life. And in this respect it turns its back upon art, which is a breaking away from society and a return to pure nature.
II Now let us see, in the light of what has gone before, the line to take for creating an ideally comic type of character, comic in itself, in its origin, and in all its manifestations. It must be deep-rooted, so as to supply comedy with inexhaustible matter, and yet superficial, in order that it may remain within the scope of comedy; invisible to its actual owner, for the comic ever partakes of the unconscious, but visible to everybody else, so that it may call forth general laughter, extremely considerate to its own self, so that it may be displayed with¬ out scruple, but troublesome to others, so that they may repress it without pity; immediately repressible, so that our laughter may not have been wasted, but sure of reappearing under fresh aspects, so that laughter may always find something to do; inseparable from social life, although insufferable to society; capable — in order that it may assume the greatest imagin- LAUGHTER CHAP.
172 able variety of forms — of being tacked on to all the vices and even to a good many virtues. Truly a goodly number of elements to fuse together! But a chemist of the soul, entrusted with this elaborate preparation, would be some¬ what disappointed when pouring out the con¬ tents of his retort. He would find he had taken a vast deal of trouble to compound a mixture which may be found ready-made and free of expense, for it is as widespread through¬ out mankind as air throughout nature.
This mixture is vanity. Probably there is not a single failing that is more superficial or more deep-rooted. The wounds it receives are never very serious, and yet they are seldom healed. The services rendered to it are the most unreal of all services, and yet they are the very ones that meet with lasting gratitude. It is scarcely a vice, and yet all the vices are drawn into its orbit and, in proportion as they become more refined and artificial, tend to be nothing more than a means of satisfying it. The outcome of social life, since it is an admira¬ tion of ourselves based on the admiration we think we are inspiring in others, it is even more natural, more universally innate than egoism; in THE COMIC IN CHARACTER i;3 for egoism may be conquered by nature, whereas only by reflection do we get the better of vanity. It does not seem, indeed, as if men were ever born modest, unless we dub with the name of modesty a sort of purely physical bashfulness, which is nearer to pride than is generally supposed. True modesty can be nothing but a meditation on vanity. It springs from the sight of others’ mistakes and the dread of being similarly deceived. It is a sort of scientific cautiousness with respect to what we shall say and think of ourselves. It is made up of improvements and after¬ touches. In short, it is an acquired virtue.
It is no easy matter to define the point at which the anxiety to become modest may be distinguished from the dread of becoming ridiculous. But surely, at the outset, this dread and this anxiety are one and the same thing. A complete investigation into the illusions of vanity, and into the ridicule that clings to them, would cast a strange light upon the whole theory of laughter. We should find laughter performing, with mathematical regu¬ larity, one of its main functions — that of bringing back to complete self-consciousness LAUGHTER ciiAr.
1 74 a certain self-admiration which is almost auto¬ matic, and thus obtaining the greatest possible sociability of characters. We should see that vanity, though it is a natural product of social life, is an inconvenience to society, just as certain slight poisons, continually secreted by the human organism, would destroy it in the long run, if they were not neutralised by other secretions. Laughter is unceasingly doing work of this kind. In this respect, it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughable is vanity.
While dealing with the comic in form and movement, we showed how any simple image, laughable in itself, is capable of worming its way into other images of a more complex nature and instilling into them something of its comic essence; thus, the highest forms of the comic can sometimes be explained by the lowest. The inverse process, however, is perhaps even more common, and many coarse comic effects are the direct result of a drop from some very subtle comic element. For instance, vanity, that higher form of the comic, is an element we are prone to look for, minutely Ill THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 175 though unconsciously, in every manifestation of human activity. We look for it if only to laugh at it. Indeed, our imagination often locates it where it has no business to be. Perhaps we must attribute to this source the altogether coarse comic element in certain effects which psychologists have very in¬ adequately explained by contrast: a short man bowing his head to pass beneath a large door; two individuals, one very tall the other a mere dwarf, gravely walking along arm-in¬ arm, etc. By scanning narrowly this latter image, we shall probably find that the shorter of the two persons seems as though he were trying to raise himself to the height of the teller, like the frog that wanted to make itself as large as the ox.
