memories of past ones! What would there be left of many of our
emotions were we to reduce them to the exact quantum of pure feeling
they contain, by subtracting from them all that is merely
reminiscence? Indeed, it seems possible that, after a certain age,
we become impervious to all fresh or novel forms of joy, and the
sweetest pleasures of the middle-aged man are perhaps nothing more
than a revival of the sensations of childhood, a balmy zephyr wafted
in fainter and fainter breaths by a past that is ever receding. In
any case, whatever reply we give to this broad question, one thing
is certain: there can be no break in continuity between the child's
delight in games and that of the grown-up person. Now, comedy is a
game, a game that imitates life. And since, in the games of the
child when working its dolls and puppets, many of the movements are
produced by strings, ought we not to find those same strings,
somewhat frayed by wear, reappearing as the threads that knot
together the situations in a comedy? Let us, then, start with the
games of a child, and follow the imperceptible process by which, as
he grows himself, he makes his puppets grow, inspires them with
life, and finally brings them to an ambiguous state in which,
without ceasing to be puppets, they have yet become human beings. We
thus obtain characters of a comedy type. And upon them we can test
the truth of the law of which all our preceding analyses gave an
inkling, a law in accordance with which we will define all broadly
comic situations in general. ANY ARRANGEMENT OF ACTS AND EVENTS IS
COMIC WHICH GIVES US, IN A SINGLE COMBINATION, THE ILLUSION OF LIFE
AND THE DISTINCT IMPRESSION OF A MECHANICAL ARRANGEMENT.

1. THE JACK-IN-THE-BOX.--As children we have all played with the
little man who springs out of his box. You squeeze him flat, he
jumps up again. Push him lower, and he shoots up still higher. Crush