fact; and since, therefore, the class of ideas compared together in the bull are, to use the old logical phrase, greater in "intention" and less in "extension" than the ideas compared together in wit, it follows that the Irish bull cannot be the converse of the witticism.

Irish bull, but that deliberately infused and much commoner quality of their comparison which we agree to call "humor." Had Sydney Smith followed out his analysis a little more closely, he would have found that the emotion of pleasure which we experience from the discovery of unsuspected incongruity beneath apparent congruity of ideas is of far more frequent occurrence than he seems to have perceived. He would have found that this pleasure is not excited by the Irish bull alone, nor only in those cases in which the combination of the incongruous ideas is unintentional and the discovery of their incongruity a source of discomfiture to their combiner, but that the human mind takes delight in the combination for its own sake, and enjoys the contemplation of incongruity intentionally exhibited. And he would, I believe, have been able to show by an indefinite number of illustrative' examples that the cases in which this happens are invariably instances of what we are now agreed to call humor, as distinct from wit. It may, perhaps, ap

In the second place it is to be observed, though this is a minor point, that Sydney Smith's admission that the bull must be "unintentional "is virtually equivalent to an admission that it cannot be, at any rate subjectively speaking, the converse of wit. For wit, considered as a quality inherent to the comparison of ideas, is independent of the mental attitude of the person comparing them; that is to say, that although we might deny the honors of "a wit" to a man who stumbles accidentally on a mot, we could not on that account refuse the praise of "wit" to the saying itself. But an objective quality of the comparison of ideas cannot have for its converse a quality thereof which is partially subjective of the person who compares them. "A great deal," adds Sydney Smith, "of the pleasure experi-pear rash to assert of so Protean a quality enced from bulls proceeds from a sense of superiority in ourselves" to the person uttering them. "Bulls which were invented or known to be invented might please, but in a less degree for want of this additional zest." Undoubtedly that is true, but it is quite enough to show the radical distinction, both of origin and character, between the pleasurable emotions respectively produced by these two forms of the comparison of ideas. Our feeling towards the sayer of a witty thing is certainly not one of "superiority," but of admiration, and even gratitude; and our "zest" is directly proportioned to the amount of deliberate "invention" of cleverness, in other words which we perceive the speaker to have displayed.

*

The truth seems to be that the real logical converse of wit is not that accidental and rare peculiarity of the comparison of ideas which constitutes the

• This sense of superiority, however, is, it should be noted, of a somewhat subtle kind. It must not be the mere contempt with which a man of ordinary intelligence might regard a stupid blunderer. It is rather the pride of quick perception; a triumph in the avoidance of those intellectual pitfalls into which men far from stupid might at any moment inadvertently tumble. "Fewer absentees than formerly!" exclaims one of Mr. Charles Keene's excellent Irishmen in Punch. "Not a bit of it, me boy. The counthry swar-rms with em." This is a nearly perfect bull of its kind; but it is so for the very reason that it could have been easily made by any man who had so accustomed him self to use the phrase "The country swarms with them" as a mere hyperbolical equivalent for "there are many of them in existence," That its territorial import, so to speak, had been effaced by familiarity from his mind. LIVING AGE. VOL. XL. 2036

that in its every phase and manifestation
the pleasure given by it can be traced to
the perception of incongruity, but I am
strongly disposed to think that such is
the case, and that no form of pure humor
- for humor and wit may, of course, be
sometimes combined in the same sen-
tence - could resist such reduction in the
last analysis. But we may, I think, go
further even than this.
Good reason
may be given for concluding that wit itself,
considered in its relation to laughter, is
mainly, if not wholly, dependent on an in-
fusion of the accidental element of humor
into that " discovery of latent simili-
tudes" of which it essentially consists.
To show this, however, it will be neces-
sary to resume the deferred analysis of
Sydney Smith's above-cited definition of
wit.

