1. In the first place, this view of the mechanical and the living
dovetailed into each other makes us incline towards the vaguer image
of SOME RIGIDITY OR OTHER applied to the mobility of life, in an
awkward attempt to follow its lines and counterfeit its suppleness.
Here we perceive how easy it is for a garment to become ridiculous.
It might almost be said that every fashion is laughable in some
respect. Only, when we are dealing with the fashion of the day, we
are so accustomed to it that the garment seems, in our mind, to form
one with the individual wearing it. We do not separate them in
imagination. The idea no longer occurs to us to contrast the inert
rigidity of the covering with the living suppleness of the object
covered: consequently, the comic here remains in a latent condition.
It will only succeed in emerging when the natural incompatibility is
so deep-seated between the covering and the covered that even an
immemorial association fails to cement this union: a case in point
is our head and top hat. Suppose, however, some eccentric individual
dresses himself in the fashion of former times: our attention is
immediately drawn to the clothes themselves, we absolutely
distinguish them from the individual, we say that the latter IS
DISGUISING HIMSELF,--as though every article of clothing were not a
disguise!--and the laughable aspect of fashion comes out of the
shadow into the light.

Here we are beginning to catch a faint glimpse of the highly
intricate difficulties raised by this problem of the comic. One of
the reasons that must have given rise to many erroneous or
unsatisfactory theories of laughter is that many things are comic de
jure without being comic de facto, the continuity of custom having
deadened within them the comic quality. A sudden dissolution of