Chapter XI: The Laughable in Art: Comedy (2)

Our study of comedy and of the sources of laughter has prepared us to accept Lamb’s view. The comic spectacle appeals to the man in the play-mood. When there, he may see the fun of the turbulent world of Aristophanes and not be troubled by the thought of the undesirability of its realisation. Even when he is entertained by a play of Molière he does not take the background quite seriously, waxing indignant, say, in sympathy with Harpagon’s ill-used son, or with M. Jourdain’s ill-used wife. The least swerving from the point of view of comedy, a turn of the mental “eye-glass,” would spoil all. He would begin, with Rousseau, to protest against presenting so good a man as Alceste in a ludicrous light. The Restoration comedy appeals to the same playful mood simplified by the temporary inhibition of all outside tendencies.

It is, I conceive, a profound error to suppose that either the writer of a comedy or his audience is at the moral point of view, envisaging behaviour as morally {374} commendable or the opposite. Possibly, the influence of the didactic morality on early modern comedy may have helped to foster this error. It is true that Molière finds his comic material in certain defects of character. Yet the selections made by comic art are not determined by degrees of moral turpitude. As hinted above, very small and comparatively harmless vices may be preferred as having the drollest look on the stage.[311] Vanity, the richest of all moral blemishes in its comic possibilities, and therefore greatly employed by comedy, both ancient and modern, is not judged as heinously immoral, like hatred and cruelty, for example.[312] This may suffice to show how wide an interval separates the point of view of the spectator of a comedy from that of the moral judge.

It seems to me to be much more correct to say, with M. Bergson, that comedy takes up the social rather than the moral point of view. By this I mean that the comic poet is thinking of the look of things to the trained apperceptive organ of the social kind of person, according as they appear to be well or ill adapted to the common practices and opinions of society as discerned and interpreted by its more intelligent representatives. Yet, in speaking of the social point of view, I must not be taken to mean that either the author or the spectator of the comic scene is seriously judging of the behaviour of its figures by a reference to social values. There is, undoubtedly, an approach to this, not only in the early modern comedy, but in the later serious variety, including some plays of Molière; but the art-impulse of the writer, where it is clear, prevents the approximation {375} of points of view from becoming a loss of distinctness. Comedy addresses itself to a mood of æsthetic contemplation which, though it has room for keen penetration, and even for a dim discernment of a serious import in the background of the puppet show, remains on the whole a playful attitude. The spectator is agreeably occupied with the look of things; and such social consciousness as is awake in him serves merely to give to his perceptions a precise measure of the seemly, or at most to enable him to glimpse something of a sharply corrective expression in the puckered visage of the comic showman.[313]

In comedy, the moral comes into view as “mores,” as a part, and a principal part, of the customary, as we have it in a civilised society. Yet it is not disengaged and held up as moral. Molière, the Comedian of Society _par excellence_, shows us clearly enough that he is not trying to distinguish the more permanent and universal basis of society in morality from the variable accidents which enter into the manners of a particular society at a given date. The “gushing” mode of accost adopted by mere acquaintances which irritates Alceste is accepted by the poet as a standard of the fitting, just because as a fashion it is a social institution, to be good-naturedly accepted by the social kind of person. When M. Jourdain tries to step out of his bourgeois rank, the laughter he provokes depends primarily on the unseemliness of his ambition. Yet, at the end of the nineteenth century in Paris or London, such ambition is so common and meets with so large a success that we have almost forgotten to smile at it. Hence, when Taine talks of Molière as a “philosopher” illustrating “universal truths,” he commits an error which may be pardoned, as due to the natural inclination to stretch the achievement of a great {376} compatriot.[314] What Molière does is to secure for the rather oddly formed group of customs and practices adopted by the particular society he is depicting, adequate exponents, who, in their advocacy of the social system against the socially perverse, not only disengage and give clearness to the unwritten laws, but may—so long as they do not raise the question of their deeper grounds—seek to recommend them by the most enlightened presentment of the common-sense attitude.

