ings, halting at intervals to look around, and finally
getting back, if possible, to the point at which the thread is dangling
and where we shall perhaps find--since the comic oscillates between
life and art--the general relation that art bears to life.

III

Let us begin at the simplest point. What is a comic physiognomy? Where
does a ridiculous expression of the face come from? And what is, in
this case, the distinction between the comic and the ugly? Thus stated,
the question could scarcely be answered in any other than an arbitrary
fashion. Simple though it may appear, it is, even now, too subtle to
allow of a direct attack. We should have to begin with a definition of
ugliness, and then discover what addition the comic makes to it; now,
ugliness is not much easier to analyse than is beauty. However, we will
employ an artifice which will often stand us in good stead. We will
exaggerate the problem, so to speak, by magnifying the effect to the
point of making the cause visible. Suppose, then, we intensify ugliness
to the point of deformity, and study the transition from the deformed
to the ridiculous.

Now, certain deformities undoubtedly possess over others the sorry
privilege of causing some persons to laugh; some hunchbacks, for
instance, will excite laughter. Without at this point entering into
useless details, we will simply ask the reader to think of a number of
deformities, and then to divide them into two groups: on the one hand,
those which nature has directed towards the ridiculous; and on the
other, those which absolutely diverge from it. No doubt he will hit
upon the following law: A deformity that may become comic is a
deformity that a normally built person, could successfully imitate.

Is it not, then, the case that the hunchback suggests the appearance of
a person who holds himself badly? His back seems to have contracted an
ugly stoop. By a kind of physical obstinacy, by rigidity, in a word, it
persists in the habit it has contracted. Try to see with your eyes
alone. Avoid reflection, and above all, do not reason. Abandon all your
prepossessions; seek to recapture a fresh, direct and primitive
impression. The vision you will reacquire will be one of this kind. You
will have before you a man bent on cultivating a certain rigid
attitude--whose body, if one may use the expression, is one vast grin.

Now, let us go back to the point we wished to clear up. By toning down
a deformity that is laughabl