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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.

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