Any serious attempt to illustrate the variety of the sources of men’s ordinary laughter must, I think, find a place for this group. Among men, and one may add the gods, the uncovering of that which decency insists on hiding is a powerful provocative of laughter. In their more direct and potent workings indecent presentations appeal to the loud mirthfulness of the coarse mind, to the _gros rire_ of the man tossing the _gros sel_, as Mr. Meredith has it. They bulk among the jocosities of savage tribes—or at least many of these—and of the less refined among civilised societies. Culture is a great restraining influence here. Yet it would be an error to suppose that educated men who are also of the laughter-loving are destitute of this sensibility. The impulse to greet merrily an allusion to the indecent, when it comes unexpectedly, taking us off our guard, so to speak, and when it is neither too pronounced nor enlarged upon, is, I believe, universal among men who laugh. The laughter at a suggestion of what not only civilised but even savage society seeks to veil from view would seem to be most naturally regarded as a case of the improper, or breach of accepted rule. To make reference to these matters is to break through a well-understood social convention. This breach, moreover, carries with it a plump descent into the depths of the undignified; for since society has willed to throw the veil here any attempt to uplift it implies something shameful. The disgrace falls on the person who is the subject of the allusion—in all cases where there is a definable person concerned. In others, where {100} the allusion is directed to a common “infirmity” of human nature, the indignity done is, of course, more widespread. Not only so, we feel on hearing such an allusion that there is a lapse of dignity all round in speaker and hearers alike. The blush of the refined hearer attests this feeling of shame.