w of
gravitation, for it is not the earth that attracts it. This soul
imparts a portion of its winged lightness to the body it animates: the
immateriality which thus passes into matter is what is called
gracefulness. Matter, however, is obstinate and resists. It draws to
itself the ever-alert activity of this higher principle, would fain
convert it to its own inertia and cause it to revert to mere
automatism. It would fain immobilise the intelligently varied movements
of the body in stupidly contracted grooves, stereotype in permanent
grimaces the fleeting expressions of the face, in short imprint on the
whole person such an attitude as to make it appear immersed and
absorbed in the materiality of some mechanical occupation instead of
ceaselessly renewing its vitality by keeping in touch with a living
ideal. Where matter thus succeeds in dulling the outward life of the
soul, in petrifying its movements and thwarting its gracefulness, it
achieves, at the expense of the body, an effect that is comic. If,
then, at this point we wished to define the comic by comparing it with
its contrary, we should have to contrast it with gracefulness even more
than with beauty. It partakes rather of the unsprightly than of the
unsightly, of RIGIDNESS rather than of UGLINESS.

IV

We will now pass from the comic element in FORMS to that in GESTURES
and MOVEMENTS. Let us at once state the law which seems to govern all
the phenomena of this kind. It may indeed be deduced without any
difficulty from the considerations stated above. THE ATTITUDES,
GESTURES AND MOVEMENTS OF THE HUMAN BODY ARE LAUGHABLE IN EXACT
PROPORTION AS THAT BODY REMINDS US OF A MERE MACHINE. There is no need
to follow this law through the details of its immediate applications,
which are innumerable. To verify it directly, it would be sufficient to
study closely the work of comic artists, eliminating entirely the
element of caricature, and omitting that portion of the comic which is
not inherent in the drawing itself. For, obviously, the comic element
in a drawing is often a borrowed one, for which the text supplies all
the stock-in-trade. I mean that the artist may be his own understudy in
the shape of a satirist, or even a playwright, and that then we laugh
far less at the drawings themselves than at the satire or comic
incident they represent. But if we devote our whole attention to the
drawing with the firm resolve to think of nothing else, we shall
probably find