For a man to make a resolution never henceforth to say what he does not think, even though he “openly defy the whole human race,” is not necessarily laughable; it is only a phase of life at its highest and best.  For another man, through amiability, selfishness, or disdain, to prefer to flatter people is only another phase of life; there is nothing in it to make us laugh.  You may even combine these two men into one, and arrange that the individual waver between offensive frankness and delusive politeness, this duel between two opposing feelings will not even then be comic, rather it will appear the essence of seriousness if these two feelings through their very distinctness complete each other, develop side by side, and make up between them a composite mental condition, adopting, in short, a modus vivendi which merely gives us the complex impression of life.  But imagine these two feelings as inelastic and unvarying elements in a really living man, make him oscillate from one to the other; above all, arrange that this oscillation becomes entirely mechanical by adopting the well-known form of some habitual, simple, childish contrivance:  then you will get the image we have so far found in all laughable objects, something mechanical in something living; in fact, something comic.

We have dwelt on this first image, the Jack-in-the-box, sufficiently to show how comic fancy gradually converts a material mechanism into a moral one.  Now we will consider one or two other games, confining ourselves to their most striking aspects.

2.  The dancing-jack.—­There are innumerable comedies in which one of the characters thinks he is speaking and acting freely, and, consequently, retains all the essentials of life, whereas, viewed from a certain standpoint, he appears as a mere toy in the hands of another who is playing with him.  The transition is easily made, from the dancing-jack which a child works with a string, to Geronte and Argante manipulated by Scapin.  Listen to Scapin himself:  “The machine is all there”; and again:  “Providence has brought them into my net,” etc.  Instinctively, and because one would rather be a cheat than be cheated, in imagination at all events, the spectator sides with the knaves; and for the rest of the time, like a child who has persuaded his playmate to lend him his doll, he takes hold of the strings himself and makes the marionette come and go on the stage as he pleases.  But this latter condition is not indispensable; we can remain outside the pale of what is taking place if only we retain the distinct impression of a mechanical arrangement.  This is what happens whenever one of the characters vacillates between two contrary opinions, each in turn appealing to him, as when Panurge asks Tom, Dick, and Harry whether or no he ought to get married.  Note that, in such a case, a comic author is always careful to personify the two opposing decisions.  For, if there is no spectator, there must at all events be actors to hold the strings.