104 Mr. William Samuel Lilly [March 13, 



was the inane laughter which Cicero justly calls the most inane 

 thing in the world : inani risu nihil est inanius. 



With these reservations, then, I think we must admit Schopen- 

 hauer's theory of the Ludicrous. It is true as far as it goes. I use 

 those words of limitation, because it does not attempt to answer the 

 deeper questions connected with the subject which I mentioned just 

 now. Perhaps they are unanswerable. Certainly the few minutes 

 left to me will not suffice even for the most superficial examination of 

 them. I would rather employ those minutes for another and more 

 practical purpose : an Englishman is nothing if not practical. We 

 have seen what the Ludicrous is : the paradoxical, and therefore 

 unexpected, subsumption of an object under a conception which, in 

 other respects is different from it. Well, but what is the function of 

 the Ludicrous in human life ? What end does it serve ? Please note 

 that this question is quite congruous with the title of my lecture : for 

 in order really to know anything, we must know its end : according 

 to that profound saying of Aristotle, rj Sk cfivcnq reXos ecrrt. 



I observe, then, that a sense of the Ludicrous is the most sane 

 thing we have. Incorrectness and abnormality are the notes of the 

 Ludicrous. And, they provoke one to affirm — ridentem dicer e verum 

 — what is correct and normal. We may say then, that the Ludicrous 

 is an irrational negation which arouses in the mind a rational affirma- 

 tion. And so, in strictness, a sense of the Ludicrous cannot be 

 attributed to animals less highly evolved than man in the scale of 

 being: because, though they have understanding, they have not, 

 properly speaking, reason; they have knowledge of perception ; they 

 have not abstract knowledge. Still, in this province, as elsewhere, we 

 may observe among them what Aristotle calls /xt/xTy/xara r^s avOfi(j)7rivrj<s 

 t,o)rjs : mimicries of the life of man. As in the most favoured in- 

 dividuals of the higher species of them there appear analoga of the 

 operations of reason, so do we find also indications of the lower kinds 

 of the Ludicrous : farce, buffoonery, practical joking. But, indeed, 

 there appear to be whole races of men — the North American Indians 

 and the Cingalese Yeddas, for example — that are destitute of the sense 

 of the Ludicrous. And, in the higher races this sense is by no means 

 universally found. The richest intellects possess it in amplest 

 measure. The absence of it is a sure indication of mental poverty. 

 *' Here comes a fool, let's be grave," said Charles Lamb on one occa- 

 sion. And, I remember a friend of my own observing of a somewhat 

 taciturn person whom we had met, " He must be a man of sense, for, 

 although he said little, he laughed in the right place." That laugh 

 is a manifestation of intellectual abundance or exuberance : it is 

 something over and above the actual work of life. And so we may 

 adapt to our present purpose certain words of Schiller's in his ' Letters 

 on Esthetic Education ' : " Man sports (spielt) only when he is man in 

 the full signification of the word : and then only is he complete man 

 (^ganz Mensch) when he sports." 



I need hardly observe how grossly this faculty of the Ludicrous 