Now, in substituting the social for the moral point of view, the writer of comedy necessarily tends to slacken the cords that bind us in society. Nothing comes out more plainly in Molière’s plays than the good-natured accommodation of social requirements to human infirmities. The author distinctly rejects the idea of going above this standard, of trying to improve on social customs—for example, in the comic treatment of Alceste and of Arnolphe. At heart, like his Roman predecessors, he takes sides with indulgence against all irksome restraint. He has the large tolerance, the readiness to excuse and to pass by, of the easy man of the world. Célimène’s coquetries, for example, are accepted as natural in one who “is twenty years old”. So it must be; for comedy is written to put us into an easy frame of mind, in which we are perfectly content with the world as it is.

From this point of view, we may see that the comedy of manners is not, fundamentally, so different from that of character as is often maintained. It breaks with the moral order of stable societies, no doubt, and turns its back rather rudely on this order. Yet it may still, in a sense, be said to adopt the social point of view. That is to say, it envisages {377} the seemly as that which falls in with the code of manners which happens to obtain at the time. Its standard of fitness is, like that of the savage and of Molière, the customs of the tribe. It is the sour-tempered and suspicious husband, for whom Macaulay expresses so droll a concern, who in this inverted world becomes the anti-social kind of person. The large indulgence of this society is but an expansion of the indulgence common to Terence and to Molière. A sub-conscious awareness of the topsy-turvyness of things is with us as we look; and the quaint fancifulness of the inversion—if only like Lamb we can refuse for a moment to take serious views—is distinctly refreshing.

In saying that we go to meet comedy in the play-mood, in which our habits of moral approbation and disapprobation, and even of estimation of social values, are lulled to a sleep more or less profound, it is not meant that these serious tendencies in us can be ignored by the writer of comedy. As implied above, they mould our forms of the seemly, unknowingly to us perhaps, even as we look. And more, though inhibited by the play-like mood, they have force; and should the showman go too far, say in the direction of stripping off the veil of decency, they may wake up and make an end of the comic enjoyment. Just as tragic fear and pity may give way to physical revulsion when horror obtrudes itself, so when in comedy the unclean thrusts into view its ugly head, a sort of physical revulsion may silence laughter. The latitude in these matters conceded from time to time to comic art will, it is evident, vary greatly with the particular ratio between the vigours of the mirthful and moral tendencies.

The presentation of the comic aspects of men’s behaviour on the stage is narrowly limited. As Sainte-Beuve reminds us, a whole people may have a fit (_accès_) of mania. If {378} this happen to be the war-fury we shall have given us, as pointed out above, unmistakable elements of comic situation and character. Indeed, if a person who has just been in the midst of a wild “Jingoism” without losing his head will read Molière’s plays he will not fail to be struck by numerous resemblances. And here, as in comedy, the figures have their comical contours and poses thrown into relief by a social background, as much superior to any single community at a particular moment, as a community to one of its members. Yet no national comedy could in these days follow Aristophanes and use such promising material, nor are we likely as yet to have a comedy for the civilised world.

Before leaving comedy, we may glance at other forms of literature which seem to approach its point of view. Of certain kinds of the so-called serious comedy of recent times I do not propose to speak. It seems more important to remark that prose fiction may now and again draw near the comic point of view. It sometimes presents us with a texture of fantastic situations and adventures which reminds us of the Aristophanean burlesque, as in the “Tartarin” series of Alphonse Daudet. This type of fiction gives us elemental laughter, uncomplicated by anything in the nature of sad reflection—though a little of the tenderness of humour may steal in. Or the tone of the story may approach that of the more sedate comedy, making, indeed, the one hardly distinguishable from the other, save through the narrative form. This holds good, for example, of the novels of Miss Austen. The social point of view is sharply defined and steadily adhered to, and critical reflection is confined to the _rôle_ of giving a fuller and more lucid interpretation of the standards of the society illustrated.

The comic point of view may intrude, too, and tend to become supreme in fiction which has something of the {379} deeper and more thrilling import. It seems to have been present, at times at least, to Balzac, and to Thackeray. But it is in Mr. Meredith’s novels that we may study a new and a finer employment of the comic attitude in connection with the more enthralling kind of interest. The very subjects—for example, the egoist entangled in the situation which makes large demands for consideration; the father with a pedagogic system of his own concoction; the tailor more successful in soaring than his client M. Jourdain, with certain consequences to his family; the gallant cadet of an ancient house affected with the zeal of radicalism—these sound like the titles of comedy. And though the writer may allow the reedy tone of humour to be heard now and again he gives prominence to the fluty note of comedy, with its simplicity and clearness, and something of its sound of sharp correction, too. Occasionally indeed, as in _Beauchamp’s Career_, this characteristic note will be distinctly heard at the end of a story which closes on a tragic disaster.

