sistent ideas, contradictory statements, interplay of discordant actions, and sentiments which reveal their inner incompatibility, as well as views that cannot be reconciled, because of their being illogical and absurd, all arouse laughter. In short, any association which expresses moral and mental turpitude compared with the normal and ideal standard of the given society and age gives rise to smiles, ridicule, and laughter. In all the cases of the comic and the ludicrous we find the combination of logical and illogical, moral and immoral, the brilliant and the commonplace, the ideal and the matter of fact, the superior and the inferior, the intelligent and the stupid, all conjoined and combined into an explosive that at the least concussion gives rise to an outburst of laughter.

The following anecdote may be taken as an example: A descendant of the noble Harmodius was taunting Iphicrates with his low birth.

"The difference between us is this," Iphicrates replied, "my family begins with me, and your's ends with you."

The contrasting relations of high and low, of good and evil, of great and small are here clearly brought out. The exalted are humbled and the humble are exalted. We laugh, we are amused, when we realize real merit clashing with deceit. The sham discerned under the garb of nobility and superiority is invariably an object of ridicule. The contrast of the two discordant and incongruous concepts, the noble and the ignoble, the superior and the inferior, their association, dissociation, and final resolution with the surprise element in which the ignoble is shown to be clothed in the garb of the noble, like the donkey in the lion's skin, arouses the sense of the ludicrous.

CHAPTER XXIV

MIMICRY

Why is mimicking a person or an animal ludicrous? Because the imitation is of something which is regarded as inferior. We do not laugh at the perfect imitation of a beautiful song, nor do we ridicule the perfect imitation of a human figure whether sculptured or painted, but we laugh at defects, at the representation of awkwardness, of clumsiness, and silliness. In mimicry it is not simply the imitation of any kind of gestures, or of action, or of mannerisms, or of speech, that is regarded as ludicrous, but it is only certain definite manifestations, only certain motor activities or postures that excite laughter. The imitation in mimicry excites our laughter because the gestures, postures, speech, and phrases imitated are considered as silly, senseless, stupid. The mimicry or imitation of what is regarded as good, true, and beautiful excites in us the highest admiration. When we mimic persons and their modes of behavior it is to bring out in the language of gestures the moral and mental inferiority, the inner senselessness of the person.

In grotesque postures and figures we find the presence of abnormalities, of conditions and states of inferiority, deformities, and defects of body and mind.

An excellent description of the power of the ludicrous possessed by grimace-making and caricature may be found in "Notre Dame de Paris," by Victor Hugo:

The field was clear for every sort of folly. The pulling of faces began. The first to appear in the openingeyelids turned inside out, the gaping mouth of a ravening beast, the brow creased and wrinkled-was greeted with such a roar of inextinguishable laughter-that Homer would have taken all these ragamuffins for gods.

A second and third distortion followed, to be succeeded by another and another; and with each one the laughter redoubled, and the crowd stamped and roared with delight. Picture to yourself a series of faces representing successively every geometrical form, from the triangle to the trapezium, from the cone to the polyhedron; every human expression, from rage to lewdness; every stage of life, from the creases of the newly born to the wrinkles of hoary age; every phantasm of mythology and religion, from Faunus to Beelzebub; every animal head, from the buffalo to the eagle, from the shark to the bulldog. The great

Hall was one vast furnace of effrontery and unbridled mirth, in which every mouth was a yell, every countenance a grimace, every individual a posture. The whole mass shrieked and bellowed. Every new visage that came grinning and gnashing to the window was fresh fuel to the furnace. And from this seething multitude, like steam from a cauldron, there rose a hum-shrill, piercing, sibilant, as from a vast swarm of gnats.

Suddenly there came a thunder of applause mingled with shouts of acclamation. The Fools had elected their Pope.

In truth, the grimace that beamed through the broken window at this moment was nothing short of the miraculous. After all the faces-pentagonal, hexagonal, and heteroclite-which had succeeded each other in the stone frame, without realizing the grotesque ideal set up by the inflamed popular imagination, nothing inferior to the supreme effort now dazzling the spectator would have sufficed to carry every vote. We can hardly convey to the reader

a conception of that tetrahedral nose, that horse-shoe mouth, of that small left eye obscured by a red and bristling brow, while the right disappeared under a monstrous wart, of those uneven teeth, with breaches here and there, like the crenated walls of a fortress, of that horny lip over which one of the teeth projected like an elephant's tusk, of that cloven chin, nor, above all, of that expression overlying the whole, an indefinable mixture of malice, bewilderment, and sadness.

There was not a single dissentient voice. They rushed to the chapel and in triumph dragged forth the thrice lucky Pope of Fools. Then surprise and admiration reached the culminating point. He had but shown his natural counte

nance.

Rather let us say his whole person was a grimace. An enormous head covered with red bristles; between the shoulders a great hump balanced by one in front; a system of thighs and legs so curiously misplaced that they only touched at the knees, and viewed from the front, appeared like two sickles joined at the handles; huge splay feet, monstrous hands, and, with all this deformity, a nameless impression of formidable strength, agility, and courage. He looked like a giant broken and badly repaired.

The picture drawn by Victor Hugo of the Pope of Fools reminds one of the Homeric awkward figure of the Cyclop Polyphemus or of Shakespeare's monster Caliban. The image that comes to one's mind is that of a powerful orang-outang or gorilla, an ape-like man or a man-like ape. In fact, that is the way the audience regards the monster:

"Oh, the hideous ape!" exclaimed one.

""Tis the devil himself!" added another.

"The other night he came and made faces at me through the window. I thought it not a man!"

As we have pointed out before, physical deficiencies, whether natural or mimicked, are in the lower stages of civilization and culture objects of ridicule. The ridicule, however, is not so much directed against the physical defect itself as against the spiritual deficiency which the physical deformity expresses. The body mirrors the mind. We see a stunted mind in a deformed body.

We laugh at deformities which express defects of personality, faults of character, inferior aberrations, and deviations of the mind. The various expressions of a fool, the silly gestures, postures, mannerisms of action, and speech of an imbecile or of an idiot give rise to laughter. We laugh at people whose actions are thoughtless, whose manners are silly, whose speech is senseless, and whose gestures are inappropriate and meaningless.

In every person's life activity there are foolish breaks, moments in which intelligence lapses, when the person may become the object of comic imitation. The comedian, the joker, the wit, and the wag seize on such moments and, bringing them to light, expose them to the ridicule of other people. Vacant, silly expressions of the features of the face, stupid, meaningless gestures, irrational actions all go to form the subject matter of the comic and the ludicrous.

Motor reactions are the mirror of mental life. The deformities of physical expression are regarded as reflections of mental deficiencies. Deformities of bodily expression are regarded as indications of flaws of character and defects of mind. We read by the physical expressions the stupidities that lie behind them. In all comic imitation the imitated acts suggest mental inferiority of some kind. It is this mental inferiority, suggested by imitation of gestures and expressions, that is