ery operation wit will have been analysed, and will then appear
as nothing more than the comic in a highly volatile state. To follow
the opposite plan, however, and attempt directly to evolve a formula
for wit, would be courting certain failure. What should we think of a
chemist who, having ever so many jars of a certain substance in his
laboratory, would prefer getting that substance from the atmosphere, in
which merely infinitesimal traces of its vapour are to be found?

But this comparison between the witty and the comic is also indicative
of the line we must take in studying the comic in words. On the one
hand, indeed, we find there is no essential difference between a word
that is comic and one that is witty; on the other hand, the latter,
although connected with a figure of speech, invariably calls up the
image, dim or distinct, of a comic scene. This amounts to saying that
the comic in speech should correspond, point by point, with the comic
in actions and in situations, and is nothing more, if one may so
express oneself, than their projection on to the plane of words. So let
us return to the comic in actions and in situations, consider the chief
methods by which it is obtained, and apply them to the choice of words
and the building up of sentences. We shall thus have every possible
form of the comic in words as well as every variety of wit.

1. Inadvertently to say or do what we have no intention of saying or
doing, as a result of inelasticity or momentum, is, as we are aware,
one of the main sources of the comic. Thus, absentmindedness is
essentially laughable, and so we laugh at anything rigid, ready-made,
mechanical in gesture, attitude and even facial expression. Do we find
this kind of rigidity in language also? No doubt we do, since language
contains ready-made formulas and stereotyped phrases. The man who
always expressed himself in such terms would invariably be comic. But
if an isolated phrase is to be comic in itself, when once separated
from the person who utters it, it must be something more than
ready-made, it must bear within itself some sign which tells us, beyond
the possibility of doubt, that it was uttered automatically. This can
only happen when the phrase embodies some evident absurdity, either a
palpable error or a contradiction in terms. Hence the following general
rule: A COMIC MEANING IS INVARIABLY OBTAINED WHEN AN ABSURD IDEA IS
FITTED INTO A WELL-ESTABLISHED PHRASE-FORM.

"Ce sabre es