which new effects
resembling them take their places in a circle. These latter are not
deductions from the formula, but are comic through their relationship
with those that are. To quote Pascal again, I see no objection, at this
stage, to defining the process by the curve which that geometrician
studied under the name of roulette or cycloid,--the curve traced by a
point in the circumference of a wheel when the carriage is advancing in
a straight line: this point turns like the wheel, though it advances
like the carriage. Or else we might think of an immense avenue such as
are to be seen in the forest of Fontainebleau, with crosses at
intervals to indicate the cross-ways: at each of these we shall walk
round the cross, explore for a while the paths that open out before us,
and then return to our original course. Now, we have just reached one
of these mental crossways. Something mechanical encrusted on the
living, will represent a cross at which we must halt, a central image
from which the imagination branches off in different directions. What
are these directions? There appear to be three main ones. We will
follow them one after the other, and then continue our onward course.

1. In the first place, this view of the mechanical and the living
dovetailed into each other makes us incline towards the vaguer image of
SOME RIGIDITY OR OTHER applied to the mobility of life, in an awkward
attempt to follow its lines and counterfeit its suppleness. Here we
perceive how easy it is for a garment to become ridiculous. It might
almost be said that every fashion is laughable in some respect. Only,
when we are dealing with the fashion of the day, we are so accustomed
to it that the garment seems, in our mind, to form one with the
individual wearing it. We do not separate them in imagination. The idea
no longer occurs to us to contrast the inert rigidity of the covering
with the living suppleness of the object covered: consequently, the
comic here remains in a latent condition. It will only succeed in
emerging when the natural incompatibility is so deep-seated between the
covering and the covered that even an immemorial association fails to
cement this union: a case in point is our head and top hat. Suppose,
however, some eccentric individual dresses himself in the fashion of
former times: our attention is immediately drawn to the clothes
themselves, we absolutely distinguish them from the individual, we say
that the latter IS DISGUISIN