We are all, I suppose, possessed of prejudices which may,
or may not, derive from painful experience in childhood. I cannot remember that I have ever suffered much from prac- tical jokes. My dislike of that ungainly form of humour is, I believe, due to purely humanitarian impulses. A practical joke entails a certain amount of physical preparation in order to create what may seem to be physical discomfiture, but what is really spiritual discomfiture. If a practical joke fails, then it brings with it that sense of wastage and frustration which is inseparable from any form of planning which goes agley. Yet, if it succeeds, the resultant triumph is not a good triumph: humiliation, ridicule, and at the best incon- venience, is imposed upon a fellow human-being. He is left with a sense of planned hostility which he never sus- pected. When I was young I used occasionally (although generally at the suggestion of more aggressive comrades) to indulge in practical jokes. I always found them an expense of spirit in a waste of shame. Since then I have often considered the type of mind which produces the practical joker, and have found that it is invariably associated with an unsuccessful, uncertain, egoistic and rather cruel character. Essentially it is a short cut to that form of self-assertion which rejoices in the humiliation, and perhaps the pain, of others. It holds the germ of sadism. And one can recog- nise this germ in the Fascist, or as we must now call it, the Totalitarian, mind.
* * *
Previous page
