That the effects of the laughable cannot all be brought under the head of means of social correction or improvement, {140} may, even at this stage of our inquiry, be seen by considering another point, to which we will now turn. No analysis of the qualities of things in which the laughable resides will enable us to account for the mirthful effects of these, even while we remain within the limits of what is commonly recognised as the ludicrous. This has been illustrated in the preceding chapter, and a word or two more may suffice to make it clear. I have tried to show that some at least of the spectacles that shake us with laughter do so by satisfying something within us akin to the child’s delight in the gloriously new and extravagant. This, again, means that these spectacles make appeal to that primitive form of laughter, already illustrated, which is called forth by some sudden increase of joy. Our rejoicing at the sight of the clown’s droll costume and funny movements has in it something of the laughing joy of the savage when he is shown some mechanical wonder of Europe, something of the laughing joy of the infant at the sudden invasion of his nursery wall by a dancing sunbeam.[79] A little more reflection on the groups of laughable things will show that other ingredients of this primitive laughter are present in our appreciation of the ludicrous. Dr. Bain finds himself compelled to eke out the deficiencies of the Hobbesian principle by urging that the spectacle of degradation may move us to laughter, not merely by exciting the feeling of power or superiority (as Hobbes said), but by supplying a sudden release from a state of constraint. The abandonment of the serious attitude in church when some trivial incident occurs is an instance of a lowering of the dignity of a thing, or an occasion, which refreshes {141} us with a sense of liberation.[80] This idea carries us much farther than the author thinks. The joyous deliverance from pressure and constraint will, I think, be found to reinforce other mental agencies in many cases of ludicrous presentation in which no degradation is discoverable. Sometimes the constraint is very severe; witness the effect when the narrator of a funny story knows how to wind up the emotion of fear to just the right pitch in order to give us the delicious run down of the mental works when the funny _dénouement_ bursts upon us. Here our laughter has a large support in the joyous relief from nervous tension.