Yet a closer inspection will show that though the point of view of these writers may approximate to that of the comic poet, it remains distinct. This distinctness, moreover, is not due merely to the presence of a large serious interest which gives gravity to the story. It arises out of the circumstance that the writer of prose fiction, by addressing himself to the reflective mood of a solitary reader, and not to the apperceptive attitude of a spectator, will, even in presenting the comic aspects of his subject, unavoidably tend to transcend the standards of fitness adopted by a particular community, substituting for these the ideal standards of a community of the wise and good.

In comedy we have the appeal to laughter in its purity, the child’s laughter at the funny show guided by an intelligent grasp of social customs. It addresses itself to the {380} many, united by common modes of judgment and a common standard of fitness. Literature gives us, however, appeals of another kind. The writer who amuses us may seem, at least, to be very far from the social point of view, and the mood he induces may be by no means that of pure gaiety. After what has been said in the preceding chapter, a few words must suffice to indicate these other literary expressions of the laughing spirit.

We may distinguish two main varieties of this mixed tone: (_a_) the combination of laughter with the attitude of serious attack, as illustrated in satire; (_b_) its combination with mellowing feelings in what we have recognised as modern humour.

The distinguishing note of satire is the angry one of reprobation. Here vices and follies are no longer set before us as a diverting spectacle, but emphasis is laid on their moral indignity. The satirist is at the point of view of the moral judge; only, instead of the calmness of the judge, he has something of the fierce attitude of the prosecutor who aims at exposing and denouncing the turpitude of an offence.

This being so, we see that laughter enters into satire as an expression of contempt and as an instrument of punishment. It assumes its most pungent and most dreaded form, ridicule or derision. It is thus less a spontaneous feeling than a volitional process: the satirist wills to mock. As satirist he controls his personal indignation by an artistic purpose, such a presentment of his victim as will excite in his hearers or readers the full laughter of contempt. Hence, the large license he takes, in the employment of exaggeration and the devices of caricature, in the invention of degrading situations, and in the appropriation of humiliating comparison, figure of speech and the other resources of his art. {381}

It is clear that the mirthful spirit when it thus lends itself to the purpose of damaging attack becomes modified to the point of transformation. To laugh with Juvenal or with Swift is to feel more of a bitter malignity than of gaiety. We may say that satire takes us back to the brutal laughter of the savage standing jubilant over his prostrate foe. Or we may describe the laughter as a feeling of “sudden glory” deeply tinged by the dominant angry attitude of the laugher.

Yet the intrusion of laughter into invective, just because it is the solvent of all serious moods, tends, as we have seen, to develop, if only for an instant, a lighter tone. Hence the gamut of dissimilar tones in satire, which at the one end is furiously denunciatory, at the other almost playful and good-temperedly jocular. The early popular “farce” of the Greeks, with its mocking and ironical speeches, and the satirical songs of the Middle Ages were apparently pieces of rollicking fun, like the comedy of Aristophanes, in which the satirical note was half-drowned in buffoonish laughter. Where, however, the composition is palpably a satire, the serious purpose may be seen to dominate and to colour the whole expression.

The characteristics of satire, thus roughly indicated, hold good alike whether the vices exposed be those of an individual, of a social class, of a society at a particular moment, or of mankind as a whole. In any case, the point of view is clearly that of a supposed moral judge and sentencer.

The presence of a purpose of serious exposure is not by any means equally clear in all cases; whence the denotation of the term satire is not sharply bounded. Comedy itself has been said to have a strong satirical element, and this seems certainly true of the compositions of Aristophanes, which, as Bergk remarks, contain in their mixture of tones {382} a “biting scorn” and a “bitter irony”.[315] Romances, as pictures of men and their manners, are often described as satirical, presumably because a free delineation of human vices is taken to imply the condemnatory attitude and the intention to castigate. Yet here the castigation may be of the mildest, as in _Gil Blas_, which, according to Sainte-Beuve, does not hold up men in the mass to ridicule as wicked and foolish, but rather exposes their meanness and dulness.[316] M. Taine finds the satirist’s lash laid on heavily in the English school of fiction, even in the writings of Thackeray.[317] Yet judgments as to a writer’s intention based on the prevailing tone of the world he portrays are apt to seem subjective and capricious.

