The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

The second species of the ludicrous follows, as we have mentioned, the opposite path from the abstract conception to the real or perceptible things thought through it. But this now brings to light any incongruity with the conception which was overlooked, and hence arises an absurdity, and therefore in the practical sphere a foolish action. Since the play requires action, this species of the ludicrous is essential to comedy. Upon this depends the observation of Yoltaire : " Tai cm remarquer aux spectacles, qu'il tie s'&tve presque jamais de ces e'clats de rire universels, qu'a I 'occasion cCune m^prise" {Preface de L Enfant Prodigue). The following may serve as examples of this species of the ludicrous. When some one had declared that he was fond of walking alone, an Austrian said to him : " You like walking alone ; so do I : therefore we can go together." Ee starts from the conception, " A pleasure which two ove they can enjoy in common," and subsumes under t the very case which excludes community. Further, he servant who rubbed a worn sealskin in his master's )ox with Macassar oil, so that it might become covered nth hair again ; in doing which he started from the coneption, " Macassar oil makes hair grow." The soldiers in he guard-room who allowed a prisoner who was brought 1 to join in their game of cards, then quarrelled with im for cheating, and turned him out. They let themilves be led by the general conception, " Bad companions

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are turned out," and forget that he is also a prisoner, ijt^ one whom they ought to hold fast. Two young peasants had loaded their gun with coarse shot, which they wished to extract, in order to substitute fine, without losing the powder. So one of them put the mouth of the barrel in his hat, which he took between his legs, and said to the other : " Now you pull the trigger slowly, slowly, slowly ; then the shot will come first.

He starts from the conception, " Prolonging the cause prolongs the effect. Most of the actions of Don Quixote are also cases in point, for he subsumes the realities he encounters under conceptions drawn from the romances of chivalry, from which they are very different. For example, in order to support the oppressed he frees the galley slaves.

Properly all Miinchhausenisms are also of this nature, only they are not actions which are performed, but impossibilities, which arc passed off upon the hearer as having really happened.

Ir them the fact is always so conceived that when it L« thought merely in the abstract, and therefore comparatively a priori, it appears possible and plausible ; bu afterwards, if we come down to the perception of the parti cular case, thus a posteriori the impossibility of the thinr indeed the absurdity of the assumption, is brought iut prominence, and excites laughter through the eviden incongruity of what is perceived and what is though For example, when the melodies frozen up in the posi horn are thawed in the warm room — when Munchhausei sitting upon a tree during a hard frost, draws up h knife which has dropped to the ground by the frozen j< of his own water, &c.

Such is also the story of the t* lions who broke down the partition between them durir the night and devoured each other in their rage, so that the morning there was nothing to be found but the tv tails.

There are also cases of the ludicrous where the conce tion under which the perceptible facts are brought do not require to be expressed or signified, but comes in

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consciousness itself through the association of ideas. The laughter into which Garrick burst in the middle of playing tragedy because a butcher in the front of the pit, who had taken off his wig to wipe the sweat from his head, placed the wig for a while upon his large dog, who stood facing the stage with his fore paws resting on the pit railings, was occasioned by the fact that Garrick started from the conception of a spectator, which was added in his own mind. This is the reason why certain animal forms, such as apes, kangaroos, jumping-hares, &c, sometimes appear to us ludicrous because something about them resembling man leads us to subsume them under the conception of the human form, and starting from this we perceive their incongruity with it.