consideration the knowledge and experience of the people addressed. If the mass of associations, whether conscious or subconscious, is wanting, the whole play is lost. The joke does not call forth the appropriate associations and is either ignored or is even misunderstood. To appreciate a joke it must first of all be understood, and this presupposes the presence of conscious and subconscious associations which form the mass that apperceives the joke.

        If we inspect the inner structure and function of the ludicrous, in whatever form it may be expressed, we find that these so-called apperceiving or synthetizing masses of association, whether conscious or subconscious, form the mainsprings of the joke or of the ludicrous. The force of the joke or of the ludicrous lies in the upheaval of masses of conscious and subconscious associations. All these associations must converge toward one focus in showing the low standard, the silliness of what is claimed to be normal, or what is thought to be superior.

        The main force of the joke or of the situation regarded as ludicrous is the allusion, the suggestiveness, the great mass of associations of inferiority and superiority which becomes stirred up in the depths of the mind, conscious and subconscious. The stronger the allusion or the suggestiveness the greater the mass of conscious and subconscious associations. The more such associations are awakened to activity, the keener is the appreciation of the joke or of the ludicrous side of the object, of the person, or of the given situation. The allusion, the suggestiveness of the inferiority of the object laughed at forms the mainspring of the witty and the comic. In fact, we may say that this holds true, not only of comic, but of all wit.

        Aristotle pointed out the important fact that mental activity of the free and artistic type is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment in human life. Now, in a joke, as in all good wit, the hint is

given and the rest is left to the listener or the reader. If the whole mass of associations heave up at the hint given and the target aimed at is hit by the reader or listener, the latter feels the joy of free activity accompanied with the feeling of superiority, and the consciousness of inferiority of the ridiculed object. The listener has the consciousness of wisdom, and the object is an example of folly and stupidity. This is the source of the comic.

        Putting it from a purely logical standpoint, all forms of wit, among which the comic takes its place, are what Aristotle terms enthymems―a syllogism in which some of the premises are omitted. The reasoning is left to the reader. It is the ability to realize the reasoning, to supply the missing links that forms the essence of the comic, and gives a special pleasure to the readers or to the audience. The whole force of the wit, the comic, and of jokes consists in the fact that the listener is left to supplement the rest from his own mind. The supplementary systems of associations must be present in the mind, consciously or subconsciously.

        The person who makes the joke must be able to reach by an appropriate phrase and allusion the association of systems. The delight of the listener consists in the fact that these associations become by an adroit and happy hit manifested in a free and easy way. In the case of the comic and of the joke the inferiority of the object, person, institution, or of the thought must be present, but in a veiled form. The force is in the allusion. The audience takes special delight in supplying the last links, in spontaneously forming the finale of the act or of the thought. The listener in this respect feels himself intellectually the actor and takes active part in the artistic piece of work presented to him. This delight in suggestiveness of the inferior is the soul of the comic.

        Humor, irony, sarcasm, satire, various forms of jokes dead with the ludicrous and are species o f wit, wit being the genus. We may in passing point out that some authors, such as Freud, for instance, have confused wit with the ludicrous. A good joke must be witty, but the witty need not concern itself with the ludicrous. Man is a mortal being, but not every mortal being is a man. Æsop's fables, the parables of the Gospels, the proverbs of the Old Testament are witty, but they do not necessarily deal with the ludicrous. In all the different forms of wit of which the ludicrous is one of the varieties allusion must be present. The factor of suggestiveness specially plays an all-important role in that species of wit which excites the ridiculing, the derisive laughter of man―the ludicrous.

        In my "Psychology of Suggestion" I have pointed out that in the normal state indirect suggestion is specially efficacious. I formulated the law of normal suggestibility: "Normal suggestibility varies as indirect suggestion and inversely as direct suggestion." This holds true in the case of all wit, of all forms of the ludicrous and the comical. The more veiled the suggestion, the greater the indirect suggestion, the higher is the effect. Along with the conscious systems of associations subconscious systems of associations must become subexcited, and the total effect is proportional to the amount of psycho-physiological activity brought into play by the artistic work of the person who arouses in us the sense of the ludicrous.

        The joke and the comic, like all wit, are addressed both to the conscious and subconscious sides of mental life. The conscious side finds, as Aristotle has pointed out, immense satisfaction in the independent and free mental activity given by the veiled and subtle allusions; while the subconscious side is aroused to activity according to the law of normal suggestibility. The effect is especially enhanced when the two factors belonging to the conscious and the subconscious sides of human nature become inextricably intertwined. Allusion and indirect suggestion are the two main factors that make wit pregnant with meaning and make the comic so irresistibly ludicrous when the hidden reference is a relation of inferiority and superiority.

        We can realize now why so many investigators and thinkers have misunderstood the nature of wit, the comic and the joke. Freud regards brevity, condensation, economy of thought as the essentials of wit and the ludicrous. This is as far from the mark as possible. It is like the Aristotelian actor who explains the lightness and quickness of the flying statues of Dædalus by the ingenious hypothesis of their bodies being filled with quicksilver.

        If condensation and economy of phraseology or of thought constitute the essence of wit and the ludicrous, then an algebraical formula or geometrical theorem should be good examples of wit and the comic. "The law of gravitation," says Karl Pearson, "is a brief description of how every particle of matter in the universe is altering its motion with reference to every particle. It simply resumes, in a few brief words, the relationships observed between a vast range of phenomena. It economizes by stating in conceptional shorthand the routine of our perceptions which form for us the universe of gravitating matter." In fact, according to Pearson, scientific law "is a brief description in mental shorthand of as wide a range as possible of the sequences of our sense impressions." It is an economy of thought. Surely it would be absurd to class Newton's laws or the binominal theorem as wit, or regard them as a joke.

        The principle of economy in science is also laid stress on by Mach. The principle of economy holds true in science as well as in business and in industry. In fact, economy holds true in all utilitarian activities of man. In the aesthetic activities, and especially in the play activities, the principles of economy break down completely. The principle of reserve energy takes the place of economy. In all play the manifestation of surplus energy is the sole aim. The feeling of free unimpeded activity, the consciousness of the presence of reserve, surplus energy is the predominant motive in play, in wit, and the comic.

        Human stupidity, or rather a suggestion at it, a mere hint at human folly, which brings into play the inner mental resources of the audience, is sufficient to set us in a roar of laughter. We may lay it down as a fundamental law that allusion to human stupidity is the root of all comic. The effect of the ludicrous is greatly enhanced when along with stupidity there is also present some form of physical and moral defectiveness. If, however, one digs deep enough into the comic, the jocose, and the humorous he will invariably find human stupidity. Any example will answer the purpose. We may take the first examples that come to hand:

        "If you plaze," said an Irish recruit, to the sergeant, "I've got a splinter in the hand."        Sergeant: "Wot yer been doing? Scratchin' yer 'ead?”

        A certain ingenious gentleman proposed, as the best most effectual way of sweeping chimneys, to place a large goose at the top and then by a string tied round her feet to pull the animal gently down to the hearth. The goose would struggle against it with all her might; and during this resistance would move her wings with such force and rapidity as could not fail to sweep the chimney completely.        "Good heavens!" cried a lady present, "how cruel would that be to the poor goose!"        "Why, madam," replied the gentleman, "if you think my method brutal to the goose, a couple of ducks will do.”

        A silly old fellow meeting his godson asked where he was going.        "To school," replied the boy.        "That is well," said the old fellow. "There is a penny for you. Be a good boy. Mind your book, and I hope I shall live to hear you preach my funeral sermon.”

        This may be matched by the story of the Irish soldier who, when taken to task for cowardliness in running away from battle, replied: "I'd rather be a coward for half an hour than a corpse the rest of my born life."

        "What is the difference?" asked the captain of artillery of the Archbishop Whatley, "between an archbishop and a donkey?"        Whatley gave it up and received the following reply: "The one carries his cross in front and the other in back."        "Very good, indeed," said Whatley laughing, "and now can you tell me the difference between a donkey and a captain of the artillery?"         "No, indeed I cannot," replied the officer. "Nor I either," rejoined Whatley.

        Bassompière, the French ambassador to Spain, was one day telling Henry IV how he entered Madrid. "I was mounted on the very smallest mule in the world," said the ambassador.         "Ah, what an amusing sight to see the biggest ass mounted on the smallest mule!"        "I was your Majesty's representative," was the quiet rejoinder.

        An Irish servant was instructed what to tell a gentleman who was expected to come a few days later. The servant soon returned and asked what she should tell the gentleman, if he should not come.

        An officer gave his servant two dollar bills and told him to buy for a dollar tobacco, and provisions for the other dollar. The servant returned perplexed. He did not know for which dollar to buy tobacco and for which to buy provisions.

        A fool said that his simplicity was not his fault; he was bright at birth, but his nurse exchanged him for another child who was a fool.

        Recruit to officer: If I told you you were an ass, what would you do, sir?        Officer: I should put you under arrest.        Recruit: And if I only thought it?        Officer: Then I could do nothing; thoughts are invisible.        Recruit: Well, I am thinking it.

        We may add that we derive a goad deal of pleasure from the readiness and quickness with which a person repels all insinuations in regard to himself or in regard to anything which is near and dear to him. Readiness of reply reveals a source of free and unimpeded energy which gives us pleasure to witness on account of inner imitation with the activities of other men. When a man without a moment's notice is taken at a disadvantage and is accused of some defect we rejoice and laugh when he is able in the form of a joke or what we term repartee to turn the point of ridicule against the man who assails him. He shows that the other man does not understand, that the defect is only apparent and should be really counted to his credit, or that the defect really belongs to the assailant. A few examples may answer our purpose :

        An Englishman and an Irishman were riding in a carriage and chanced to pass by a gallows. "Where would you be," said the Englishman, "if everybody had his due?"        "Alone in the carriage," was the response.

        A judge threatened to fine a lawyer for contempt of court.      "I have expressed no contempt for court," said the' lawyer, "on the contrary, I have carefully concealed my feelings."

        A nobleman seeing the great philosopher, Descartes, enjoying a good meal, said to him sarcastically: "What! do philosophers enjoy such sweets?" "Why," replied Descartes, "do you fancy that nature has produced all its good things only for fools?"

        In the first joke the suggestion of the criminality of the Irishman is answered by the suggestion that the real criminal is the Englishman. In the second example the lawyer, while denying in so many words the contempt of court for which he is threatened with a fine, really affirms by indirect suggestion his actual contempt of the judge. In the third example, Descartes points out the folly of

the nobleman. This action and reaction, this play of opposites, of contrasts, affirming by denying and denying by affirming, constitute an important element of all wit, joke, and the comic. Really what we have here is the playful manifestation of the fundamental factor of what we have termed suggestiveness. Like a lambent flame the joke plays around the subject and suggests, consciously and subconsciously, possible, vague, distant associations of moral and mental inferiority.

        The late Bishop Williams of Connecticut was sitting in a box in an opera house where collegiate commencement exercises were being held. The toilettes of the ladies were extremely décolleté. After looking round the house with an opera glass one of the ladies exclaimed: "Honestly, Bishop Williams, dad you ever see anything like it in your life?"       "Never," gravely replied the Bishop. "Never, madam, since I was weaned."

       Here the insinuation was naïvely made that the Bishop had seen such immoral sights before. The Bishop in self-defence had to say "no." The sting, however, of the ridicule is added and is directed against the audience of women. Instead of simply replying, "No, I have never seen anything so bad and immoral," he puts the negative reply in an affirmative form, denying and affirming such a spectacle. "I have not seen it since I was weaned." Such a state was only seen by him when nursing at his mother's breast. This further gives rise to a vast number of associations, all tending to bring out the inappropriateness, the shamelessness of the women who expose themselves without having the pure motives of motherhood. In other words, it is a spectacle not fit for adults, but only for babies and sucklings. At the same time there are dissociation of the exhibition from all dignified human life and association with the purposes of nursing. These women are stupid and silly and behave like wet-nurses. The ridicule is directed against the woman whose person, dissociated from the beautiful, becomes associated with wet-nurses and sucklings. The sting of the ridicule is against the attire of the women, which is fit for nursing purposes; such décolleté is fit only for the gaze of innocent infants. In other words, the attire is ugly and stupid, and shows the mental inferiority of the women who dress in such an inappropriate and silly fashion.

        "I am willing," exclaimed the candidate, "to trust the people."        "Great Scott!" yelled a man in the audience. "I wish you'd open a grocer's shop."

        Here we have the pun on the word "trust" with the strong suggestion that the candidate had better turn storekeeper or grocer, and with the indirect suggestion of the candidate being what the French term épicier (grocer) or philistine. In other words, the candidate is stupid. Misapprehension, stupidity, and ignorance, various forms of mental inferiority, form the butt of ridicule. The effect is specially ludicrous when both the one who criticizes and the one who is criticized are involved the dramatic action, one playing the part to bring out the fault of the other.

        A good old-fashioned darkey was bitterly complaining about the delinquencies of her niece who had greatly offended her sense of propriety. When asked, "Dinah, can Mabel read and write?" she looked scornfully at her mistress and answered: "Yes'm, she got a fine edgecaeshun; that's the reason she's sich a foal and ain't got no sense!"

        There is the laughter at the ignorance and stupidity of what the darkey misapprehends by education. There is laughter at the one who gets such an education. At the same time, in the background of our consciousness or subconsciousness there is lurking the suspicion that a good deal that goes under the name of education is nothing but silly stupefaction of natural good sense. Education in the ordinary sense is associated with increase of knowledge and of wisdom, but there is a good deal of education which deprives one of original thinking and makes of one an educated fool.

        At a trial for murder the counsel for the accused asked the examining physician if prussic acid was not sometimes spontaneously evolved from the stomach. "I do not know," answered the witness, "but if it be so, it must be very dangerous to have a stomach."

        The lawyer, as is usual with his tribe, wishes to confuse the physician by some clever puzzling question and so to discredit the physician before the jury both as to intelligence and knowledge. The reply of the physician, when fully developed, is to the effect that the counsel's question displays ignorance and shows that he is stupid. Prussic acid is one of the most powerful poisons for the organism. If the stomach should give rise to prussic acid, the stomach, one of the most important animal organs requisite for the normal nutrition and life of the organism, would not only be useless, but would be a positive danger to the individual. The counsel thinks he is a clever man, but he is really ignorant and stupid.

CHAPTER XX

WIT AND RIDICULE

        Wit often employs metaphor, double sense, equivocation, and brevity, so as to play with the audience, give information, and make it think. Aristotle, who had analyzed so many different forms of thought, refers also to wit, though in a rather incoherent and incomplete way. In his "Rhetoric" he says: "Also the greatest number of elegancies arise from metaphor, and from additionally deceiving the hearer (more correctly surprising the hearer's expectation); for the point becomes more clear that he has learned something from the meaning being opposite of what it was supposed, and the mind seems to say, ‘How true is this! I, however, was wrong."'

       The arousal of subconscious ideas by means of similarity and contrast, by synonyms, homonyms, and antonyms constitutes the essence of wit. "In all such cases," says Aristotle, "if one introduce the term appropriately under an equivocation or metaphor then there is wit. The same, too, is that commended saying of Anaxandrides, ‘It is honorable to die before doing aught worthy death'; for it is the same as saying, ‘It is worthy a man to die when he is not worthy the punishment of death, when he has not committed acts worthy that punishment.' Now the form of the diction of these sentences is the same; but in proportion as the idea happens to be enunciated in fewer words and with antithesis, in the same proportion is it more approved. And the reason is that the information becomes by means of the antithesis fuller; by means of brevity more rapid." In another place Aristotle displays rather unusual contempt for the hearer as he tells us that one should be brief, to the point, and not put many questions "by reason of the imbecility of the hearer. On which account we ought as much as possible to compress even our enthymems." The principal object of good wit is not to confuse the listener, but to stir him up, to make him think and to bring about the right exercise of the mental powers which is one of the greatest pleasures of man.

        Wit employs double sense, equivocations, metaphors, simile, brevity. Still all these are but the implements, not the essence, not the actual spirit of true wit. These implements may be used in the construction of sentences which are thoroughly flat, silly, and stupid. The characteristic of wit is the sudden, unexpected realization of new and strange views brought by simple means within the mental horizon of the audience, or the realization of something customary, usual, habitual, and familiar bearing the aspect of the unhabitual, unusual, uncustomary, and strange. Wit should therefore be regarded as a form of words and sentences which suddenly opens a new horizon, gives a surprising, sudden new view, accompanied by an agreeable shock, stirring up to activity masses of mental and emotional systems with their subconscious reserve energy, arousing feelings of power

due to greater mental activity, deeper insight into things, and wider knowledge of the world. Wit, therefore, does not deal with the ludicrous only, it may touch on the grave, and, in fact, it often does deal with serious matters of human life.

        The main thing, however, is the fact that in wit we experience a sudden, unexpected, surprising arousal of subconscious reserve energy. The force in all wit is the sudden stimulation of mental activity. In wit the saying is brief, pithy, not only because the hearer is usually stupid, but because the hearer is supposed to be stimulated to do thinking for himself and to be able to draw conclusions independently. The pleasure derived from wit is self-activity, the arousal of subconscious reserve energy. The person who hears a witty saying, realizes the meaning, and is enabled to draw the hidden inferences, feels stronger mentally, experiences an uplifting of the spirit.

        The object of wit, as I pointed out, is stimulation of subconscious reserve energy, the calling forth of mental self-activity. The pleasure consists in the free, spontaneous activity due to the stirring of his subconscious, reserve energy. The function of wit is to widen the sphere of human thought, to strengthen his energies, and, to call forth in him the joy of being, action, and life. In this respect wit is similar to ridicule, but wit radically differs from ridicule by the fundamental characteristic of the absence of and emphasis on relations of inferiority. There is present in wit the feeling of joy due to an increase of being and activity, development, and growth of mental life, but without any relation of inferiority; there is in wit the presence of excellence of spirit without the relation of degradation.

        We have pointed out the fundamental error made by many writers on the subject of laughter in that they confuse wit with ridicule, the ludicrous, and the comic. They consider the witty as something inherently laughter-raising, and hence they, identify the witty with the joke, the jest, and ridicule. This is a radical error. Wit and ridicule are by no means identical. Ridicule falls under the category of wit, but the witty may have nothing to do with ridicule. There are witty sayings, anecdotes, and stories in which the ludicrous has no place. Many folk proverbs, the proverbs and parables of the Bible, Æsop's or Hindoo fables are witty, but they lack the element of the ludicrous. Similarly, charades, puzzles, enigmas are witty, but we cannot regard them as having even a shadow of ridicule. Plato's myth of the creation and education of man, as told by him in his "Protagoras," may be considered not only as beautiful, but also as witty, although there is not a grain of ridicule in it. The simile of the soul to a charioteer and two horses in "Phaedrus," the story of Gyges in the "Republic," the metaphor of Love in the "Symposium," as an immortal dæmon born of Poros or Plenty and Penia or Poverty, may all be regarded as excellent illustrations of good wit from which ridicule is entirely absent.

        As an illustration of our point of view we may take the story told by Aristotle in his "Politics" of Eubulus, who, when Autophradates was going to besiege Atarneus, told him to consider how long the operation would take, and then reckon up the cost which would be incurred in time. "'For,' Eubulus said, ‘I am willing for a smaller sum than that to leave Atarneus at once."' These words of Eubulus made an impression on Autophradates, and he desisted from the siege. Aristotle also mentions the story of the tyrant Periander, when the herald was sent by Thrasybulus to ask counsel of him in regard to government. Periander said nothing, took the herald to the field, and cut off the tallest ears and brought the field to a level. The herald did not understand the meaning of the action, but came and reported to Thrasybulus what he had seen. Thrasybulus took the hint that he was to cut off the principal men in the state. Such stories are witty, but there is nothing in them of the ludicrous.

        Many of the sayings in the Confucian "Analects," paradigms, maxims, aphorisms by philosophers, poets, and wise men, such as Heraclitus, Antisthenes, Montaigne, Pascal,

Schopenhauer, or the Bible, are witty, but they cannot be regarded as a matter of ridicule. A series of illustrations will help us most in the differentiation of wit and ridicule. We may take at random a few of the witty Biblical proverbs and sayings:

        As vinegar to the teeth and as smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to them that sends him.        As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.        Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.      The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.       Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles.        Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a broken tooth and a foot out of joint.        As in water face answereth face, so is the heart of man to man.

        We may take as examples the witty and pithy sayings of Ecclesiastes :

        A living dog is better than a dead lion.        All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled.        Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself overwise, why shouldst thou destroy thyself?       The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to the man of understanding, nor yet favor to the man of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

        Confucius, the grave Chinese sage, likewise has his witty sayings:

        I have not yet met with a man who loves Virtue as he loves Beauty.       Some one asked him, "What say you of (the remark) ‘Requite enmity with kindness'?"       "How then," he answered, "would you requite kindness?―Requite enmity with straightforwardness (justice) and kindness with kindness."

      We may take as illustrations a few Oriental proverbs, the wisdom of folklore:

        A devil with experience is better than an angel without.        Speak little and you will hear much.        He who speaks the truth must have one foot in the stirrup.

        Montaigne is full of wit:

        The fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself.        I find that our greatest vices derive their first propensity from our most tender infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse.        We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves. Of what is the most subtle folly made, but of the most subtle wisdom?       From the rare and quick agitations of our souls proceed the most wonderful and wildest frenzies; 'tis but a half turn of the toe from the one to the other.

        Similarly Pascal:

        Man is the feeblest reed in existence, but he is a thinking reed.        It is the contest and not the victory that gives us pleasure.        It is easier to suffer death without thinking of it than to think of it when in no danger of suffering it.        A horse does not trouble itself about the admiration of its fellow.        The last thing we can settle in the composition of a thing is how to begin it.

        We may cull a few witty sayings made by the genius of Shakespeare:

        Fear and scruple shake us.        All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.        A golden mind stoops not to shows of dross.       The world is still deceived with ornament. Ornament is but the gilded shore to a more dangerous sea.        My blood speaks to you in my veins.       When fortune means to men most good, she looks upon them with a threatening eye.       O, that my tongue were in the thunder's mouth! Then with a passion would I shake the world!       He that stands upon a slippery place makes nice of no vile hold to stay him up.       Jealousy is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

      We may also take a few of the witty sayings of the ancient Greek philosophers and sages:

       That judges of important affairs should hold office for life is not a good thing, for the mind grows old as well as the body.―Aristotle        Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.―Aristotle        Man's character is his fate.―Heraclitus        Bear all thou canst; for Can dwells nigh to Must. ―Pythagoras        One to me is as good as ten thousand, if he be the best.―Heraclitus        Strength of body is nobility in beasts, strength of character is nobility in men.―Democritus       My enemy is not the man who wrongs me, but the man who means to wrong me.―Democritus        Truth is in the depth.―Democritus       One should attend to one's enemies, for they are the first persons to detect one's errors.―Antisthenes

        We may give a few witty sayings of American sages:

        He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,        And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.―Emerson        Man lives by pulses.        We thrive by casualties.        The poets are liberating the gods.        The quality of the imagination is to flow, and not to freeze.        Divinity is behind our failures and follies also.        A man is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no luster as you turn it in your hand, until you come to a particular angle; then it shows deep and beautiful colors.        Temperament is the iron wire on which the beads are strung.―Emerson

        We may also refer to Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac”:

        The cat in gloves catches no mice.        Little strokes fell great oaks.

       We may conclude with a few verses from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam," whose poetry is full beauty, grandeur, and wit:

        Into this Universe, and Why not knowing,        Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing;            And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,        I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.

        There was the Door to which I found no Key;        There was the Veil through which I might not see:        Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE           There was―and then no more of THEE and ME.

        What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke        A conscious Something to resent the yoke            Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain        Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke!

        What! from his helpless Creature be repaid        Pure Gold for what he lent us, dross-allay'd―            Sue for a Debt he never did contract,        And cannot

answer―Oh the sorry trade!

        Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make        And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake;            For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man        Is blacken'd―Man's Forgiveness give―and take!

        A Moment's Halt―a momentary taste        Of Being from the Well amid the Waste―            And Lo!―the phantom Caravan has reach'd        The Nothing it set out from―Oh, make haste!

        A study of all the examples chosen from many writers, poets, and sages of various countries and different ages goes to show that wit is the opening of new horizons before the mental eye by means of the usual and the habitual associated with the unusual and the unhabitual; and again by dissociation of elements and traits of the customary from their habitual surroundings and reassociation with the strange, the unusual, and uncustomary. Along with it there must be present an awakening of reserve energies, both in him who makes the witty remark and in him who hears it and appreciates it. When the association belongs to the class of superior and inferior, then does the ludicrous arise. Wit may deal with relations of inferiority, but the emphasis is not necessarily on inferiority as it is in all the forms of ridicule. Wit is that form of thought and its expression which gives rise to free, spontaneous mental activity due to the arousal of subconscious reserve energy.

        We may add that the popular, now vulgarized, saying that "brevity is the soul of wit" is but a superficial, glittering generality not based on the real nature of wit. Brevity in itself may be silly and stupid. It is only when the customary, the usual, the habitual relations of life become transcended by a sudden manifestation and play of reserve energy, it is only then that true wit comes into being. Wit is the result of union of widely different and contrasting ideas. Wit is the outcome of the clash of colliding, remote, customary concepts. As the heat, light, and life of new worlds are born out of collisions of cold, lifeless masses gravitating in space, so is wit.

 

CHAPTER XXI

THE SLUGGISH AND THE LUDICROUS

            From our standpoint we can realize why the awkward, clumsy, the mechanical, the automatic are ludicrous. It is because awkward and clumsy motor reactions are indications of the mind behind them and a sluggish intellect. Now a sluggish mind is essentially regarded as a stupid mind, a mind falling below the normal intellect, and is on that account on object of ridicule, of jokes, and of the comic. It is not economy of motor reactions, nor is it economy and thriftiness that are involved here. On the contrary, it is the reckless expenditure, but without effort on the part of the person. We can spend all we want and there is more energy left. The person who spends his energy, physical and mental, with effort gives the impression of one who lacks energy and needs economy. When no disagreeable consequences are associated with such an impression the effect is invariably ludicrous.

            The prodigal is rarely laughed at, it is the close, the stingy, the miserly that form the butt of ridicule. As Schopenhauer strongly puts it: "Avarice is the quintessence of all vices . . . This utterly incorrigible sin, this refined and sublimated desire of the flesh, is the abstract form in which all lusts

are concentrated, and to which it stands like a general idea to individual particulars. Accordingly, avarice is the vice of age, just as extravagance is the vice of youth." Laughter never comes from economy, but from superabundance of energy. Laughter is by no means due to an economizing process, it is essentially a dissipation of energy. The ludicrous, the comic is the trigger that opens in the audience stores of accumulated reserve energy.

            We may then say that suggestiveness, indirect suggestion in regard to inferiority in general and mental inferiority in particular, forms the mainspring, the chief source of the ludicrous and of the comic. In the last analysis, however, we may say that we ridicule stupidity in all its forms.

            Sluggishness of mind, stupidity, especially human stupidity, under all its forms and disguises is the sole source of the ludicrous. All disguises are ludicrous, not so much because they are disguises, but because under them we discern the silly, the stupid, and the self-contended, arrogant, foolish ignorance. We laugh at the judge, at the lawyer, at the professor, at the physician, at the official who hide their ignorance and stupidity under the cloak of solemn ceremonies and obsolete meaningless mummeries. All ceremonies, all stereotyped, solemn actions are ridiculous, when behind them we discern the meaningless, the stupid, and the ignorant.

            It is not automatic, nor the "mechanical encrusted upon the living," as Bergson would have it, that brings about the ridiculous, but it is always stupidity revealed to the eye of intelligence. The very examples brought by Bergson show, not mechanism, but stupidity of the persons at whom the ridicule is directed.

            An M. P. questions the Home Secretary on the morrow of a terrible murder which took place in a railroad carriage: "The assassin, after dispatching his victim, must have got out the wrong side of the train, thereby infringing the company's rules." There is nothing mechanical about it except the fact that the remark shows the stupidity of the M. P. In the same way Doctor Bahis' maxim, "It is better to die through violating them," is not an indication of the mechanical, but an example of stupidity, of lack of understanding of the actual purpose of medicine. This may be duplicated by the following anecdote:

Irish doctor: Well, I've knocked the fayver out of him anyhow.

Wife: O Doctor, do you think there is any hope?

Irish doctor: Small chance, I'm afeard, madam; but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing he died cured.            The stupid and therefore ludicrous side of the situation is brought out in the physician's last phrase that the patient died cured. This stupidity of misconceiving the end of cure, which should lead to life instead of death, is often directed against the surgeon who reports a successful operation and death of the patient. The stupidity ridiculed is against the professional narrow-mindlessness which concentrates its attention on the knocking out of the "fayver," on the successful operation from a purely professional standpoint, without regard to the patient himself, for whose life and welfare the treatment and operation were undertaken. This sort of stupidity is common with professional men who think more of their profession than of the welfare of their patients and clients for whom the profession ultimately exists.

            This stupid narrow-mindedness into which professional men are apt to drift forms the constant butt of ridicule. Bergson is right in his remark, though he gives it the wrong interpretation: "Bridoison's words significant: 'F-form, mind you, f-form.' A man laughs at a judge in a morning coat, and yet he would quake with dread at the mere sight of an attorney in his gown. 'F-form, all

the matter of f-form.'" This is perfectly true. It is the function of ridicule to pierce the thick crust of professional bigotry. Pascal puts it quite forcibly:

            "The greatest and most important thing in the world is founded on weakness; and the foundation is admirably firm; for nothing can be more certain than that people will be feeble.

            "Our magistrates are adepts in this mystery. Their halls of justice, their robes of scarlet and ermine, with the other insignia of their office, are all necessary."

            It is the function of ridicule to rend the cloak of form and ceremony, and show the hidden emptiness, weakness and stupidity. It is the function of ridicule to tear away the mantle that hides senseless form, hollow hypocrisy, and imbecility. We laugh at stupidity under all its forms and disguises. In fact, we may say that all ridicule, even where it concerns physical defects and motor clumsiness and awkwardness, is aimed at mental deficiency and intellectual turpitude. Stupidity is the target of the shafts of ridicule.

CHAPTER XXII

RIDDLE, DISSOCIATION, AND SURPRISE

        Laughter is the result of tapping new sources of subconscious reserve energy; the element of suddenness, or of surprise must be taken into consideration. The turn in the joke or in the ludicrous must come in a sudden sharp way, thus heightening the contrast effects and setting the hidden energies into activity by liberating the unused, accumulated surplus energy. When the same joke is repeated a few times it becomes stale. When the result of the comic becomes known beforehand the laughter is deadened. Surprise at the unexpected, when of a pleasant character, is generally provocative of a smile or of laughter, but when connected with the elements of inferiority and stupidity of the object or of the given situation the laughable effect is irresistible.

        The audience must have the feeling of expectancy and of surprise at the outcome. The outcome must not be too obvious. A veil must be skillfully thrown over the last results. The inference must be left to the listener or to the looker-on. As Aristotle would put it, the joke and the comic must be of the nature of an enthymeme, the conclusion should be omitted. A veil of a gauzy, transparent character must be thrown over the outcome. The conclusion must not be seen, and still it must be sufficiently indicated indirectly so that the audience should be sure to supply it from its own mental resources.

        This artistic illusion of suggestiveness, of indirect suggestibility, is one that specially delights the audience. In the joke, as in the comedy, the audience is apparently made to participate in the act. The audience is thrown skillfully on its own inner resources and is artfully made to supply the missing links. Such a skillful maneuver, when successfully carried out, sets the audience in an uproar of uncontrollable laughter.

        The joke and the comic are constructed like a riddle, but unlike the usual riddle or charade the solution must be given in the puzzle. The answer must be given in the very substance of the joke or of the comic.   In the riddle and in the conundrum the solution is hidden, and the more hidden the solution is, the better the riddle is appreciated. Not so is it in the joke and the comic―the solution is

hidden and still is fully apparent or transparent to the audience. The riddle needs an explanation, and the harder it is to find the explanation, the more difficult the solution is, the better is the riddle. Quite opposite is the case with the joke and the comic. Nothing kills a joke so much as an explanation. The joke and the comic resemble the riddle in the fact that the conclusion or the solution is not given, but while in the riddle all efforts are made to hide the solution, in the joke and the comic the solution lies on the surface; the hiding is only a matter of playful semblance.

        In the different forms of the ludicrous, in the joke and in the comic, the riddle is such that one has to find out at a glance where the defect, the subnormal, the stupid lies. Now the stupid may be in act, in behavior, in manners, in costume, or it may be in a higher sphere, namely, in the moral and in the intellectual―it may be a lapse or permanent defect of moral or of reasoning capacities. In the ultimate analysis all these different varieties can be referred to sheer stupidity.

       When a man runs and slips we may laugh when the person is young. What is expected of him is agility, motor control which indicates an active mind. The slip ping of a young person is an indication of a sluggish mind. Should the person suffer from motor disturbances or be old there would be compassion and not laughter. A young person playing croquet, for instance, and taking his aim and missing is laughed at, because it is an indication of his psychomotor sluggishness. Similarly I once observed great hilarity in onlookers at a person who was sitting on a stout branch and sawing it in front of him, and then coming down, branch and all. The laughter was clearly on account of the person's stupidity.

        When again a man walks in a solemn way, slips, falling into mud, showing signs of ill temper, the tendency to laughter is enhanced in the bystanders. The person reveals by his anger his silliness, which is laughed at. A marionette acting like an intelligent person is laughed at because of the absence of reason which we find in it. Thus Collodi in his "Pinochio" describes "the people in the street, seeing the wooden marionette running as fast as a rabbit, stopped to look at it, and laughed, and laughed." They laughed at the marionette and at the awkwardness of the men chasing a wooden, senseless marionette. A person acting like a thing or like a machine is laughed at. For mechanical action, automatism, indicates lack of reasoning, deficiency of intellect―stupidity.

        A person tossed about like a ball, as Sancho Panza  is ludicrous, because he becomes assimilated to a wooden object or to a rubber ball; in other words, the image of the blockhead hovers before our mind and we regard the man as a fool. Similarly clowns behaving stiffly like wooden sticks and treating their heads like wooden balls are ludicrous, because they clearly, though indirectly, tell the audience by their actions: we are marionettes, we are blockheads. All awkward, clumsy, motor adjustments are ludicrous, because they indicate to people who judge of the mind by the motor reactions that the intelligence is dull, torpid, and inactive.

        Even in the case of moral defects we do not laugh at the clever rogue, but at the knave and the scoundrel who, through stupidity, disclose their dishonesty and knavery. We do not laugh at the crimes and sins of guilty persons, but we laugh at their silliness and stupidity. In the same way worn-out ceremonies, customs, manners, rites, and beliefs are ridiculed, because there is no sense behind them, because they are stupid. It is not moral depravity that is laughed at, but it is torpid, mental inactivity, stupidity. Crime and sin are punished by law and religion, but stupidity is chastened by laughter.

        We must, however, remind the reader of the importance of the surprise element. The foolishness pointed out should not be of a character to which we are accustomed, which we know and with which we are familiar in the ordinary intercourse of life. The novelty of the silly aspect is an important element in the ludicrous. What we are accustomed to no longer arouses our energies, it

falls below the threshold of stimulation. A joke by repetition becomes stale. Repetition is fatal to the comic. Ever new displays, ever new insights into man's stupidity and into the depths of human folly are the requirements of the ludicrous.

        It is the first solution of the puzzle that pleases, there is no second solution. In the same way with the ludicrous it is the first realization of the joke and of the comic that electrifies us, the second one leaves us indifferent, and the third or more makes us turn up our nose. We positively dislike a joke that is often repeated, it is an indication of poverty of thought, of stupidity, and as such is apt to excite in us a derisive smile at the person who tells it.

        The novel aspect o f human folly is a requisite of laughter. We do not laugh at what is usual and customary, even if at first we may regard it as silly and foolish. Custom is the tyrant of men and holds them in bonds stronger than steel. Gradually the ludicrous side dwindles away as we get used and accustomed to the stupidity and take it as part and parcel of life. On the one hand, the customary, as it becomes interwoven with our spirit, becomes by it rationalized, and, on the other hand, the unusual, the strange, the uncustomary, even if good and rational, appears to us as irrational and therefore seems to us ludicrous.   A good example is the Asiatic coming into European society. We may also quote Herodotus in the strong contrasts he makes between Egyptian and Hellenic customs, contrasts which must have greatly amused the Greek world. It requires the whole farce of genius to discover stupidity in hallowed custom, or to see the rational in the unusual.

        In his essays Montaigne expresses tersely the great power of custom:

       He seems to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of custom, who first invented the story of a country woman who, having accustomed herself to play with and carry a young calf in her arms, and daily continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by custom, that, when grown to be a great ox, she was still able to bear it. For, in truth, custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes. . . . I do believe that no so absurd or ridiculous fancy can enter into human imagination, that does not meet with some example of public practice, and that, consequently, our reason does not ground and back up.

        The factor, or, rather to say, the process which is quite frequently taking place in the bringing about of the ludicrous is that of dissociation. The object, the precept, the idea, the situation must be dissociated from its customary associations and then brought again into association with concepts, ideas, images, and situations of an inferior character, physical, mental, and moral. A word, or phrase, is detached from its usual meaning and a different meaning of an inferior character is given to it. The meaning of inferiority is not .directly given, but only implied, being strongly suggested to the listener. This, for instance, may be exemplified in the remark made on an actor: "Jokes aside, he is a fair actor." Now the meaning of fair means nice and good, but it also means a market place. In other words, the critic, while apparently saying that the acting is fair, good, and beautiful, really implies or suggests the idea that the acting is fit for a fair, for a market place. The adjective fair, which is indicative of excellence, is made use of as a noun and thus conveys the idea that the acting is poor and that the actor is but a clown. The word fair is dissociated from its meaning as good and excellent and is associated with the clown of the market place.

        Take again the following example:

        Unfortunate lady, how sad is your lot!        Your ringlets are red, your poems are not.

        Here the play is on the word red, the lady's hair is red and her poems are not read, they are not good. The looks of the lady and her poems are both brought into a relation of inferiority.

        When Homer Tooke was asked by George III whether he ever played cards, he replied, "I cannot, your Majesty, tell a king from a knave."

        The relation of the king and knave of cards is dissociated from the play of cards and brought into relation with the real king and the knave. It is like saying in so many words that there is no difference between a king and a knave.

        To take another example:

        At a banquet the host presented his wines to the guests by the little speech: "I am not a connoisseur, but I have some wines fit for the gods."        An Irishman present took the hint. When he gave a banquet he made the following introduction: "I am not O'Connor, but I have some whiskey fit for Christ'!"

        Here the structure of the joke is brought out even more clearly, inasmuch as the meaning is changed through a misconception of words due to ignorance and to similarity of associations in the Irishman's mind. It is a play on resemblance of words connoisseur and O'Connor, as well as a play of association expressed in similar concepts such as wine and whiskey, the gods and Christ. The joke clearly shows an interchange of the inferior for the superior and suggests the ignorance and stupidity of the Irishman.

        Some remarks of Coleridge, rather of a democratic character, were greeted with hisses, at which he exclaimed: "I am not at all surprised that, when the red hot prejudices of aristocrats are suddenly plunged into the cool element of reason, they should go off with a hiss."

        Here the play on similar words is accompanied by a similarity of associations which reveals the irrationality and stupidity of his opponents.

        "I hope I did not weary you by the length of my sermon, Doctor," said a young preacher at dinner.        "No, nor by its breadth either."

        The play here is on the word length, which is used originally in regard to time; while the interlocutor utilizes the word in a different sense he employs the associated word of breadth, but with reference to thought. In other words, he tells the preacher that the sermon lacked in thought, thus indirectly telling him that the sermon was dull and stupid.

        The misapprehension of a ward showing the ignorance and stupidity of the man who used it is itself often a source of laughter.

        "There are some spectacles," exclaimed an orator, "that a person never forgets."        "I'd like to know whar dey sells them," remarked an old colored man.

        There is one point we must always have in mind, and that is that the climax or sting of the joke or of the comic, though wrapped and covered up by a sugared capsule, should invariably carry the suggestion of defect, of shortcomings, of moral and mental inferiority, of dullness and stupidity. Perhaps a series of examples will best help a clear understanding of the matter:

        Clergyman: I've lost my portmanteau.        Traveler: I pity your grief!        Clergyman: All my sermons are in it.        Traveler: I pity the thief!

 

        "I cannot understand," says Dick,        "What it is that makes my legs so thick;"        "You do not understand," says Harry,        "How great a calf they have to carry:"

        In the first one the implication is that the sermons are poor and pitiful, and in the second one the ridicule lies in telling Dick that he is a big calf and stupid. Both of them have their climax.

        "So you refuse to buy my car, do you?"        "I certainly do. When I want a car like yours, I'll go to the five and ten cent store and get a new one."

        We may complete the thought left suggested and reveal the sting of the reply. A car like the one you wish to palm off an me is cheap and worthless even as a new one. You are silly if you think me such a fool as to buy your car.

        "If you were my husband, I would give you poison."        "Madam, if I were your husband, I would take it."

        The woman tells the man that he is so bad that he deserves to be poisoned, while the man retorts that under such conditions he would willingly take poison, as his life would be so miserable that death is preferable, because she is such a mean shrew. While she tells him that he deserves death, he replies indirectly that she is worse than death.  And now mark another point. The woman in disparaging him makes the slip in regarding the man as a possible husband. This stupid, contradictory slip is taken occasion of, and the woman is made the butt of ridicule. At the same time it may be well to notice here the effect of the principle of dissociation often present in the comic. The original thought, the death of a man, is dissociated and put in the light as death of her husband. This dissociation frees the man from the stigma of being a bad man and puts the woman in a ludicrous light as being both a bad woman, a bad wife, and brings out her stupidity in making the slip by the suggestion that he could possibly be her husband.

        Two men who had not seen one another for a great while meeting by chance, one asked the other how he did. He replied he was very well and had been married since he saw him.

         "That's good news, indeed," said he.        "Nay, not such good news, neither," replies the other, "for I married a shrew."            "That was bad," said the friend.            "Not so bad, neither; for I had two thousand pounds with her."              "That's well again," said the other.             "Not so well, neither," said the man, "for I laid it out in sheep, and they all died of the rot"             "That was hard, indeed," said his friend.        "Not so hard," said the husband, "for I sold the skins for more than the sheep cost." "That made you amends," said the other.        "Not so much amends, neither, for I laid out my money in a house, and it was burnt to the ground."        "That was a great loss, indeed," said the friend.        "Not so great a loss, neither; for my wife was burnt in it."

        We have here present the baffling sense of surprise so important in wit and the comic, while the story winds up with a climax full of surprise. The whale force of the ridicule is sustained and leads up to the evil in women and the misery of married life.

        Take the passage from Goldsmith's "Vicar of Wakefield":

        Olivia undertook to be our prolocutor, and delivered the whole in a summary way, only saying, "We were thrown from our horses." At which account the ladies were greatly concerned; but being told the family received no hurt, they were exceedingly glad, extremely glad; but being informed that we were almost killed by fright, they were vastly sorry; but hearing that we had a very good night, they were extremely glad.

 

        "Were yez iver shtruck be loightning, Pat?"        "Oi don't remimber."             "Don't remimber ?"        "No. A mon that's bin married tin years don't remimber sich troifles as thot."

 

        Foreman (at the door) : Did yer husband hov a new suit av clo'es on this mor'nin', Mrs. O'Malley?        Mrs. O'Malley: He did.              Foreman: They're ruined entirely.              Mrs. O'Malley: How did ut happen?              Foreman: He was blown up be a charge of dinnymite.

        Once an Irish advocate was examining a witness, and, failing to get a correct answer, said: "There is no use in asking you questions, for I see the villain in your face."

        "Did you, sir?" said the man; "faix, I never knew before that my face was a looking-glass."

 

        Pat: What be yer charge for a funeral notice in yer paper?        Editor: Five dollars an inch.        Pat: Good heavens'! Are me poor brother was six feet high.

 

        Pat was in the museum looking at a copy of the "Winged Victory.”        "And phat may yez call thot?" he asked an attendant.             "That is a statue of Victory, sir," was the answer.        Pat surveyed the headless and armless statue with renewed interest.        "Victhry, is it?" he said. "Then begarry, Oi'd loike to see the other fellow."

 

        The following remarks by Lichtenberg disclose the suggestive nature of relations of inferiority characteristic of ridicule: "When a head and a book come into collision, and one sounds hollow, is it always the book?" We take another example from the same author, an example which even more clearly expresses the relation of inferiority inherent in ridicule: "Works like this are as a mirror; if an ass looks in, you cannot expect an apostle to look out."

        Sa'di, in "The Gulistan," expresses the same idea more directly when he says: "I grew weary of instructing brutes, and of holding up a mirror to an assembly of the blind."

        A close inspection of all such jokes clearly reveals the fact that the laughter is at some moral, mental, or logical inferiority disclosed unexpectedly to the view of the reader or listener. At the same time we observe the process of dissociation and the element of climax.

        The following verses from Goldsmith illustrate the climax in the comic:

Good people all, with one accord,    Lament for Madam Blaize, Who never wanted a good word―    From those who spoke her praise.

The needy seldom passed her door,    And always found her kind;She freely lent to all the poor―    Who left a pledge behind.

She strove the neighborhood to please    With manners wondrous winning;And never follow'd wicked ways―    Unless when she was sinning.

 At church, in silks and satins new,    With hoop of monstrous size,She never slumber'd in her pew―    But when she shut her eyes.

Her love was sought, I do aver,    By twenty beaux and more;The King himself has follow'd her―    When she has walled before.

But now her wealth and finery fled,    Her hangers-on cut short all;The doctors found, when she was dead―    Her last disorder mortal.

Let us lament, in sorrow sore,    For Kent Street well may say,That had she lived a twelvemonth more―    She had not died to-day.

 

        Mental and moral inferiority are well brought out in each climax.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE GROUNDWORK OF THE COMIC

        The most general way in which the comic effect is brought about is what may better be termed as the process of deviation. A deviation from the original meaning with a suggestion to the inferior is invariably one of the great sources of the ludicrous. A deviation from the normal to the subnormal, from the moral to the immoral, from the intelligent to the unintelligent, from the wise to the stupid, from the superior or normal to the inferior is the great source of all comic and ludicrous. Any change or variation in the phrase, in the emphasis, accent, or in the order of the words tending to a different and disadvantageous meaning to the speaker excites laughter. Any variation or deviation in the relation, or in the order of events, or in the environment in which the set of events is given with a tendency toward a suggestion of the inferior is invariably regarded as comic.

        Associations of contrast are frequently utilized for ludicrous effects. The great is contrasted with the small, the grave with the gay, the good with the bad, the wise with the foolish, the superior with the inferior. The ludicrous is formed by the blending of contrasting shades and colors in the physical, moral, and intellectual world―the one passing and melting into the other, always with the suggestion toward the lower side of life, always with the hidden grin and leer in the direction of what is mean, law, wicked, silly, and stupid.

        The shock given by the contrast and the suggestive glimpse into the world of the great combine to awaken the sense of the ludicrous. The grandiose, the pompous, the sublime, ending in the low, in the mean, in the stupid, result in the jocose and the comic. Instance the verse:

        The thunder roared, the clouds grew big,        The lightning flashed―and struck a pig.

        This transition from the pompous to the despicable, from the grand to the vile and the mean, has the effect of the ludicrous.

         Take an example from Byron:

They mourned for those who perished in the cutter,And also for the biscuits, cakes and butter.

         His Majesty was confined to his house with a violent cold. The printer made an error, and the phrase was changed to: His Majesty was confined to his house with a "violent scold."

          The general behaved like a hero was changed to behaved like a hare.

          In one paper an announcement read that a surgeon caught in the river was sold at ten cents a pound.

          A clergyman's work was complimented as immortal in which the printer omitted the "t" to the great consternation of both the editor and the divine.

          An orator told an impatient audience: "Wait, gentlemen, I have a few more pearls."

          Every one who has been in the Civil War is a colonel. Is it because they had shells?

                This is not much of a joke, as it turns on pronunciation Colonel as kernel. Still people laughed when they heard it. The amusement lies in the indirect association of the dignified heroes with nuts.

          Let us take the Biblical text with a printer's mistake as a climax.

          And he rebuked the winds and the sea, and lo, there was a Clam!

        The unintentional slip made by the Bible itself in the fable told by Jotham to the men of Shechem is quite amusing on account of the startling assertion as to the divine power of the juice of the vine:

Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us. And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man?

        In the following examples we find the factors of dissociation, sudden unexpected turn, surprise of contrast―two or more contradictory thoughts or mutually exclusive trains of ideas run together with consequent incongruity and nonsense in the climax.

        A lady one day heard a knock at the door, and afterwards asked the servant who had called.        "It was a gintleman, ma'am, looking for the wrong house," replied Mary.

       In stating his grievance to his employer, Dan D――, famed for his sagacity and his persuasive powers, said, "If you please, sir, I've been sent as a delegate by the workers to ask a favor of you regarding the payment of our wages."        "Yes, and what do they desire?" queried the master.        "Well, sir, it is the desire of myself, and it is also the desire of every man in the establishment, that we receive our fortnight's pay every week."

        "Courting," said an Irishman, "is like dying; sure a man must do it for himself."

       "It is a great pleasure entirely to be alone, especially whin your sweetheart is wid ye," observed one reflective swain.

         A man obtained permission from his employer to attend a wedding. He turned up next day with his arm in a sling and a black eye.        "Hello, what is the matter?" asked his employer. "Well, you see," said the wedding guest, "we were very merry yesterday, and I saw a fellow strutting about with a swallow-tailed coat and a white waistcoat. ‘And who might you be? sez I. I'm the best man,' sez he, and begorra he was, too."

        A daughter of Erin was soliciting custom for milk from passengers on board a liner which had just arrived at Queenstown from Canada.        "And what sort of milk might it be?' asked a passenger familiarly.        "Skim milk, to be sure," said the girl.        "Skim milk! Why, we give that to the pigs in my country."        "Indade!" replied the milkmaid simply, "but we sell it to them here."

         An Irishman was visiting the Falls of Niagara. "There," cried Jonathan to Paddy, as he waved his hand in the direction of the Horseshoe Fall, "there now, is not that wonderful?"

        "Wonderful?" replied Paddy. "'What's wonderful?"

        "Why, to see all that water come thundering over them rocks!"

        "Paix, then, to tell ye the honest truth," was the response, "I can't see anything very wonderful in that. Why, what the divil is to hinther it from coming over? If it stopped on the top that'd be something wonderful."

        "Why were you late in barracks last night, Private Atkins?" demanded an officer.        "Train from London was very late, sir," was the reply. "Very good," said the officer. "Next toime the train's late take care you come on an earlier one."

        An Irishman named Linahan, after short residence, made application to be naturalized. One of the questions which is asked of applicants for citizenship is, "Have you read the constitution of the United States?" When this question was asked of Linahan, he replied, "No, your Honor, I have riot, but me friend, Dennis McCarthy, read it to me, and it's mighty well pleased I was with it." He got his papers.

        The play of the joke turns on "reading." It is not mere reading, it is understanding that is of importance. The allusion to foolishness lies far in the background.

        "So yez t'ink Friday is an unlucky day?" asked Doolan.        "Oi know it," replied Hooligan. "Oi lost me purse wid tin shillins in it on a Friday.        Don't yez call thot bad luck?"        "Yis; bad luck fer you, but faine luck for the fellow that found it."

       A show proprietor said to Pat, who was looking at a cinematograph; "How do you like the fight?"       "Oi've only one objection, sor," said Pat.        "What is it," asked the proprietor.        "Just that Oi can't get in it," was the answer.

        "An' how did ye injoy St. Patrick's day?" queried Muldoon of his friend."Foine," was the answer. "We cracked Casey's skull in the marnin', an' attinded his wake in the avenin'.”

        "I intend to pray that you may forgive Casey for having thrown that brick at you," said a parson when he called to see a man who had been, worsted in a melee.        "Mabbe yer riv'rence 'ud be savin' toime if ye'd just wait till 0i git well, an' pray for Casey," replied the patient.

        The last few examples well illustrate the pugnacious character of the Irishman.

        Incongruity and absurdity disclosing silliness, stupidity, and general mental inferiority are important factors in the comic, bringing out the comic, the ludicrous. A few examples will illustrate this point:

        Papa to Johnny: You had a fight again. Your forehead is bleeding.Johnny: I bit myself in the forehead.                Papa: How could you do that? You could not reach your forehead.                Johnny: I climbed up on a chair.

       We laugh here at the absurdity which lies in the association of incongruity of cause and effect. We laugh at the false analogy of reaching a high object such as the forehead by climbing on a chair or on a ladder.

        The same may be exemplified by the Irish railroad porter.

        "The ten o'clock train'll go at eleven o'clock to-night, and there'll be no last train."

        Another example is that of the man who said:

      "I receive an immense number of anonymous letters which are quite insulting. I despise them too much to pay any attention to them. When I write anonymous letters, I always sign them."

        The joke lies in the incongruity of signing anonymous letters as well as in the acknowledgment indirectly made that he writes insulting letters.

        Again we may take the story of the captain who instructed his corporals:

        I want all the corporals to give the word of command together. "Shoulder arms!" he shouted. He then angrily exclaimed: "I hear several corporals saying nothing at all."

        This may be matched by the Irishman who, at a meeting, called out:        "All ye who are present say: yea! All those who are absent say: nay!"

        The ludicrous side of the joke lies in the incongruity and absurdity of hearing what is not said, or of expecting absent people to indicate their absence by answering "nay" to your question. At the same time the ridicule is directed against the person who naively makes such remarks-it suggests his stupidity.

        A foolish young esquire, hearing his steward say he had killed a bullock for Christmas, exclaimed: "What do you mean by such extravagance and expense? Have but one half killed at a time!"

       Thus a person's physiognomy has been jestingly described as: "a few pensive lines about the nose showed that snuff and sorrow had been busy there." Contrast of associations, incongruity of images, clash of inconsistent ideas, contradictory statements, interplay of discordant actions, and sentiments which reveal their inner incompatibility, as well as views that cannot be reconciled, because of their being illogical and absurd, all arouse laughter. In short, any association which expresses moral and mental turpitude compared with the normal and ideal standard of the given society and age gives rise to smiles, ridicule, and laughter. In all the cases of the comic and the ludicrous we find the combination of logical and illogical, moral and immoral, the brilliant and the commonplace, the ideal and the matter of fact, the superior and the inferior, the intelligent and the stupid, all conjoined and combined into an explosive that at the least concussion gives rise to an outburst of laughter.

        The following anecdote may be taken as an example:

        A descendant of the noble Harmadius was taunting Iphicrates with his low birth.        "The difference between us is this," Iphicrates replied, "my family begins with me, and your's ends with you."

        The contrasting relations of high and low, of good and evil, of great and small are here clearly brought out. The exalted are humbled and the humble are exalted. We laugh, we are amused, when we realize real merit clashing with deceit. The sham discerned under the garb of nobility and superiority is invariably an object of ridicule. The contrast of the two discordant and incongruous concepts, the noble and the ignoble, the superior and the inferior, their association, dissociation, and final resolution with the surprise element in which the ignoble is shown to be clothed in the garb of the noble, like the donkey in the lion's skin, arouses the sense of the ludicrous.

 

HAPTER XXIV

MIMICRY

        Why is mimicking a person or an animal ludicrous? Because the imitation is of something which is regarded as inferior. We do not laugh at the perfect imitation of a beautiful song, nor do we ridicule the perfect imitation of a human figure whether sculptured or painted, but we laugh at defects, at the representation of awkwardness, of clumsiness, and silliness. In mimicry it is not simply the imitation of any kind of gestures, or of action, or of mannerisms, or of speech, that is regarded as ludicrous, but it is only certain definite manifestations, only certain motor activities or postures that excite laughter. The imitation in mimicry excites our laughter because the gestures, postures, speech, and phrases imitated are considered as silly, senseless, stupid. The mimicry or imitation of what is regarded as good, true, and beautiful excites in us the highest admiration. When we mimic persons and their modes of behavior it is to bring out in the language of gestures the moral and mental inferiority, the inner senselessness of the person.

        In grotesque pastures and figures we find the presence of abnormalities, of conditions and

states of inferiority, deformities, and defects of body and mind.

      An excellent description of the power of the ludicrous possessed by grimace-making and caricature may be found in "Notre Dame de Paris," by Victor Hugo:

        The field was clear for every sort of folly .  .  .  The pulling of faces began. The first to appear in the opening―eyelids turned inside out, the gaping mouth of a ravening beast, the brow creased and wrinkled―was greeted with such a roar of inextinguishable laughter―that Homer would have taken all these ragamuffins for gods.

        A second and third distortion followed, to be succeeded by another and another; and with each one the laughter redoubled, and the crowd stamped and roared with delight. Picture to yourself a series of faces representing successively every geometrical form, from the triangle to the trapezium, from the cone to the polyhedron; every human expression, from rage to lewdness; every stage of life, from the creases of the newly born to the wrinkles of hoary age; every phantasm of mythology and religion, from Faunus to Beelzebub; every, animal head, from the buffalo to the eagle, from the shark to the bulldog. . . . The great Hall was one vast furnace of effrontery and unbridled mirth, in which every mouth was a yell, every countenance a grimace, every individual a posture. The whole mass shrieked and bellowed. Every new visage that came grinning and gnashing to the window was fresh fuel to the furnace. And from this seething multitude, like steam from a cauldron, there rose a hum―shrill, piercing, sibilant, as from a vast swarm of gnats .   .    .    .

     Suddenly there came a thunder of applause mingled with shouts of acclamation. The Fools had elected their Pope.

     In truth, the grimace that beamed through the broken window at this moment was nothing short of the miraculous. After all the faces―pentagonal, hexagonal, and heteroclite―which had succeeded each other in the stone frame, without realizing the grotesque ideal set up by the inflamed popular imagination, nothing inferior to the supreme effort now dazzling the spectator would have sufficed to carry every vote. We can hardly convey to the reader a conception of that tetrahedral nose, that horse-shoe mouth, of that small left eye obscured by a red and bristling brow, while the right disappeared under a monstrous wart, of those uneven teeth, with breaches here and there, like, the crenated walls of a fortress, of that horny lip over which one of the teeth projected like an elephant's tusk, of that cloven chin, nor, above all, of that expression overlying the whole, an indefinable mixture of malice, bewilderment, and sadness.

        There was not a single dissentient voice. They rushed to the chapel and in triumph dragged forth the thrice lucky Pope of Fools. Then surprise and admiration reached the culminating point. He had but shown his natural countenance.

        Rather let us say his whole person was a grimace. An enormous head covered with red bristles; between the shoulders a great hump balanced by one in front; a system of thighs and legs so curiously misplaced that they only touched at the knees, and viewed from the front, appeared like two sickles joined at the handles; huge splay feet, monstrous hands, and, with all this deformity, a nameless impression of formidable strength, agility, and courage. He looked like a giant broken and badly repaired.

        The picture drawn by Victor Hugo of the Pope of Fools reminds one of the Homeric awkward figure of the Cyclop Polyphemus or of Shakespeare's monster Caliban. The image that comes to one's mind is that of a powerful orangoutang or gorilla, an ape-like man or a man-like ape. In fact, that is the way the audience regards the monster:

     "Oh, the hideous ape!" exclaimed one. "'Tis the devil himself!" added another.      "The other night he came and made faces at me through the window. I thought it not a man!"

      As we have pointed out before, physical deficiencies, whether natural or mimicked, are in the lower stages of civilization and culture objects of ridicule. The ridicule, however, is not so much directed against the physical defect itself as against the spiritual deficiency which the physical deformity expresses. The body mirrors the mind. We see a stunted mind in a deformed body.

        We laugh at deformities which express defects of personality, faults of character, inferior aberrations, and deviations of the mind. The various expressions of a foal, the silly gestures, postures, mannerisms of action, arid speech of an imbecile or of an idiot give rise to laughter. We laugh at people whose actions are thoughtless, whose manners are silly, whose speech is senseless, and whose gestures are inappropriate and meaningless.

        In every person's life activity there are foolish breaks, moments in which intelligence lapses, when the person may became the object of comic imitation. The comedian, the joker, the wit, and the wag seize on such moments and, bringing them to light, expose them to the ridicule of other people. Vacant, silly expressions of the features of the face, stupid, meaningless gestures, irrational actions all go to form the subject matter of the comic and the ludicrous.

        Motor reactions are the mirror of mental life: The deformities of physical expression are regarded as reflections of mental deficiencies. Deformities of bodily expression are regarded as indications of flaws of character and defects of mind. We read by the physical expressions the stupidities that lie behind them. In all comic imitation the imitated acts suggest mental inferiority of some kind. It is this mental inferiority, suggested by imitation of gestures and expressions, that is regarded as ludicrous. Moral and mental defects brought out by physical expressions of attitude, deportment, physiognomy are the factors of the ludicrous in all forms of imitation and mimicry of the comic.

        The cartoonist in drawing his cartoons of individuals or situations is bringing to light mental and moral deficiencies which, by a form of suggestion, he exposes to the gaze of the public. By a play of the features of the face, by exaggeration or diminution of organs and traits of character the ludicrous side is exposed to view. The nose may be lengthened, the lips may be made thick or retreating, the teeth be formed like tusks, the ears may be made large, the forehead may be made retreating and possibly horns and hoofs added. All sorts of deformities may be brought into play in order that mental and moral traits may be exposed to ridicule. Sometimes a very slight change in the features of the face or in the figure may do the work, may bring about the ludicrous effect. The cartoon may be regarded as a joke, a jest, a travesty, a farce, or burlesque done in pictures.

        We may look at the cartoon as an ideographic joke. Quite often the cartoon is supplemented, as we find in the comic-papers, by the ordinary form of joke. The two often interpret and interpenetrate each other. The inscription made on the picture explains its meaning, which is further supplemented and developed by the usual joke. The picture illustrates the verbal joke, and the joke in its abstract and verbal farm is strengthened by the cartoon or caricature. Visual and auditory images are blended to intensify the ludicrous side of the abject or of the situation. As, for instance, the boy who made a picture of a wagon and under it wrote: "drawn by a horse."

        The pictures may be given in a series and may represent a whole dramatic performance of various individuals under different conditions and in various situations, bringing the whale to a climax, all the scenes having a running verbal commentary. We may say, then, that in all forms of comic mimicry, of comic imitation there must be present the strong undercurrent of suggestion of

mental inferiority. The very object, the aim of mimicry, of imitation is the revelation of the inferiority of the butt of ridicule. The success of mimicry or of comic imitation consists in the happy selection of traits which are regarded as law, mean, and below the standard of ordinary intelligence and morality, characteristic of the given group, society, or age in which the joke, the cartoon, or caricature is made.

        The cartoon does not ridicule physical being, but mind, character, spirit. In all forms of the comic it is not the body, but it is the soul that is the subject of ridicule. It is not the material, the physical side, the mechanical, the automatic functions of the body which are ridiculed, but it is always the virtues of the soul, when falling below the normal accepted standard, that form the everlasting butt of ridicule. The material, the physical is no matter for the joke, for the comic. It is the mental, the spiritual in all its infirmities, shortcomings, and failures that forms the everlasting material of the joke and the comic.

        The infirmities of the spirit are as much chastened by laughter as they are purified by pain. It is laughter, ridicule that arouses the spirit out of its torpor, gives the slumbering soul a shock, stings the spirit into action and further development. When man or society falls into mental turpitude it is the whip of ridicule that lashes it into mental awakening and further work. Aristotle is right―the ridiculous deals with mental turpitude unattended with pain and destruction. Like a flash of lightning on a dark night, so laughter or ridicule illuminates the dark abyss of the human spirit and awakens the soul to the active light of day.

        When two people look alike we may smile. We smile because we regard one as an imitation of the other. The situation is ludicrous because we are in a state of perplexity, since we regard each one as an imitation of the other, we do not know which is the original and which is the mimicking imitation. I have, however, inquired of a number of people, and I find that it is not so much the likeness of the individuals that is laughed at as the misunderstanding to which the close resemblance gives rise. Twins are laughed at only when we are apt to confuse them and have misapprehensions of an absurd character which are on that account ludicrous. Shakespeare, in his "Comedy of Errors," represents a, couple of twins with complicated absurd situations in which one of the twins is taken for the other, with ludicrous results, because of the confusion and misunderstanding of their actions and misinterpretation of what the twins say and do. After a series of misunderstandings the double set of twins are confronted before Adriana and the duke, who exclaim in amazement:

Adr.      I see two husbands, or mine eyes deceive me.Duke.   One of these men is Genius to the other;            And so of these. Which is the natural man,            And which the spirit? who deciphers them?        In the comedy of "Twelfth Night" Shakespeare resorts to a similar plot in which Sebastian and his sister Viola are made to look alike. Out of such an ambiguous situation the poet weaves a net of misunderstandings. When the plot comes to a solution and the two are confronted Shakespeare makes the lookers-on exclaim:

Duke.    One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons,             A natural perspective, that is and is not!

Seb.      Antonio, O my dear Antonio!            How have the hours rack'd and tortured me,            Since I have last thee!

Ant.      Sebastian are you?

        Mark the fact that when the twins are confronted there is no laughter at their close resemblance, but there is present a state of astonishment with nothing of the ludicrous in it. The ludicrous arises out of the ambiguity of situations, out of the play of misapprehensions, false vexations, trivial troubles, various farms of foolings which amuse and delight the audience. We laugh at the way people are, intentionally or unintentionally, misled and fooled by imitations.

        Imitation, imitativeness, or mimicry is laughed at because it indicates lack of intelligence, either of the original or of the copy. In imitativeness, in mimicry we laugh at lack of brains. The essence of the ludicrous in mimicry may be summarized by the following fable:

        A fox entered the house of an actor and, rummaging through all his properties, came upon a Mask, an admirable imitation of a human head. He placed his paws on it, and said, "What a beautiful head! yet it is of no value, as it entirely wants brains."

        The cunning fox and the brainless Mask are well contrasted. The human head, however fair, is made ludicrous through lack of brains.

CHAPTER XXV

LOGIC AND RIDICULE

        Many of the jokes and comic phrases we meet are logical in character, and as such may be considered as verbal or material fallacies. Thus the pun, which is commonly regarded as a joke or a witty remark, falls under the class known as fallacy of equivocation. The same word has an homonymous meaning with something which is quite different and contrasting to what the speaker intends to say, the inferior being brought into play under the covered meaning of the superior.

        Take, for instance, the example of the theatrical manager who, on being complimented on the excellent voice of his prima donna, replied: "Yes, but she has a long bill." The equivocation turns on the association of contrasting images as a bill of a bird with a bill for money.

        "Can she paint?"        "Yes, she uses paint daily."

        A linguist was asked how many modern tongues he had mastered.

        "All, except that of my wife and of my mother-in-law."

       A sailor after having been fished out from the water was asked by a sentimental lady haw he felt in the water.        "Wet," the sailor replied.

        An Irishman was listening to two young school teachers. One said she had thirty children, the other said she had forty children to attend to.        "Excuse me," asked the Irishman, "do your husbands come from the old country?"

        "Why can't you be good?" asked a mother of her small boy.        "I'll be good for a nickel," he said.        "Ah," admonished the mother. "You should copy your father, and be good for nothing."

        In all these examples we have an equivocal meaning of words with a suggestion of the relation of inferiority. The speaker by a word or a phrase suggests the reverse of what he intends to say, or the meaning of the phrase is differently interpreted by the listener or interlocutor. Take another example where the joke turns on pure equivocation of words:

        "This is Mike Gun," said the police officer. "The Gun is loaded."      In the morning the captain turned to the prisoner: "Gun, you are discharged and the report will be in the papers to-morrow."

       A physician turned dairyman. When asked the reason for it, the physician replied that he found there was more money in the "well" than in the sick.

        One wondered there were so many pickpockets about London, seeing there was a watch at every corner.        "Bah!" was the reply, "they would as willingly meet with a watch as with anything else."

        In all these examples we find the play on words of equivocal meaning, with a distant suggestion of associations of inferiority, such as the drunkard Gun and the firearms, the physician, dairyman, and the well, the pickpocket and the watch he picks.

        "We have a hen," said a boy boastingly, "that lays an egg for me every week."        "My grandfather," replied his chum, "is a bishop, and every week he lays a foundation stone."

      The doctor said, "I must throw, up everything and take a sea voyage."―Got the cart before the horse.

        An Irishman saw while passing through a graveyard the following words written on a tombstone: "I still live." Pat looked a moment, and then said: "Be jabers, if I was dead, I'd own up to it."

        "He was driven to his grave!"        "Sure he was. Did you expect him to walk there?"

        In all these various examples of jokes we find that the word which is played upon is one that has various meanings and the suggestion is toward the inferior, while the word is apparently used in the sense of superiority, or one of the dramatis personæ is made to look sheepish by a play on a word. The solemn and the sad are contrasted with the flippant and the gay, the intelligent with the stupid. The word is taken out of its setting, dissociated from the set of systems into which it fits and acquires its meaning, and is associated with another set with which it is incongruous, thus giving rise to the ludicrous on account of the lack of meaning and association of inferiority. The senseless, the meaningless is ridiculous because it expresses stupidity, inferiority of thought.

        The fallacy known in logic as the fallacy of equivocation is often utilized to express mental inferiority, moral and intellectual. The pun is much used in the jocose and the comic:

       "How does the noted healer, who cures his patients by touching them, differ from the regular physician?"        "Why he touches them before he cures them."

        Two doctors met in the hall of the hospital. "Well," said the first, "what is new this

morning?"       "I've got a most curious case. Woman cross-eyed; in fact so cross-eyed that when she cries the tears run down her back:"        "What are you treating her for?"        "Just now," was the reply, "we are treating her for bacteria."

        A young American lady attended a banquet of physicians in London. She was decidedly good to look at, and the gentleman on one side, glancing at her, remarked to her escort: "By George, we have a duck between us."        She retorted: "Why, because I am between two quacks?"

        In all these jokes or puns the ludicrous depends an the meaning of the ward with the suggestion of a state of inferiority, disclosing an incongruity of concepts, a plausible absurdity. Cross-eyedness, tears running down the back, bacteria. Touching in the sense of healing and touching in the sense of stealing. Duck a good thing, duck a bird and, hence, the further suggestion of ganders and quacks used in the meaning of fakes.

        We may take occasion to point out that the joke attains its end, not only by dissociating the word from its moorings, so to say, but often accomplishing its purpose by dissociating the word itself; such, for instance, is the case in the joke on back-teria. Other examples may be adduced proving the same point:

        The "Legend of the Cid" was set up by a printer as "The Leg End of the Kid."

       The joke or the comic may again be constructed on the equivocal meaning of the sentence, such as the invitation to an acquaintance:

        "If, sir, you ever come within a mile of my house, I hope you will stay there."

        Reports had came to the president of a well known Eastern college that one of the students was drinking more than was good for him. Meeting the student on the campus one morning, the president stopped him by the question:        "Young man, do you drink?"        "Well, why?" the student hesitated, "not so early in the morning."

        A farmer being sick, he and his wife came to a doctor for examination and advice. The doctor after the examination turned to the farmer and said: "My dear man, you must drink asses’ milk. If you cannot obtain asses' milk come to me and I'll help you to some."        When the couple left the office, the wife turned to the farmer:        "Does the doctor give suck?"

        This is known in logic as the fallacy of amphibology, and often gives rise to comic sayings and ludicrous situations.

        "Why do you keep the pigs in the house?" Pat was asked.        "Ain't it a good place for pigs?" was the reply.

        A nurse had been called as a witness to prove the correctness of the bill of a physician.       "Let us get at the facts in the case," said the lawyer who was doing a cross-examining stunt. "Didn't the doctor make several visits after the patient was out of danger?"       "No, sir," answered the nurse, "I considered the patient in danger as long as the doctor continued his visits."

       Any combination of opposite, contradictory ideas and images is apt to give rise to laughter. Thus Mr. Hanna during his change of personality had to learn things over again. He saw a chicken and he was told it was a black chicken. Next time he saw a white chicken he called it a white-black

chicken. At which the people laughed. Such incongruous remarks are often made by children.

       A young lady said of a book that it was so dry that she had to wade through it.

        A Bostonian lady asked a village grocer if he kept Browning.        "No," he answered, "I only keep blacking."

        A business man given to bankrupting asked his newly married daughter if she was happy.        "You know, father, marriage is a failure."        "Then," replied the father, "your marriage is a success."

       An Irish cavalryman was found by his officer dismounted from the horse.       "Did you have orders from headquarters?"       "No, from hindquarters."

        Sometimes the accent or intonation, emphasis, of the word in the sentence are apt to give rise to equivocal meaning with a disadvantage and derogation of one of the speakers, and the result is ludicrous. Such, for instance, is the verse in the Bible:

        And he spake to his sons, saying, Saddle me the ass. And they saddled him.

        Maggie, I do not want that big policeman in the kitchen.

        All right, mum, I shall have the little one.

        There are the fallacies of arguing from a general rule to a special case, or conversely from a special case to a general rule, what is known a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter; or again arguing from a special case to another special case. The fallacy of irrelevant conclusion, or what is known in logic as Ignoratio Elenci, is a common source of the comic and the ludicrous.

      "I have a convincing argument for woman suffrage," exclaimed a gentleman. "Are not all human beings equal? Then women should vote."

        The captain of a merchant vessel gave an Irish seaman his spyglass, of which he was very proud, and told him to clean it carefully. Pat met with an accident during the cleaning, and went to the captain, asking:        "Captain, will yez tell me if a thing can be said to be lost whin one knows where it is?"        "Lost when one knows where it is?" said the captain. "Why of course not. How foolish you are, Pat."        "Well sor," said Pat, "thin yer spyglass is safe, for it's at the bottom of the sea."

        An attorney for the defendant in a lawsuit is said to have handed to the barrister his brief marked: "No case, abuse the plaintiff's attorney."

        A slip of memory from the general to the special, or from the special to the general may often give rise to laughter. A Miss Pigeon is misnamed Miss Bird, a Miss Creek, by association of ideas with the creak of a door, is addressed as Miss Hinge.

        The fallacy known as Petitio Principii, or begging the question, or circulus in probando, is often a source of the ludicrous, as in the case of the Irish announcement, "vehicles must carry light in the darkness. Darkness begins when the lights are lit."

        In the same way the rest of the logical fallacies are found in the comic, such as the fallacy of non sequitur, that of false cause, the fallacy known as non causa pro causa, and the well-known fallacy described by the phrase post hoc ergo propter hoc, the fallacy of many questions as well as the fallacy of dubious and many different meanings, are all employed in the comic and the ludicrous.

        All the different forms of fallacies may be employed in the comic. The characters may directly and naïvely show their mental and moral deficiency; or the mental turpitude may be revealed by one of the characters making some remarks to turn the saying or the action to the disadvantage of the person ridiculed. The joke may take the form of a fallacy or absurdity or some distant, vague, partly obscure, and still evident enough suggestion of mental and moral inferiority.

        A judge said to an advocate: "Do you see anything ridiculous in the wig?"        "Nothing but the head."

        A lawyer was once addressing a jury, when the judge, who was thought to be antagonistic to his client, intimated his dissent from the arguments advanced by shaking his head. "I see, gentlemen," said the lawyer, "the motion of his Honor's head. Persons unacquainted with him would be apt to think that this implied a difference of opinion; but be assured, gentlemen, this is not the case. When you know his Honor as well as I do, it will be unnecessary to tell you that when he shakes his head there is really nothing in it.”

       A rich contractor was discussing the instability of the world. "Can you account for it?" he asked.        "Well, not very clearly," was the response, "unless we suppose it was built by contract."

        In the first two examples the fallacy was pointed out that the ridiculous was not in the wig, not in the shaking of the head, but in the head of the judge, in his stupidity. In the second the fallacy of the instability of the world was referred to the bad work done by contract.

        "Why are you humming that air?" "Because it haunts me."        "No wonder," was the rejoinder, "you are murdering it.”

       The gentleman intimated he was musical and that is why he was haunted by airs. The rejoinder pointed out the false cause, the real cause was the murdering of the music―that the gentleman was really devoid of all musical abilities.

        There is again the joke or the comic made by the process of converse reasoning. The statement is refuted by a converse statement in which the folly of the first statement stands out clear and distinct.

        The Chancellor D'Aguesseau, with all his intellect and learning, was very irresolute; his son, who was very rapid in his decisions, said to him one day:           "Father, you know everything, and never decide upon anything."        "My son," retorted the Chancellor, "you know nothing and decide always upon everything."

        A Scotchman put an Irishman in kilts and told Pat:        "Do not be afraid, you will not be cold with the kilts."        "Yes, but I may be kilt with the cold."

        It was reported to Sheridan that the critic, Cumberland, had said of a performance of "The School for Scandal" that he was surprised that the audience laughed at it so immoderately, as it did not make him smile.        "Cumberland is truly ungrateful," said Sheridan, "for not smiling at my

comedy; for I saw a tragedy of his a fortnight before at the Covent Garden, and laughed from the beginning to the end."

        In the examples adduced we have a converse process of reasoning with a slight modification and emphasis on a central concept which throws the train of thought in a different line, in the opposite direction. The assaulted party turns the table on assailants and puts them to flight. In other words, the relation of inferiority is thrown back and reversed. The stream of thought runs in one direction and then suddenly, by a sleight of hand, so to say, by a swift turn, is made to flow in the apposite direction.

       As an example of petitio principii, or of begging the question, we may take the anecdote:

        "Where do you live, Pat?" "With Mike."        "Where does Mike live?" "With me."        "But where do you and Mike live?" "Together."

        As an example of non sequitur may be taken the problem:       The ship is 150 feet long, 25 feet deep and 20 feet wide, how old is the captain's wife?

        This may be matched by the statement of the Irish beggar:        "Give me something to eat; I am so thirsty that I do not know where I am going to sleep to-night."

        Another statement is of the same type and no less ludicrous:        The American Indians have such sharp eyesight that they can hear the tramp of a horse at a great distance.

        As an example of non causa pro causa may be taken the following from Lucian:        A fool was bitten by many fleas. He put out the light and said, "Now you no longer see me."

       The fallacy of many questions may be illustrated by the following example:

        A juvenile judge asked a delinquent boy: "Was your father in a state of intoxication when your mother hit him with a rolling pin?"

        Two different questions are here rolled into one. The answer "Yes," as well as the, answer "No," would still imply the affirmation of at least one of the statements.

        As another example in which the inappropriate cause, inferiority, and stupidity of the actors stand out clearly may be taken the following anecdote:

       A lady was bragging that she had overthrown her enemy in a lawsuit. One of her servants, standing by, said he took a wrong sow by the ear, when he meddled with her ladyship.

 

CHAPTER XXVI

NONSENSE AND RIDICULE

        Ordinary nonsense verses or sayings such as Irish bulls are apt to afford us the pleasure of

laughter, like any absurdity which we can readily discover and regard as a relation of inferiority in respect to our intellectual activity. We are amused at the nonsense verses of "Alice in Wonderland," or even at the still more nonsensical verses of "Mother Goose." This is not due to the fact, as some imagine, of removal of inhibitions and ease of thought, but it is solely due to the relation of superiority and inferiority as well as to the satisfaction with ourselves and our mental resources which those absurdities and nonsense statements set into action. In short, the laughter in such cases is not due to diminution of activity and saving of mental energy, but, on the contrary, to the sense of increase and free expenditure of mental activity.

        The feeling of presence of sources of reserve energy, the sense of buoyancy, of mental activity, the upheaval of inner, latent energies raised from the conscious and the subconscious regions by associations of the relation of inferiority―all these conditions constitute the essence of the funny, the ludicrous, and the comic. It is not the saving, not the economizing of energy; but, quite the contrary, it is the reckless expenditure, the expansion of inner forces, the revelation of untold wealth, which can be carelessly thrown away at our pleasure, disclosed to our superior view by things and relations of an inferior character, it is that alone that gives rise to the mirth and merriment of the laughter, of the comic and the ludicrous. The laughter of the comic and the ludicrous is like the joy of viewing lowlands, valleys, ravines, and lower peaks from the height of some overtowering mountain top. The enjoyment does not consist so much in the fact that we ourselves feel bigger, as that we have the sensation of standing on higher ground. It is not we, it is the mountain and its scenery that are grand. Such sensations of grandeur, added to the feeling of our inner powers, are given to us subconsciously in laughter. In nonsense we experience the strength of our sense.

        Nonsense is often employed to bring out the inner absurdity of some saying or of some real relation in life or of some of the institutions which are regarded as holy and inviolable. The moral poems which children are made to memorize by rate in school are well ridiculed by the nonsense verses which Alice is made to repeat before the Caterpillar:

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,

    "And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head―

    Do you think at your age it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,

    "I feared it might injure my brain;

But now I am perfectly sure I have none,

    Why, I do it again and again."

 

At the same time in his frolicsome merriment and under the cloak of nonsense the writer manages to throw out a hint as to marital relations and family happiness :

 

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak

    For anything tougher than suet;

Yet you finished the goose with the bones and the beak,

    Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law

    And argued each case with my wife;

And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw, 

    Has lasted the rest of my life."

 

Take again the nonsense verses repeated as school lessons before the Gryphon and the Mock Turtle:

'Tis the voice of the lobster; I heard him declare,

You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.

As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose

Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.

"That is different from what I used to say when I child," said the Gryphon.

"Well I never heard it before," said the Mock Turtle, "but it sounds uncommon nonsense."

 

Take the parody on the silly verses, "Mary had a Little Lamb":

 

Mary had a little lamb,

    Likewise a lobster stew,

And ere the sunlit morning dawned

    She had a nightmare, too:

 

We may take another version:

 

Mary had a little lamp,

    Filled with benzoline;

Tried to light it at the fire,

    Has not since benzine.

 

To quote from "Mother Goose':

 

Three wise men of Gotham

Went to sea in a bowl;

If the bowl had been stronger,

My song had been longer.

 

The nonsense of "Alice Through the Looking Glass" is specially instructive:

 

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

    Did' gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

    And the mome raths outgrabe.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

When you say ‘hill,"' the Queen interrupted, "I could show you hills, in comparison with which you'd call that a valley."

"No, I shouldn't," said Alice, surprised into contradicting her at last; "a hill can't be a valley, you know. That would be nonsense."

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

"It's only the Red King snoring," said Tweedledee.

"Come and look at him!" the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's hands, and led her up to where the king was sleeping.

"Isn't he a lovely sight?" said Tweedledum.

Alice couldn't say honestly that he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud, "fit to snore his head off!" as Tweedledum remarked.

"I'm afraid he'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass," said Alice, who was a very thoughtful little girl. "He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee; "and what do you think he's dreaming about?"

Alice said, "Nobody can guess that."

"Why, about You!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?”

"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.

"Not you !" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd be nowhere. Why you're only a sort of thing in his dream !"

"If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go out―bang! ―just like a candle!"

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

 

"What sort of things do you remember best?" Alice ventured to ask.

"Oh, things that happened the week after next," the Queen replied in a careless tone.

"For instance, now," she went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, "there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now being punished; and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday; and of course the crime comes last of all."

"Suppose he never commits the crime?" said Alice. "That would be all the better, wouldn't it?" the Queen said.

 

Humpty Dumpty sings:

I sent a message to the fish;

I told them "This is what I wish."

 

The little fishes of the sea

They sent an answer back to me.

 

The little fishes' answer was

"We cannot do it, Sir, because――"

 

        In the nonsense of "Alice Through The Looking Glass" we find that the ludicrous side lies in the uncommon, unusual, absurd combination of words and ideas.

        The unusual, surprising aspect of it is pleasant, while the illogical, absurd, and nonsensical side with the tendency of revealing the inferior makes of it that specific kind of laughter which is characteristic of the comic and the ludicrous. The unusual aspect stimulates our activi¬ties, which are apt to run into a rut by the ordinary stimuli of life, and thus brings out our subconscious energies held in reserve by the environment which has no demand for them. Just as we crave for new sensations so do we crave for new aspects of life. Even the nonsensical is a source of enjoyment.

        A form of verse adapted to a ludicrous subject and clothed in a clumsy, awkward, ludicrous expression with long and short feet may be found in the limerick. This form of versification well brings out our view of the ludicrous. The form consists of ill matched feet, while the subject and the climax, or rather the anti-climax, are trivial, low, and inferior. We find in the limerick the factor of suggestiveness present in the climax of the little poem with its sharp, unexpected, sudden turn, suggestive of the low, mean, ignoble, base, and disreputable. A few examples will best answer our purpose:

        There was a young man from the city,        Who saw what he thought was a kitty,            To make sure of that            He gave it a pat.        They buried his clothes―what a pity!

        We have here the sudden turn of the subject in the climax from the purring pussy with the strong suggestion of the mean, fetid skunk.

        Of a sudden the great prima-donna

Cried: "Heavens, my voice is a gonner!"

    But a cat in the wings

    Cried, "I know how she sings."

And finished the solo with honor.

        The ridicule here is in the juxtaposition of the primadonna and the eat; with the suggestive climax that even at her best the prima-donna's voice is nothing but a discordant caterwauling so hideous to people.

There was a young man of Ostend

Who vowed he'd hold out to the end,

    But when half way over

    From Calais to Dover

He done what he didn't intend.

        The vulgarity, the slang, and the suggestion in the climax of seasickness with its consequences of the inferior, referring to the uncontrollable side of man's lower organization and functions―all go to constitute the ludicrous in these limericks.

The inventor, he chortled with glee,

As they fished his airship from the sea,

    "I shall build," and he laughed,

    "A submarine craft,

And perhaps it will fly," remarked he.

 

Said the aeronaut in his balloon:

"I shall see all the stars very soon:"

    Soon he flopped and he dropped,

    And he saw when he stopped,

Four millions of stars and a moon.

 

An inventor who once did aspire

To invent a remarkable flier,

    When asked, "Does it go?"

    Replied, "I don't know,

I wait far some d――n fool to try'er."

        All these limericks are directed against the inferiority of aeronautics.

        The following limerick and its doggerel Latin version, though almost brutally vulgar, may be regarded as ludicrous on account of the implied suggestion of relation of inferiority:

There was a young lady of Riga

Who smiled as she rode on a tiger.

    They returned from the ride

    With the lady inside,

And the smile on the face of the tiger.

 

Puella Rigensis ridebat

Quam tigris in tergo vehebat;

    Externa profecta,

    Interna revecta,

Sed risus cum tigre manebat.

 

Solomon and David led very merry lives,

And had a most delightful time among their many wives,

But when at last their blood grew thin, they suffered many qualms,

Then Sol, he wrote the Proverbs, and Dave, he wrote the Psalms.

        Here the sublime and the profane, the holy and the scurrilous are brought into association and awaken the sense of the ludicrous. Whenever and wherever we meet with veiled suggestions of relations of inferiority, whether physical, intellectual, or moral, there we find the sense of the ludicrous aroused to activity. The slipping of a person on the street accompanied with profane language may be a source of the ludicrous:

There was a young girl named O'Dell

Who while walking down Chestnut street fell,

    She got up with a bound,

    And looked all around,

And said in a deep voice, "Oh, H――l!"

        The dignity of the girl, the fall, the unguarded profanity after looking all around, strongly suggest relations of inferiority.

        There are again limericks which in a jolly way point out the contrast between the assumed moral ideal of social life and actual practice:

There was a young lady from Kent,

Who always said just what she meant;

    People said, "She's a dear;

    So unique―so sincere,"

But they shunned her by common consent.

 

We may take another example which indicates relations of inferiority suggested to the reader:

There was a young fellow named S――m,

A foe to all pretense and Sh――m

    His language was l――se

    And he swore like the d―ce

When angry he always said d――m.

        The limerick sometimes avails itself of alliteration to bring out the comic effect. Alliteration is an inferior form of versification, and this is utilized to bring out an inferior form of activity:

A tutor who tooted the flute

Tried to teach two young tooters to toot;

    Said the two to the tutor;

    "Is it harder to toot, or

To tutor two tooters to toot?"

        In "Much Ado About Nothing" Shakespeare makes the reader laugh at Dogberry's stupidity, nonsense, absurdity, and asininity.

        Dog. Come hither, neighbor Seacole. God hath blessed you with a good name: to be a well-favored man is the gift, of fortune; but to write and read comes by nature.

        . . . . . . .     . . . . . . . .

        Conrade. Away! You are an ass, you are an ass.

        Dog. . . . O that he were here to write me down an ass! But, masters, remember that I am an ass; though it be not written dawn, yet forget not that I am an ass.

        Dogberry makes his report to Don Pedro:

     D. Pedro. Officers, what offence have these men done?

    Dog. Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secondarily, they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves.

 

In "The Merry Wives of Windsor" Sir Hugh Evans, the parson, sings his nonsense verses which make of him a melodramatic fool:

 

To shallow rivers, to whose falls

Melodious birds sing madrigals;

There will make me our peds of roses,

And a thousand fragrant posies.

    To shallow―

Mercy on me!    I have a great disposition to cry. (Sings.)

Melodious birds sing madrigals―

When as I sat in Pabylon―

And a thousand vagram posies.

    To shallow, &c.

        Many different trains of thought, forming a tangle of associations thus ending in absurdity, folly and nonsense, disclosing relations of inferiority and states of stupidity, invariably awaken the sense of the ludicrous.

CHAPTER XXVII

HUMOR AND THE INFINITE

        Any form of inferiority excites laughter. In the lower states of intellect, in the lower conditions of social life, or in barbaric communities we find that all forms of inferiority arouse derision and laughter. We find that some of the more ferocious types positively enjoy pains inflicted on their enemies. Enemies taken captives are tortured, while their cries arouse a feeling of glee in the bystanders. The same we find in the tortures inflicted on the heretics in the Middle Ages. The crowd enjoyed the spectacle of having a heretic burned alive, the day of an auto-da-fe was regarded as a festival. The writhing pains of the heretic were met with hilarious, uproarious laughter. Boys of the rougher type in torturing insects and defenceless animals laugh immoderately―the agonies of the animal are a matter of intense enjoyment to the youthful tormentors. Similarly the gladiatorial games of the ancient Romans and the bull fights of the modern Spaniards, the prize fights, boxing matches, and other games of the Anglo-Saxon races are all arranged with the view of appealing to the lower brutal instincts of man.

        In the vulgar shows of our own times we find the lower instincts taking the upper hand. A man knocked down on the stage several times in succession, one poking his fingers into another man's eyes, one stepping an another man's corns, all such actions having the appearance of causing pain, of not a dangerous character and still seemingly serious to the one who is subjected to them, are greeted by some audiences with peals of laughter. The pain is regarded by the audience as slight and insignificant, although the abused person may regard the matter in a very different light. In fact, the more important the insignificant matter is considered by the person the more ridiculous the whole performance appears. In many societies pain is regarded as ludicrous, even if it is a matter of death, as in the case of the gladiatorial games of the ancient Romans. This was due not only to the brutality of the people used to such spectacles, but also to the fact that the lives of the gladiators were considered as worthless.

        To laugh at the misfortunes of other people with whom we have no sympathy, or for whom we have no use and whom we treat with contempt and possibly with hatred, may be considered as one of the early roots of the comic and ludicrous. One laughs at the misfortunes of his enemies, the laughter is malicious, diabolical, and really belongs to the inimical sneer which is the direct descendant of the snarl of the brute. We may include under it the obscene and scurrilous joke which regards the object of ridicule with a sneer. The obscene joke has the tendency to awaken sexual energy and pamper the sexual instinct. This root of malice, however, becomes gradually atrophied and dwindles away in the higher spheres of comic art. At first the malicious side is hidden and then is completely omitted in the real productions of art. The malicious comic may be still utilized for the amusement of the mob, but it is not art. Detective stories and dime novels are not regarded as literary productions, although they may keep on amusing the crowd. Play on malice, credulity, and low instincts is kept out of art.

        If we come to analyze the comic we find that its abject is the awakening of the subconscious surplus energy of man, bringing to the foreground the play of free, unimpeded activity, giving rise to pure joy, resulting in laughter. Malice and cruelty belong to the primitive means of arousing

man's reserve energy, just as war was useful in bringing men into communication, as cruel despotism was requisite to cement tribes, and as slavery had its place in the training of man. Such means, however, fall into disuse with the further advance of mankind.

        The comic, which is a manifestation of the play instinct, follows a similar course. The factor of cruelty is no longer the one that arouses mirth among civilized people, or, at least, among the best classes of civilized races. In fact, we find that the element of malice must be hidden, and the element of inflicted pain must be of a character that should be slight, insignificant, and only apparently serious. Furthermore, the demand is that the ridicule should be directed against something which is really inferior and demands suppression in the mild way caused by laughter.

        In the still higher forms of ridicule the malicious is not only eliminated, but sympathy is present with the inferior object or relations ridiculed. This is the form known as humor. Dickens ridicules a number of characters, but we see through his ridicule his humaneness and love for human life; we love and sympathize with the people whom we regard as ludicrous.

