The coarsest type of humor is the practical joke: pulling away the chair from the dignitary’s lowered bottom. The victim is perceived first as a person of consequence, then suddenly as an inert body subject to the laws of physics: authority is debunked by gravity, mind by matter; man is degraded to a mechanism.

Determine which of the following passages are arguments. For those that are, identify the conclusion. For those that are not, determine the kind of nonargument.