THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSE OF LAUGHTER. 401 



blage of grave men makes us laugh for tlie same reason, because 

 humanity is detected under its mask of gravity. Monkeys make 

 us laugh because they by their grimaces and attitudes degrade the 

 men they imitate to their own level. In general, fatuity, pretension, 

 and affectation are ludicrous because vulgarity is betrayed under the 

 mask at every instant. 



Yet this is not the real cause, for we often witness the spectacle 

 of a degradation without having any disposition to laugh at it. 

 When we perceive a pettiness in a person for whom we have rever- 

 ence, we are only sorry. We do not always laugh when the eccen- 

 tricity of another is exposed. Our laughing depends much on the 

 way the exposure is made. Thus, not the odd or the exhibition of 

 freedom or contrast or degradation is the real cause of laughter. 

 There are queer spectacles that are not amusing, free actions that are 

 austere, contrasts that are sad, and degradations that are solemn. 

 The one thing that is always present, that provokes laughter, to 

 suppress which is to suppress laughter, a variation of which has an 

 immediate effect on the intensity of the emotion of the ludicrous, is 

 still to be found. 



Let us study a few cases; first, of what we find to amuse us in 

 acts, and then in words. We find the application of great effort to 

 move a load that proves to be a trifle, ludicrous; as when a man 

 exerts all his strength to force open a door that yields at a touch, or 

 when the clown on the stage brings all his strength to bear to lift 

 the mock cannon ball which we know is only pasteboard. Our first 

 impression of such actions is that they are strange or absurd. Such 

 Herculean efforts to raise a load we know to be trifling, to overcome 

 a resistance which we know is as nothing, are, on the first impres- 

 sion, incomprehensible. A second impression, however, comes on, 

 which the psychologists seem to have missed, and which may go far 

 to account for the ludicrous aspect of the proceeding. A rapid 

 process of thought within us makes the act which at first seems absurd 

 appear natural from the point of view of the actor. We think that 

 the man supposed the door was solidly fastened, and the clo\vn that 

 he had a real cannon ball to lift. The effort they made was there- 

 fore natural; we should have strained ourselves too if we had 

 been in their place, and all for nothing; and we laugh at that. 

 What seemed queer Avas simply natural, an unusual fact was a 

 habitual one, and what we thought was surprising was after all 

 familiar. We experience a sudden revulsion of feeling, and are 

 amused. 



So in words and expressions which we regard as witty or funny. 

 They are first presented to us in a sense and with associations which 

 seem queer or remote; then we find that they have also a natural 



VOL. LIII. — 28 



