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An Essay on Laughter: Its Forms, Its Causes, Its Development and Its Value

Chapter 2: PREFACE.
By James Sully
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About This Book

The essay examines laughter from psychological, physiological, and social perspectives, beginning with the bodily mechanisms of smiling and laughing and their organic effects. It analyzes occasions and causes—tickling, nervous or reflex laughter, play, teasing, jokes and contests—and distinguishes varieties of the laughable, including novelty, bodily and moral deformity, breaches of order, small mishaps, indecency, pretence, ignorance, incongruity, and verbal wit. It evaluates competing philosophical theories of the ludicrous, surveys developmental and habitual aspects, notes benefits and excesses, and considers humour’s uses and value for individual feeling and social interaction.

PREFACE.

The present work is, I believe, the first attempt to treat on a considerable scale the whole subject of Laughter, under its various aspects, and in its connections with our serious activities and interests. As such, it will, I feel sure, lay itself open to the criticism that it lacks completeness, or at least, proportion. A further criticism to which, I feel equally sure, it will expose itself, is that it clearly reflects the peculiarities of the experience of the writer. The anticipation of this objection does not, however, disturb me. It seems to me to be not only inevitable, but desirable—at least at the present stage of our knowledge of the subject—that one who attempts to understand an impulse, of which the intensities and the forms appear to vary greatly among men, of which the workings are often subtle, and of which the significance is by no means obvious, should, while making full use of others’ impressions, draw largely on his own experience.

Portions of the volume have already appeared in Reviews. Chapter I. was published (under the title “Prolegomena to a Theory of Laughter”) in The Philosophical Review, 1900; Chapter V., in the Revue Philosophique, 1902; and Chapter VIII., in The International Monthly, 1901. The parts of Chapters III. and VI. which treat of the psychology of tickling appeared in the Compte rendu of the Fourth International Congress of Psychology (IVme Congrès International de Psychologie), Paris, 1901. Some of the ideas in Chapter X. are outlined in an article on “The Uses of Humour,” which appeared in The National Review, 1897.

Some of my obligations to other writers and workers have been acknowledged in the volume. For friendly assistance in reading the proofs of the work I am greatly indebted to Mr. Carveth Read, Dr. Alexander Hill, Prof. W. P. Ker, Mr. Ling Roth, Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, Miss C. Osborn, and Miss Alice Woods.

HÔTEL DU WEISSHORN,
VAL D’ANNIVIERS, August, 1902.