This introduction into humour of something in the nature of a thinking process or reflection has this curious consequence, that it does not merely play about the realm of the serious, as the earlier and simpler laughter does, but comprehends, assimilates, and becomes toned down into half-play by something of the weightier import of things, of their value and their bearing on our welfare. This is the paradox, the secret of the humour-loving soul, irritating at once to the merely serious person and to the light-hearted trifler. In order to understand how this is effected, we shall, as will be seen presently, need to look at other elements besides the intellectual. Yet we shall do well to note the fact that the possibility of this meeting of the playful and the serious in the mood of humour has its intellectual condition in an enlarged mental grasp of things. Our analysis of the objects which entice the laugh from man has suggested that the risible aspect nearly always coexists with other aspects. The kind of physical defect which is amusing may also be wrong æsthetically or hygienically, and so on of the rest. And though writers from Aristotle to Bain have been careful to point out that the laughable defect or degradation must in its magnitude be below the threshold of the painfully ugly, the {302} blameworthy and so forth, it is perfectly clear that given a quick and comprehensive perception, and a turn for musing on what is perceived, the serious tendency in that which amuses us will come into the margin of the field of vision. In this way, in the case of those who have developed the requisite combining organ, a kind of binocular mental vision has become possible. We enjoy pensively the presentation of Don Quixote, of Uncle Toby, and the other great humorous characters, just because we are in a mood in which, while giving ourselves up to an amusing spectacle, we nevertheless embrace in our reflective survey, and are affected by, something of its deeper meaning. A full account of the humorous way of regarding things would trace out all the subtle interpenetrations of merry fooling and serious inspection, of a light and merry fancy and a sober reason. A hint, only, on their modes of combination, can be given here.