CHAPTER IV.

VARIETIES OF THE LAUGHABLE.

In the preceding chapter we have examined those early and elementary forms of laughter which arise from the action of such causes as tickling, the attitude of play, and the sudden uplifting in a feeling of joy. These do not, it is evident, imply the existence of that specific faculty which we call the perception of the laughable in things, or what is commonly spoken of as the sense of the ludicrous. We have now to inquire into the mode of operation of this more intellectual cause of laughter, and to connect it, if possible, with that of the simpler processes of excitation.

The peculiarity in this case is that there is not only an external excitant, such as tickling fingers, but an object of the laughter. A tickled child laughs because of the tickling, but not at this as an object. The same is true of a good deal of the laughter of play: it is only when play represents something funny, or when the play-illusion is interrupted by a moment’s critical glance at the poverty of the doll or other plaything, that it gives rise to a proper enjoyment of the laughable; and a like remark holds good of the laughter which springs out of a relief of tension and a sudden transition from grave to gay. In the laughter of educated men and women we see an intellectual element, the perception of a laughable quality in an object, and the justification of the action by a reference to this. The examination of this intellectual type of laughter will bring {83} us to what is undoubtedly at once the most interesting and the most difficult problem in our study.

The objective reference in laughter implied in speaking of the “laughable” may be illustrated by a glance at the contemptuous laughter of the victor surveying his prostrate foe. The boy of ten who danced and screamed and laughed after he had killed his playmate in a street fight[52] was hardly possessed with what we call a sense of the comicality of things. The laughter, though directed _at something_, had not, in the complete sense of the expression, _its object_. The boy himself would not have laughed at the spectacle at another time, but viewed it with quite different feelings. And the object would not have presented itself as laughable to others who chanced to see it. In other words, the laughter was not caused by a mere contemplation of an object, but was conditioned by a particular relation between the laugher and this object.

To say that a thing is laughable, just as to say that a thing is eatable, implies an element of permanence and of universality. This is true even when a person says about a spectacle, _e.g._, that of a drunken man walking, “It is laughable to me,” since he means that for his experience at least it is a general rule that the sight of such movements excites laughter. But the word laughable clearly connotes more than this, a universality which embraces others as well as the individual. A thing is only rightly so called when it is supposed to be fitted to provoke men’s laughter in general. Language has been built up by men living the social life, and interested in common forms of experience; and the word laughable and all similar words undoubtedly refer to such common forms. {84}

These common forms of experience may be conceived of narrowly or widely. Much of what is called laughable by a schoolboy, by a savage, or even by an educated Englishman, is made to appear so by the special habits and correlated modes of thought of his community or his class. This clearly holds good of laughter at strange forms of dress, language and the like. Its “universality” is thus strictly conditioned. In dealing with the laughable we shall have constantly to allude to its relativity to particular customs and expectations. It will be a part of our problem to disengage from among the common excitants of laughter what seems to possess a truly universal character.

In speaking of an object of laughter as having universal potency, we do not imply that it will, as a matter of fact, always excite the outburst. The expression means only that a man will be ready to laugh at it, provided that he has certain requisite perceptions with the correlated emotional susceptibilities, and that nothing interferes with the working of these. Hence we shall have to speak of the laughable as answering to a _tendency_ only, and to note the circumstances which are apt to counteract it. It is obvious, for example, that the limitations of class-custom, so far as they make laughter relative, will render a man blind to what is “objectively” laughable in his own customs. In truth, the adoption of such relative and accidental standards, which marks all the earlier stages in the growth of intelligence and of æsthetic sentiment, is the great obstacle to a clear recognition of what is laughable in a wider and more strictly universal sense.

Again, when we are considering the question of fact, “What do men really laugh at?” it is important to bear in mind that the tendency to laugh may, on the one hand, be reinforced by a favourable psycho-physical condition at the {85} moment, as well as by previously formed tendencies to apperceive things on their laughable side; while, on the other hand, it may be checked and wholly counteracted by unfavourable conditions, such as a sad mood, or an acquired habit of looking at those aspects of things which excite feelings antagonistic to laughter. Owing to the action of these forces, we find, not only that one man may fail to discern the laughable in an object which moves another to a hearty outburst, but that in many cases in which two men join in laughing at something they may not be touched by the same laughable feature or aspect of the presentation. Nothing, indeed, has more of that appearance of caprice which comes from the influence of uncertain subjective factors than the laughter of men, even of those who have a normal sense of the ludicrous.

A word more is needed on the language here used. The terms laughable and ludicrous may be employed interchangeably up to a certain point without risk of confusion. At the same time it is well to note that the second is used in a stricter sense than the first. The term ludicrous seems to denote particularly what is not only an universal object of laughter, but an object of that more intellectual kind of laughter which implies a clear perception of relations. In everyday language we should speak of incidents and stories, of which the fun is obvious and broad, as “laughable” rather than as “ludicrous”. Closely connected with this emphasis on an intellectual element in the meaning of the term ludicrous, is its tendency to take on an ideal connotation, to mark off what we deem to be worthy of laughter. Here, as in the case of other objects of an æsthetic sentiment, there is a half-disguised reference to the regulative principles of art.

This control by an æsthetic principle or standard is more {86} clearly indicated in the use of “comic,” a word, by the way, which is used more freely in some European languages than in our own. A comic spectacle means, for one who uses language with precision, a presentation which is choice, which comes up to the requirements of art, and would be excellent material for comedy.

Our problem may now be defined as an analysis of the objects of our common perception and imagination which ordinary men tend to laugh at and to describe as laughable. This inductive inquiry into facts is, as implied above, a necessary preliminary to a discussion of the nature of the “ludicrous” or “comic” as an ideal or regulative conception.

In order to find our way with some degree of certainty to the general characteristics of laughable things, we should do well to take at least a rapid survey of the objects of men’s laughter as reflected in popular jests, “_contes pour rire_,” “comic songs” and amusing literature in general; as also in what may be called the standing dishes in the repasts of fun served up in the circus and other places where they laugh. No assemblage of facts of this kind adequate for scientific purposes has, so far as I know, yet been made;[53] so that it must suffice here to indicate some of the leading groups of laughable objects which a brief inspection of the field discloses.

It may be assumed as a matter of common recognition that this field of laughable objects will lie in the main within the limits of the spectacle of human life. It is the situations, appearances and thoughts of men which yield to laughter the larger part of its harvest. At the same time allusion will be made now and again to provocatives {87} lying outside these limits, which are certainly found in simple examples of the laughable.

In attempting to form these groups one must give a warning. It is implied in what has been said above, that the things we laugh at have in many cases, perhaps in most, more than one distinguishably amusing facet. In trying to classify them, therefore, we must be guided by what seems the most massive and impressive feature; and, as already suggested, it is not always easy to say what really is the main determinant of our laughter.

(1) Among the things which are commonly said to be laughable we find many objects distinguished by _novelty_. A presentation which differs widely from those of the ordinary type, and so has a stimulating freshness, may, as we have seen, when agreeable and of sufficient force, excite to laughter by suddenly relieving the dulness of the common and oft-repeated, and raising the feeling-tone of the observer to the level of joyous excitement. The proper effect of a recognised laughable aspect only appears when experience begins to be organised and the mind of the spectator to perceive, dimly at least, a certain contrariety in the new presentation to the usual run of his perceptual experience, in other words, the aspect of “out-of-the-wayness” or _oddity_. Much of the laughter of children, and, as we shall see, of savages, at what is called “funny” illustrates this. A child will laugh vigorously, for example, on first hearing a new and odd-sounding word, or on first seeing a donkey roll on his back, a Highlander in his kilt, his sister’s hair done up in curling-papers, and the like. In some of these cases, at least, the appreciation of the new object as odd or singular is aided by the agreeably lively character of the novel impression. This is true also of the amusing effect of two strikingly similar faces seen together; for here the look {88} of oddity, which is explained by the circumstance that our ordinary experience is of dissimilarity between faces, is supported by the stimulative force of the likeness itself.

This expansive effect of the new and the odd on our feeling may come too from the perception of things sub-human. The sight of a crab walking sideways, of an oddly-marked dog, of an eddy of leaves in autumn, and so forth will excite laughter in a child.

A glance at the language employed in describing laughable objects suggests the large scope of the odd. Thus the “whimsical” and the “fantastic” in the realm of ideas and tastes, the “extravagant” in the region of sentiment—these and the like seem to refer directly to what is peculiar, to the point of an amusing remoteness from life’s common way.

This enjoyable appreciation of the odd is in a particularly obvious way subject to the condition of relativity. To begin with, the amusing aspect is determined by, and so strictly relative to the manner of the hour; so that, as the word “antic” shows, the old-fashioned begins to take on an amusing aspect as soon as it is so far displaced by a new custom as to be an out-of-the-way thing.

Again, as already hinted, the odd is always relative to the custom of a locality or a class. A savage and a civilised man alike are wont to laugh at much in the appearance and actions of a foreign people; and this because of its sharp contrast to the customary forms of their experience.

The chief counteractive to be noted here is the impulse to distrust and fear the new and unfamiliar. A child may often be noticed oscillating between laughter and fear as some new strange sight bursts upon him. A savage must feel himself secure before he can freely indulge in laughter at all the odd belongings and doings of the white man.

(2) A special variety of the singular or exceptional which {89} is fitted, within certain limits, to excite laughter is _deformity_, or deviation from the typical form. It is certain that, for the unsophisticated palate of the child and the savage, bodily deformity is a large source of mirth. The dwarf, the hunchback, the cripple, the man with the big nose, and the like have been great entertainers of youth. The tendency to regard such deviations from type as amusing extends, as we know, to our perceptions of animals and of plants. A limping quadruped or a tree with a wen-like excrescence seems to reflect a human deformity and to share in its laughable aspect. Even a lifeless object may sometimes entertain us with its appearance of deformity. A house shored up affects us in the same way as a man on crutches, and the back view of a rickety tilted cart, as it wobbles down a street, may gladden the eye much as the sight of a heavy, ill-balanced human figure attempting to run.

While we may view the laughable aspect of bodily deformity as an example of the odd or deviation from the common pattern of our experience, we must not forget that it appeals to the more brutal element in laughter. All ugly things had in them for the Greek mind something contemptible or disgraceful. Much of the point of men’s laughter at deformity lies in a recognition of its demeaning effect on the person who is its subject. It is a clear manifestation of the impulse to rejoice in the sight of what is degraded, base, or contemptible. It is not difficult to detect this note of contemptuous rejoicing in the derisive laughter of the coarser sort of boy and savage, the kind of laughter illustrated in Homer’s description of the merriment of the Achæan chiefs at the sight of the misshapen Thersites, with his hump, his sugar-loaf head crowned with stubble, and his persecuting squint.[54] Here we seem to have an unmistakable ingredient {90} of malignant satisfaction, of rejoicing at another’s ills (Aristotle’s ἐπιχαιρεκακία).

Roughly speaking, we may say that the laughable force of a deformity varies with its extent. The droll effect of an enlargement of the nose or of a reduction of the chin increases, within certain limits at least, with the amount of the aberration from the normal dimensions. Yet it would be difficult to establish any exact quantitative relation here.

Again, all kinds of deformity are not equally provocative of laughter. In general, perhaps, positive additions or extensions, such as a big nose or big ears, are more conducive to merriment than reductions and losses; they seem to seize perception more aggressively. Then there are varieties of the deformed which probably involve special kinds of droll suggestiveness. Certain squints and twistings of the human face divine may move us as expressions of the roguish; a red nose or a shock of red hair may owe its force to its supposed moral symbolism. Long ears and other deformities affect us through their undignified reminder of affinity to a lower animal species. Much, however, in these preferences of the ruder sort of laughter looks quite capricious, and can only be set down to habit and imitation.

The impulse to laugh at deformity has a narrower and a wider counteractive. The first is pity, the second is the feeling of repugnance at the sight of ugliness.

The inhibition of laughter at deformity by pity and kindly consideration is one of the marks of a refined nature. Where the unsightly feature suggests suffering, whether physical or moral, such consideration may completely counteract the impulse.

Since deformity is a variety of the ugly, and the perception of the ugly as such repels us, we have as a further counteractive a fine æsthetic shrinking from what is {91} unsightly. A person endowed with this repugnance may have his capacity of enjoying the funny aspect of a deformity completely paralysed. At the other extreme, we have a readiness to make fun of all bodily defects, even when they are a revolting spectacle. The area of enjoyment for most men lies between these extremes, when the displeasing element of the ugly is mitigated, so that its effect is lost in the stream of hilarity which its drollery sets flowing.

It may be added that where deformity has been turned into a laughable quality the impulse to “make fun” has commonly been aided by other forces, more particularly a sense of relief from fear and a feeling of retaliation. This is clearly illustrated in the laughter of the people in the Middle Ages at the devil, the demons and the rest. Perhaps children’s rather cruel laughter at the hunchback contains an element of retaliative dislike for a person who is viewed as vicious and hurtful.

(3) Another group of laughable objects is closely related to the last. Certain _moral deformities and vices_ have always been a special dish in the feast of laughter. We have only to think of popular jokes, the _contes_ of the Middle Ages, and the large branches of literature known as comedy and satire, to see how eagerly the spirit of mirth has looked out for this source of gratification.

So far as this laughter directs itself against a vicious disposition, or deformity of character, such as vanity or cowardice, and not against a lighter defect of external manners, it seems to involve a perception of something ugly, like a bodily blemish, and further some appreciation of its disgraceful or degrading aspect.

It is a view commonly held, and as we shall see supported by the practices of art, that all vices are not equally fit subjects for laughter. Some kinds seem to have a specially {92} amusing aspect. There may be peculiar features in the expression of the vicious disposition which give it value for the laughing eye. This is obviously true of drunkenness, for example; and hardly less so of violence of temper, which has a large and impressive drollness in its display. Other vices, such as cowardice and miserliness, have something choice for the eye of laughter in the meanness of their display, the petty, contemptible practices to which they commonly lead. The supreme place given to vanity among laughable moral failings seems to be explicable in part by this consideration. Nothing is more entertaining than the inflation in carriage and speech which comes from an overweening conceit. Hypocrisy, again, together with her kinswomen deceit and lying, seems to have a peculiar value for the mirthful eye by reason of her disguise, and the elemental joy which mortals young and old derive from a good peep behind a mask. As a last example we may take a porcine obstinacy over against the expression of others’ wishes, the stupidity against which even “the gods contend in vain,” a variety of the amusing which seems to tickle our sensibilities by presenting to us the rigidity of the machine in lieu of the reasonably pliant organism of the man.

This glance at the amusing side of what we call moral deformities suggests that when we laugh at these we are by no means always at the moral point of view, looking at actions and traits of character as immoral. This is seen, first of all, in the fact that, when we are laughing at what we view as vice, we do not, as some say, always recognise its littleness and harmlessness, visiting it, so to speak, with the merely nominal penalty of a laugh. Lying, or a display of brutal appetite, may be turned into a subject of mirth when the least reflection would show that it is decidedly {93} harmful. It is seen, further, in the fact that the laughable in this case extends far beyond the limits of what we commonly call vices. The excessive humility of the friend of our youth, Mr. Toots, is hardly less entertaining a spectacle than excessive vanity. It seems rather to be want of a certain completeness and proportion of parts in the moral structure which amuses here. This is yet more clearly illustrated by the fact that comedy, as we shall see, holds up to a gentle laughter want of moderation even in qualities which we admire, such as warmth of feeling, refinement of sentiment, and conscientiousness itself.

Here again we may note that the “laughable” will be relative to the special experiences and standards adopted by the particular society. Contrast, for example, the fund of amusement which lies in the spectacle of drunkenness for a people addicted to, and therefore tolerant of, deep drinking, with that available for another people by whom the vice is shunned and judged severely. It is evident, indeed, that our readiness to be entertained by the look of excess or disproportion in a character will vary with the idea of the normal pattern. The old Greek way of scanning character differed, in certain respects, from that habitual, say in England to-day.

In the case of what are palpable vices we have as counteractive tendencies, not merely the finer shrinking from the ugly, but the recoil of the moral sense in the distressed attitude of reprobation. Hence it may be said that the immoral trait must not be of such volume and gravity as to call forth the moral sense within us. Here, too, differences of temperament and habit, and, one may add, of the mood in which the presentation finds us, will affect the result. It is amazing to what an extent even reputable citizens are able to enjoy the presentment of moral failings, when they give {94} themselves up to the mood which seems to belong to a seat before the comic stage.

(4) We may pass to a group of laughable presentations in which the feature specially fixated by the observer’s mental eye is some _breach of order and rule_. Laughable displays of vice involve this element, of course, but in the cases now to be considered the violence done to rule is the more conspicuous feature. On the other hand, laughable violations of rule are closely related to the oddities dealt with above. The donkey rolling on his back may be said, for the child’s intelligence, to break the rule of the donkey’s normal behaviour; yet here the laughableness seems to spring immediately out of the fresh stimulating character of the novelty of the spectacle. In order that an action may impress us as disorderly, we must recognise, vaguely at least, that some custom or rule is disobeyed. The sight of a donkey stepping on to the pavement of a street, or quietly browsing in a garden, would amuse as an exhibition of the disorderly. Perhaps we have the boundary-line between what is merely odd and what is disorderly illustrated by the bizarre aspect of a boy in a class who deviates considerably in height from the approximately uniform height of the rest of the class. It has been pointed out by Dr. Lipps[55] that even a house in a row may assume an amusing appearance under like circumstances. Here the general uniformity, immediately presented to the eye, seems to supply the spectator with the idea of a rule which the odd-looking individual is violating.[56] Under the present head we shall keep to examples of the laughable where the breach of rule is palpable. {95}

To begin with, disorderliness, the upsetting of the usual orderliness of life, is a great source of laughter to the young and even to many adults. All the more extravagant forms of jollity or “high spirits” are wont to pass into the disorderly. This applies not merely to uproar, but to such “jocose” proceedings as smashing windows, the enjoyment of which, as Addison reminds us, is by some laid down as the test of humour.

This being so, we might expect that the appearance of the disorderly would wear an amusing aspect for ordinary men. This is certainly what we find. The crowd loves the spectacle of lawlessness and misrule in the harlequinade and elsewhere. The laughter-moving force of the presentment of a man always in a hurry, or continually changing his purpose, illustrates this effect of the disorderly. The comic value of the man in a rage depends too in part on this circumstance. All appearances of disorder where order is counted on, as in dress, are apt to provoke a smile of amusement. A squad of soldiers marching out of time, or out of line, is a recognised stimulus to laughter. Even the sight of a room turned upside down for a cleaning, or of the confusion of a dinner-table after a meal, takes on something of this amusing aspect of the disorderly.

The droll aspect of the disorderly becomes specialised in the breach of commonly-recognised rules of behaviour. The best marked cases are offences against the code of good manners, and the rules of correct speech. Rude behaviour and _gaucheries_, solecisms, provincialisms, and confusions in the use of language, amuse us as breaches of familiar rule, though they may no doubt entertain us also as manifestations of a naïve ignorance.