Satire proper, where the purpose of ridicule is confessed, is a very different thing. We see this in the works of Juvenal, of whom Prof. Tyrrell writes, “He is always in a rage and a laugh seems to sit strangely on his lips”.[318] In this more serious and poignant satire the laugh takes on a shrill note of malignity from its mental _entourage_. The virulence of the satire of antiquity has since been softened. This is frequently effected by allegorical disguise. The mediæval satires, such as that on cunning and treachery in the fable of the Fox, are examples. The satires of Voltaire and of the English satirists, including the bitter and unsparing Swift, illustrate the same tendency.

This throwing of a fierce attack, whether political or moral, into the form of an allegory, though it seems to veil the direction of the assault, really gives it more point. In the attacks of derision, at least, a back-handed blow may often hurt more than one straight from the shoulder. The reader’s satisfaction includes no doubt an {383} element of admiration for the finesse of art: yet more seems to be involved. Swift could not have shown us the absurdities in our social and political institutions half as well by any direct attack on them as he has shown us by the indirect attack in _Gulliver’s Travels_. The indignity of a familiar vice or folly seems to be made palpable when it is thus ridiculed under the guise of some new semblance. Further, our laughter at the vice is reinforced by that which comes from the detection of the make-believe of the allegory. The playful element probably takes on something of malice from the prevailing tone of the satire, and in the end we may laugh yet more cruelly at the victim who is ever being anew detected, so to speak, under the literary mask.

Much the same kind of remark applies to the effect of simile, innuendo, irony, and all that we mean by wit in satire. We have touched on the playful side of wit under the head of Comedy. But this is only a part of what the word commonly implies. Even in comic dialogue there is something of attack, and the witty women of the Restoration and other writers have now and again a rasping tongue. Yet it is in satire that we see the deep malignity of wit. The witty sarcasms of Voltaire and the rest seem to be imps of malice disguised as toys. The sally of cruel meaning out of what looks harmless nonsense, or a mere verbal slip—as in the polished rebuke of a Master of Trinity to a too confident Junior Fellow, “we are all fallible, even the youngest of us”—has a wounding force greater than that of a direct mode of statement. The effect is still greater where failure and disgrace are exhibited under a thin ironical veil of glorious achievement, as in Pope’s lines on the Lord Mayor’s Show—said by Leigh Hunt to be the finest piece of wit he knew:— {384}

Now night descending the proud scene is o’er,
But lives in Settle’s numbers one day more.

In all such ironical inversion the satirist manages by a suggestion of the worthy and honourable to drive home with added force the humiliating truth; as in the remark of Cicero, apropos of an elderly dame who said that she was but forty years old: “I must believe her, for I have heard her say so any time these ten years”.[319] The presentation in this case of something hidden, immediately followed by an uncovering, may evoke an echo of the “bo-peep” laugh of infancy, which should, one supposes, tend to introduce a milder and playful tone into the attack; yet, owing to the predominance of the attitude of fierce derision, this very element of playfulness appears, somehow, to give a new pungency to the satirical thrust.

Nothing could be more unlike the laughter of virulent satire than that provoked by the expression of humour in literature. As our analysis would lead us to expect, we find in the truly humorous writer the mellowing influences of good nature and sympathy, and a large understanding and acceptance of that against which he pokes fun. While satire, sarcasm and their kind seem to be trying to push things away, or at least to alter them, humour, curiously enough, looks as if it were tenderly holding to the world which entertains it. Yet while all humorous writings illustrate these tendencies, the subjective and personal quality of humour is seen in the circumstance that every writer brings to bear on what he sees a new temper and attitude.

The contrast of the satirical and the humorous point of view may be conveniently studied by glancing at the current {385} and much-discussed distinction between wit and humour. That these do not logically make a pair of contrasting species has been implied in our analysis of the two. Perhaps nowhere do we find the human mind to have been more strangely misled by the fact of the existence of two words than in this case. Wit, as essentially a manner of deportment of the intelligence, can stand in no simple and direct relation to an emotional mood like humour.

