ed
data, by comparing analogous cases and extracting their essence, in
short by a process of abstraction and generalisation similar to that
which the physicist brings to bear upon facts with the object of
grouping them under laws. In a word, method and object are here of the
same nature as in the inductive sciences, in that observation is always
external and the result always general.

And so we come back, by a roundabout way, to the double conclusion we
reached in the course of our investigations. On the one hand, a person
is never ridiculous except through some mental attribute resembling
absent-mindedness, through something that lives upon him without
forming part of his organism, after the fashion of a parasite; that is
the reason this state of mind is observable from without and capable of
being corrected. But, on the other hand, just because laughter aims at
correcting, it is expedient that the correction should reach as great a
number of persons as possible. This is the reason comic observation
instinctively proceeds to what is general. It chooses such
peculiarities as admit of being reproduced and consequently are not
indissolubly bound up with the individuality of a single person,--a
possibly common sort of uncommonness, so to say,--peculiarities that
are held in common. By transferring them to the stage, it creates works
which doubtless belong to art in that their only visible aim is to
please, but which will be found to contrast with other works of art by
reason of their generality and also of their scarcely confessed or
scarcely conscious intention to correct and instruct. So we were
probably right in saying that comedy lies midway between art and life.
It is not disinterested as genuine art is. By organising laughter,
comedy accepts social life as a natural environment, it even obeys an
impulse of social life. And in this respect it turns its back upon art,
which is a breaking away from society and a return to pure nature.

II

Now let us see, in the light of what has gone before, the line to take
for creating an ideally comic type of character, comic in itself, in
its origin, and in all its manifestations. It must be deep-rooted, so
as to supply comedy with inexhaustible matter, and yet superficial, in
order that it may remain within the scope of comedy; invisible to its
actual owner, for the comic ever partakes of the unconscious, but
visible to everybody else, so that it may call forth general laugh