It is hardly needful to point out that men’s judgments of the laughable element in breach of rule will be relative. {96} The code of manners will vary with the community and with the particular class, and will tend to change with time in the case of the same group. One has only to think of the variations, from period to period, in the fashionable modes of accost, of pronouncing words, and so on.

The great force which tends to counteract this direction of laughter is the respect for order and rule, which has been formed slowly and with much difficulty, at least in the larger part of a community. It follows that if men who are supporters of rule are to laugh at a violation of it, the act of lawlessness must not seem of a gravity sufficient to offend this respect. This condition will be satisfied if it is manifest that the upsetting of rule, so far as it is intentional, is not serious but a sort of make-believe; or that it is confined within the limits of the harmless, as in the case of the angry man vainly threatening denunciation against all and sundry; or, again, that the failure to comply with rule is not intentional but due to ignorance.

(5) We may now pass to a group of presentations where the laughable feature seems to reside in a situation or condition which is distinctly undesirable. _Small misfortunes_, especially those which involve something in the nature of a difficulty or “fix,” are for the ordinary onlooker apt to wear an amusing aspect. The loss of one’s hat, a fall due to a slip, or a tilting against another pedestrian, are recognised instances of the amusing in the spectacle of the streets. Such sights as Ajax slipping in the foot-race and getting his mouth filled with dirt (_Iliad_, xxiii., 770–85), John Gilpin on his runaway steed, a party in a boat left stranded on a sand-bank, the down in the circus vainly trying to stop a runaway horse by clinging to its tail; these and other illustrations will readily occur to one familiar with the ways of laughter. The older popular entertainments, such as the {97} enjoyment of the performance of grinning through the horse-collar at the country fair, owed something of their value to this delight in seeing a man in a fix—if only that of being compelled to make a fool of oneself—especially when it was due to his lack of foresight.[57] A more refined sense of the laughable seizes on the many “awkward” situations of social life, say the unconcealable _gêne_ that overtakes a fine lady when she makes a meritorious but ill-judged attempt to get into touch with one of the “lower class”.

It is to be noted that many situations involving not only an irritating amount of inconvenience but real suffering may excite this kind of laughter in the vulgar. The spectacle of a cripple dragging his body along has its amusing aspect, not only for jovial mortals but for superior beings. Homer represents the Olympian gods as dissolved in laughter at the sight of the lame blacksmith trying to discharge the dainty office of the cup-bearer Ganymede. We see the same unfeeling rejoicing at mishap in the laughter of the savage and of the coarser product of civilisation at certain forms of punishment, particularly the administration of a good thrashing to a wife, or to some ugly piece of mischief, as Thersites. Even “polite society” seems to have a relish for this form of amusement, if we may judge from the entertainment which the fashionable crowd on one side of the English Channel appears to find in scanning the gloomy figures and wan faces of the passengers as they land after a stormy passage. Here, again, the deep malignity of man peeps out in a rejoicing at the sight of others’ hurt (Schadenfreude).

Among these mirth-provoking misadventures, situations and incidents which manifestly involve loss of dignity fill a large space. The spectacle of a flying hat pursued by its {98} owner owes much of its “funniness” to the fact that the loss of a symbol of dignity is involved. Possibly certain bodily deformities, especially a failure of the nose or of the chin, may derive something of their laughableness from our perception of the loss of a dignified feature.[58] The laughter which is wont to greet the sight of a man left with a baby on his hands illustrates the same effect. The favourite situations in the lighter popular comedy, as that of the man who is henpecked, and who is subject to a mother-in-law, amuse so much because of the deep descent of the “head” of the house which they involve. The stimulating force of this kind of presentation is the greater where the undignified situation overtakes one who is holding at the time an exalted position, as when a preacher in the pulpit is caught stumbling on too homely an expression, or a judge on the bench giving way to an oppressive somnolence.

As in the other instances, we have here to note the limitations introduced by the variable nature and circumstances of the spectator. Misfortune, the suffering of indignity, clearly appeals to a kind of feeling quite dissimilar to that of mirth. Where pity is strong and alert much of the laughter at mischances, at difficulties, and so forth, is restrained. On the other hand, this pity for men in misadventure comes of knowledge and of insight; and where experience and training have not given these, the restraining influence on laughter will be wanting. Hence the familiar fact that youngsters, though not less capable of pity than their elders, will laugh at sights, such as the old lady slipping and falling, which touch the heart of those who know what they really mean.

(6) We may now touch on a group of laughable objects {99} which has a close kinship with more than one of the groups already illustrated, though it stands apart by right of well-marked peculiarities. I refer to laughter at _the indecent_ or obscene, whether in actual presentation or in suggestion.

Any serious attempt to illustrate the variety of the sources of men’s ordinary laughter must, I think, find a place for this group. Among men, and one may add the gods, the uncovering of that which decency insists on hiding is a powerful provocative of laughter. In their more direct and potent workings indecent presentations appeal to the loud mirthfulness of the coarse mind, to the _gros rire_ of the man tossing the _gros sel_, as Mr. Meredith has it. They bulk among the jocosities of savage tribes—or at least many of these—and of the less refined among civilised societies. Culture is a great restraining influence here. Yet it would be an error to suppose that educated men who are also of the laughter-loving are destitute of this sensibility. The impulse to greet merrily an allusion to the indecent, when it comes unexpectedly, taking us off our guard, so to speak, and when it is neither too pronounced nor enlarged upon, is, I believe, universal among men who laugh.

The laughter at a suggestion of what not only civilised but even savage society seeks to veil from view would seem to be most naturally regarded as a case of the improper, or breach of accepted rule. To make reference to these matters is to break through a well-understood social convention. This breach, moreover, carries with it a plump descent into the depths of the undignified; for since society has willed to throw the veil here any attempt to uplift it implies something shameful. The disgrace falls on the person who is the subject of the allusion—in all cases where there is a definable person concerned. In others, where {100} the allusion is directed to a common “infirmity” of human nature, the indignity done is, of course, more widespread. Not only so, we feel on hearing such an allusion that there is a lapse of dignity all round in speaker and hearers alike. The blush of the refined hearer attests this feeling of shame.

