Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/157

Rh relationships between humor and freedom, which Penjon has so well worked out, and between humor and aesthetics, long ago indicated by Kant and recently by Lipps, but that mental activity so long interpreted as play should be credited to humor. I have already indicated the survival value of humor for superstitions. It doubtless performs a similar and larger function for play. Humor, then, is an end in itself. It is disinterested in its object. This fact constitutes it first differentium.

I have already indicated that the sense of freedom is a constituent element in the humor process. Its consideration is next in order. To that end I submit some of the evidence as it had formed in my own mind before meeting with Penjon's more extended account. The family and guests are seated about the fireside enjoying the moments of silence. The only light is that of the glowing embers. A smouldering bit of bark suddenly flashes up and a smile plays over the faces of the silent group. The stroke of a sweet-toned clock, or a sneeze, or the dropping and rolling of a sewing thimble or a ball of yarn produces under similar conditions the same effect. A group of boys are seated on the bank of a bathing pond apparently gazing at the water's glassy surface. Suddenly it is broken by a few drops of rain out of a cloudless sky. The boys smile. The humor in such cases is weak and simple. At such times consciousness is damped down to dreamy monotonous processes under lax attention, and the mild humor results from the sudden, delicate and harmless stimulus piercing its surface tension, disrupting its feeble structure, and permitting it to flow in a more free and spontaneous fashion. This simple type finds verification writ large in every-day life. Objects and actions of little or no inherent humor may become excruciatingly humorous under hard and tense conditions. "Snickerin' at nothin'" in the schoolroom, giggling before strangers and company, especially when at the table, the increasing intensity of the annoying return waves of humor on solemn occasions, are cases in point. Members of college glee clubs inform me that they see humor in everything while on their vacation musical tours. Darwin records that the German soldiers before the siege of Paris, after strong excitement from exposure to extreme danger, were particularly apt to burst into laughter at the smallest joke. I have received abundant reliable evidence that the sufferers of the San Francisco earthquake, while enduring intense mental strain, burst into laughter on the slightest provocation. This and like cases should not be confounded with hysteria, which may occur unaccompanied by mental strain. The history of humorous literature discloses the fact that it is most prolific in those crises and changes in human affairs at which the consciousness of freedom breaks out. The work of the cartoonist is most vigorous and poignant when official tyranny and high-handed abuses are laying heavy hands on the public. We recall the heroic