We will now pass from the comic element in forms to that in gestures and movements.  Let us at once state the law which seems to govern all the phenomena of this kind.  It may indeed be deduced without any difficulty from the considerations stated above.  The attitudes, gestures and movements of the human body are laughable in exact proportion as that body reminds us of A mere machine.  There is no need to follow this law through the details of its immediate applications, which are innumerable.  To verify it directly, it would be sufficient to study closely the work of comic artists, eliminating entirely the element of caricature, and omitting that portion of the comic which is not inherent in the drawing itself.  For, obviously, the comic element in a drawing is often a borrowed one, for which the text supplies all the stock-in-trade.  I mean that the artist may be his own understudy in the shape of a satirist, or even a playwright, and that then we laugh far less at the drawings themselves than at the satire or comic incident they represent.  But if we devote our whole attention to the drawing with the firm resolve to think of nothing else, we shall probably find that it is generally comic in proportion to the clearness, as well as the subtleness, with which it enables us to see a man as a jointed puppet.  The suggestion must be a clear one, for inside the person we must distinctly perceive, as though through a glass, a set-up mechanism.  But the suggestion must also be a subtle one, for the general appearance of the person, whose every limb has been made rigid as a machine, must continue to give us the impression of a living being.  The more exactly these two images, that of a person and that of a machine, fit into each other, the more striking is the comic effect, and the more consummate the art of the draughtsman.  The originality of a comic artist is thus expressed in the special kind of life he imparts to a mere puppet.

We will, however, leave on one side the immediate application of the principle, and at this point insist only on the more remote consequences.  The illusion of a machine working in the inside of the person is a thing that only crops up amid a host of amusing effects; but for the most part it is a fleeting glimpse, that is immediately lost in the laughter it provokes.  To render it permanent, analysis and reflection must be called into play.

In a public speaker, for instance, we find that gesture vies with speech.  Jealous of the latter, gesture closely dogs the speaker’s thought, demanding also to act as interpreter.  Well and good; but then it must pledge itself to follow thought through all the phases of its development.  An idea is something that grows, buds, blossoms and ripens from the beginning to the end of a speech.  It never