were
not the speaker himself one of the twins in the story. It results
entirely from the fact that Mark Twain asserts he is one of these
twins, whilst all the time he talks as though he were a third person
who tells the tale. In many of our dreams we adopt exactly the same
method.

V

Regarded from this latter point of view, the comic seems to show itself
in a form somewhat different from the one we lately attributed to it.
Up to this point, we have regarded laughter as first and foremost a
means of correction. If you take the series of comic varieties and
isolate the predominant types at long intervals, you will find that all
the intervening varieties borrow their comic quality from their
resemblance to these types, and that the types themselves are so many
models of impertinence with regard to society. To these impertinences
society retorts by laughter, an even greater impertinence. So evidently
there is nothing very benevolent in laughter. It seems rather inclined
to return evil for evil.

But this is not what we are immediately struck by in our first
impression of the laughable. The comic character is often one with
whom, to begin with, our mind, or rather our body, sympathises. By this
is meant that we put ourselves for a very short time in his place,
adopt his gestures, words, arid actions, and, if amused by anything
laughable in him, invite him, in imagination, to share his amusement
with us; in fact, we treat him first as a playmate. So, in the laugher
we find a "hail-fellow-well-met" spirit--as far, at least, as
appearances go--which it would be wrong of us not to take into
consideration. In particular, there is in laughter a movement of
relaxation which has often been noticed, and the reason of which we
must try to discover. Nowhere is this impression more noticeable than
in the last few examples. In them, indeed, we shall find its
explanation.

When the comic character automatically follows up his idea, he
ultimately thinks, speaks and acts as though he were dreaming. Now, a
dream is a relaxation. To remain in touch with things and men, to see
nothing but what is existent and think nothing but what is consistent,
demands a continuous effort of intellectual tension. This effort is
common sense. And to remain sensible is, indeed, to remain at work. But
to detach oneself from things and yet continue to perceive images, to
break away from logic and yet continue to string together ideas, is to
indulge in