of its development. An idea is something that grows, buds, blossoms
and ripens from the beginning to the end of a speech. It never
halts, never repeats itself. It must be changing every moment, for
to cease to change would be to cease to live. Then let gesture
display a like animation! Let it accept the fundamental law of life,
which is the complete negation of repetition! But I find that a
certain movement of head or arm, a movement always the same, seems
to return at regular intervals. If I notice it and it succeeds in
diverting my attention, if I wait for it to occur and it occurs when
I expect it, then involuntarily I laugh. Why? Because I now have
before me a machine that works automatically. This is no longer
life, it is automatism established in life and imitating it. It
belongs to the comic.

This is also the reason why gestures, at which we never dreamt of
laughing, become laughable when imitated by another individual. The
most elaborate explanations have been offered for this extremely
simple fact. A little reflection, however, will show that our mental
state is ever changing, and that if our gestures faithfully followed
these inner movements, if they were as fully alive as we, they would
never repeat themselves, and so would keep imitation at bay. We
begin, then, to become imitable only when we cease to be ourselves.
I mean our gestures can only be imitated in their mechanical
uniformity, and therefore exactly in what is alien to our living
personality. To imitate any one is to bring out the element of
automatism he has allowed to creep into his person. And as this is
the very essence of the ludicrous, it is no wonder that imitation
gives rise to laughter.

Still, if the imitation of gestures is intrinsically laughable, it