论笑

acter that the rigidity of a fixed idea has to intellect? Whether as a moral kink or a crooked twist given to the will, vice has often the appearance of a curvature of the soul. Doubtless there are vices into which the soul plunges deeply with all its pregnant potency, which it rejuvenates and drags along with it into a moving circle of reincarnations. Those are tragic vices. But the vice capable of making us comic is, on the contrary, that which is brought from without, like a ready-made frame into which we are to step. It lends us its own rigidity instead of borrowing from us our flexibility. We do not render it more complicated ; on the contrary, it simplifies us. Here, as we shall see later on in the conclud¬ ing section of this study, lies the essential difference between comedy and drama. A drama, even when portraying passions or vices that bear a name, so completely incorporates them in the person that their names are for¬ gotten, their general characteristics effaced, and we no longer think of them at all, but rather of the person in whom they are assimilated ; hence, the title of a drama can seldom be any¬ thing else than a proper noun.…