he sense of ineptitude.
Things amuse us in the mouth of a fool that would not amuse us in
that of a gentleman; a fact which shows how little incongruity and
degradation have to do with our pleasure in the comic. In fact,
there is a kind of congruity and method even in fooling. The
incongruous and the degraded displease us even there, as by their
nature they must at all times. The shock which they bring may
sometimes be the occasion of a subsequent pleasure, by attracting
our attention, or by stimulating passions, such as scorn, or cruelty,
or self-satisfaction (for there is a good deal of malice in our love of
fun); but the incongruity and degradation, as such, always remain
unpleasant. The pleasure comes from the inward rationality and
movement of the fiction, not from its inconsistency with anything
else. There are a great many topsy-turvy worlds possible to our
fancy, into which we like to drop at times. We enjoy the
stimulation and the shaking up of our wits. It is like getting into a
new posture, or hearing a new song.

Nonsense is good only because common sense is so limited. For
reason, after all, is one convention picked out of a thousand. We
love expansion, not disorder, and when we attain freedom without
incongruity we have a much greater and a much purer delight. The
excellence of wit can dispense with absurdity. For on the same
prosaic background of common sense, a novelty might have
appeared that was not absurd, that stimulated the attention quite as
much as the ridiculous, without so baffling the intelligence. This
purer and more thoroughly delightful amusement comes from what
we call wit.

_Wit._

Sec. 62. Wit also depends upon transformation and substitution of
ideas. It has been said to consist in quick association by similarity.
The substitution must here be valid, however, and the similarity
real, though unforeseen. Unexpected justness makes wit, as sudden
incongruity makes pleasant foolishness. It is characteristic of wit to
penetrate into hidden depths of things, to pick out there some
telling circumstance or relation, by noting which the whole object
appears in a new and clearer light. Wit often seems malicious
because analysis in discovering common traits and universal
principles assimilates things at the poles of being; it can apply to
cookery the formulas of theology, and find in the human heart a
case of the fulcrum and lever. We commonly keep the departments
of experience distinct; we th