Now the first thing that strikes one about this definition, when we come to examine it, is that it is too wide — that it commits that worst fault of a definition, of covering more objects than it is intended to define. "The pleasure arising from wit proceeds from our surprise at suddenly discovering things to be similar in which we suspected no similarity." But if this alone be wit, what then are the rhetorical figures of simile and metaphor themselves? The similarities revealed by wit must, as we are told, be unsuspected, but so they are in some similes and metaphors, and so they ought to be in

train of reflections or affect the bearer's
or reader's mood to solemnity in any
way; but he is none the nearer to being
amused by them for all that. I would not
contend that they are on that ground alone
to be denied the honors of wit; and, in-
deed, it would be impossible to maintain
the proposition that the capacity of pro-
voking laughter is to be treated as the
differentia of wit proper.
Such a propo-
sition stands refuted by some of the most
illustrious examples of wit, and of wit,
too, of the purest and subtlest kind. One
might read the "Provincial Letters," for
instance, from end to end, without a
laugh, yet nobody surely would deny that
the keen pleasure which Pascal's irony
gives us is essentially pleasure of the kind
produced by wit. Nevertheless it re-
mains true that the provocation to laugh-
ter is popularly accounted as the only
true test of wit; and it is at least certain,
that if we once begin to waive this test,
it becomes very difficult to draw the line
between those comparisons of ideas which
are entitled to the epithet of "witty" and
those which are not. At opposite ends of
the scale the discriminative process may
be easy enough. There are some similes,
excellent in their kind, which no one would
think of including in the catogory of wit,
and others, not perhaps more apt, to
which no one would think of refusing a
place therein; but midway between the
two we find a number of examples which,
except by applying to them the criterion
risibile, we should be quite at a loss to
assign to their respective categories.

all similes and metaphors which are meant | emotions which they arouse. They do to be rhetorically effective. An orator not of themselves suggest any serious who confined himself to pointing out patent resemblances would soon weary and disgust his hearers; to captivate or even to interest them he must disclose latent resemblances; but when he does so the effect is not, or is not always, wit. He may produce something of the intellectual effect of wit; he certainly does not produce its well-known physical consequences. And these it is which the definition leaves altogether unexplained. We all know, without going into questions of the wit of speech, that the sudden discovery of fitness invariably gives pleasure. The answer to a riddle, the neat working out of a mathematical problem, the solution of a mechanical puzzle, all awaken emotions of pleasure; but they do not excite laughter, or not at any rate among adults. One may, indeed, see a child clap its hands and burst out laughing as the right segment of its "dissecting map drops suddenly into an unpromising-looking hole; but the satisfaction of its elders at this "sudden discovery of fitness" is more soberly manifested. Surprise and pleasure do not here excite laughter, nor do they in other analogous cases. Surprise is aroused by every brilliant comparison invented by orator or writer; and the pleasure and admiration which accompany it are proportioned to the perfection of the comparison, and to the completeness with which it lay hidden till the happy sentence flung the light upon it. But though we are delighted at the discovery, and admire the discoverer, we do not necessarily laugh at it or with him. Sydney What then is that element in any comSmith has himself remarked on the occa-parison of ideas which, when present, sional failure of suddenly revealed resem- makes it satisfy this criterion, and when blances to excite laughter, and suggested absent makes it fail to do so? It is not an explanation which, though true enough mere felicity, nor mere surprisingness so far as it goes, is insufficiently general- - not the closeness of resemblance beized. He examines the comparison between the ideas compared, nor the comtween the cedar-tree imparting fragrance pleteness with which that resemblance to the axe and the Christian returning lies hid; for these as has been observed, good for evil to his persecutors, and says and, as could be easily proved by examthat this would give the pleasure of wit ples, are characteristics present to a were it not that it “excited virtuous emo- greater or less extent in all similes and tions." And no doubt a simile which ex-metaphors of any degree of merit. Let cites virtuous emotions is not calculated us take two examples at random. In one to provoke laughter- at least from per- of his eloquent speeches delivered in the sons of well-regulated minds. But, in Spanish Cortes, under the late republitruth, for an apt comparison to produce can régime, Señor Castelar was dilating mirth it is not enough that it should make (rather prematurely as events proved) on no positive appeal to our graver feelings. the extinction of the monarchical spirit Very many comparisons that we meet among his countrymen. "The monarwith in literature and oratory are thor- chy," he exclaimed, "is dead in Spain. oughly neutral in respect of the moral In Spain, gentlemen: remember what

that means.

It is as though one should | in short, are incongruous; and it is the incongruity of the things compared, not the neatness or felicity of the comparison, which provokes laughter. But incongruities form the material of humor, as resemblances form the material of wit; and in cases like this, therefore, we can clearly trace the laughter-moving property of witticisms to an admixture in them of the quality of humor.

say that the Koran was dead in Mecca." Here then is a comparison, which, without being above the average of quality, will serve to illustrate my point as well as another. It is a comparison which no one would think of describing as witty, but which nevertheless fairly satisfies Sydney Smith's definition of wit. The resemblance of the ideas, that is to say, is sufficiently striking, and yet is not ob- There are doubtless, however, other vious, and their comparison accordingly cases in which this is not so immediately produces that mixture of pleasure and apparent cases in which the ideas comsurprise which was all that Sydney pared in a witticism are not themselves Smith's analysis of the emotion produced incongruous, while laughter is, notwithby wit can be said to yield. Yet the com-standing, provoked by the comparison. parison is undoubtedly not witty, and it Even here, however, it will be found, I certainly fails to satisfy the criterion risi- believe, that it is not to the mere felicity bile. Many of Señor Castelar's hearers of the comparison that the laughter is no doubt applauded it, but we may take due that it is not the perception of fitit as certain that none of them laughed at ness but that of unfitness which arouses it. mirth. Among the many witty things which were said, or are reported to have been said, in the old Irish Parliament, there was none perhaps of higher merit than this: "The honorable member described himself just now as the guardian of his own honor, but on other occasions I have heard him boast that he was an enemy to sinecures." We not only ad mire this, but laugh at it, and it might be thought at first sight that the laughter was the pure product of the wit. tainly seems to follow as instantaneously and inevitably upon the flash of surprise struck out at the moment when we grasp the "point as the thunder-clap follows upon the lightning when the storm is directly overhead. Yet still I am inclined to think that it is in reality not the sense of fitness, but of unfitness - not the felicity of the comparison, but its extremely infelicitous application to the person against whom it is directed - which moves us to mirth. The "passion of laughter" has been defined by Hobbes in his "Discourse of Human Nature" as

But on the other hand take this example. A certain moribund ministry, exist ing only on the sufferance of the opposition, was wont to plead for successive prolongations of its official life on the ground of the valuable legislative meas ures which it declared itself on the point of producing; and these appeals were compared by Albany Fonblanque to the plea which female convicts under capital sentence sometimes put forward for the arrest of execution on the ground of pregnancy. Fonblanque's comparison is here as apt as, but perhaps no apter than, Castelar's, yet it would undoubtedly be called witty, while Castelar's would not; and, unlike Castelar's, it certainly satisfies the criterion risibile. It is indeed extremely laughable, and of course it is not difficult to see why. The ideas compared are in this case not only outwardly dissimilar, they are incongruous, and incongruity in the sense in which the word is here used means much more than mere dissimilarity. Incongruous ideas are ideas which are not only dissimilar as presented to the intellectual vision, but which belong to different planes of emotion. Now the ideas of the monarchy in Spain, and of the Koran in Mecca may be mentally unlike enough, but they are emotionally similar: there is no marked descent in dignity from one to the other. But from the idea of a condemned woman pleading for the life of her unborn child, to the idea of a discredited government attempting to wheedle out a political reprieve for themselves as being big with legislative projects, there is a very notable and comical descent indeed. The ideas,

It cer

nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly;" and though this definition stands in need of course of some allowance for the too sweeping cynicism of its author, it undoubtedly contains a large ingredient of truth. It is always, indeed, as unsafe to neglect a definition of Hobbes as a maxim of Rochefoucauld's. Neither shows us more than the "seamy side " of human natue, but it is human nature which they both show. The "passion of laughter "is usually something more than

66

words, is the satellite of humor and not of wit, save when wit- - as happens, however, more often perhaps than not is in humor's company; and that while, therefore, We laugh at the discom- the former is confined to a narrow and strictly defined domain, the latter ranges freely over all the incongruities of the world.

