ave been offered for this extremely simple
fact. A little reflection, however, will show that our mental state is
ever changing, and that if our gestures faithfully followed these inner
movements, if they were as fully alive as we, they would never repeat
themselves, and so would keep imitation at bay. We begin, then, to
become imitable only when we cease to be ourselves. I mean our gestures
can only be imitated in their mechanical uniformity, and therefore
exactly in what is alien to our living personality. To imitate any one
is to bring out the element of automatism he has allowed to creep into
his person. And as this is the very essence of the ludicrous, it is no
wonder that imitation gives rise to laughter.

Still, if the imitation of gestures is intrinsically laughable, it will
become even more so when it busies itself in deflecting them, though
without altering their form, towards some mechanical occupation, such
as sawing wood, striking on an anvil, or tugging away at an imaginary
bell-rope. Not that vulgarity is the essence of the comic,--although
certainly it is to some extent an ingredient,--but rather that the
incriminated gesture seems more frankly mechanical when it can be
connected with a simple operation, as though it were intentionally
mechanical. To suggest this mechanical interpretation ought to be one
of the favourite devices of parody. We have reached this result through
deduction, but I imagine clowns have long had an intuition of the fact.

This seems to me the solution of the little riddle propounded by Pascal
in one passage of his Thoughts: "Two faces that are alike, although
neither of them excites laughter by itself, make us laugh when
together, on account of their likeness." It might just as well be said:
"The gestures of a public speaker, no one of which is laughable by
itself, excite laughter by their repetition." The truth is that a
really living life should never repeat itself. Wherever there is
repetition or complete similarity, we always suspect some mechanism at
work behind the living. Analyse the impression you get from two faces
that are too much alike, and you will find that you are thinking of two
copies cast in the same mould, or two impressions of the same seal, or
two reproductions of the same negative,--in a word, of some
manufacturing process or other. This deflection of life towards the
mechanical is here the real cause of laughter.

And laughter will be more pronounced stil