No doubt there are facts which give colour to the idea of an opposition in this case. Thus, it is indubitable that whereas humour specially favours certain kinds of imaginative and reflective activity, wit seems always to prefer, even in its play, something in the shape of an incisive logical process.[320] But I suspect that the deeper ground of the distinction is to be found in the circumstance that the wit which is most brilliant, of keenest edge, and most effective in its stroke, appears always to grow out of, and so becomes associated with, those moods of satire and mordant mockery, to which humour as good-natured and tolerant is directly opposed. So it is with the wit of Voltaire and of others of his century.

A closer examination will, however, show that there is nothing incompatible between the humorous sentiment and the witty mode of behaviour of the intellect. As play indeed, wit quite naturally allies itself to the attitude of humour. It will be found that much that is commonly described as wit discloses the softening effect of humour, and might, indeed, just as well be called an illustration of humour. Those who really know the Irish will sometimes hesitate whether to speak of their wit or of their humour. The same applies, I feel sure, to a large number of {386} Shakespeare’s “witticisms”.[321] In all such cases, the wit, which when set in the fierce mood of the satirist has a nasty sting, not only becomes harmless, but may take on something of positive kindliness when it is tempered by an infusion of genial humour. The remark apropos of a very correct person, “He has not one redeeming vice,” may illustrate the point. It may even, in this harmless form, come into a laugh which tells against the humorist, as in the observation of an idler, “I don’t like working between my meals”.[322]

Yet though in their well-marked forms thus dissimilar, the satirical and the humorous mood may shade one into the other in a way that makes it difficult to draw the boundary line. Heine, in some of his writings, _e.g._, the poem _Deutschland_, tempers his mockery with sentiment and humour in such a way that one finds it hard to think of it as a satire. In places, indeed, this genius, so simple-looking yet really so profound, seems to become a consummate humorist, bringing out with a single touch all the laughter and all the tears of things. Was Lewis Carroll a satirist when he threw behind the fun of his children’s stories some deeper meaning which for ever eludes us? or was this semblance of a meaning a part of his fun, his playful way of punishing the “grown up” for reading a child’s book? {387}

In modern literature, the interesting point to note is the growing interpenetration of the laughing and the serious attitude, and the coalescence of the mirthful spirit with sentiment. The two processes, though distinct, may run on together, as we may see in Shakespeare’s plays. The humorous element introduced by the fool in “Lear” and elsewhere at once relieves the tragic tension, and gives a moment’s play to that disposition towards a lighter laughing criticism which is always active when we survey colossal folly, even though the mental eye is at the moment focussed for its catastrophic effects. The laughter is controlled and kept tenderly humorous and half-sad by a large reflection, which does not lose sight, even at the relieving moment, of the lamentable ruin. It is only another way of combining the “fun” and the “pity” of it when the master brings a genial humour into comedy and makes us, with his faithful follower Bardolph, half-love and more than half-pity the faulty knight who so merrily entertains us.

As we have seen, prose-fiction may illustrate the comic spirit and something of the fiercer temper of satire. Yet laughter comes into it in another form. It has to accommodate itself to the presence of serious interests, and of a plot which involves sympathetic fear and strain. Hence it appears in stories which have a mixed tone, as it does indeed in comedy when this is not pure—for example, “heroic comedy,” as illustrated by M. Rostand’s _Cyrano_—in the guise of humour. That is to say, its gay treble note is complicated by an undertone, a resonance of the sadness of its _milieu_. One needs only to think how one laughs at Moses and his purchase of spectacles in the _Vicar of Wakefield_, or at the disfigurement of the hero in _Cyrano_.

A novel may, of course, present the grave and the gay in mere juxtaposition, so that the interaction and {388} modification here spoken of are only very imperfectly realised. The notion of a good story entertained by many is of one that bears the imagination of the reader swiftly through a series of diverse scenes, now grave and pathetic, now gay and mirthful. A large part of modern fiction satisfies this need. Stories of wild adventure from _Gil Blas_ to _Tom Jones_ are “humorous” to the multitude in this sense. Even in the case of a real humorist like Dickens, whose amusing figures are there to touch the heart as well as to entertain the imagination, the perfect harmonising of tones may sometimes seem to be wanting. A humorist of another complexion, Laurence Sterne, seems to have missed the judicious mixture of laughter and sentiment in his _Sentimental Journey_.[323]

