For supposing we assume that some movement in the bodily organs is associated sympathetically with all our thoughts, it is readily intelligible how the sudden act above referred to, of shifting the mind now to one standpoint and now to the other, to enable it to contemplate its object, may involve a corresponding and reciprocal straining and slackening of the elastic parts of our intestines, which communicates itself to the diaphragm (and resembles that felt by ticklish people), in the course of which the lungs expel the air with rapidly succeeding interruptions, resulting in a movement conducive to health.This alone, and not what goes on in the mind, is the proper cause of the gratification in a thought that at bottom represents nothing.Voltaire said that heaven has given us two things to compensate us for the many miseries of life, hope and sleep.
He might have added laughter to the list-if only the means of exciting it in men of intelligence were as ready to hand, and the wit or originality of humour which it requires were not just as rare as the talent is common for inventing stuff that splits the head, as mystic speculators do, or that breaks your neck, as the genius does, or that harrows the heart as sentimental novelists do (aye, and moralists of the same type).
We may, therefore as I conceive, make Epicurus a present of the point that all gratification, even when occasioned by concepts that evoke aesthetic ideas, is animal, i.e., bodily sensation.For from this admission the spiritual feeling of respect for moral ideas, which is not one of gratification, but a self-esteem (an esteem for humanity within us) that raises us above the need of gratification, suffers not a whit-no nor even the less noble feeling of taste.
In naivete we meet with a joint product of both the above.Naivete is the breaking forth of the ingenuousness originally natural to humanity, in opposition to the art of disguising oneself that has become a second nature.We laugh at the simplicity that is as yet a stranger to dissimulation, but we rejoice the while over the simplicity of nature that thwarts that art.We await the commonplace manner of artificial utterance, thoughtfully addressed to a fair show, and lo! nature stands before us in unsullied innocence-nature that we were quite unprepared to meet, and that he who laid it bare had also no intention of revealing.That the outward appearance, fair but false, that usually assumes such importance in our judgement, is here, at a stroke, turned to a nullity, that, as it were, the rogue in us is nakedly exposed, calls forth the movement of the mind, in two successive and opposite directions, agitating the body at the same time with wholesome motion.But that something infinitely better than any accepted code of manners, namely purity of mind (or at least a vestige of such purity), has not become wholly extinct in human nature, infuses seriousness and reverence into this play of judgement.But since it is only a manifestation that obtrudes itself for a moment, and the veil of a dissembling art is soon drawn over it again, there enters into the above feelings a touch of pity.This is an emotion of tenderness, playful in its way, that thus readily admits of combination with this sort of genial laughter.And, in fact, this emotion is as a rule associated with it, and, at the same time, is wont to make amends to the person who provides such food for our merriment for his embarrassment at not being wise after the manner of men.For that-reason art of being naif is a contradiction.But it is quite possible to give a representation of naivete in a fictitious personage, and, rare as the art is, it is a fine art.
With this naivete we must not confuse homely simplicity, which only avoids spoiling nature by artificiality, because it has no notion of the conventions of good society.
The humorous manner may also be ranked as a thing which in its enlivening influence is clearly allied to the gratification provoked by laughter.It belongs to originality of mind (des Geistes), though not to the talent for fine art.Humour, in a good sense, means the talent for being able to put oneself at will into a certain frame of mind in which everything is estimated on lines that go quite off the beaten track (a topsy-turvy view of things), and yet on lines that follow certain principles, rational in the case of such a mental temperament.A person with whom such variations are not a matter of choice is said to have humours; but if a person can assume them voluntarily and of set purpose (on behalf of a lively presentation drawn from a ludicrous contrast), he and his way of speaking are termed humorous.This manner belongs, however, to agreeable rather than to fine art, because the object of the latter must always have an evident intrinsic worth about it, and thus demands a certain seriousness in its presentation, as taste does in estimating it.
