DISCHARGE OF ARRESTED FEELINGS. 205 



the rest, and wliich is sufficiently massive to absorb all the 

 nascent excitement. Among the spectators of an awkward 

 tumble, those who preserve their gravity are those in whom 

 there is excited a degree of sympathy with the sufferer, 

 sufficiently great to serve as an outlet for the feeling which 

 the occurrence had turned out of its previous course. 

 Sometimes anger carries off the arrested current ; and so 

 prevents laughter. An instance of this was lately furnished 

 me by a friend who had been witnessing the feats at 

 Franconi's. A tremendous leap had just been made by an 

 acrobat over a number of horses. The clown, seemingly 

 envious of this success, made ostentatious preparation for 

 doing the like ; and then, taking the preliminary run with 

 immense energy, stopped short on reaching the first horse, 

 and pretended to wipe some dust from its hauriches. In the 

 majority of the s23ectators, merriment was excited ; but in 

 my friend, wound up by the expectation of the coming leap 

 to a state of great nervous tension, the effect of the baulk 

 was to produce indignation. Experience thus proves 

 what the theory implies : namely, that the discharge of 

 arrested feelings into the muscular system, takes place 

 only in the absence of other adequate channels — does not 

 take place if there arise other feelings equal in amount to 

 those arrested. 



Evidence still more conclusive is at hand. If we con- 

 trast the incongruities which produce laughter with those 

 which do not, we at once see that in the non-ludicrous ones 

 the unexpected state of feeling aroused, though w^holly 

 different in kind, is not less in quantity or intensity. 

 Among incongruities that may excite anything but a laugh, 

 Mr. Bain instances — " A decrepit man under a heavy bur- 

 den, five loaves and two fishes among a multitude, and all 

 unfitness and gross disproportion ; an instrument out of 

 tune, a fly in ointment, snow in May, Archimedes studying 

 geometry in a siege, and all discordant things ; a wolf in 



