Let us go on to society, As we are both in and of it, we cannot help treating it as a living being. Any image, then, suggestive of the notion of a society disguising itself, or of a social masquerade, so to speak, will be laughable. Now, such a notion is formed when we perceive anything inert or stereotyped, or simply readymade, on the surface of living society. There we have rigidity over again, clashing with the inner suppleness of life. The ceremonial side of social life must, therefore, always include a latent comic element, which is only waiting for an opportunity to burst into full view. It might be said that ceremonies are to the social body what clothing is to the individual body: they owe their seriousness to the fact that they are identified, in our minds, with the serious object with which custom associates them, and when we isolate them in imagination, they forthwith lose their seriousness. For any ceremony, then, to become comic, it is enough that our attention be fixed on the ceremonial element in it, and that we neglect it's matter, as philosophers say, and think only of it's form. Everyone knows how easily the comic spirit exercises it's ingenuity on social actions of a stereotyped nature, from an ordinary prize distribution to the solemn siting of a court justice. Any for or formula is a ready-made from into which the comic element may be fitted.
Laughter: An essay on the meaning of the comic, Henri Bergson (page 45)
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