1896.] on the Tlieoi-y of the Ludicrous. 101 



they are questions wliicli it is far easier to ask than to answer. 

 Plato, in the ' Philebus,' tells us " the pleasure of the Ludicrous 

 springs from the sight of another's misfortune, the misfortune, how- 

 ever, being a kind of self-ignorance that is powerless to inflict hurt." 

 A certain spice of malice, you see, he held to be of the essence 

 of this emotion. Well, that may be so. It is always perilous 

 to differ from Plato. But certainly his account is inadequate, 

 as, indeed, is now pretty generally allowed. Far profounder 

 is the view expounded by Aristotle, here, as in so many provinces, 

 " the master of them that know." " The Ludicrous," he tells us in 

 * The Poetics,' "is a defect of some sort (ajxapT-qixa tl) and an ugli- 

 ness (atcrxo?), which is not painful or destructive." These are 

 words which, at first, may not seem very enlightening. But, as 

 Professor Butcher admirably remarks, in his edition of ' The Poetics,' 

 we cannot properly understand them without taking iuto account the 

 elements which enter into Aristotle's idea of beauty. And when we 

 have done that, we shall find that we may extend their meaning so as 

 to embrace " the incongruities, absurdities, or cross purposes of life, 

 its imperfect correspondences or adjustments, and that in matters 

 intellectual as well as moral." Aristotle's view of the Ludicrous 

 appears to be, in fact, something out of time and j3lace without 

 danger, some error in truth and propriety, which is neither painful 

 nor iDcrnicious. The treatment of the Ludicrous by the schoolmen is 

 worth noting, as indeed is their treatment of every question to which 

 they have applied their acute and subtle intellects. Their philosophy 

 goes upon Plato's notion of ideals or patterns in the divine mind, 

 compared with which individuals, both in themselves and in their 

 relations with one another, fall short of perfection. This deficiency, 

 they teach, when not grave enough to excite disgust or indignation, is 

 the ground — the fundamentum reale — of our subjective perception of 

 the Ludicrous. I believe I have looked into most of the modern 

 philosophers who have dealt with this matter, and 1 do not think that, 

 with one exception — to be presently dwelt upon — they take us much 

 beyond the ancients and the schoolmen. Of course we have attained 

 to a clearer perception of its physical side. And here we are 

 indebted to Mr. Herbert Spencer for an explanation, which, so far as 

 I can judge — and that is not very far — may very likely be true. 

 This is the substance of it. " A large amount of nervous energy, 

 instead of being allowed to expend itself in producing an equivalent 

 amount of the new thoughts and emotions which were nascent, is 

 suddenly checked in its flow." " The excess must discharge itself in 

 some other direction, and there results an efflux through the motor 

 nerves to various classes of the muscles, producing the half-convulsive 

 actions we term laughter." I dare say Mr. Spencer may be right in 

 the hypothesis he here presents. But I am sure he is wrong if he 

 supposes that those " nervous discharges," of which he speaks, are the 

 primary or the main element in the emotion of which laughter is an 

 outward visible siffn. That emotion begins with a mental act. As 



