Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/416

400 object comes in and forces it into a contrary direction." Still the same common theory of contrast, except that with Dumont the contrast rises to a contradiction.

Many contrasts are unquestionably ludicrous. In a parody, the comic effect is produced by the contrast of the gravity of the original work and the irreverence of the travesty. In the child's innocent expression that we laugh at, there is a contrast between the bearing of the word and the candor of the one who speaks it. Certain kinds of transpositions make us laugh for a similar reason: a tragedy rendered into a trivial style, sublime sentiments expressed in slang.

There are other contrasts in which there is nothing ludicrous. The false note of a singer is in most cases only painful; but the effect of it is a contrast. The sight of a deformed body, after looking at sound and well-proprtioned bodies, does not amuse. We do not laugh when black is set upon white. We laugh when a clown, pretending to imitate a cavalier, makes an awkward tumble, but not if a real horseman gayly trotting by meets with disaster; yet there is equally a contrast in both cases. A saying, amusing in itself, does not please when pronounced under solemn circumstances that contrast with its tenor; and nothing is so insupportable as a companion who insists on being funny when one is absorbed in admiration of something or with grief. Everything that is out of tune creates a contrast, but does not make one laugh.

Bain suggests the explanation that laughter is provoked by what he calls a degradation, meaning that we laugh when we all at once perceive something degrading, a trickery, a weakness, or a pettiness in some person or object which we respect; as when the infirmities of human nature disclose themselves in a person of importance, or when some trivial affair occurs in a solemn ceremony to drag us down, or when the wrong side of some great thing or some great man is exposed. "The occasion of the laughter is the degradation of a dignified person or interest, under circumstances that do not excite a stronger emotion. In all theories of laughter the more or less important fact is marked. . . that the feeling of the ludicrous arises when something which we respected before is presented in a mean light; for we have no disposition to laugh when something that we already regarded as such is depicted as tricky and vile."

It can not be denied that this solution agrees with many facts. We frequently, perhaps most frequently, laugh at degradation. Those words are often amusing which bring up all at once the eccentricity or the vice of some person. Degradation is even the essence of parody. We laugh at the lapse of an orator, because the man, with his weaknesses, is suddenly exposed in the midst of his sublime flight. An uncouth expression or sound uttered in an