obstructing everything with its machine-like obstinacy. The more
paltry and uniformly repeated these claims of the body, the more
striking will be the result. But that is only a matter of degree,
and the general law of these phenomena may be formulated as follows:
ANY INCIDENT IS COMIC THAT CALLS OUR ATTENTION TO THE PHYSICAL IN A
PERSON WHEN IT IS THE MORAL SIDE THAT IS CONCERNED.

Why do we laugh at a public speaker who sneezes just at the most
pathetic moment of his speech? Where lies the comic element in this
sentence, taken from a funeral speech and quoted by a German
philosopher: "He was virtuous and plump"? It lies in the fact that
our attention is suddenly recalled from the soul to the body.
Similar instances abound in daily life, but if you do not care to
take the trouble to look for them, you have only to open at random a
volume of Labiche, and you will be almost certain to light upon an
effect of this kind. Now, we have a speaker whose most eloquent
sentences are cut short by the twinges of a bad tooth; now, one of
the characters who never begins to speak without stopping in the
middle to complain of his shoes being too small, or his belt too
tight, etc. A PERSON EMBARRASSED BY HIS BODY is the image suggested
to us in all these examples. The reason that excessive stoutness is
laughable is probably because it calls up an image of the same kind.
I almost think that this too is what sometime makes bashfulness
somewhat ridiculous. The bashful man rather gives the impression of
a person embarrassed by his body, looking round for some convenient
cloak-room in which to deposit it.

This is just why the tragic poet is so careful to avoid anything
calculated to attract attention to the material side of his heroes.
No sooner does anxiety about the body manifest itself than the