gard in it the elements of weight, of resistance, and,
in a word, of matter; we forget its materiality and think only of its
vitality, a vitality which we regard as derived from the very principle
of intellectual and moral life, Let us suppose, however, that our
attention is drawn to this material side of the body; that, so far from
sharing in the lightness and subtlety of the principle with which it is
animated, the body is no more in our eyes than a heavy and cumbersome
vesture, a kind of irksome ballast which holds down to earth a soul
eager to rise aloft. Then the body will become to the soul what, as we
have just seen, the garment was to the body itself--inert matter dumped
down upon living energy. The impression of the comic will be produced
as soon as we have a clear apprehension of this putting the one on the
other. And we shall experience it most strongly when we are shown the
soul TANTALISED by the needs of the body: on the one hand, the moral
personality with its intelligently varied energy, and, on the other,
the stupidly monotonous body, perpetually obstructing everything with
its machine-like obstinacy. The more paltry and uniformly repeated
these claims of the body, the more striking will be the result. But
that is only a matter of degree, and the general law of these phenomena
may be formulated as follows: ANY INCIDENT IS COMIC THAT CALLS OUR
ATTENTION TO THE PHYSICAL IN A PERSON WHEN IT IS THE MORAL SIDE THAT IS
CONCERNED.

Why do we laugh at a public speaker who sneezes just at the most
pathetic moment of his speech? Where lies the comic element in this
sentence, taken from a funeral speech and quoted by a German
philosopher: "He was virtuous and plump"? It lies in the fact that our
attention is suddenly recalled from the soul to the body. Similar
instances abound in daily life, but if you do not care to take the
trouble to look for them, you have only to open at random a volume of
Labiche, and you will be almost certain to light upon an effect of this
kind. Now, we have a speaker whose most eloquent sentences are cut
short by the twinges of a bad tooth; now, one of the characters who
never begins to speak without stopping in the middle to complain of his
shoes being too small, or his belt too tight, etc. A PERSON EMBARRASSED
BY HIS BODY is the image suggested to us in all these examples. The
reason that excessive stoutness is laughable is probably because it
calls up an image of the same kind. I almos