A last attempt to escape this theoretic dualism would be to urge that the two principles rule in distinct realms. In that of the _ludicrous_ proper, it might be urged, we have to do with the intellectual principle: it is only when the sphere is enlarged to include all that is laughable, and so the region of the _ridiculous_, that the principle of lowered dignity comes in.[77] Theorists may insist on such distinctions, but it seems to me that they cannot be maintained as hard and fast boundaries. As has been shown above, laughable things do not all affect us in quite the same way. A spice of malice comes into much of the laughter that greets the spectacle, say of a bit of successful trickery; yet this does not make the experience substantially different from that of enjoying some striking example of incongruity, say a good Irish “bull”. When the note of derision begins to sound clearly, there is of course no longer any suggestion of an effect of the laughable pure and simple. The attempt to analyse our perceptions of the laughable {139} in the hope of discovering some single uniting principle has proved to be abortive. We find in the end that two causes of laughter remain on our hands.[78] The most promising way of bringing the several laughable qualities and aspects of things under one descriptive head would seem to be to say that they all illustrate a presentation of something in the nature of a defect, a failure to satisfy some standard-requirement, as that of law or custom, provided that it is small enough to be viewed as a harmless plaything. Much, at least, of our laughter at the odd as opposed to the customary, at the deformed, at failure in good manners and the other observances of social life, at defects of intelligence and of character, at fixes and misfortunes—so far as the situation implies want of foresight—at the lack of a perception of the fitness of things, and at other laughable features, may undoubtedly be regarded as directed to something _which fails to comply with a social requirement_, yet is so trifling that we do not feel called upon to judge the shortcoming severely. I am sure that to look at the laughable in this way is an indispensable step in the construction of a theory of the subject. We must, as we shall see presently, supplement the common mode of dealing with laughter as an abstract psychological problem, by bringing into view its _social_ function. Yet this does not necessarily mean that the consideration of this function will lead us straightway to a simple theory of the ludicrous. As hinted in the preceding chapter, we may easily exaggerate the more serious function of laughter, and this point will be made clearer in subsequent chapters.