The artist reverses this technique by conferring on trivial experiences a new dignity and wonder: Rembrandt painting the carcass of a flayed ox, Manor his skinny, insipid Olympia; Hemingway drawing tragedy out of the repetitive, inarticulate stammer of his characters; Chekhov focussing the reader's attention on a fly crawling on a lump of sugar while Natasha is contemplating suicide. When 'consciousness is unawares transferred from great things to small' -- which Spencer regarded as the prime cause of laughter -- the result will be either a comic or an aesthetic experience, depending on whether the person's emotions are of the type capable of participating in the transfer or not. The artist, reversing the parodist's technique, walks on a tightrope, as it were, along the line where the exalted and the trivial planes meet; he sees with equal eye, as God of all, / A hero perish or a sparrow fall . The scientist's attitude is basically similar in situations where he suddenly discovers the connection between a banal event and a general law of nature -- Newton's apple or the boiling kettle of James Watt. When F.W.H. Myers became interested in people's attitudes to religion he questioned an elderly widow on what she thought about the whereabouts of her departed husband's soul. She replied: 'Oh well, I suppose he is enjoying eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't talk about such unpleasant subjects.' I would call this an illustration of the peaceful coexistence of the tragic and trivial planes in our humble minds. Equally convincing is this statement made by a schoolboy to his mathematics master: