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 we 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 severe 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 an 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 and 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:

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

        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!"

        "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.

        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 today, he claimed to have created a masterpiece. He was criticized by one of his brother genii as follows:

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

        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, incompetence, 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 of our race," Galton tells us, "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 mediæval 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: