striving after reciprocal adaptation.  Society will therefore be suspicious of all inelasticity of character, of mind and even of body, because it is the possible sign of a slumbering activity as well as of an activity with separatist tendencies, that inclines to swerve from the common centre round which society gravitates:  in short, because it is the sign of an eccentricity.  And yet, society cannot intervene at this stage by material repression, since it is not affected in a material fashion.  It is confronted with something that makes it uneasy, but only as a symptom—­scarcely a threat, at the very most a gesture.  A gesture, therefore, will be its reply.  Laughter must be something of this kind, a sort of social gesture.  By the fear which it inspires, it restrains eccentricity, keeps constantly awake and in mutual contact certain activities of a secondary order which might retire into their shell and go to sleep, and, in short, softens down whatever the surface of the social body may retain of mechanical inelasticity.  Laughter, then, does not belong to the province of esthetics alone, since unconsciously (and even immorally in many particular instances) it pursues a utilitarian aim of general improvement.  And yet there is something esthetic about it, since the comic comes into being just when society and the individual, freed from the worry of self-preservation, begin to regard themselves as works of art.  In a word, if a circle be drawn round those actions and dispositions—­implied in individual or social life—­to which their natural consequences bring their own penalties, there remains outside this sphere of emotion and struggle—­and within a neutral zone in which man simply exposes himself to man’s curiosity—­a certain rigidity of body, mind and character, that society would still like to get rid of in order to obtain from its members the greatest possible degree of elasticity and sociability.  This rigidity is the comic, and laughter is its corrective.

Still, we must not accept this formula as a definition of the comic.  It is suitable only for cases that are elementary, theoretical and perfect, in which the comic is free from all adulteration.  Nor do we offer it, either, as an explanation.  We prefer to make it, if you will, the leitmotiv which is to accompany all our explanations.  We must ever keep it in mind, though without dwelling on it too much, somewhat as a skilful fencer must think of the discontinuous movements of the lesson whilst his body is given up to the continuity of the fencing-match.  We will now endeavour to reconstruct the sequence of comic forms, taking up again the thread that leads from the horseplay of a clown up to the most refined effects of comedy, following this thread in its often unforeseen windings, halting at intervals to look around, and finally getting back, if possible, to the point at which the thread is dangling and where we shall perhaps find—­since the comic oscillates between life and art—­the general relation that art bears to life.