Such a stimulus is also mildly operative in the amusement we derive from masquerades and other pretences. The charm of juggling and sleight-of-hand tricks is dependent on the unexpected performance of an apparently impossible task or the solution of an apparently insurmountable difficulty. As an instance of the surprise whose conquest forms a part of our amusement and which at first gives us a shock which has something of superstition in it, I will mention that which I felt on receiving “in the very nick of time,” as it were, the article of Hall and Allin’s, to which I have so often referred, just as I was about to begin my attempt to analyze the comic. Punning, the introductory step to wit, is enjoyed by children too young to appreciate true wit. It consists in an incongruous association of ideas which at first amazes and then delights. Wit presents ideas in unexpected associations full of suggestion which prove either to be illusory or to conceal some jesting or serious meaning. Finally, we may include in his list some lying tales and extravagances which are too grotesque to represent any intention to deceive. In all these instances we can trace the combination of fighting play with the contrast of ideas. The former, however, possesses here a deeper and more subjective significance, since it is no longer inspired by external inferiority, but by the necessity for overcoming the shock which at the first blush staggers and overwhelms us, but which it enables us to shake off immediately. We can thus speak of an offensive and a defensive triumph; in the former the laugh has something of the character of an attack, while in the latter we are warding off surprise. Yet the contrast of ideas coming in here makes it difficult to maintain this distinction clearly. Inner imitation falls in many cases into the background or entirely out of view, indicating that we are no longer dealing with æsthetic enjoyment. In the simpler cases contrast between stressed attention and its sudden unexpected release becomes the most prominent feature, while in others it is the contrast of opposing qualities which the object really possesses or has ascribed to it. Summing up now the important data we find that enjoyment of the comic depends in the large majority of cases, though not in all, on the union of fighting play with the idea of contrast. This kind of fighting play naturally falls into two distinct groups, involving everything comic. The one is essentially composed of aggressive fighting plays, and makes prominent the contrast between inner imitation and the triumphant feeling of superiority. In the other group we find more defensive fighting play, and the idea of contrast takes the form primarily of sudden relaxation of the stressed attention and the impression of contradiction. That the first group represents an earlier stage of development from which the second is evolved, as Sully and Ribot intimate, is not easily proved. Children exhibit both very early.