so popular, there is rather too prominent an aim
to obtain complexity of ideas--sometimes to the verge of nonsense.
Humorous sayings are largely manufactured on this plan.

The ideas in humour, although in one respect distant, must be brought
close together. Protraction in relating a story will cause it to fail,
and this is one reason why jokes in a foreign language seldom make us
laugh.

Locke speaks of wit as the assemblage of ideas. Most philosophers
acknowledge the existence of some conflict in humour, and in many
instances of the ludicrous it seems to lie between the real and ideal.
External circumstances appear different from what we should expect them
to be, and think they ought to be. Thus we have seen a dignified man
walking about quite unconscious that a wag has chalked his back, or
fastened a "tail" on his coat behind.

Some have attempted to explain all humour on this basis, but the
complication in it does not seem capable of being brought under this
head. Weiss and Arnold Ruge say it is "the ideal captive by the
real"--an opinion similar to that of Schopenhauer, who calls it "the
triumph of intuition over reflection." Of course, this cannot be taken
as a definition, for in that case every mistake we make, such as
thinking a mountain higher than it is, or a right action wrong, would be
laughable. We contemplate acts of injustice or oppression, and failures
in art and manufacture, and still feel no inclination to laugh. But we
may accept the opinion as an admission of the principle of complication.
The ideal and real often meet without any spark being struck, and in
some cases the conflict in humour can scarcely be said to lie between
them. It is often dependent upon a breach of association, or of some
primary ideas or laws of nature. Necessary principles of mind or matter
are often violated where things, true under one condition, are
represented as being so universally. Our American cousins supply us with
many illustrative instances. "A man is so tall that he has to go up a
ladder to shave himself." Generally we require to mount, to reach
anything in a very high position, but if it were our own head, however
lofty we carried it, we should not require a ladder. Somewhat similar is
the observation "that a young lady's head-dress is now so high, that she
requires to stand on a stool to put it on."

We have heard of a soldier surprising and surrounding a body of the
enemy; and of a man coming downstairs in t