lert in each of its parts as to eliminate the
ready-made and oppose the mechanical operations of inversion,
transposition, etc., which one would fain perform upon it as on some
lifeless thing. The rigid, the ready--made, the mechanical, in contrast
with the supple, the ever-changing and the living, absentmindedness in
contrast with attention, in a word, automatism in contrast with free
activity, such are the defects that laughter singles out and would fain
correct. We appealed to this idea to give us light at the outset, when
starting upon the analysis of the ludicrous. We have seen it shining at
every decisive turning in our road. With its help, we shall now enter
upon a more important investigation, one that will, we hope, be more
instructive. We purpose, in short, studying comic characters, or rather
determining the essential conditions of comedy in character, while
endeavouring to bring it about that this study may contribute to a
better understanding of the real nature of art and the general relation
between art and life.

CHAPTER III

THE COMIC IN CHARACTER

I

We have followed the comic along many of its winding channels in an
endeavour to discover how it percolates into a form, an attitude, or a
gesture; a situation, an action, or an expression. The analysis of
comic CHARACTERS has now brought us to the most important part of our
task. It would also be the most difficult, had we yielded to the
temptation of defining the laughable by a few striking--and
consequently obvious--examples; for then, in proportion as we advanced
towards the loftiest manifestations of the comic, we should have found
the facts slipping between the over-wide meshes of the definition
intended to retain them. But, as a matter of fact, we have followed the
opposite plan, by throwing light on the subject from above. Convinced
that laughter has a social meaning and import, that the comic
expresses, above all else, a special lack of adaptability to society,
and that, in short, there is nothing comic apart from man, we have made
man and character generally our main objective. Our chief difficulty,
therefore, has lain in explaining how we come to laugh at anything else
than character, and by what subtle processes of fertilisation,
combination or amalgamation, the comic can worm its way into a mere
movement, an impersonal situation, or an independent phrase. This is
what we have done so far. We started with the pure metal, and all our