We note also that this perceived groundlessness of the action becomes a large element in later forms of play, as wit and humour, but the pleasure is plainly based on the power and the superiority of intelligence implied. It amuses the tyrant to throw his companions into mortal fear by the slightest suggestion, the smaller the occasion the more amusing the fright. And in general the slighter the real cause in relation to the effect produced, the more acute the pleasure, by reason of the supremacy thereby emphasized. It is always more amusing to scare a child by a slight movement of a finger than by a vigorous act of the whole body. It seems to me that it is by this association that disproportion, incongruity, irrelevance, however induced, become in themselves amusing, ludicrous, laughable. So the incongruous, in which I have no part whatever, becomes a comic spectacle and the basis of all comedy, yet also of the tragic and tragedy. In the tragic the discordance between what is and what ought to be, instead of pleasing, pains. What is comic to a coarse mind may seem tragic to the refined. A bird, distressed by the death of its mate, offering it food, might amuse a savage or a boy, but must be a pathetic sight to a civilized and cultured man, though both might be amused to see a child presenting food to its doll. Not only may the incongruous which is comparatively unrelated to me be amusing as well as that which I myself bring about, but even when I am the victim I may be highly delighted by the intrinsic disproportion of my experience to the exciting cause. With some persons, perhaps rather few in number, the next best thing to playing a joke is having one played on them. This amusement at oneself occurs even among savages. When Stanley was on the Congo, he was at one time greatly annoyed by the number of native visitors. In vain he tried to repel them, but one morning when a crowd had assembled at the river side, at some little distance, waiting an opportunity to board his vessel, some of his men put on lion skins which were at hand, and acted the part so well that the intending visitors fled in abject terror. Having retired to a safe distance they looked back to see the men walking the deck with the lion skins in their hands and laughing most heartily. Seeing then the groundlessness of their alarm the whole crowd burst into roars of laughter and shouted in merriment for a long time. Exhibitions of fright, we may remark, seem to be especially amusing to savages, as when an assembly of Africans of the lowest type went into ecstasies of uproarious delight on seeing a stereopticon picture of a frightened negro hastily climbing a tree to get out of the way of the gaping jaws of a crocodile.