Hobbes's "sudden glory;" but this sudden glory is nearly always an ingredient in it, and is sometimes its sole constituent. I believe that it is so in the instance above quoted. fiture of this "guardian of his own honor," and glory in the sudden sense of superiority which it awakens in our minds. We rejoice to think that we have never ἐσθλοὶ μὲν γὰρ ἁπλῶς, παντοδαπῶς δὲ κακόι, laid ourselves open to so neat and ingenious an insult; and the mere fact that said the Greek gnomic poet of the essenno possible exercise of caution could have tial difference between the good and the saved the victim - the mere fact that no evil; and the same distinction may be enemy of sinecures could reasonably drawn between the unity of the material have foreseen any danger in describing of wit and the multiplicity of the material himself as the "guardian of his own of humor. Resemblance is a word of limhonor," - detracts nothing from the com-itation, but unlikeness, disparity, unfitplacency with which we contemplate hisness, are words implying the negation of dialectical overthrow. For our own "em-limiting qualities. A is one; but notinency " need not, to satisfy Hobbes's A is infinite, and humor is as illimitable definition, be founded on our own merit, as the space covered in scholastic logic nor the "infirmity of others on their by the universal negative. own fault: it is enough that circumstances have placed us in a position of superiority to another man, and that we are enabled to admire the suddenness and skill with which his imprudent utterances have been turned to his own confusion.

But in so far as this "sudden glory" enters into it, the example in question is another case of delight in incongruity of pleasure excited by the spectacle not of fitness but of unfitness. In other words, it is not the wit of the comparison between the two forms of sinecure, but the humor of the contrast between the self-glorifying intention of the anti-sinecurist's boasts and the humiliating use to which his adversary has contrived to put them that excites our mirth. And the same thing is observable in an indefinite number of instances instances which all tend to confirm the theory that humor and not wit is the true excitant of laughter; and that if and when laughter is excited by a witty comparison it will be found that the appeal to the risible faculty comes not from the intellectual shock which is produced by the discovery of resemblance between the two compared ideas, but from the sudden change of emotional temperature which is produced when we are compelled to associate great things with small, noble things with ignoble, serious things with trivial, and to think of objects thus dissimilar in point of dignity as in some other respects closely resembling each other.

The sum, then, of the matter appears to be this that it is by unfitness always, and by fitness never, that the emotion of laughter is stirred; that laughter, in other

Still it is not, of course, the extent of the field over which humor ranges, but the quality of its material, which is the really interesting thing. It is, indeed, one of the most mysterious phenomena of the mystery of being, that this keenest and most abiding of mental pleasures should be essentially and inseparably combined with the unfit, the incongruous

with, in fact, the imperfect in human life and in the constitution of the world. It is Carlyle, I think, who has somewhere defined humor as "a sympathy with the seamy side of things;" but the metaphor has, perhaps, somewhat of a tendency to obscure the truth. "Sympathy," in this connection, is doubtless not to be understood in its natural sense, as implying any admixture of compassion or pity. In that acceptation, of course, the sense of humor is neither the product of sympathy with, nor of antipathy to, the "seamy side of things" two perfectly well-known and well-marked mental attitudes of two different classes of mind, which, however, belong neither of them to the humorous order; for as there are minds too impatient of the imperfections of life to permit of their possessing a sense of humor, so there are minds too deeply moved by those imperfections to permit it either. The one type of character is the natural soil from which springs the visionary philanthropist and projector of Utopiasthe least humorous personage, probably, among mortal men; the other tends as naturally to beget the ascetic moralist and thinker, or the doer of good works for the love of God-the Pascals or the Vincent de Pauls (the first of which names alone

