One practical reflection to close with. Any civilised community which has much to do in the way of managing the “lower races” would surely be wise to take some heed of their love of fun. And this, because it has been found that appeals to this side have been more effective than the harsher measures to which even a gentle Briton may think himself sometimes driven. An African missionary, already quoted, writes that in cases where a disposition to quarrel shows itself “one joke is worth ten arguments”.[225] This is borne out by one who has not much good to tell of his savages, when he says of the East African that he delights {253} in a joke “which manages him like a Neapolitan”.[226] In a letter to me Miss Kingsley writes: “I have always found I could chaff them into doing things that other people could not get them to do, with blows—I could laugh them out of things other people would have to blow out of them with a gun”. {254} CHAPTER IX. LAUGHTER IN SOCIAL EVOLUTION. In the two preceding chapters we have followed the earlier stages of the development of laughter in the individual and have glanced at its counterpart in the life of savage communities. If now we try to push the psychological inquiry farther, and ask how the mirth of the child develops into that complex sentiment which in these days we call humour, we find ourselves forced to pause. One thing is clear, however. No one of us would ever have acquired this valuable endowment but for the educative action of that advanced stage of social culture which is our intellectual and moral environment. It seems to follow that we shall need to look for a moment at the movement of social culture itself, to consider the impulse of laughter as one of the features in the life of a community, and to inquire how it has become transformed, almost beyond recognition, by the movement of social progress. To attempt to give an exhaustive account of these social changes would clearly lead us very far. It may be argued with force that every one of the great directions of social evolution, such as that of intellectual conceptions, of moral sentiments, of political and social liberty, of wealth, of the differentiation of classes and ranks, has involved as its effect some change in the intensity, the mode of distribution, and the manner of expression in daily life and in {255} art, of the laughing impulse. But we do not need to consider so deeply. It will be enough if we briefly retrace those phases of social evolution which appear to carry with them as their immediate accompaniments considerable modifications of the mirthful spirit. We must in this inquiry begin by defining the social aspect of laughter. This was touched on in the last chapter in connection with our study of the mirth of savages. We have now to examine it more closely.