nfinite gradation
and complexity, and ranging from sublimity to tedium and from
pathos to uncontrollable merriment.

Certain crude and obvious cases of the comic seem to consist of
little more than a shock of surprise: a pun is a sort of jack-in-the-box,
popping from nowhere into our plodding thoughts. The liveliness
of the interruption, and its futility, often please; _dulce est
desipere in loco;_ and yet those who must endure the society of
inveterate jokers know how intolerable this sort of scintillation can
become. There is something inherently vulgar about it; perhaps
because our train of thought cannot be very entertaining in itself
when we are so glad to break in upon it with irrelevant nullities.
The same undertone of disgust mingles with other amusing
surprises, as when a dignified personage slips and falls, or some
disguise is thrown off, or those things are mentioned and described
which convention ignores. The novelty and the freedom please, yet
the shock often outlasts the pleasure, and we have cause to wish
we had been stimulated by something which did not involve this
degradation. So, also, the impossibility in plausibility which tickles
the fancy in Irish bulls, and in wild exaggerations, leaves an
uncomfortable impression, a certain aftertaste of foolishness.

The reason will be apparent if we stop to analyze the situation. We
have a prosaic background of common sense and every-day reality;
upon this background an unexpected idea suddenly impinges. But
the thing is a futility. The comic accident falsifies the nature before
us, starts a wrong analogy in the mind, a suggestion that cannot be
carried out. In a word, we are in the presence of an absurdity; and
man, being a rational animal, can like absurdity no better than he
can like hunger or cold. A pinch of either may not be so bad, and
he will endure it merrily enough if you repay him with abundance
of warm victuals; so, too, he will play with all kinds of nonsense
for the sake of laughter and good fellowship and the tickling of his
fancy with a sort of caricature of thought. But the qualm remains,
and the pleasure is never perfect. The same exhilaration might
have come without the falsification, just as repose follows more
swiftly after pleasant than after painful exertions.

Fun is a good thing, but only when it spoils nothing better. The
best place for absurdity is in the midst of what is already absurd --
then we have the play of fancy without t