Yet to describe the effect here as due to breach of rule and lapse of dignity is certainly not to give a full account of the _modus operandi_ of this variety of the laughable. If to speak of these things is forbidden and branded as an offence to good taste, on the other hand that which is alluded to is a real and an inseparable part of our nature. The enjoyment of these allusions may accordingly be viewed under another aspect as a rejection of the artificial in favour of simple unadorned nature. The casting aside for the moment of the decent veil and the facing of what is customarily hidden away seems, indeed, to be attended by a distinct feeling of liberation from restraint and of joyous expansion. Hence, probably, the fact noted by historians of mediæval manners that the coarseness of the jocosity appeared to increase with the magnitude of the feast. The mood of exuberant hilarity favours the slackening of all artificial restrictions. The same consideration may, perhaps, explain the hold which coarse jokes, if only they have just the right quantum of salt, maintain on the humorous palate of the strong and virile among men of intellect.

In this brief account of the mirthful aspect of the indecent I have confined myself to what discloses itself to consciousness in the moderate forms of laughter, common among civilised men who practise a certain self-restraint. Yet we know that the outbursts which are provoked, in coarser men at least, by the uncovering of sexual matters have a deeper {101} source in the obscure parts of our animal organisation. Our sources of knowledge with respect to the condition of men when they are seized with the sexual orgasm, including the testimony of mythology, suggest that laughter here assumes the function of voicing a state of riotous self-glorification of the animal part of our nature, when fully released for a moment; and, further, that here, as in some forms of nervous laughter, it has an organic connection with a condition of emotional paroxysm.

It is hardly necessary to point out that relativity has a large empire in this branch of the laughable. A man’s idea of what is obscene will be relative to the standards of his society, which may vary considerably. The Englishman living abroad is apt to be impressed by the fact that men and women, otherwise as refined as his own people, hesitate less to call a spade a spade and to allude in conversation to subjects which are tabu at home. Similarly, the modern reader of Shakespeare may be shocked by the freedom of speech of the cultivated women of another age.

Further, as implied above, the readiness to laugh here will be modified profoundly by refinement of feeling. If it is true that all men are capable of enjoying an allusion to the indecent, provided that it is delicately executed, it is no less true that only coarse-minded men are able to drink frequently or deeply at this rather muddy spring of laughter.[59]

(7) Another group of laughable presentations has a certain analogy with the last. Popular mirth has made a {102} prominent target of men’s _pretences_. To peep behind the mask and seize the make-believe is a sure means of providing ourselves with laughter. So large, indeed, is the part of affectation and disguise in social life, that not only the ruder popular art, but comedy has made them one chief source of its entertainment. The flavour of the laughter varies greatly according to the moral complexion of the pretence. Seeing through the transparent make-believe of the child sets us laughing in one key; the detection of the half-unconscious humbug, in another; and that of the artful impostor, in yet another.

That the appreciation of this embodiment of the laughable is relative, may not be at once evident. Yet a glance at the numerous little hypocrisies not only allowed, but even exacted by polite society, will suffice to show how the standard may vary. The dulling influence of use is exceptionally apparent here. The shams of life cease to amuse us—save a very few—when they are numerous and ubiquitous. The Englishman who laughs at the little pretences of society abroad, may be quite incapable of discerning the amusing side of quite similar simulations and dissimulations in the ways of his own society.

Here, too, as in the case of moral blemishes generally, the impulse will be restrained by the tendency to judge seriously, and by the higher degrees of moral sensitiveness. Men of easy morals will laugh cynically, perhaps, at forms of imposture which would shock those of a finer moral texture.

(8) We may now pass to a species of the laughable which has a more markedly intellectual character. Among the exhibitions of human quality none appears to have had its ludicrous mark more widely recognised than that of _want of knowledge or of skill_. Here, again, our friend, the clown {103} of the circus, comes to our aid. The spectacle of his futile attempts to imitate the exploits of the skilled horseman and other experts stirs the risibility of the multitude to one of its _fortissimo_ outbursts. Ignorance of locality, especially when it lands a traveller in a mess, is a common source of merriment to the rustic onlooker. Children, savages, and all simple folk delight in such exhibitions of ignorance and incompetence. The more restrained amusement of “society” at the want of _savoir faire_ in the uninitiated shows that this enjoyment of the spectacle of ignorance by the well-informed is widespread. The value of the spectacle is evinced by the fact that when in argument a man desires to win the laugh of onlookers to his side, he will do his best to show up a laughable degree of ignorance in his fellow-disputant. The presence of the expert in a gathering of bucolics is a situation pregnant with possibilities of mirthful enjoyment. Let the delightful discussions of Mr. Hardy’s Wessex folk suffice as illustration.

These amusing uncoverings of ignorance and inability are a spicy ingredient in the mutual quizzings of men belonging to distinct peoples or classes, such as the savage and the white man, the sailor and the landsman. This will be illustrated later on.

In these cases the spectator may not count on the possession by others of knowledge or skill. The man who laughs has at most a vague expectation that outsiders should be equal to those of his own set. The laugh at ignorance and incompetence takes on another and more ironical ring when knowledge and competence are reasonably to be expected, as for example when an official shows a striking incompetence for the duties of his office.

The spectacle of human ignorance grows particularly entertaining when it has to do with matters supposed to be {104} of common knowledge. M. Bergson gives us an example in the observation of a disappointed traveller on hearing that there was an extinct volcano in the neighbourhood: “They had a volcano and allowed it to go out”.[60] It is this element of ignorance of what is generally known which, in part, gives the amusing aspect to many breaches of rule, particularly those of language. So firm is our assumption that everybody, even the foreigner, ought to be able to speak our language that we cannot hear a gross mispronunciation or misapprehension of meaning without feeling it to be naïve. Shakespeare in the same play makes us laugh at the bad English of Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans. Of course the fun is greater if the foreigner stumbles unwittingly into an observation which tells against himself; as when a German visitor to London, being asked how his wife was, answered, “She is generally lying, and when she is not lying she is swindling,” meaning to say “lying down” and “feeling giddy” (“hat Schwindel”).

The ludicrous side of the paradoxical, of what is violently opposed to common-sense—a matter to be dealt with more fully presently—illustrates the effect of intellectual naïveté. All exaggeration in description and other extravagance of statement are laughed at, in part at least, as showing ignorance of what is credible. On the other hand, insistence on the well known and the obvious, especially when it is accompanied by a laboured argument, amuses us by ignoring the circumstance that the hearer or reader is already quite familiar with the matter.

A delightful exhibition of the naïve intelligence is given by a gross misapprehension of what is happening or of what is being said at the moment. The Londoner may delight his country listener with his misunderstandings of {105} what to the latter seems perfectly self-explanatory. The tickling force of such misapprehension is heightened when it involves an idea which is the very reverse of the truth. The good story of the Yorkshire juryman who remarked that “Lawyer Scarlet gets all the easy cases” turns on the delicious inversion of causal relations. When travelling once in a train I heard a mother say to her little girl, who had been complaining of the heat, “The more you think of it the worse it will be”; upon which the child remarked in a drily humorous tone, “I should say the worse it is the more I shall think of it”. The mother’s remark had probably seemed an inversion of the true relation.

