humour in any subsequent chapter, I may be allowed to add here a passage from Emerson which seems to me to carry the discussion a step further. Aristotle, it will be remembered, tells us in the Poetics1 that 'the sense of the ridiculous arises from our perception of a defect, a painless and harmless depravity, moral or physical.' His meaning is made plainer by the example which is given. It is the comic mask, which is a deformed and perverted object which can be looked upon without pain." This idea of a departure from a standard of physical or moral rightness too insignificant to involve an appeal to our conscience or our humanity is embodied and expanded in Emerson's essay on 'The Comic.' 'The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, is the non-performance of what is pretended to be performed.' He then proceeds :

'The presence of the ideal of right and of truth in all action makes the yawning delinquencies of practice remorseful to the conscience, tragic to the interest, but droll to the intellect. The activity of our sympathies may for a time hinder our perceiving the fact intellectually, and so deriving mirth from it; but all falsehoods, all vices seen at sufficient distance, seen from the point where our moral sympathies do not interfere, become ludicrous. The comedy is the intellect's perception of discrepancy.'

These extracts make both the nature of the subject of humour and the cause of our enjoyment plain. The physical or moral depravity which is the subject

1 1449".

· αἰσχρόν τι καὶ διεστραμμένον ἄνευ ὀδύνης.

of humour must not cause us pain either by appealing to our humanity or by outraging our sense of decorum; to do either will prevent us from making the comparison necessary for our perception of the defect in the light of the ideal. The extent of our enjoyment depends upon the degree in which we are able (or think we are able) to identify ourselves with this ideal. If we add to this the thought that comedy is humour in its literary form, we shall arrive at a tolerably correct conclusion of the nature of both.

CHAPTER V

ADDISON'S TREATMENT OF THE IMAGINATION AS A SEPARATE FACULTY OF THE MIND INTRODUCES

A NEW PRINCIPLE INTO CRITICISM

BUT it is in the 'Essay on the Pleasures of the Imagination' that Addison's real theory of creative literature appears. The distinction between his theory and Aristotle's can be stated in a single sentence. Aristotle found that the plot was the 'central principle and soul' of tragedy; Addison finds that the talent of affecting the Imagination' is the 'very life and highest perfection' of poetry. A brief consideration of these two statements will reveal the principles which respectively underlie them.

The plot was the soul of tragedy, because it was only by a skilful arrangement of the incidents that a powerful appeal to the emotions of fear and pity could be produced. But the appeal to the emotions, the element of pathos, which is so conspicuous and valuable in tragedy is not equally conspicuous and valuable in other forms of poetry. Addison, therefore, noticing this, was compelled to seek for a new principle wide enough to cover the appeal, not only

of tragedy, but of all poetry and fiction. Why should certain incidents, when arranged by the poet, affect us more powerfully than the same incidents, or the same class of incidents, in real life? Further, why should the description of actions and objects, which are in themselves disagreeable, affect us pleasurably when presented by the poet? The answer is, that just as the raw material of human action is endowed with a mental value by being combined into a plot, so individual actions and single events, and even visible and tangible objects when they are selected for representation, are subject to a transformation process in the mind of the artist; and it is only when they have been so transformed that they are presented to us by poetry and the arts. When so presented they affect our minds in a different manner, and in different degrees, from the manner, or degrees, in which they would affect us if they reached our mind directly through the That is to say, they

appropriate avenues of sense. no longer appeal primarily to the senses, but to the imagination.

And this appeal to the imagination is the characteristic quality of every form of poetry, whether its intention be pathetic or humorous, whether it present a picture of human life or of nature. In other words, whereas Aristotle found the key to one form of poetry only, Addison found a key that would unlock not only tragedy, but every other form of poetry as well.

But we must consider the nature of this appeal to the imagination a little more closely.

Up to the present the description of the poet and the picture of the painter have, broadly speaking, been treated by Addison (following in the steps of Aristotle) as appealing to the mind in precisely the same way as the originals on which these representations are respectively based appeal to the mind.' Aristotle, in distinguishing the truth of art from the truth of logic, discovered a difference between the productions of art and the external realities on which these representations are based. Addison, using the fresh knowledge of his age, further discovers a difference between the manner in which natural objects and works of art respectively approach the mind. The picture, the statue, the written or spoken words, the mise en scène, do, indeed, approach the mind through the avenue of the senses, but these representations possess something more than the originals; and the possession of this something causes them to use the avenue of the senses in a different manner. In other words, they are themselves in part the product of the imagination, and they, therefore, excite the imagination more keenly than the originals. This 'something,' then, which gives them their distinctive

1 Perhaps we should make an exception of the 'disagreeable objects' which Aristotle noticed could be represented by art without affecting the mind in the same way as the objects themselves did.