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}