(7) Another group of laughable presentations has a certain analogy with the last. Popular mirth has made a {102} prominent target of men’s _pretences_. To peep behind the mask and seize the make-believe is a sure means of providing ourselves with laughter. So large, indeed, is the part of affectation and disguise in social life, that not only the ruder popular art, but comedy has made them one chief source of its entertainment. The flavour of the laughter varies greatly according to the moral complexion of the pretence. Seeing through the transparent make-believe of the child sets us laughing in one key; the detection of the half-unconscious humbug, in another; and that of the artful impostor, in yet another. That the appreciation of this embodiment of the laughable is relative, may not be at once evident. Yet a glance at the numerous little hypocrisies not only allowed, but even exacted by polite society, will suffice to show how the standard may vary. The dulling influence of use is exceptionally apparent here. The shams of life cease to amuse us—save a very few—when they are numerous and ubiquitous. The Englishman who laughs at the little pretences of society abroad, may be quite incapable of discerning the amusing side of quite similar simulations and dissimulations in the ways of his own society. Here, too, as in the case of moral blemishes generally, the impulse will be restrained by the tendency to judge seriously, and by the higher degrees of moral sensitiveness. Men of easy morals will laugh cynically, perhaps, at forms of imposture which would shock those of a finer moral texture. (8) We may now pass to a species of the laughable which has a more markedly intellectual character. Among the exhibitions of human quality none appears to have had its ludicrous mark more widely recognised than that of _want of knowledge or of skill_. Here, again, our friend, the clown {103} of the circus, comes to our aid. The spectacle of his futile attempts to imitate the exploits of the skilled horseman and other experts stirs the risibility of the multitude to one of its _fortissimo_ outbursts. Ignorance of locality, especially when it lands a traveller in a mess, is a common source of merriment to the rustic onlooker. Children, savages, and all simple folk delight in such exhibitions of ignorance and incompetence. The more restrained amusement of “society” at the want of _savoir faire_ in the uninitiated shows that this enjoyment of the spectacle of ignorance by the well-informed is widespread. The value of the spectacle is evinced by the fact that when in argument a man desires to win the laugh of onlookers to his side, he will do his best to show up a laughable degree of ignorance in his fellow-disputant. The presence of the expert in a gathering of bucolics is a situation pregnant with possibilities of mirthful enjoyment. Let the delightful discussions of Mr. Hardy’s Wessex folk suffice as illustration.