natural the explanation of the cause, the more comic is the effect.
Automatism, inelasticity, habit that has been contracted and
maintained, are clearly the causes why a face makes us laugh. But
this effect gains in intensity when we are able to connect these
characteristics with some deep-seated cause, a certain fundamental
absentmindedness, as though the soul had allowed itself to be
fascinated and hypnotised by the materiality of a simple action.

We shall now understand the comic element in caricature. However
regular we may imagine a face to be, however harmonious its lines
and supple its movements, their adjustment is never altogether
perfect: there will always be discoverable the signs of some
impending bias, the vague suggestion of a possible grimace, in short
some favourite distortion towards which nature seems to be
particularly inclined. The art of the caricaturist consists in
detecting this, at times, imperceptible tendency, and in rendering
it visible to all eyes by magnifying it. He makes his models
grimace, as they would do themselves if they went to the end of
their tether. Beneath the skin-deep harmony of form, he divines the
deep-seated recalcitrance of matter. He realises disproportions and
deformations which must have existed in nature as mere inclinations,
but which have not succeeded in coming to a head, being held in
check by a higher force. His art, which has a touch of the
diabolical, raises up the demon who had been overthrown by the
angel. Certainly, it is an art that exaggerates, and yet the
definition would be very far from complete were exaggeration alone
alleged to be its aim and object, for there exist caricatures that
are more lifelike than portraits, caricatures in which the
exaggeration is scarcely noticeable, whilst, inversely, it is quite
possible to exaggerate to excess without obtaining a real