of specifying contrasts. But they are, it will be seen, no more than specifications; their common element is the "contrast."

The contrast theory of the comic defines the comic by considering its objective nature. Aristotle's description of it as "in the nature of a missing of the target" stands between this objective description and the more directly psychological theory of Kant and his followers. This theory might be called the theory of "disappointed expectation." "Laughter," writes Kant, "is an affection arising from a sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing. A jest must be capable of deceiving for a moment. Hence when the illusion is dissipated, the mind turns back to try it once again, and thus through a rapidly alternating tension and relaxation, it is jerked back and put into a state of oscillation." The first of these Kantian suggestions is hardly more than paraphrased by Lipps for whom "the comic arises, if in place of something expected to be important and striking, something else comes up (of course under the assumption of the ideas we were expecting) which is of lesser significance." The other half of the Kantian description has been more popular. We might call it the "oscillation theory' although it is essentially a form of contrast. It has received the endorsement of Hecker and of Wundt, and has been attached by them to the term "contrast."

The variations in these fundamental notions are innumerable. Writers have found the comic to be only that which violates social usage, or only that which conflicts with established moral, intellectual or æsthetic standards. The net result of a review of all of these theories is that they are all true, and in so far as they deal with unrelated facts, all exclusive of oneanother. They are specifications of comedy under special conditions and in various fields. They contain the essence of the comic; but they have not really isolated it. Our journey through the field of laughter has shown us that this essence may reside anywhere in the universe. It is not confined to human beings or to social norms, as certain authors believe; nor is it limited to the merely living. Its habitat is as wide as experience. It ranges from the tangent which so stirred the jocund Schopenhauer, to the universe which amused Democritus. As anything may be beautiful, so anything may be comic. It becomes comic, as all the comic objects which we have examined have shown us, and as the theories of the comic which we have considered obviously affirm, when somehow it is at a disadvantage, out of proportion, mal-adjusted. It becomes comic when it constitutes a disharmony. This disharmony is the basis of contrast, the cause of oscillation, of

disappointed expectation, the essence of degradation. But by the mere fact of being a disharmony the object is not yet comic. The daily life and the arts offer the mind an infinity of disharmonies which are either tragic or indifferent. Intrinsically, things are no more comic than they are beautiful. The comic, like the beautiful, is not a property which things possess, but a relation which they bear to the mind. We do not laugh at a thing because it is funny; it is funny because we laugh at it.

An examination of the nature of laughter itself will show us that which more specifically constitutes comedy. We have found laughter to be a wide-ranging action, corresponding to the active character of its object. But this action does not have the purposeful, rapt nature of other human activities. It seems to be a detached and free thing,-a thing which is leisurely and secure. Even when it ensues upon absorbing fear, upon the madness of anger, the anguish of passion, it seems to have this liberty and security, this leisure, as opposed to the precedent breathlessness and extreme intentness. It seems indeed often to be a cry of freedom, of relief, a roulade of triumph. When we seek the earliest semblance of an apprehension of the comic, we find it in the replete child, repeating the pleasurable act of sucking. Its normal expression in the smile requires the baring of the rending and cutting teeth, the assumption of an appearance which, when well-considered, bears a startling resemblance to an animal about to rend and devour its prey. In the hungry beast of the jungle, that has fought for its life in a double sense, and has triumphed in its struggle, may lie the ultimate parentage of laughter. The explosions of breath, the gurgitations, the throwing back of the head as if to swallow, the sprawling, expansive movements of the limbs,-those are actions that beasts still perform when they have their prey completely at their mercy. And this prey, up to the moment of possession, was a peer. The struggle to live matches not kind with kind, but every kind with all other kinds; its may be a contest of strength against swiftness, ear against eye, eye against nose. And the struggle invariably carries its essential hazard which makes even the weakling his enemy's peer. There is therefore the inevitable absorption and tension and breathlessness. In no matter how unequal a combat, there is even for the victor one moment of dread and menace, and there is the final triumph and relief in laughter. The primeval laugher is the triumphant beast, with its paw upon its defeated enemy, and its jaws set for the act of devouring. The first laughter is life's earliest cry of victory over the elemental world-wide enemy that wages the titanic battle with it. Laughter is perhaps a mutation

from feeding, and it serves the same result: it strengthens life by heightening its vitality. Its scope has expanded as the world has expanded. The laughter of man has all things for its object, all things that may enthrall him or do him hurt, in whatever sense. It 'degrades' them, makes them man's proper food; it contrasts them with what they were; it destroys their power over him. He stands outside and beyond them; they cannot touch him. The object of laughter is ridiculous, not in so far as it is good, but in so far as it is dangerous. It is the frustrated menace in things, personal, social or cosmic,-that moves men merrily, when their power for evil is turned to emptiness. The novel, the dark, the cancerous in the life of the spirit and in the life of the body becomes ridiculous when we recognize that it is ineffectual. And conversely, to turn a thing to ridicule is to make it ineffectual, to throw it out of gear, to rob it of its place, to compel it to spend its energy in a vacuum. This is true degradation, and the laughter in it is not appreciation but malice. It is for this reason that even to so intelligent and sympathetic a student of the comedy as Bergson or Meredith, comedy seems to be a social corrective. But they fail to see that the comic force lies not in the correction, but in the joy of the corrector. There is always the possibility of a certain cruelty in comedy, an utter brutish joy in victory which is ethically more outrageous than the thing it destroys, until one remembers that what laughter consumes, laughter first finds evil.

