y gravitates: in short,
because it is the sign of an eccentricity. And yet, society cannot
intervene at this stage by material repression, since it is not
affected in a material fashion. It is confronted with something that
makes it uneasy, but only as a symptom--scarcely a threat, at the very
most a gesture. A gesture, therefore, will be its reply. Laughter must
be something of this kind, a sort of SOCIAL GESTURE. By the fear which
it inspires, it restrains eccentricity, keeps constantly awake and in
mutual contact certain activities of a secondary order which might
retire into their shell and go to sleep, and, in short, softens down
whatever the surface of the social body may retain of mechanical
inelasticity. Laughter, then, does not belong to the province of
esthetics alone, since unconsciously (and even immorally in many
particular instances) it pursues a utilitarian aim of general
improvement. And yet there is something esthetic about it, since the
comic comes into being just when society and the individual, freed from
the worry of self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of
art. In a word, if a circle be drawn round those actions and
dispositions--implied in individual or social life--to which their
natural consequences bring their own penalties, there remains outside
this sphere of emotion and struggle--and within a neutral zone in which
man simply exposes himself to man's curiosity--a certain rigidity of
body, mind and character, that society would still like to get rid of
in order to obtain from its members the greatest possible degree of
elasticity and sociability. This rigidity is the comic, and laughter is
its corrective.

Still, we must not accept this formula as a definition of the comic. It
is suitable only for cases that are elementary, theoretical and
perfect, in which the comic is free from all adulteration. Nor do we
offer it, either, as an explanation. We prefer to make it, if you will,
the leitmotiv which is to accompany all our explanations. We must ever
keep it in mind, though without dwelling on it too much, somewhat as a
skilful fencer must think of the discontinuous movements of the lesson
whilst his body is given up to the continuity of the fencing-match. We
will now endeavour to reconstruct the sequence of comic forms, taking
up again the thread that leads from the horseplay of a clown up to the
most refined effects of comedy, following this thread in its often
unforeseen wind