Ill It would be quite impossible to go through all the peculiarities of character that either coalesce or compete with vanity in order to force themselves upon the attention of the comic poet. We have shown that all failings may become laughable, and even, occasionally, LAUGHTER CHAP.
176 many a good quality. Even though a list of all the peculiarities that have ever been found ridiculous were drawn up, comedy would manage to add to them, not indeed by creating artificial ones, but by discovering lines of comic development that had hitherto gone unnoticed; thus does imagination isolate ever fresh figures in the intricate design of one and the same piece of tapestry. The essential condition, as we know, is that the peculiarity observed should straightway appear as a kind of category into which a number of individuals can step.
Now, there are ready-made categories estab¬ lished by society itself, and necessary to it because it is based on the division of labour. We mean the various trades, public services and professions. Each particular profession impresses on its corporate members certain habits of mind and peculiarities of character in which they resemble each other and also dis¬ tinguish themselves from the rest. Small societies are thus formed within the bosom of Society at large. Doubtless they arise from the very organisation of Society as a whole. And yet, if they held too much aloof, there would be a risk of their proving harmful to sociability.
in THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 177 Now, it is the business of laughter to repress any separatist tendency. Its function is to convert rigidity into plasticity, to readapt the individual to the whole, in short, to round off the corners wherever they are met with. Accordingly, we here find a species of the comic whose varieties might be calculated beforehand. This we shall call the professional comic.
Instead of taking up these varieties in detail, we prefer to lay stress upon what they have in common. In the forefront we find professional vanity. Each one of M. Jourdain’s teachers exalts his own art above all the rest. In a play of Labiche there is a character who cannot understand how it is possible to be anything else than a timber merchant. Naturally he is a timber merchant himself. Note that vanity here tends to merge into solemnity, in propor¬ tion to the degree of quackery there is in the profession under consideration. For it is a remarkable fact that the more questionable an art, science or occupation is, the more those who practise it are inclined to regard them¬ selves as invested with a kind of priesthood and to claim that all should bow before its N LAUGHTER CHAP.
178 mysteries. Useful professions are clearly meant for the public, but those whose utility is more dubious can only justify their existence by assuming that the public is meant for them: now, this is just the illusion that lies at the root of solemnity. Almost everything comic in Moliere’s doctors comes from this source. They treat the patient as though he had been made for the doctors, and nature herself as an appendage to medicine.
Another form of this comic rigidity is what may be called professional callousness. The comic character is so tightly jammed into the rigid frame of his functions that he has no room to move or to be moved like other men. Only call to mind the answer Isabelle receives from Perrin Dandin, the judge, when she asks him how he can bear to look on when the poor wretches are being tortured: Bah! cela fait toujours passer une heure ou deux.1 Does not Tartuffe also manifest a sort of professional callousness when he says — it is true, by the mouth of Orgon: 1 Bah! it always helps to while away an hour or two.
U. THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 179 Et je verrais mourir frcre, enfants, mfere et femme, Que je m’en soucierais autant que de cela! 1 The device most in use, however, for making a profession ludicrous is to confine it, so to say, within the four corners of its own par¬ ticular jargon. Judge, doctor and soldier are made to apply the language of law, medicine and strategy to the everyday affairs of life, as though they had became incapable of talking like ordinary people. As a rule, this kind of the ludicrous is rather coarse. It becomes more refined, however, as we have already said, if it reveals some peculiarity of character in addition to a professional habit. We will instance only Rdgnard’s Joueur, who expresses himself with the utmost origin¬ ality in terms borrowed from gambling, giving his valet the name of Hector, and calling his betrothed Pallas, du nom connu de la Dame de Pique; 2 or Moli&re’s Femmes savantes, where the comic element evidently consists largely in the translation of ideas of a scientific nature into 1 Let brother, children, mother and wife all die, what should I care!
* l’allas, from the well-known name of the Queen of Spades.
180 LAUGHTER chap.
terms of feminine sensibility: “ Epicure me plait.. (Epicurus is charming), “ f aime les tourbillons” (I dote on vortices), etc. You have only to read the third act to find that Armande, Philaminte and Bdlise almost invari¬ ably express themselves in this style.
