We might think that we could add and
subtract attributes until words and faculties failed us, until, in the
one direction, we were reduced to a single point, in fact, to the
ludicrous itself--while in the other we are lost in a boundless expanse.
To be satisfied with our definition, we must form a narrower estimate of
the number of instances, and a higher one of our powers of
discrimination.
But there is an alternative--although amusing objects and circumstances
are almost innumerable, as we may have gathered from the last chapter,
we may claim a license, frequently allowed in other cases, of drawing
conclusions from a considerable number of promiscuous examples, and
regarding them as a fair sample of the whole. Such a view has no doubt
been taken by many able men, who have attempted to define the ludicrous.
An eminent German philosopher even said that he did not despair of
discovering its real essence.
It must be admitted that we have no actual proof that the provocatives
of the ludicrous are innumerable or utterly heterogeneous, nor any
greater presumption that they are so than in many cases of physical
phenomena which we are accustomed to define. The difficulty is at the
most only that of degree, but we are unusually conscious of it owing to
the nature of the subject. Every day, if not every hour, brings
ludicrous objects of different kinds before us, whereas the number and
variety of plants, animals, and minerals are only known to botanists and
zoologists and other scientific men.
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