In other cases, again, the release comes as an interruption of a solemn occasion by the intrusion of something disconnected, and, by contrast, trifling. The tittering in a church at a small _contretemps_ has been our illustration. There is incongruity here between two orders of ideas, if you like; or, as I should prefer to put it, between two levels of interest. For the point is that the interruption must seem ludicrous by exhibiting clearly a trifling character, by powerfully suggesting a non-reverent point of view. As hinted above, these two sources of laughter, a sudden oncoming of gladness and a relief from restraint, are closely connected. The unexpected presentation which gladdens us seems commonly to bring a kind of relief. This is certainly true of all cases in which the preceding state was one of conscious depression and ennui. The laughter of the young, in response to our often cumbrous attempts to amuse them, may be an escape from a certain strain which belongs to a state of ennui, from the confinement or restraint which the poverty of their surroundings at the moment imposes on them.[81] {142} There is another conceivable way of bringing together the effect of sudden gladness and relief from restraint. It has been urged that all laughable things affect us by way of a shock of surprise followed by a sense of relief. Leigh Hunt, for example, thinks that when we laugh at something we receive a shock of surprise which gives _a check to the breath_, a check which is in proportion to the vivacity of the surprise; and that our laughter is a relief from this.[82] This theory embodies a sound physiological principle, one which we have already adopted, but it seems to go too far. As I have tried to show, a shock of surprise, as we ordinarily understand the expression, is not an invariable antecedent of our response to laughable things. On the other hand, it may be urged with some reason that even in cases where this full shock of the unexpected is wanting, there is a moment of strain as the presentation affronts the custom-trained eye, and that the laughter is the expression of the condoning of this affront, the acceptance of it as harmless play.