Proceeding further in the same direction, we discover that there is also such a thing as a professional logic, i.e. certain ways of reasoning that are customary in certain circles, which are valid for these circles, but untrue for the rest of the public. Now, the contrast between these two kinds of logic — one particular, the other universal — produces comic effects of a special nature, on which we may advantageously dwell at greater length. Here we touch upon a point of some consequence in the theory of laughter. We propose, therefore, to give the question a wider scope and consider it in its most general aspect.
IV Eager as we have been to discover the deep-seated cause of the comic, we have so far had to neglect one of its most striking Ill THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 181 phenomena. We refer to the logic peculiar to the comic character and the comic group, a strange kind of logic, which, in some cases, may include a good deal of absurdity.
Theophile Gautier said that the comic in its extreme form was the logic of the absurd. More than one philosophy of laughter revolves round a like idea. Every comic effect, it is said, implies contradiction in some of its aspects. What makes us laugh is alleged to be the absurd realised in concrete shape, a “ palpable absurdity ”; — or, again, an apparent absurdity, which we swallow for the moment only to rectify it immediately afterwards; — or, better still, something absurd from one point of view though capable of a natural explanation from another, etc. All these theories may contain some portion of the truth; but, in the first place, they apply only to certain rather obvious comic effects, and then, even where they do apply, they evidently take no account of the characteristic element of the laughable, that is, the particular kind of absurdity the comic contains when it does contain something absurd. Is an immediate proof of this desired? You have only to choose one of these definitions i$2 LAUGHTER chap.
i$2 LAUGHTER chap.
and make up effects in accordance with the formula: twice out of every three times there will be nothing laughable in the effect obtained. So we see that absurdity, when met with in the comic, is not absurdity in general. It is an absurdity of a definite kind. It does not create the comic; rather, we might say that the comic infuses into it its own particular essence. It is not a cause, but an effect — an effect of a very special kind, which reflects the special nature of its cause. Now, this cause is known to us; consequently we shall have no trouble in under¬ standing the nature of the effect Assume, when out for a country walk, that you notice on the top of a hill something that bears a faint resemblance to a large motionless body with revolving arms. So far you do not know what it is, but you begin to search amongst your ideas — that is to say, in the present instance, amongst the recollections at your disposal — for that recollection which will best fit in with what you see. Almost immedi¬ ately the image of a windmill comes into your mind: the object before you is a windmill. No matter if, before leaving the house, you have just been reading fairy-tales telling of in THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 183 giants with enormous arms; for although com¬ mon sense consists mainly in being able to remember, it consists even more in being able to forget. Common sense represents the endeavour of a mind continually adapting itself anew and changing ideas when it changes objects. It is the mobility of the intelligence conforming exactly to the mobility of things. It is the moving continuity of our attention to life.
Rut now, let us take Don Quixote setting out for the wars. The romances he has been reading all tell of knights encountering, on the way, giant adversaries. He therefore must needs encounter a giant. This idea of a giant is a privileged recollection which has taken its abode in his mind and lies there in wait, motionless, watching for an opportunity to sally forth and become embodied in a thing. It is bent on entering the material world, and so the very first object he sees bearing the faintest resemblance to a giant is invested with the form of one. Thus Don Quixote sees giants where we see windmills. This is comical; it is also absurd. Rut is it a mere absurdity, — an absurdity of an indefinite kind?
LAUGHTER CHAP.
I84 It is a very special inversion of common sense. It consists in seeking to mould things on an idea of one’s own, instead of moulding one’s ideas on things, — in seeing before us what we are thinking of, instead of thinking of what we see. Good sense would have us leave all our memories in their proper rank and file; then the appropriate memory will every time answer the summons of the situation of the moment and serve only to interpret it. But in Don Quixote, on the contrary, there is one group of memories in command of all the rest and dominating the character itself: thus it is reality that now has to bow to imagination, its only function being to supply fancy with a body. Once the illusion has been created, Don Quixote develops it logically enough in all its con¬ sequences; he proceeds with the certainty and precision of a somnambulist who is acting his dream. Such, then, is the origin of his delu¬ sions, and such the particular logic which controls this particular absurdity. Now, is this logic peculiar to Don Quixote?