The art of humorous writing consists in part in selecting characters, incidents and the rest in such a way as to exhibit the intimate connections between that which amuses and that which touches the serious sentiments, respect and pity; and to develop the reflective consciousness which sustains the mood of humour. Goldsmith’s history of the Vicar and his family is one of the best examples. Scott’s Antiquary and Fielding’s Parson Adams are characters which at once entertain and win us. Such humorous types involve, as Leigh Hunt has pointed out, a striking contrast within the characters, _e.g._, the gullible and the manly in Parson Adams;[324] and the sharpness of this contrast turns on that of the feelings excited by the constituents. The characters selected by humorous fiction may be consciously amusing, after the manner of the Merry Knight, or wholly unconscious of their laughter-provoking power. A valuable part of this amusing portraiture consists in bringing out {389} the fresh and odd-looking characteristics not only of individuals, but of classes and even of races.

In addition to this objective presentation of the humorous aspects of character and its relations, the writer may further the effect by striking now and again undertones of quaint reflection and so introducing an element of subjective humour. The notion that such reflection is out of place in narrative art seems strange to a student of the history of literature. If there was room for the comments of the onlooking chorus in Greek drama, and for the yet deeper reflections supplied by the acting onlookers in Shakespeare’s plays, there should be room for it in a prose narrative. In truth, some of the best writers of fiction, Fielding, Thackeray and George Eliot among others, make excellent use of this reflective accompaniment. In the best works of the last-named writer we have something of Shakespeare’s art of adding a pregnant observation which, so far from disturbing, rather furthers the mood needed for a due appreciation of the action.

In the great humorous writings, those of Rabelais, Cervantes and—removed by an interval no doubt—Sterne, we appear to find presented a largeness of subject and of treatment which makes direct appeal as much to reflection as to perception. You must know the Middle Ages, which are being laughingly kicked aside, before you will even care for Gargantua; you must envisage Don Quixote and his squire, not as two individuals or even as two types of character, but as embodiments of two remote levels of culture, and more, of two opposed ways of looking at the world, before you will begin to feel all the humour of these juxtapositions. And so of the great contrast between Mr. Shandy and his brother, the Captain. There is no need for the interpolation of reflection: the scale, the breadth {390} of treatment, the wealth of ideas poured out, these compel us to reflect. The laughter which comes from the perceptions of the utter incongruity of the mental and moral structures thus juxtaposed and attached is saturated with this reflection. And more, so right, so likeable, so estimable even is each of these contrasting characters, with its well-marked temper and _manière de voir_, that our sympathies go out towards both. Thus we leave the perceptual level and the relative point of view of comedy far behind us, reaching a standpoint near that of the thinker who embraces all particular points of view, and yet may manage to have his own laugh in the end. When, as in Jean Paul’s _Siebenkäs_, and yet more clearly in Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_, the contrast seems to open up the great collision in human experience between sentiment and prosaic reality, idealism and the earth-binding instincts of practical life, we stand, indeed, on the border-line between the humour of fiction and that of philosophy.

Humour has its place, a respectable one too, in essays and other forms of literature which deal directly with reality and are products not so much of imagination as of thought. In these, the contrast between the serious and the playful appears in transitions from a perfectly grave to a humorous kind of reflection. Marked differences of tone are observable here also. The humorous remark may be but a momentary diversion of the attention, a playful side-glance, in a serious argument. In some writings, _e.g._, those of Sir Thos. Browne and of Lamb, the humorous element hardly amounts to a digression, or even to a momentary interruption, but is fused into and half lost to sight in the serious argument.[325] Among more recent writers, too, including some yet living, we have admirable examples of historical narrative {391} and criticism lit up here and there with soft glow-worm points of humour. In other cases, the humorous feature may be so large as to modify the colour of the whole, as in Miss Kingsley’s _Travels in West Africa_. An Essay, again, may be as a whole a _jeu d’esprit_ and the fun seem to preponderate, while the manner is throughout that of grave argument; or, in more subtle work, as some of Charles Lamb’s, it may be best described as fun sandwiched in between a look of seriousness on the surface, and a real seriousness of meaning below. The fusion of tones leaves much to be desired in the case of many writers who are popularly regarded as skilled humorists. A mere interruption of serious thought by a sort of playful “aside” does not prove the existence of the gift of humour, which is essentially the power of playing on moods not only dissimilar but usually antagonistic in a way that avoids all shock and sense of discontinuity.

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