duly disclosed in the course of our analysis.

V

Before going further, let us halt a moment and glance around. As we
hinted at the outset of this study, it would be idle to attempt to
derive every comic effect from one simple formula. The formula
exists well enough in a certain sense, but its development does not
follow a straightforward course. What I mean is that the process of
deduction ought from time to time to stop and study certain
culminating effects, and that these effects each appear as models
round which new effects resembling them take their places in a
circle. These latter are not deductions from the formula, but are
comic through their relationship with those that are. To quote
Pascal again, I see no objection, at this stage, to defining the
process by the curve which that geometrician studied under the name
of roulette or cycloid,--the curve traced by a point in the
circumference of a wheel when the carriage is advancing in a
straight line: this point turns like the wheel, though it advances
like the carriage. Or else we might think of an immense avenue such
as are to be seen in the forest of Fontainebleau, with crosses at
intervals to indicate the cross-ways: at each of these we shall walk
round the cross, explore for a while the paths that open out before
us, and then return to our original course. Now, we have just
reached one of these mental crossways. Something mechanical
encrusted on the living, will represent a cross at which we must
halt, a central image from which the imagination branches off in
different directions. What are these directions? There appear to be
three main ones. We will follow them one after the other, and then
continue our onward course.