We have shown that the comic character always errs through obstinacy of mind or of dis¬ position, through absentmindedness, in short, in THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 185 through automatism. At the root of the comic there is a sort of rigidity which compels its victims to keep strictly to one path, to follow it straight along, to shut their ears and refuse to listen. In Moliere’s plays how many comic scenes can be reduced to this simple type: a character following up his one idea, and con¬ tinually recurring to it in spite of incessant interruptions! The transition seems to take place imperceptibly from the man who will listen to nothing to the one who will see nothing, and from this latter to the one who sees only what he wants to see. A stubborn spirit ends by adjusting things to its own way of thinking, instead of accommodating its thoughts to the things. So every comic character is on the highroad to the above-men¬ tioned illusion, and Don Quixote furnishes us with the general type of comic absurdity.
Is there a name for this inversion of common sense? Doubtless it may be found, in either an acute or a chronic form, in certain types of insanity. In many of its aspects it resembles a fixed idea. But neither insanity in general, nor fixed ideas in particular, are provocative of laughter: they are diseases, and arouse our pity.
i86 LAUGHTER CHAP.
Laughter, as we have seen, is incompatible with emotion. If there exists a madness that is laughable, it can only be one compatible with the general health of the mind, — a sane type of madness, one might say. Now, there is a sane state of the mind that resembles madness in every respect, in which we find the same asso¬ ciations of ideas as we do in lunacy, the same peculiar logic as in a fixed idea. This state is that of dreams. So either our analysis is in¬ correct, or it must be capable of being stated in the following theorem: Comic absurdity is of the same nature as that of dreams.
The behaviour of the intellect in a dream is exactly what we have just been describing. The mind, enamoured of itself, now seeks in the outer world nothing more than a pretext for realising its imaginations. A confused murmur of sounds still reaches the ear, colours enter the field of vision, the senses are not completely shut in. But the dreamer, instead of appealing to the whole of his recol¬ lections for the interpretation of what his senses perceive, makes use of what he perceives to give substance to the particular recollection he favours: thus, according to the mood of the rn THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 18; dreamer and the idea that fills his imagination at the time, a gust of wind blowing down the chimney becomes the howl of a wild beast or a tuneful melody. Such is the ordinary mechanism of illusion in dreams.
Now, if comic illusion is similar to dream illusion, if the logic of the comic is the logic of dreams, we may expect to discover in the logic of the laughable all the peculiarities of dream logic. Here, again, we shall find an illustra¬ tion of the law with which we are well acquainted: given one form of the laughable, other forms that are lacking in the same comic essence become laughable from their outward resemblance to the first. Indeed, it is not diffi¬ cult to see that any play of ideas may afford us amusement if only it bring back to mind, more or less distinctly, the play of dreamland.
We shall first call attention to a certain general relaxation of the rules of reasoning. The reasonings at which we laugh are those we know to be false, but which we might accept as true were we to hear them in a dream. They counterfeit true reasoning just sufficiently to deceive a mind dropping off to sleep. There is still an element of logic in LAUGHTER CHAP.
1 88 them, if you will, but it is a logic lacking in tension and, for that very reason, affording us relief from intellectual effort. Many “ witti¬ cisms ” are reasonings of this kind, considerably abridged reasonings, of which we are given only the beginning and the end. Such play upon ideas evolves in the direction of a play upon words in proportion as the rela¬ tions set up between the ideas become more superficial: gradually we come to take no account of the meaning of the words we hear, but only of their sound. It might be instruc¬ tive to compare with dreams certain comic scenes in which one of the characters systema¬ tically repeats in a nonsensical fashion what another character whispers in his ear. If you fall asleep with people talking round you, you sometimes find that what they say gradually becomes devoid of meaning, that the sounds get distorted, as it were, and recombine in a haphazard fashion to form in your mind the strangest of meanings, and that you are re¬ producing between yourself and the different speakers the scene between Petit -Jean and The Prompter.1 1 Les Plaideurs (Racine).
m THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 189 There are also comic obsessions that seem to bear a great resemblance to dream obsessions. Who has not had the experience of seeing the same image appear in several successive dreams, assuming a plausible meaning in each of them, whereas these dreams had no other point in common. Effects of repetition sometimes present this special form on the stage or in fiction: some of them, in fact, sound as though they belonged to a dream. It may be the same with the burden of many a song: it persistently recurs, always unchanged, at the end of every verse, each time with a different meaning.
