This mental tone involves a peculiar modification of the conative processes. All laughing scrutiny of things, as a play-attitude, is a sort of relaxation of the set concentration {305} of a conative purpose. Whenever we laugh, if it be only with a child at the jocosities of a clown, we are freed from the constraining force of the practical and even of the theoretical interests which commonly hold and confine our minds when we observe closely. In such moments we abandon ourselves to the tickling play of the object on our perceptions and ideational tendencies. In humour this self-abandonment takes on a shade of seriousness, not because the relaxation of the conative effort is less complete, but because the self-abandonment is that of a mind so habitually reflective that, even when it is at play, it does not wholly lose sight of the serious import of the thoughts which minister to its entertainment; because it dimly recognises the worth of the standard ideas, by the lightest allusion to which it is able to indulge in a playful criticism of what is presented.
The deeper secret of the mood of humour, however, lies in a peculiar modification of the feeling-tone of consciousness. In this, it is at once evident, we have to do with a special example of complexity. The laughter tinged with something akin to sadness is a mixture of feeling-tones; of tones, too, which seem directly opposed and likely to be mutually repugnant.
The gaiety of laughter begins to be complicated with an undertone by the half-intrusion into consciousness of the serious import of things. To be aware, however indistinctly, that the world has its serious side, is to lose the child’s note of pure mirth, is to have a touch of sadness added to our laughter.
The more serious complication comes, however, when the regrettable side of the laughable object makes itself felt. The effect of this on the humorous person has nothing in common with that of the exhibition of folly on {306} the contemptuous person. It is the very opposite to the feeling of one who rejoices in another’s discomfiture as such. It is a sense of the implicated “pity of it”. A person completely humorous is essentially sympathetic, skilled in the humane art of transporting himself to others’ standpoints, of comprehending men’s doings and words in the warm light thrown by the human affections. By some, indeed, sympathy is regarded as the great distinguishing characteristic of humour.[261] But it seems well to add that it is the infusion of a proportionate amount of the sympathetic into our blithe survey of things which carries us far in the path of humorous appreciation. A sympathy of a step too quick for the sense of fun to keep abreast in friendly comradeship will, as Flaubert says happened in his case in later life,[262] make an end of laughter.
It is but a step from this recognition of the regrettableness of what amuses us to a discernment of what, in its turn, tones down the sadness of regret, of the fine threads which attach the laughable defect to elements of real worth. Humour, of the richer kinds at least, certainly includes something of consideration, of a detection, in the laughable quality or its attachments, of suggestions of what is estimable and lovable.
The disposition to think well of what amuses us may come in the first instance from an impulse of gratitude. So ready are we in general to acknowledge another’s entertainment of us that, even when the pleasure bestowed is known to have been given quite unwittingly, we cannot quite check the impulse to tender thanks. {307}
Again, that which amuses us will often, when thoughtfully considered, show itself to be bound up with what is really estimable. It is exaggerations of good qualities which are so amusing, especially when through sheer obstinacy they tend to become the whole man, and to provoke while they entertain. Comedy will sometimes—in the figure of Molière’s Alceste, for example—exhibit to us this clinging of the laughable to the skirts of excellence. But it is only to the more reflective mood of humour, to which comedy, as we shall see, does not appeal, that this coexistence of the quality and its defects, fully discloses itself.
Sometimes, too, even though we fail to discern its partial redemption through an organic connection with a worthy trait, a laughable defect may take on the appearance of a condonable and almost lovable blemish of character. Thus it is with the small imperfections seen in men recognised to be substantially good, imperfections which bring them nearer to us and so make them comprehensible. Thus, too, is it with the ignorances and simplicities of children, which, even while they bring the smile, disclose their worth as pure expressions of child-nature.
By speaking of a sentiment of humour we imply that the kindly feeling somehow combines with the gaiety of laughter in a new type of emotional consciousness. This combination, again, seems to involve a simultaneous presence in consciousness of the two elements, and not merely a rapid alternation of two phases of feeling. It is this simultaneous rise and partial fusion of a gay and a sad tone of feeling which differentiates humour proper from the feeling of ages to which the proximity of the laughable and the pathetic in things was familiar enough, as we may see, for example, from Pope’s lines on Addison:— {308}
Who but must laugh if such a man there be?