Other examples of what we call naïveté come, in part at least, under this head. The want of tact, the bringing in of that which has no relevance to the circumstances or the ideas of the moment, is an excitant of laughter for men of all levels of culture. The inappropriate ways in which the kindly savage or child tries to minister to his visitor’s comfort are a pretty example of such simplicity. Irrelevances in conversation and discussion, such as _mal à propos_, mistakings of the issue, unfortunate suggestions of reasons, and the like, are among the recognised tributaries of the river of laughter. These irrelevances make a large contribution to the lighter enjoyment of social intercourse. An irrelevance having a peculiarly broad effect is a response to a question which wholly misses its point, as when one reads of a man on a descending balloon who asked a yokel, “Where am I?” and received for answer only the absurdly obvious, “In a balloon”.

Children’s naïveté—a mine of wealth to the discerning seeker after the laughable—illustrates this tickling property of a perfect simplicity of intelligence, and of those {106} irrelevances of behaviour and of utterance which by their mighty compass seize and occupy for the instant the field of contemplative vision. One of its most valuable manifestations is the habit of quietly substituting the child’s point of view for the adult’s. A large number of the “funny remarks” of children illustrate this. Here is an example. An improver of occasions asked a child who had seduced her grandfather into a rather alarming romp, “Isn’t grandpapa very kind to play with you, dear?” and received the sharp correction, “I’m playing with _him_”.

A bare reference may be made to other illustrations of the intellectual simplicity which entertains the mirthful eye. The effect of prejudice and passion in narrowing the mental outlook and setting up erroneous views of things is a favourite subject of comic treatment. As we shall see, the spectacle gains a higher value when the degraded intelligence approaches that of the disordered, and the amusing person, wholly preoccupied with his illusions, utters a string of remarks so widely irrelevant to the actual circumstances of the moment as to upset the gravity even of a serious spectator.

The limiting influence of relativity in the appreciation of this branch of the amusing has been pretty plainly illustrated in what has been said. The lack of skill or of knowledge which excites our merriment is the lack of that which is a familiar possession of our set, which accordingly we, at least, tend to look for in others. Hence, the man of society is amused at your not knowing one kind of thing, say, the history of the British Peerage, the bucolic at your ignorance of another, say, the ways of calves, and so forth. The simplicity of a child’s mind only impresses us in relation to our own grown-up and complex ways of thinking. Even the absurdities of paradox are relative, for what we are {107} pleased to regard as the stable, unalterable body of common-sense is, in reality, subject to change.

(9) We will now touch on a group of facts on which writers on the ludicrous are accustomed to lay stress. The spectacle of a child wearing a man’s hat, fully considered above, shows us the laughable directly and unmistakably as a juxtaposition of two foreign elements, the semblance of a whole made up of incongruous parts. Here we see the sense of fun fixing its eye on _relations_. It is recognised by all that the perception of certain relations, more particularly the unfitting, the disproportionate, the incongruous and the logically inconsistent, plays a large part in calling forth the more refined sort of laughter.

In dealing with this laughable aspect of relations we must draw a distinction. When a person laughs, say, at the imbecile movements of a skater as he tries to save himself from a fall, or at an outrageous costume, or at the fantastic language of some _précieuse_, he may be aware of half-perceiving a relation; such as want of fitness, extravagant departure from the normal. He knows, however, that his mental eye is not focussed for this relation; on the contrary, he feels as if the presentation in itself, by giving the required jerk to his apperceptive tendencies, were directly provocative of mirth.

On the other hand, he will, I believe, hold that there are cases where the enjoyment of the laughable depends on the mental eye directing itself to a relation. The relation may not be apprehended in a perfectly precise way; but the point is that it is mentally seized, if only for the fraction of a second; and, further, that a degree of definiteness is given to the apprehension of the relation by a glimpse, at least, of the related terms.

This localising of the laughable in a relation is most {108} evident in the case of those complex presentations where lack of harmony and of mutual fitness—what we call incongruity—appear in the several parts of the whole which are present to the eye, and forces itself on the attention in a thoroughly aggressive fashion. A country woman displaying in her dress or in her speech a bizarre mixture of the peasant and the fine lady, a proposal to climb a mountain in dainty high-heeled shoes, the couching of a vote of thanks in language far below or above the needs of the occasion, these pull at the muscles of laughter because they strike us as a forcing together of things which hurtle and refuse to consort. The same holds true of cases in which the incongruity lies between one presentation and another which has preceded and is still present to the imagination, as in the clown’s utter failure to reproduce the model action of the expert which he sets out to equal.

Even in cases where the laughable incongruity holds between things both of which are not present at the same or nearly the same moment, a direct glancing at the relation, involving at least a dim representation of the absent member of the related twain, may be requisite for a full enjoyment. It is probable, for example, that Homer’s gods, when they laughed uproariously at the sight of the grimy and lame Vulcan essaying the part of Ganymede, mentally recalled the image of the latter and carried out a comparison between the two. Similarly in many of our nicer judgments of the amusingly excessive in dress, speech and so forth, we may, as suggested above, envisage the relation to a standard of measure in this direct way.[61]

It may, no doubt, be a question whether the relation made “focal” in consciousness in such cases lies between two parts of a complex presentation, or between the {109} presentation as a whole and a represented standard arrangement. When, for example, we laugh at the intrusion of a too lively gesture into the pulpit, do we mentally fixate the incongruity between the situation and the action, or mentally go back to the idea of the customary and suitable kind and amount of gesture, and view the present performance as disagreeing with these? This point may be reserved for later consideration.