suffices to remind us how completely wit | analogue of humor to be found in any of may be dissociated from humor) the them. A lame couplet, an ill-constructed whole race, in short, of those eager and machine, a discordant note, a clumsy melancholy spirits upon whom the dark-statue, a picture "out of drawing," a ness of the world and of man's lot is ever bungled problem - these are not pleasurlowering unrelieved. But Carlyle's "sym- able to hear, or see, or study, but purely pathy with the seamy side of things" painful. If ever the pain that they give must, no doubt, be understood to mean is in any degree relieved, it is by their something quite different from a compas- chancing to appeal to the sense of humor sionate sense of the imperfections of life: on accidental grounds, and for reasons it means, beyond question, an actual en- bearing on relation to the various arts and joyment of these imperfections, a delight sciences to which they belong. In themin the seaminess for the sake of the seams. selves they are mere blots and failuresBut so explained, the phrase as greatly mere negations of the characteristic effect overstates the truth of the case as, upon which the work of the poet or the musithe other construction, it would understate cian, the painter, sculptor, mechanican, it; for it is unquestionably the fact that or mathematician is normally calculated the sense of humor is appealed to, and to produce. The sense of humor - the keenly appealed to, by circumstances and pleasure which humor awakens - stands situations in which it would be simply alone; it is wholly abnormal and disparate, diabolical to take pleasure: in which, in- completely sui generis; and we seek in deed, none but fiends could be seriously vain for any other account to give of its supposed to delight. It is impossible, for existence except that "it is felt." instance, for an Agnostic, possessed of But whatever mystery may surround its any sense of humor at all, to be uncon- origin and nature, its profound and abidscious of the humorous the powerfully ing consolations must be exultingly rec humorous - element underlying the whole ognized by all but those thrice unhappy relations of man with the unseen world beings to whom it has been denied. We and with his own unknown future. The need not say "gratefully" recognized; fun of the thing is, of course, disagreeably for really the endowment of man with a grim, but it is as genuine and unmistak- sense of humor seems no more than a fair able an appeal to one's sense of the ludi- equivalent for the gradual extinction of crous as ever was made; and being so, it his belief in immortality. After having cannot help producing the kind of pleas-been deluded for so many ages, it would ure which the recognition of the ludicrous have been hard indeed to have denied him always produces. But to say that we take pleasure in the existence and insolubility of an insoluble enigma, with which millions of human hearts are wrestling in agony every hour of the day, would be to make too horrible a charge against human nature. Moreover, it would be absurd on the face of it, since it is well known that the capacity of feeling most intensely on this subject is itself an extremely common accompaniment of the power of appreciat- | ing its humorous side.

The more closely, then, we examine the pleasure derived from the quality of humor, the more hopeless seems the attempt to find a place for it under any known category of human delights. Analysis simply lands us in a paradox, and there it leaves us. Wit has its analogues in halfa-dozen other products of the human intelligence: in poetry, in mechanics, in music, in the imitative arts of painting and sculpture, in the very processes of the mathematician. Fitness, the better if surprising and suddenly discovered is at the bottom of the pleasure which we derive from all of these. But there is no

the satisfaction of laughing at the hoax. As it is, evolution, the giver, has added this good gift to him for what evolution, the destroyer, has taken away. Our Lubbocks and Tylors have not yet definitely fixed for us the birth, and systematically traced out for us the growth, of the sense of humor in our race: but I presume that it would be quite undiscoverable in primitive man, and it certainly seems that, while it was but faintly developed and sparsely distributed among men of the "ages of faith," it has increased in strength and depth and dispersion with the progress of modern thought. It is assuredly stronger in these days in spite of a certain superficial lack of gaiety, than it has ever been before, and its pleasures are beyond doubt as well suited to the senectus mundi as is whist to the old age of man. We can say of it, indeed, as we can say of no other earthly delight, that it grows fuller with advancing years, that it is not blunted but sharpened by mental suffering, that it thrives even upon the ashes of despair. For whether there be moral enthusiasms they shall fail; wheth