In pretences, both hypocrisies and less serious kinds,
which raise the laugh, we note the same swift lapse into
the play-attitude. For, in order to enjoy these vain shows
with perfect gaiety, we must be ready to bring a mental
" blind spot " to bear on everything in them which has
serious moral significance. Here, too, we take a leap into
the world of the player, transmuting what has something
of seriousness, something even of offending hurtfulness, into
a mere plaything.
152 THEORIES OP THE LUDICROUS

The more intellectual varieties of the ludicrous disclose
the same deep-seated characteristic. The incongruous, the
absurd, the tricks of ambiguous speech, these are things
which offend us as serious mortals bent on having con-
sistency of ideas and clearness of utterance in our social
world. They evoke our laughter when they take such a
form as to upset this serious attitude and to win us over to
regarding them as nothing but entertaining show.
In all the more intellectual laughter at things we seem to
find the perfect form of the mind's play. I say " perfect "
because psychologists as well as others are wont to speak of
poetic imagination as playful activity, though this, as con-
trolled by the ends of art, is seriousness itself compared with
the freer movements of ideas when the sportive temper
takes us.