The view that in the cases just illustrated we have to do with another variety of laughter, that of the mind or intelligence, is confirmed by the reflection that much of it is excluded from the popular category. The masses can enjoy a palpable contradiction between profession and performance—witness the enjoyment afforded to the populace of the Middle Ages by the spectacle of the moral inconsistencies of the monks.[62] But when it comes to the appreciation of inherent inconsistencies within the character, such as want of stability of purpose, fickleness in the affections and so forth, the need of a certain acuteness in perceiving relations, and of quickness in mentally reinstating what is not present, may greatly restrict the area of the enjoyment. Gross and palpable inconsistencies, such as those represented in the delightful monologue _L’Indécis_, with which M. Coquelin (aîné) rejoices us, are accessible to popular laughter, but most of the self-contradictions with which a Molière, a George Eliot, or a George Meredith refreshes our spirits are “caviare to the general”. Much the same is true of the laughter which gladdens the measuring eye when it lights on the unmeasured, the excessive, the disproportionate. {110}

One subdivision of this domain of the laughable is the logically incongruous or _the absurd_. Here, again, we touch on a region into a large part of which culture must give the key of admission. An example of such a laughable absurdity is found in that which conflicts with our deepest and most unalterable convictions. What is logically far-fetched or paradoxical is a familiar provocative of mirth. Since this case, like that of laughing at an extravagant costume, does not imply a direct and clear perception of relation, but only a kind of harmless shock to our firmly rooted apperceptive tendencies, we may expect to find illustrations of it low down in the scale of intelligence. As we shall see later, children will be moved to mirth by the presentation of an idea that directly conflicts with their crude standards of the possible; and savages show the same impulse to laugh at what is manifestly opposed to their fixed traditional standards of truth. So it is with suggestions and proposals which strike the more mature intelligence as paradoxical, that is to say, as a kind of assault on its deeply fixed habits of belief, and what it is pleased to call its “common-sense”. Ideas which strike it as revolutionary, whether they appear in the domain of social custom, of political activity, of morals, or of scientific explanation, are greeted by voluminous laughter. Darwin’s idea of man’s descent from an ape-like ancestor, when first introduced, probably excited almost as much hilarity as indignation.

More restricted is the area for amusement supplied by logical inconsistencies. The spying out of amusing inconsequences in a man’s various utterances is the work of an expert. A contradiction must be very palpable, and the contradictory statements must be very near to one another in time, in order that food for laughter may reach the many. The best example of this laughter at contradiction in popular {111} mirth is, I suppose, the “bull,” where the incompatibility stares out at you from a single statement, and sets your sides shaking; as in the argument, attributed to an Irish statesman, that, in the prosecution of a certain war, “every man ought to be ready to give his last guinea to protect the remainder”.[63]

One might naturally suppose that in the appreciation of these more intellectual forms of the laughable there would be no room for the restraining action of relativity. An incongruous relation would seem to be one and the same object for all men’s intuitions, and the least affected by accidents of temperament and external circumstances. Yet this supposition is not quite correct. Such incongruities as moral and logical inconsistencies have, it must be remembered, their disagreeable and even their painful aspect. When discovered in the character or in the intellect of a person known to be of a high consistency, a contradiction would naturally offend the admiring spectator. Here, too, then, we have to add the qualification, “provided that there is nothing disagreeable and repellant in the manifestation”. Not only so, with respect to much that is popularly called paradox it is to be remembered that the standard of truth employed is far from being that of the eternal verities. As the allusion to the ridicule poured on Darwin’s theory of natural selection shows, what one generation laughs at as plainly contradictory to fundamental notions may be quietly recognised as a familiar truth by its successor.

(10) A group of laughable presentations making large appeal to the more intellectual kind of laughter meets us in {112} _verbal play and amusing witticism_. A closer examination of the nature of wit will come later.

What seems most manifestly characteristic of verbal forms of the “funny” is the intrusion of the playful impulse. Children’s word-play shows this clearly enough. New words are for them sounds to be reduced to familiar ones, and the funnier the results of this reduction the better are they pleased. This leads by a step to punning, where quite intelligible words or phrases are purposely altered so as to bring in a new meaning; or where without any verbal alteration the substitution of a new meaning for the primary and obvious one effects the required change. The playful impulse to get as far away as possible from rule and restriction, to turn things topsy-turvy, to seize on the extravagant and wildly capricious, is clearly enough recognisable here. Much of this word-play, too, has a close kinship with make-believe; a natural and obvious meaning is the pretence in this case, whereas the reality is the half-hidden meaning introduced by the inventive wag. All the same it seems to me that this group of laughable objects has its place close to that of the incongruous and absurd. A pun that claims any intellectual rank must have a point, a bite, and this would appear to be most naturally secured by introducing an element of irony and rendering the primary and obvious meaning of the sentence ludicrously false. When, for example, a preacher whose ponderous dulness had set his congregation genteelly scuttling was said to have delivered “a very _moving_ discourse,” the point of the witty thrust lay in the complete opposition between the best and the worst result of eloquence brought together in the two meanings of “moving,” an opposition which gives the trenchant irony to the description.

In cases, too, where there is no verbal trickery the lighter {113} kind of wit shows the same tendency to a playful capriciousness of fancy. It delights in substituting for our ordinary points of view and standards of reference others which strike the hearer as amusingly fanciful and extravagant. This is illustrated by much of our entertaining talk, which is wont to try to escape for a moment from the leading-strings of sober sense; as when a person _à propos_ of a moon looking wan and faint some hours after an eclipse observed that she seemed not yet to have got over the effects of the eclipse.

In this department of contemplative amusement we see once more the limitations introduced by differences of temperament and mental attitude, as well as of experience and knowledge. Nowhere, perhaps, is the habitual inclination of the balance between seriousness and love of fun in a man more clearly indicated than in his readiness to tolerate and enjoy word-play and the entertaining side of nonsense generally. One to whom words and serious points of view are sacred things, will barely suffer any form of this recreation. On the other hand a ready appreciation of these pranks of wit means that the listener’s fancy has the requisite speed of wing. It means, too, commonly, that his intelligence is in touch with the wit’s standpoint, with his experience and circle of ideas. Bucolic wit is a sealed book to the superior gentleman from the town; the merry verbal sports of the judge, the statesman, the theologian and so forth, reflecting like their dreams daily types of experience and habits of thought, are apt to fall flat on the ears of those who are not in touch with these.

The above may, perhaps, serve as a sufficiently full enumeration of the more prominent of those attributes or aspects of laughable things which, some in some cases, others in others, make direct appeal to our mirth. {114}

That each of these may of itself thus start the currents of laughter will, I believe, be admitted by those who are familiar with the field of human mirth. There is, I hold, ample evidence to show that what is embarrassing, what is contrary to rule, what is demeaning, what is unreal and pretentious, and the rest, do each, under certain limiting conditions, move men’s laughter.

