To begin with, much of the laughable illustrated above may be regarded as an expression in persons or things of the play-mood which seizes the spectator by way of a sympathetic resonance. Examples have been given in the laughter excited by the spectacle of aimless actions which have the look of frolicsomeness. As our name “word-play” clearly suggests, verbal jokes are recognised as an outcome of the play-mood which throws off for the nonce the proper serious treatment of language. Again, the odd when it reaches the height of the extravagant has an unmistakable look of play-license. Much of the amusing effect of disguise, of pretence, including certain kinds of “aping,” appears to involve some recognition of the make-believe aspect of play. The disorderly, even when it applies to a room, is, to say the least, powerfully suggestive of the ways of rompish play. Many irregularities of thought and action readily take on the look of a self-abandonment to play; for example, irrelevances and confusions of idea, droll, aimless-looking actions, such as going off the scene and coming back again and again, {150} senseless repetitions of actions by the same person or by others—a common entertainment of the circus and the popular play-house. As a last example, we may instance the effect of the incongruous when it assumes a trifling aspect on a solemn occasion. This is surely amusing because it is so like the interruptions of child’s play. How far can this principle be carried? May not a good deal of the amusingly incongruous in behaviour and in circumstances, of intellectual and of moral collapse, when this wears the aspect of folly, be said to affect us as an expression of the play-mood? And is not our amusement at the sight of certain mischances which have the look of a tripping up, an outwitting or befooling, either by others or by circumstance or “fate,” traceable to a perception of something indistinguishable from playful teasing? Yet we must not rely on this expression of the playful too much. There seem to be many cases of the laughable, for example, amusing vices, absences of mind, and all irrelevances which bring in the solemn where it is out of place, where that which is expressed is a mood the very opposite of the playful. Nor do we need to push this principle to an extreme. Even if the laughable spectacle does not wear the look of a play-challenge, it can bring up the playful mood in the spectator in another way. It may so present its particular feature as to throw us off our serious balance, and by a sweet compulsion force us to play with it rather than to consider it seriously. A brief reference to our store of laughable things may suffice to illustrate this.