sight, it is found that the hat so ardently sought is precisely the one that has been eaten.  The same voyage of discovery is depicted in another equally well-known comedy of Labiche. [Footnote:  La Cagnotte.] The curtain rises on an old bachelor and an old maid, acquaintances of long standing, at the moment of enjoying their daily rubber.  Each of them, unknown to the other, has applied to the same matrimonial agency.  Through innumerable difficulties, one mishap following on the heels of another, they hurry along, side by side, right through the play, to the interview which brings them back, purely and simply, into each other’s presence.  We have the same circular effect, the same return to the starting-point, in a more recent play. [Footnote:  Les Surprises du divorce.] A henpecked husband imagines he has escaped by divorce from the clutches of his wife and his mother-in-law.  He marries again, when, lo and behold, the double combination of marriage and divorce brings back to him his former wife in the aggravated form of a second mother-in-law!

When we think how intense and how common is this type of the comic, we understand why it has fascinated the imagination of certain philosophers.  To cover a good deal of ground only to come back unwittingly to the starting-point, is to make a great effort for a result that is nil.  So we might be tempted to define the comic in this latter fashion.  And such, indeed, seems to be the idea of Herbert Spencer:  according to him, laughter is the indication of an effort which suddenly encounters a void.  Kant had already said something of the kind:  “Laughter is the result of an expectation, which, of a sudden, ends in nothing.”  No doubt these definitions would apply to the last few examples given, although, even then, the formula needs the addition of sundry limitations, for we often make an ineffectual effort which is in no way provocative of laughter.  While, however, the last few examples are illustrations of a great cause resulting in a small effect, we quoted others, immediately before, which might be defined inversely as a great effect springing from a small cause.  The truth is, this second definition has scarcely more validity than the first.  Lack of proportion between cause and effect, whether appearing in one or in the other, is never the direct source of laughter.  What we do laugh at is something that this lack of proportion may in certain cases disclose, namely, a particular mechanical arrangement which it reveals to us, as through a glass, at the back of the series of effects and causes.  Disregard this arrangement, and you let go the only clue capable of guiding you through the labyrinth of the comic.  Any hypothesis you otherwise would select, while possibly applicable to a few carefully chosen cases, is liable at any moment to be met and overthrown by the first unsuitable instance that comes along.