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? Who would not weep, if Atticus were he? Again, as a harmonious blending of elements the sentiment of humour contrasts with that mere mixture of pleasurable and painful ingredients which Plato thought he detected in all laughter.[263] The psychology of the emotions is still in a backward state, and we know very little about the laws of their fusion.[264] One or two points may, however, be touched on. It must be remembered that two feelings simultaneously excited may clash and refuse to combine in a peaceful whole. This commonly happens, indeed, when they are repugnant in kind, _e.g._, pride and tenderness, and when both are powerfully excited. Emotional fusion means that this repugnance is somehow overcome, that the constituent emotive processes combine in some new current of consciousness. Not that the elements need be wholly submerged in the product; they may remain as tones remain in a chord, half-disclosed, though profoundly modified by their concomitants. Such a state of partial fusion may be illustrated in our moods of memory, in which delight in the recovery of lost experiences is tempered with regret.