It is, no doubt, difficult to supply a perfect demonstration of the fact of the intrinsic laughableness of each of these features. It has already been pointed out that in many of the most agreeable instances of the laughable different stimuli combine their forces. This is so much the case that it is sometimes difficult to decide which of the co-operating attributes is the most prominent. For example, the spectacle of the lackey donning the externals of a fine gentleman—a favourite subject of mirthful treatment by Molière and others—may amuse us as a transparent pretence, as a fine display of insolent vanity, or, again, as an amusing caricature of the extravagant absurdities of fine manners. Extravagance in dress and the like is frequently found in the company of a deliciously erroneous idea of one’s own importance. Intellectual naïveté may peep out at us and a moral naïveté look over its shoulder, as in the remark of a lady whom the astronomer Cassini had invited to see an eclipse, when she found that she had arrived too late: “M. de Cassini will be good enough to begin again for my sake”.[64] As I have remarked, the unfitting is in a large number of cases an introduction of something unworthy; as when a man at a dinner-party almost suggests something of an animal violence in his mode of eating, or an orator resorts to a “wooden” manner of speech or gesture, or when an unhappy simile hurls {115} the hearer into the lowest region of the commonplace, a proceeding satirised in the well-known lines from Butler’s _Hudibras_:—

And like a lobster boil’d, the morn From black to red began to turn.

As a last example of the many-sidedness of the laughable we may name affectation, particularly when it takes the form of aping another’s manners; for this may amuse us as a bit of acting seen through, or as an incongruous intrusion of a foreign element into the natural character of the imitator, or, again, as a weakness, a lack of intellectual or of moral initiative.

Nevertheless, the appearance of cross-division in our scheme is really no objection to it. By collecting a sufficient number of instances, and noting how the presentation of a certain feature affects us when it is plainly the preponderant stimulus, and how it will continue to affect us in much the same way when its concomitants vary, we may satisfy ourselves that each of the aspects here named is effective as a provocative of laughter. It will be for experimental psychology, if ever its methods are competent to grapple with the subject, to make this clearer.

There is another objection, which, though related to the last, is to be carefully distinguished from it. Even in cases where the laughable feature is clearly localised there may seem something arbitrary in our mode of describing it. For example, it may be said, why distinguish the relation of the unfit and kindred relations as a special group, since in all cases they may be regarded as products and expressions of a defective intelligence or taste? To raise this difficulty now is, however, to anticipate our theoretical problem, how far these several varieties of laughable feature lend themselves to reduction to a {116} common principle. In naming each of the above groups I have sought to envisage the laughable aspect as the natural man, innocent of theoretic aims, would envisage it.

What is important here is to emphasise both the frequent combination of entertaining features in the objects which excite our laughter, and the fact that one and the same feature may be envisaged in more than one way. These two circumstances throw an interesting light on the meaning of the long discussions and the want of agreement among theorists.

In drawing up this list of the laughable features in things I have said nothing about the connection between this part of the inquiry and that which preceded it. Yet the connection has not been wholly hidden. In the entertaining effect of new things we have found an element of the laughter which springs from a sudden expansion of joy. In the laughter excited by the indecent we have noted a trace of the laughter of “sudden glory” and of what I have called nervous laughter. Lastly, in dealing with the entertaining quality of the more sportive wit we seem to have got near the laughter of play.

This connection would appear the more clearly if we were to extend our list by adding a pair of groups. These are (11) laughable objects which affect us as expressions of a merry mood; and (12) laughable situations which involve a relation akin to that of victor and vanquished. A word or two on each of these must suffice.

(11) There is little doubt that all presentations which are instantly interpreted as manifestations of a fun-loving disposition tend to excite merriment. This is true of series of sounds, musical as well as non-musical, which have in their rapid staccato movement a resemblance to those of laughter. It holds good also of play-like movements, such as the {117} freakish gambols of a just loosened pony, or of a circus clown. The expression of the mirthful temper in things awakens a sympathetic laughter in the observer. Here, perhaps it would seem to be more correct to say that we laugh not _at_ or _over_, but, if one may so say, _to_ the playful freak. Nevertheless, we shall find that what we recognise as objectively laughable cannot be understood save by reference to these appearances of playful challenge.

(12) That the sight of a man winning in a struggle or getting the better of another in some way is fitted to furnish amusement, is indisputable. This obviously falls in part under the head of laughter at the spectacle of another’s difficulty or scrape; but it certainly deserves a separate place in an enumeration of the larger and popularly distinguished sources of merriment.

There is no need to emphasise the fact that the social spectacle owes much of its interest to combat, competition, all that is understood by men’s measuring their powers one against the other. The amusing side of this interest is found in the gleeful satisfaction which the impartial spectator derives from each successful stroke, whether on the one side or on the other. The attraction of all encounters of wit in the market-place, in the political domain, on the stage and so forth, illustrates this. Popular literature will show that the plain man has fed his mirth bounteously from this source.

The situations which minister to this feeling of “sudden glory” in an onlooker are not confined to those of contest. All displays of a capacity to get the better of another seem to be entertaining to the many. Just as the sight of a man chastising his wife is good sport for the savage onlooker, so the spectacle of taking down, of discomfiture and humiliation—especially if it involves an element of deception or {118} befooling, and so takes on the look of outwitting—may yield excellent fun to the civilised spectator.

A more refined variety of the perception of the laughable occurs when we look on Nature or fate as discomfiting man, playing tricks on him or outwitting him. So far as this idea of irony comes into our view of things, any misfortune, especially if it involves disappointment of hopes and frustration of efforts, may excite a note of laughter which has an “over-tone” of triumphant mockery.

The enjoyment of the spectacle of one man triumphing over another or showing superiority to him will in all cases be limited by conditions already sufficiently indicated. Since the laughter excited here is, presumably, in its characteristic ingredient a reflection by way of sympathetic imagination of the victors sudden glory, it must be included in the more brutal variety. If a lively sensibility produces quickly enough a sympathetic apprehension of the feelings of the vanquished, it will effectually check the impulse to laugh.

Finally, a bare allusion may be made to the way in which the laughter of relief from emotional or other strain comes into our appreciation of the laughable in things. The amusing aspect of all lapses from dignity in religious and other ceremonies cannot, I believe, be understood merely as an illustration of an inconsequence and irrelevance, but must be connected with the powerful tendency to throw off a heavy and depressing mental load by a moment’s mirth. The laughter at what is lawless, and still more at the indecent and the profane, certainly derives a part of its gusto from a sense of relief from restraint, which is a main ingredient in the enjoyment of all license. But the fuller discussion of the way in which the primal sources of laughter contribute to the impressions we receive from laughable objects belongs to another chapter.

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