        The same we find in the genial humor of Bret Hart, and of Mark Twain, writers who otherwise lack the artistic sense. Thus, for instance, in "Huckleberry Finn," the negro Jim is put in a ridiculous light with all the beliefs and superstitions which he entertains and which he tries to impress on his companion, Finn. At the same time we feel the common humanity we share with the poor negro. We cannot help loving and sympathizing with poor Jim in spite of all his failings and shortcomings. We laugh at Jim, but there is human feeling in the laughter as we feel intensely our community with him.

        The laughter in such ridicule acts in that way of catharsis as described by Aristotle in the case of tragedies―it purifies us and establishes our common humanity, full of defects and imperfections, revealing that divine spark which burns in every human being in spite of the ashes which cover the flames, hide the fire, and seemingly smother it. We forgive and we sympathize, for we see a living soul, the beauty of the spirit behind the ugly, dirty tatters, and the black skin. The characters may be laughed at, but we cannot help loving them.

        Dickens' characters may be commonplace people, but we feel the good heart that beats under their unattractive exterior, and we come to love them.   Such, for instance, are the characters Barkis and Pegotty, in "David Copperfield." We laugh away our indignation, narrowness, and prejudices. As in all art, the bonds of individuality are burst asunder and the artist, by means of his humor, brings people together. Souls are stripped of their conventionalities by ridicule and come into close contact.

        Our life runs on worn-out paths laid in the ruts of social tradition; our experiences are run into ready-made moulds of pale abstract concepts; our feelings, emotions,; cravings and longings are controlled by tradition and custom, handed down by former generations, as well as by habits developed in the course of the routine education of the individual. We are apt to fall into a routine and cease to appreciate the main, central, essential aspects of life. We attend to our individual experiences, as they come along, without the realization of their general meaning and significance. In the routine of out life, and in the tangle of our experiences, we are apt to go by the practical rule of thumb, and cease to appreciate the really important; we cease to discriminate the essential from the inessential. The power of selection and the sense of appreciation of the important and unimportant, of the significant and insignificant, being feeble, undeveloped or rudimentary in the average specimen of humanity, man wanders about like a lost sheep in the wild confusion of his chaotic experiences. The best that man can do is to seize on each bit of individual experience, as it forces itself on him, but he cannot grasp the many experiences as a whole, see them in perspective,

and view them in their various aspects.

        The function of art is the selection by the artist of the important, essential, significant traits of life and the weaving of them into creations of universal types.    The types are ideal and still they are real, inasmuch as they give meaning and significance to the confused and chaotic individual experiences of our daily life. The artist, by his creative genius, gives us the perspective of things: he makes us appreciate the various aspects of life, which he reveals to our gaze by finding their ideal meaning, their real significance in the ceaseless flux of our life; he gives us the interpretation of the various aspects of life, as seen by the eagle eye of his artistic genius.    This the artist accomplishes by presenting the typical, the ideal, the universal in concrete, individualized forms of sensuous experience.

        Out of the chaos and confusion of experience the artist selects the essential; out of the fleeting and transitory he selects the permanent, the abiding, the characteristic features, creating them into living types, into immortal characters. The artist universalizes the individual and individualizes the universal; he embodies the ideal into a living type. Phidias creates his Zeus, Raphael his Madonna, Homer creates his Achilles, Hector and Ulysses, Æschylus breathes life into his Prometheus, Sophocles creates his Antigone, Euripides his Alcestis, Cervantes his Don Quixote, Shakespeare his Hamlet and Goethe his Faust.

        Dramatic genius expresses itself in tragedy and comedy the function of which is the creation of types and the revelation of the real, inner, deeper nature of man. Tragedy reveals the nature of types of man through inner struggle and suffering, while comedy gives a glimpse into the depths of types of man's life by contrast of defects of the actual with the ideal through laughter and joy. Both tragedy and comedy, in the better and higher sense, confront man with his real self.    

        In the higher forms of art comedy and tragedy may merge. It is hard to tell whether or no Euripides, "Alcestis," Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice," Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," Gogol's "Dead Souls" belong to tragedy or to comedy. Dante's "Inferno" is entitled "Divine Comedy."

        In his "Dead Souls," Gogol complains of the unjust judgment which does not recognize the fact that creations of "elevated laughter stand on the same plane with the creations of elevated lyrical emotions." He further tells us: "I have been condemned by some strange power to go hand in hand with my heroes (types), to view life, as it sweeps pompously by, through the seeming world of laughter and tears." Tragedy and comedy, in fact, all the higher forms of art, free man from the bonds of his finite individuality, and, through laughter and tears, reveal to him by immediate intuition the infinity, the freedom of his better, deeper, larger self.

        Banter and badinage are akin to humor. The person is humiliated and laughed at, but only in play. In reality it is the reverse that is meant. Affection and love are expressed in terms drawn from the inferior and humbler side of life. What is meant is the opposite, it is based on association of contrast.  In the same way a big man is called an infant, or white is indicated as black, sweet as sour, good as bad, and love is playfully regarded as hatred. This play and playful spirit often come from a deep source of love. In this respect it is akin to the kiss, the smacking and, the licking which express affection and which, by the law of association of similars, are originated in food reactions and afterward transferred to other sources to express satisfaction, gratification, and love.

        In some cases the excitement may run so high as to be manifested by a sham bite and even by an actual strong bite causing pain. Banter and badinage are in the intellectual world of laughter what the kiss and the bite are in the material world. In banter and badinage there are love, faith, and

devotion, but they are all covered by a thin veil of smiles, laughter, ridicule, and raillery.   The superior is expressed in terms of the inferior.

        In this respect we may regard it as the reverse of irony, in which the inferior is played as if it were the superior. Irony is allied to sarcasm. Both show lack of trust in the powers of the ridiculed object. Banter and badinage are more allied to satire, in which, though pessimistic and attacking faults and defects, still there faith in the deeper forms of life and the possibility of regeneration. The satirist ridicules the faults and shortcomings of persons and life, he expects improvements and hopes that a new higher type will take the place of  the old degenerated forms.

        We may call the reader's attention to a little-known Christmas story, entitled "Makar's Dream," by Korolenko. The writer draws a vivid picture of Makar's life, of his family relations, of his beastly drunkenness. The picture is full of grim humor. Makar, in his besotted state, the result of heavy drinking in honor of Christmas holiday, dreams that he has departed this life and has gone to heaven before the seat of judgment. The journey presents many ludicrous incidents. Poor, ignorant, superstitious Makar is helpless and bewildered in the heavenly court-house. The sins and merits are weighed on scales; the sins are too heavy. As usual Makar attempts to lie and cheat and is caught in the act. The charges against him are too grave. As the loving glance of Christ falls on Makar, the fear disappears, confidence and courage rise in the poor sinner's soul. Righteous indignation arises in him against the accusations of his cheerless life. He recalls his whole life―down to the smallest detail, it was indeed a miserable and brutal life. As he goes back to his early childhood he sees himself with all the possibilities of a good human soul. He witnesses the state of degradation in which he has fallen, and a cry of intense pain rends his agonized soul.

        In "The Death of Ivan Ilitch," Tolstoy, the greatest of Russian writers, depicts with spirit and humor the artificial life of the modern successful man. He ridicules the pettiness, the narrowness, the conventionality, the hypocrisy, the aimlessness of such a hollow life. From the artificial social standpoint the life of the successful man is good and superior; in reality, it is inferior, bad and miserable. Guided by the false social standards, the successful man does not realize whither he drifts. The whole career is described by Tolstoy with all the artistic power in his possession. Tolstoy pours out the vials of his righteous ridicule in his humorous descriptions of the hypocrisy that permeates the life of the wealthy classes with their affected standards of sham goodness and counterfeit happiness. Ivan Ilitch falls sick. The disease becomes painful and aggravated. Physician after physician is consulted, and new treatments are undertaken. Tolstoy takes the occasion to describe in a humorous light the character of the physician, the lawyer, the judge, and of the professional man in general. He shows the hypocrisy, the vanity, the conceit of the various professions. The disease gains ground, develops, becomes fatal. Ivan Ilitch becomes obsessed with the fear of death. With the inimitable vigor characteristic of Tolstoy, he sketches in bold, artistic outlines this state of obsession which finds its victims among the higher classes of society. As the end draws nigh, Ivan Ilitch begins to realize that his life has not been a success, that it has been a rank failure; in fact, it was all an immense lie. A cry of agony arises from the inmost depths of his soul. As the sham of life vanishes the fear and pain suddenly disappear. In freeing himself from the bonds of his artificial life a great light and joy have entered into his soul. He has regained his real, true self.

        In one of his stories, "Three Deaths," Tolstoy describes, with the titanic power of his genius, the life, sickness, and death of a wealthy lady. He shows the pettiness of that life, the hypocrisy, the discontent, the irritability, the credulity, the fear of death with which the wealthy classes are smitten. In a few lines of genius he depicts the life and end of a poor driver. There is a grim humor in the picture of the simple people―the lack of self-consciousness, the rough, natural kindness, the brutal frankness, the ignorance, the superstitions, the absence of morbid fears, the almost total resignation to the course of their life. The short scenes are full of the most delicate, the most artistic

touches of humor. With a few strokes of genius the artist scales the heights of the human spirit, and throws a beam of light into the inmost depths of human nature. The story is concluded by a wonderful description of a scene in the forest, a requiem by the forest over the departure of a tree, a paean by nature triumphing over death, a symphony of joy of newly rising life.

        In the highest forms of humor the gentle smile and rippling laughter may end with an agonizing cry coming from the inmost depths of the human soul. The ludicrous, the humorous, is the play of mental light and shade on the foamy, restless waves, rolling and swaying above the unknown depth of the human spirit.

        We may say that the highest form of humor is akin to that upbraiding and finding of faults characteristic of the ancient prophets. The shortcomings are pointed out bluntly and with intense fervor, but behind the reproofs, condemnations, and denunciations there is seen to be flaming an intense love for man, there is present an almost superhuman faith in the capabilities of human nature. The allusions and suggestiveness of humor are absent, but there is present an intense love of truth and of the ideal as well as a profound love of man. Listen to the invective against the waywardness of his generation by the prophet Hosea:

        O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee ?  .  .  .

        The iniquity of Ephraim was discovered, and the wickedness of Samaria; for they commit falsehood; and the thief cometh in, and the troop of robbers spoileth without. . . . Ephraim is a cake not turned. . . . Ephraim also is like a silly dove. . . . Woe unto them! for they have fled from me: destruction unto them! because they have transgressed against me: though I have redeemed them, yet they have spoken lies against me.

        Israel is an empty vine. . . . O Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah. . . . Ye have plowed wickedness, ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies. . . .Therefore shall a tumult arise among the people, and all thy fortresses shall be spoiled.   .     .     .

        The prophet's love becomes awakened:

        When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. . . . I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them. . . . I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love. . . . How shall I give thee up Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee, Israel? . . . Mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled Together. . . . I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man. . . . 

        In this we find infinite love, sympathy, pity, and compassion.

        There is an element in the higher forms of the ludicrous which broadens and deepens it to an extent to which the lower form do not aspire. While in the lower forms the inferior aspect is totally on the side of the ridiculed object, whether it be person, idea, feeling, institution, or belief, in the higher forms there is a reflections of inferiority on the person who observers the ludicrous, and there is again a reflection of superiority from the observer to the ridiculed object. Thus there is a mutual sympathy established between the contrasted personal states, as well as a communion between the contrasted personal states, as well as a communion between the opposed relations of inferiority and superiority. The lower forms tend to bring out the inner latent energies of the observer, the higher forms tend to show the depth of human life and the greatness of soul of the very characters represented to us in a ludicrous light. The glimpse into the infinity of the human

soul is given to us under the very forms of defects and shortcomings. The lower forms of ridicule lean more to the inferior, the animal, the brutal, the cruel, and the pessimistic, while the higher forms have the distinct aspect of human love, compassion, and pity.

        On the one hand, the observer, far from feeling triumphant, arrogant, and superior in regard to the ridiculed object or subject, feels his affinity with the inferior responding with a deep emotion of humility that one is not better than the most humble and the lowest of human life. On the other hand, there opens before one an infinite horizon of what is really true and noble in the human soul. Under the veil of petty, ludicrous traits and incidents we witness the revelation of the depth of human life and of the splendor of the soul present in what is humble, meek, and low. The great are humbled and the low are exalted. Both, however, are surrounded by a glorious halo of what is truly great in man. All the barriers of artificiality and conventionality of social relationship are broken and the human soul shines forth in its full glory.

        The highest point reached by laughter is intimately related with the highest intellectual, aesthetic, and moral development.

        The highest development of ridicule, true humor, brings one in touch with the infinite. True humor in its highest stages sees the infinite depth of the soul in the very failures, faults, defects, and imperfections. 

        For thence—a paradox

        Which comforts while it mocks,—

        Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:

What I aspired to be,

And was not, comforts me. . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Now, who shall arbitrate?

    Ten men love what I hate,

    Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;

Ten, who in ears and eyes

 

Match me: we all surmise,

    They, this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe? 

    Not on the vulgar mass

Called “work,” must sentence pass,

 

Things done, that took the eye and had the price;

    O'er which, from level stand,

    The low world laid its hand,

Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

 

    But all, the world's coarse thumb

    And finger failed to plumb,

So passed in making up the main account;

    All instincts immature,

    All purposes unsure,

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:

 

    Thoughts hardly to be packed

    Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped;

    All I could never be,

    All, men ignored in me,

This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.