That, _prima facie_, we have to do in this case with a real difference in the mode of perception, seems indisputable; let the reader compare the effect of the two spectacles, a man wearing an extravagantly tall hat, and a small boy wearing a hat of the height of a man’s; or, again, a tiny man alone, and a short man by the side of a tall woman. In some instances, indeed, we may see that there is an intrinsic repugnance between the parts of a presentation, as when two colours in a woman’s dress violently clash, or when a statement is palpably self-contradictory. Here there seems to be no reference, however vague, to previous experience or the customary. At the same time we may easily see that this field of the internally incongruent is a very narrow one. Much of what looks like this turns out, on closer inspection, to be, in part at least, externally determined. This is true of what we call a bizarre mixture of incongruent elements in mode of attire or in manners; for it is experience and the habits of social life which dispose our minds to regard them as foreign one to the other. Much of our mirthful gratification at exhibitions of the incongruous arises through a perception of the intrusion of something foreign into a situation. When, for example, we observe a {135} rather sprightly gesture in the pulpit, we mentally view this action against a background which is the situation of the moment. Now this situation is by no means wholly presented: it is a presentation greatly enlarged and profoundly modified by the addition of a general significance. The attitude of the spectator’s mind, face to face with the scene, is determined by apperceptive tendencies which imply a readiness to expect _a certain kind_ of behaviour. And this, again, evidently means that certain directions of imaginative activity, and something in the nature of a “generic image” and of conceptual thought, are stirring. This effect of experience and apperceptive habits in modifying our perceptions is probably illustrated in all our appreciations of the amusingly incongruous. To revert once more to the spectacle of the man’s hat on the child’s head, may we not say that in this case, also, we envisage the hat as an interloper in the situation—the sweet sanctum of the nursery?