It is the same if we start with the other or Moral principle. Incongruities which are lapses from standard ideas may certainly, as already conceded, be regarded as degradations. And it may be possible to show that in all cases of incongruity _some_ loss of dignity is logically implied. Yet even if it be so, the psychological contention will still stand that in many cases of incongruity, including our old friend the child in the father’s hat, we have a full sense of relishing the incongruity and yet none at all of enjoying a degradation. Where is the degradation in the spectacle of a crow on a sheep’s back which may flood a child with mirth? In truth, if our theorists had only condescended to take note of so small a matter as children’s enjoyment of the world’s fun, the hypothesis of degradation could never have stood its ground so long. Yet another way of evading a glaring dualism may suggest itself. Allowing that the two principles are each valid, we might, at least, be able to combine them in the form of a single generalisation. This is what is done by Hazlitt, for example, who, though he finds the essence of the laughable in the incongruous, defines the ludicrous as involving disappointment of expectation _by something having deformity or (something) inconvenient_, that is _what is contrary to the customary_ and desirable.[74] Herbert Spencer’s expression, a “descending incongruity,” is clearly a very similar mode of combining the principles.[75] Lipps’ theory of incongruity, with its distinction of a little, and a belittling presentation, might also, I think, easily be made to illustrate another mode of such combination. More recently Fouillée {138} and others have urged that the one principle in a manner supplements the other.[76] It is evident, however, that this apparent mode of escape will not avail us. The combined theory implies that all cases of the laughable are at once incongruities and degradations, that is to say, perceived and felt to be such. In dealing with the principles separately, however, we have seen that, in the case of each alike, there are well-recognised examples of the laughable to which it does not apply. This conclusion manifestly carries with it the proposition that there are cases to which a combination of the principles does not apply.