hers--Firstly that of Voltaire, Jean Paul, Brown, the German
Idealists, Leon Dumont, Secondly that of Descartes, Marmontel and
Dugald Stewart--Whately on Jests--Nature of Puns--Effect of Custom and
Habit--Accessory Emotion--Disappointment and Loss--Practical Jokes.

Although a distinction can be drawn in humour between the sense of wrong
and the complication which accompanies it, still, as in any given case,
the two flow out of the same circumstances, there seems to be some
indissoluble link between them. It is not necessary to say that the
sense of the ludicrous is a compound feeling, to maintain that it has
the appearance of containing or being connected with something like a
feeling of disapprobation.

Moreover, all the elements contained must be perfectly fused together
before the ludicrous can be appreciated, just as Sir T. Macintosh
observes of Beauty, "Until all the separate pleasures which create it be
melted into one--as long as any of them are discerned and felt as
distinct from each other--qualities which gratify are not called by the
name of Beauty," and when we say that the humour consists of an emotion
awakened by an exercise of judgment, we do not pretend to determine how
far the emotion has been modified by judgment, and judgment directed by
emotion.

We cannot properly suppose that there is anything really wrong in
external objects brought before us, and did we recognise that everything
moves in a regular pre-ordained course, we should be obliged to consider
everything right, and conclude that the error we observe is imaginary,
and flows from our own false standard. We do so with regard to the
so-called works of Nature, and, therefore, we never laugh at a rock or a
tree--no matter how strange its form. But in the general circumstances
brought before us the reign of law is not so clear, especially when they
depend on the actions of men, which we feel able to pronounce judgment
upon, and condemn when opposed to our ideal. In humorous representations
we are actually beholding what is false; in ludicrous we think we are,
though we cannot avoid at times detecting some infirmity in our own
discernment. Thus, in the case of a child's puzzle, a person unable to
solve it sometimes exclaims, "How dull I am! I ought to be able to do
it," and people occasionally find fault with their senses, as we
sometimes see them laughing when dazzled by rapidly revolving colours.
Such instances may suggest to us that