he may continue therein, even though fully conscious of what he is and feeling keenly the horror he inspires in us.  But a defect that is ridiculous, as soon as it feels itself to be so, endeavours to modify itself, or at least to appear as though it did.  Were Harpagon to see us laugh at his miserliness, I do not say that he would get rid of it, but he would either show it less or show it differently.  Indeed, it is in this sense only that laughter “corrects men’s manners.”  It makes us at once endeavour to appear what we ought to be, what some day we shall perhaps end in being.

It is unnecessary to carry this analysis any further.  From the runner who falls to the simpleton who is hoaxed, from a state of being hoaxed to one of absentmindedness, from absentmindedness to wild enthusiasm, from wild enthusiasm to various distortions of character and will, we have followed the line of progress along which the comic becomes more and more deeply imbedded in the person, yet without ceasing, in its subtler manifestations, to recall to us some trace of what we noticed in its grosser forms, an effect of automatism and of inelasticity.  Now we can obtain a first glimpse—­a distant one, it is true, and still hazy and confused—­of the laughable side of human nature and of the ordinary function of laughter.

What life and society require of each of us is a constantly alert attention that discerns the outlines of the present situation, together with a certain elasticity of mind and body to enable us to adapt ourselves in consequence.  Tension and elasticity are two forces, mutually complementary, which life brings into play.  If these two forces are lacking in the body to any considerable extent, we have sickness and infirmity and accidents of every kind.  If they are lacking in the mind, we find every degree of mental deficiency, every variety of insanity.  Finally, if they are lacking in the character, we have cases of the gravest inadaptability to social life, which are the sources of misery and at times the causes of crime.  Once these elements of inferiority that affect the serious side of existence are removed—­and they tend to eliminate themselves in what has been called the struggle for life—­the person can live, and that in common with other persons.  But society asks for something more; it is not satisfied with simply living, it insists on living well.  What it now has to dread is that each one of us, content with paying attention to what affects the essentials of life, will, so far as the rest is concerned, give way to the easy automatism of acquired habits.  Another thing it must fear is that the members of whom it is made up, instead of aiming after an increasingly delicate adjustment of wills which will fit more and more perfectly into one another, will confine themselves to respecting simply the fundamental conditions of this adjustment:  a cut-and-dried agreement among the persons will not satisfy it, it insists on a constant