Perhaps we shall the better see how theorists have been wont to ignore and to misunderstand the laughing experiences of the plain man if we examine at some length {9} the mode of dealing with the subject adopted by a writer who holds a high place among contemporary psychologists. Prof. Lipps has recently elaborated a theory of the ludicrous, illustrating it at some length.[7] This theory may be described as a modification of Kant’s, which places the cause of laughter in “the sudden transformation of a tense expectation into nothing”. According to Lipps, we have the “comic” when “the little” measures itself with something else and so steps into the daylight. There is a mental movement (Vorstellungsbewegung) from a presentation relatively great or important to one relatively little or unimportant; and the impression of the comic depends on the nullification of the latter through its contrariety to the former and the disappointment which this involves. What may be called the belittling idea—which the reader must bear in mind is the important one—always comes first, the belittled or nullified one, always second. In order to illustrate his point he takes among other examples that of a hat on the wrong head. A man topped by a child’s small cap, and a child covered with a man’s big hat are, he tells us, equally comical. But the reason is different in the two cases. In the first, starting with the perception of the worthy man, we expect an adequate head-covering, and this expectation is nullified by the obstinate presence of the tiny cap. Here, then, the funny feature, the belittled thing, is the diminutive cap. In the second case, however, the movement of thought is just the reverse. We here set out with the perception of the headgear, not with that of its wearer. It is the dignified man’s hat that now {10} first fixes our attention, and it is the obtrusion of the child beneath when we expect the proper wearer which is the comical feature. In other words, when a man puts on a baby’s cap it is the cap which is absurd, when a baby dons his father’s cylinder it is the baby which is absurd. This is ingenious, one must confess, but does it not involve some twisting of facts? Would the unphilosophic humorist recognise this account of the ways of laughter? Has this account the note of familiarity with these ways? Let us see.