The most elementary illustrations demonstrate this. The unusual is the
original comic; to the child all strange things are comical--the
Chinaman with his pigtail, the negro with his black skin, the new
fashion in dress, the clown with his paint and his antics. As we get
used to things, and that means as we come to form ideas of them into
which they will fit, adjusting the mind to them, rather than seeking
to adjust them to the mind, they cease to be comical. So fashions in
dress or manners which were comical once, become matters of course and
we laugh no longer. Enduringly comic are only those objects that
persistently create expectations and as persistently violate them.
Such objects are few indeed; but they exist, and constitute the
perennial, yet never wearying, stock in trade of comedy. But the comic
spirit does not have to depend upon them exclusively, for, as life
changes, it constantly raises new expectations and offers new objects
which at once provoke and fail to meet them. Everything, therefore,
is potentially comical and, in the course of human history, few things
can escape a laugh; some curious mind is sure, sooner or later, to
bring them under a new idea against which they will be shown up to be
absurd. The sanctities of religion, love, and political allegiance
have not been exempt.
Why, if the comical object is always opposed to our demands, should
we take pleasure in it? How can we be reconciled to things that are
admittedly incongruous with our standards? Why are we not rather
displeased and angry with them? Investigators have usually looked for
a single source of pleasure in the comic, but of those which have been
suggested at least two, I think, contribute something.
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