Not infrequently do we notice in dreams a particular crescendo, a weird effect that grows more pronounced as we proceed. The first concession extorted from reason introduces a second; and this one, another of a more serious nature; and so on till the crowning absurdity is reached. Now, this progress to¬ wards the absurd produces on the dreamer a very peculiar sensation. Such is probably the experience of the tippler when he feels himself pleasantly drifting into a state of blankness in which neither reason nor pro- LAUGHTER CHAP.
190 priety has any meaning for him. Now, consider whether some of Moliere’s plays would not produce the same sensation: for instance, Monsieur de Pmrceaugnac, which, after beginning almost reasonably, develops into a sequence of all sorts of absurdities. Consider also the Bourgeois gentilhomme, where the different characters seem to allow themselves to be caught up in a very whirl¬ wind of madness as the play proceeds. “If it is possible to find a man more completely mad, I will go and publish it in Rome.” This sentence, which warns us that the play is over, rouses us from the increasingly extravagant dream into which, along with M. Jourdain, we have been sinking.
But, above all, there is a special madness that is peculiar to dreams. There are certain special contradictions so natural to the imagina¬ tion of a dreamer, and so absurd to the reason of a man wide-awake, that it would be im¬ possible to give a full and correct idea of their nature to anyone who had not ex¬ perienced them. We allude to the strange fusion that a dream often effects between two persons who henceforth form only one and nr THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 191 yet remain distinct. Generally one of these is the dreamer himself. He feels he has not ceased to be what he is; yet he has become someone else. He is himself, and not himself. He hears himself speak and sees himself act, but he feels that some other “he” has borrowed his body and stolen his voice. Or perhaps he is conscious of speak¬ ing and acting as usual, but he speaks of himself as a stranger with whom he has nothing in common; he has stepped out of his own self. Does it not seem as though we found this same extraordinary confusion in many a comic scene? I am not speaking of Amphitryon, in which play the confusion is perhaps suggested to the mind of the spectator, though the bulk of the comic effect proceeds rather from what we have already called a “ reciprocal interference of two series.” I am speaking of the extravagant and comic reasonings in which we really meet with this confusion in its pure form, though it requires some looking into to pick it out. For instance, listen to Mark Twain’s replies to the reporter who called to interview him: Question. Isn’t that a brother of yours?
192 LAUGHTER CHAP.
Answer. Oh! yes, yes, yes! Now you remind me of it, that was a brother of mine. That’s William — Bill we called him. Poor old Bill!
Q. Why? Is he dead, then?
A. Ah! well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a great mystery about it.
Q. That is sad, very sad. He disappeared, then?
A. Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him.
Q. Buried him! Buried him, without know¬ ing whether he was dead or not?
A. Oh no! Not that. He was dead enough.
Q. Well, I confess that I can’t understand this. If you buried him, and you knew he was dead — A. No! no! We only thought he was Q. Oh, I see! He came to life again?
A. I bet he didn’t.
Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. Somebody was dead. Somebody was buried. Now, where was the mystery?
A. Ah! that’s just it! That’s it exactly. You see, we were twins,— defunct and I, — and we got mixed in the bath-tub when we were ui THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 193 only two weeks old, and one of us was drowned. But we didn’t know which. Some think it was Bill. Some think it was me.
Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do you think?
A. Goodness knows! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, this awful tragedy has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell you a secret now, which I have never revealed to any creature before. One of us had a peculiar mark, — a large mole on the back of his left hand: that was me. That child was the one that was drowned!...etc., etc.
A close examination will show us that the absurdity of this dialogue is by no means an absurdity of an ordinary type. It would dis¬ appear were not the speaker himself one of the twins in the story. It results entirely from the fact that Mark Twain asserts he is one of these twins, whilst all the time he talks as though he were a third person who tells the tale. In many of our dreams we adopt exactly the same method.