This observation yields the key to the right definition of comedy. Beauty, it has been noted, is the relation between the mind and the environment when the two are adapted to each other harmoniously, perfectly and immediately. And the environment which beauty presents to the mind is good in itself, an intrinsic and direct excellence. Now the environment which comedy presents to the mind is primarily an evil, full of discord and unrest. This evil comes to us, however, not as our peer, but as our slave, bankrupt and stripped of its power to harm. And to it, as to the thing of beauty, we are adapted directly and instantly. Comedy, then, like beauty, is a relation, but it is a relation in which we are harmoniously and completely adapted to what is in itself a disharmony, a mal-adjustment. It is a relation which converts evil into goodness. It adapts us adequately to disharmony and mal-adjustment, snatching as it were, life's victory from the jaws of death itself.

Unconscious and Subconscious as used by Psychopathologists
General Discussion of the above mentioned Concepts
Consciousness in Animals

158

159

161

161

III.

The Relation of Consciousness to Learning

172

IV.

An Experimental Study of the Relation of Consciousness to
Learning

179

I.

Do Unnoticed Items assist in the Formation of Associative
Links?

179

2.

The Effect of Attention and Distraction on the Formation of the "Motor Set" (Motorische Einstellung)

181

3.

The Role of Consciousness in the Acquirement of Muscular
Skill.

VII.

Appendix: Detailed Statements with regard to the Experiment
on the Learning of Meaningless Syllables

The question of the relation of consciousness to learning, in the case of man, was suggested by the disagreement among psychologists as to the value of "ability to learn" as a criterion of consciousness in animals. From a purely metaphysical standpoint, those who accept the doctrine of psychophysical parallelism would admit consciousness of some sort as an attendant of the activities of all animals. Those who attack the problem from a purely empirical standpoint1

'Bethe, A.: Die anatomischen Elemente des Nervensystems, und ihre physiologische Bedeutung, Biol. Cent. 1898, XVIII. pp. 863 ff.

Nuel, J. P.: La psychologie comparée, est-elle légitime? Arch. de psy., 1904. V. p. 320.

Ziegler, H. E.: Theoretisches zur Tierpsychologie und vergleichenden Neurophysiologie, Biol. Cent., 1900, XX. p. I.

either attempt a complete explanation of animal behavior from the physiological side without the assumption of mental qualities, or else they argue that consciousness is present only when the animal is able to profit from experience, or to profit from it rapidly enough to argue the presence of a psychic resultant of former experience.1 Still others assume that consciousness may be present in all animal forms; but the power of associative memory is a measure of its grade, or a proof of its existence.2 Those who deny the possibility of a comparative psychology are met by the answer that the ascription of consciousness even to human beings rests upon inference and assumption, no mental states being capable of proof but our own. Before considering the question of the possibility of learning without consciousness, and the relation of learning to consciousness,-which are the main themes of this study,we shall consider briefly a few definitions of the term sciousness," and the related terms "unconsciousness," and "subconsciousness."

con

II. THE CONCEPTS OF CONSCIOUSNESS, UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND SUBCONSCIOUSNESS

Practically all admit that "consciousness," being an ultimamate, is incapable of definition; yet it has been variously described and explained. For Descartes it was equivalent to self-consciousness; Wolff was the first to give it the meaning of "ultimate property of the soul;" while others consider self-consciousness to be only a particular form of consciousness. For Lipps it is identical with the ego. Usually it is broadly an equivalent for awareness or experience, and an opposite to the unconsciousness of coma, fainting, dreamless sleep, etc. Some writers make it synonymous with attention, or a general term for that experience of which attention

1Loeb, J.: Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology, New York, 1903. p. 12; p. 118.

Washburn, M. F.: The Animal Mind. New York, 1908. p. 33.
Romanes, G. J.: Animal Intelligence, New York, 1883. p. 4.

2Wundt, W.: Grundzüge der physiologischen Psychologie. (Fifth Edition.) Leipzig, 1902. III. pp. 324 ff.

Romanes, G. J.: Op. cit., p. 4.

Ziegler: Op. cit., p. 2.

Nuel: Op. cit., p. 343.

'Yerkes, R. M.: Objective Nomenclature, Comparative Psychology and Animal Behavior. Jour. Comp. Neurol. and Psy. 1906. XVI. p. 383. Forel, A.: Ants and some other Insects. (Trans.) Chicago, 1904. p. 2. "See Horwicz, A.: Psychologische Analysen, Halle, 1872-1875, for review.

"Lipps, T.: Leitfaden der Psychologie, Leipzig, 1909. p. 6.