354 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



Some theories die hard. Of no topic in psychology is this more 

 true than in that of the psychology of the comic. In Sully's 'Essay 

 on Laughter,' and in the article on this subject by Hall and the 

 present writer/') may be found in extenso a collection of such meta- 

 physical hard-ridden and hard pressed delinitions. Nor are Sully 

 and other modern writers altogether free from blame in this respect. 

 Miss Calkins in her 'Introduction to Psychology' says that 'virtually 

 all theories of the comic agree in defining the sense of humor as 

 enjoyment of an unessential incongruity' (p. 284). Sully says, 

 "The most promising way of bringing the several laughable qualities 

 and aspects of things under one descriptive head would seem to be 

 to say that they all illustrate a presentation of something in the 

 nature of a defect, a failure to satisfy some standard requirement, as 

 that of law or custom, provided that it is small enough to be viewed 

 as a harmless plaything" (p. 139). 



It is a Ptolemaic pastime trying to discover the causes and inner 

 essence of laughter in the objective world, or even for that matter in 

 the world of mental presentations. In the treatment of the emotions 

 no scientific grounds for causal explanation or classification can be 

 found in the objects of the emotions; no more can such be found for 

 laughter, one of the prominent forms of emotion. The real causal 

 ground of laughter is to be found in physiologic processes. A person 

 may laugh when tickled, may laugh from the influence of drugs, 

 may laugh automatically without the presence of mental presenta- 

 tions, may laugh as an exhibition of Men etre^ may laugh at a button 

 on his coat, may laugh when there is only one single presentation in 

 the mental field or when there are two or more. Morever, these ex- 

 ternal things are not laughable in themselves. It is our reaction 

 which clothes them with the cloak of humor, gayety, or what-not. In 

 this the comic follows the general law of all emotions, including also 

 under that term the field of aesthetics. These emotional judgments 

 are revelations and judgments of our own selves and characters, rather 

 than of the mountains, sculpture, paintings, or so-called laughable 



(M Hall and Allin, The Psychology of Tickling, Laughing, and the Comic. Amer. Journal of 

 Psychology, Vol. IX, No. 1. 



