Finally, a bare allusion may be made to the way in which the laughter of relief from emotional or other strain comes into our appreciation of the laughable in things. The amusing aspect of all lapses from dignity in religious and other ceremonies cannot, I believe, be understood merely as an illustration of an inconsequence and irrelevance, but must be connected with the powerful tendency to throw off a heavy and depressing mental load by a moment’s mirth. The laughter at what is lawless, and still more at the indecent and the profane, certainly derives a part of its gusto from a sense of relief from restraint, which is a main ingredient in the enjoyment of all license. But the fuller discussion of the way in which the primal sources of laughter contribute to the impressions we receive from laughable objects belongs to another chapter. {119} CHAPTER V. THEORIES OF THE LUDICROUS. Our survey of laughable things has led us to recognise certain groups which appear to induce the laughing mood: each presenting its special variety of laughable feature. One group may be said, _primâ facie_, to exhibit mischances, another some form of human defect, another, again, something of the misfitting or incongruous, and so forth. We may now advance to the theoretic problem of unifying and explaining these varieties of the laughable. Here, for the second time, we must touch on the views propounded by authorities on the subject under the name of Theories of the Ludicrous. Happily, it is not necessary to burden the reader with a full account of these. We shall of course pass by all doctrines deduced from _a priori_ metaphysical conceptions, and confine ourselves to those which make a show, at least, of grounding themselves on an analysis of facts. Of these I shall select two or three typical theories which come to us with the claims of distinguished authorship. We shall test these by examining how far they succeed in comprehending the diversity of fact now before us. 1. The first of these typical theories localises the secret force of the laughable in something unworthy or degraded in the object. According to this view, the function of laughter is to accompany and give voice to what may be called the derogatory impulse in man, his tendency to look {120} out for and to rejoice over what is mean and undignified. This may be called the Moral Theory, or Theory of Degradation.