194 LAUGHTER CHAP.
V Regarded from this latter point of view, the comic seems to show itself in a form somewhat different from the one we lately attributed to it. Up to this point, we have regarded laughter as first and foremost a means of correction. If you take the series of comic varieties and isolate the predominant types at long intervals, you will find that all the inter¬ vening varieties borrow their comic quality from their resemblance to these types, and that the types themselves are so many models of impertinence with regard to society. To these impertinences society retorts by laughter, an even greater impertinence. So evidently there is nothing very benevolent in laughter. It seems rather inclined to return evil for evil.
But this is not what we are immediately struck by in our first impression of the laughable. The comic character is often one with whom, to begin with, our mind, or rather our body, sympathises. By this is meant that we put ourselves for a very short time in his place, adopt his gestures, words, and actions, and, if amused by anything laughable in him,...THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 195 invite him, in imagination, to share his amuse¬ ment with us; in fact, we treat him first as a playmate. So, in the laugher we find a “ hail-fellow-well-met ” spirit — as far, at least, as appearances go — which it would be wrong of us not to take into consideration. In particular, there is in laughter a movement of relaxation which has often been noticed, and the reason of which we must try to discover. Nowhere is this impression more noticeable than in the last few examples. In them, indeed, we shall find its explanation.
When the comic character automatically follows up his idea, he ultimately thinks, speaks and acts as though he were dreaming. Now, a dream is a relaxation. To remain in touch with things and men, to see nothing but what is existent and think nothing but what is con¬ sistent, demands a continuous effort of intel¬ lectual tension. This effort is common sense. And to remain sensible is, indeed, to remain at work. But to detach oneself from things and yet continue to perceive images, to break away from logic and yet continue to string together ideas, is to indulge in play or, if you prefer, in doke far niente. So, comic absurdity gives us LAUGHTER CHAP.
I96 from the outset the impression of playing with ideas. Our first impulse is to join in the game. That relieves us from the strain of thinking.
Now, the same might be said of the other forms of the laughable. Deep-rooted in the comic, there is always a tendency, we said, to take the line of least resistance, generally that of habit. The comic character no longer tries to be ceaselessly adapting and readapting himself to the society of which he is a member. He slackens in the attention that is due to life. He more or less resembles the absentminded. Maybe his will is here even more concerned than his intellect, and there is not so much a want of attention as a lack of tension: still, in some way or another, he is absent, away from his work, taking it easy. He abandons social convention, as indeed — in the case we have just been considering — he abandoned logic. Here, too, our first impulse is to accept the invitation to take it easy. For a short time, at all events, we join in the game. And that relieves us from the strain of living.
But we rest only for a short time. The sympathy that is capable of entering into the impression of the comic is a very fleeting one.
Ill THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 197 It also comes from a lapse in attention. Thus, a stern father may at times forget himself and join in some prank his child is playing, only to check himself at once in order to correct it.
Laughter is, above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate, it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties taken with it. It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of sympathy or kindness.
Shall we be told that the motive, at all events, may be a good one, that we often punish because we love, and that laughter, by checking the outer manifestations of certain failings, thus causes the person laughed at to correct these failings and thereby improve him¬ self inwardly?
Much might be said on this point. As a general rule, and speaking roughly, laughter doubtless exercises a useful function. Indeed, the whole of our analysis points to this fact. But it does not therefore follow that laughter always hits the mark or is invariably inspired by sentiments of kindness or even of justice.
To be certain of always hitting the mark, it LAUGHTER CHAP.
198 would have to proceed from an act of reflec¬ tion. Now, laughter is simply the result of a mechanism set up in us by nature or, what is almost the same thing, by our long acquaint¬ ance with social life. It goes off spontaneously and returns tit for tat. It has no time to look where it hits. Laughter punishes certain fail¬ ings somewhat as disease punishes certain forms of excess, striking down some who are innocent and sparing some who are guilty, aiming at a general result and incapable of dealing separately with each individual case. And so it is with everything that comes to pass by natural means instead of happening by conscious reflection. An average of justice may show itself in the total result, though the details, taken separately, often point to any¬ thing but justice.
In this sense, laughter cannot be absolutely just. Nor should it be kind-hearted either. Its function is to intimidate by humiliating. Now, it would not succeed in doing this, had not nature implanted for that very purpose, even in the best of men, a spark of spiteful¬ ness or, at all events, of mischief. Perhaps we had better not investigate this point too m THE COMIC IN CHARACTER 199