now gone right to the end of the first of the three directions we
had to follow. Let us turn to the second and see where it will lead
us.

2. Our starting-point is again "something mechanical encrusted upon
the living." Where did the comic come from in this case? It came
from the fact that the living body became rigid, like a machine.
Accordingly, it seemed to us that the living body ought to be the
perfection of suppleness, the ever-alert activity of a principle
always at work. But this activity would really belong to the soul
rather than to the body. It would be the very flame of life, kindled
within us by a higher principle and perceived through the body, as
if through a glass. When we see only gracefulness and suppleness in
the living body, it is because we disregard in it the elements of
weight, of resistance, and, in a word, of matter; we forget its
materiality and think only of its vitality, a vitality which we
regard as derived from the very principle of intellectual and moral
life, Let us suppose, however, that our attention is drawn to this
material side of the body; that, so far from sharing in the
lightness and subtlety of the principle with which it is animated,
the body is no more in our eyes than a heavy and cumbersome vesture,
a kind of irksome ballast which holds down to earth a soul eager to
rise aloft. Then the body will become to the soul what, as we have
just seen, the garment was to the body itself--inert matter dumped
down upon living energy. The impression of the comic will be
produced as soon as we have a clear apprehension of this putting the
one on the other. And we shall experience it most strongly when we
are shown the soul TANTALISED by the needs of the body: on the one
hand, the moral personality with its intelligently varied energy,
and, on the other, the stupidly monotonous body, perpetually