George Eliot, to quote her again, makes one of her philosophic characters declare that a liking for Bellini’s music “indicates a puerile state of culture.” Certainly the liking for practical jokes is an even more certain indication of this condition. And “puerile” is an aptly chosen adjective, since the practical joke is boyish; and boys are pitiably uncivilized. Until they tame their native energy they are callous to the sufferings of others and they even enjoy cruelties they inflict in the spontaneous expression of their thereby demonstrated superiority. Just as the Clown in the pantomime butters the slide so that the Pantaloon shall slip and tumble down tumultuously, so the boy in real life delights in disguising the frozen pavement with scattered snow so that the unsuspecting gentleman in spectacles will make a violent and vain struggle to keep his balance. This evokes joyful shouts from the youthful perpetrators of the unkindly act. If a grown-up happens to witness the mishap he is not moved to laughter; his immediate impulse is to go to the aid of the elderly victim. Yet this same grown-up when he is one of the audience at a pantomime reverts to the puerile stage of culture and becomes a child again; for the two hours’ traffic of the stage he is subdued to what he gazes at; and he may be moved to loud merriment by deeds which, seen in the street, would cause him instantly to summon the police. He laughingly approves of the unprovoked assassinations of Punch. We are assured by scientific investigators that civilization is only a thin veneer at best and that beneath the courtesy of the most civilized society there lie dormant the archaic instincts of primitive man. However remote we may think ourselves from our probably arboreal ancestor, the beast within us is never dead; and he is ever ready to rouse himself from his long slumber and to put us to shame sometimes by his blood-lust and sometimes by his monkey-tricks. The scientists also assert that every one of us, from his conception to his coming of age, passes through the successive stages of the evolution of mankind, slowly rising year by year from savagery to barbarism and from barbarism to civilization (supposing that he is lucky enough to progress so far). If this must be admitted, then we need not be surprized that the audiences in our theaters can be interested by wit which is juvenile and by humor which is primitive. These audiences are made up of all sorts and conditions of men, in every stage of development. Even if we assume that most of these spectators are civilized (perhaps a precarious assumption), we cannot doubt that only a few of them have attained to a high level of culture; and by this very attainment these more advanced members of the audience are separated from the main body, which has not progressed in its preferences so far away from its ruder and cruder progenitors.