The consideration of the complexity of the sentiment may throw light, further, on its modifications among the peoples which are correctly spoken of as endowed with it. These differences are roughly accounted for by saying that the proportions of gravity and gaiety, of serious reflection and playful fancy vary indefinitely. They are certainly different, let us say, in the case of the Englishman, the American, the Scotchman and the Irishman. Yet this consideration does not account for all the dissimilarity. Since humour is playfulness modified by the whole serious temper of a man, we should expect it to differentiate itself into many shades according to the trend of the ideas, interests, impulses and the rest which distinguishes one sort of mind or character from another. We can only fully understand the contrast between American and English, or between Irish and Scotch, humour, when we understand the differences {313} of character. An amusing Irish or Scotch story, one, that is to say, which is produced for home-consumption, seems to be redolent of the whole temperament, mind and character of the people. It is this complexity of the sentiment which makes the amiable effort to illustrate the humour of other peoples by published selections a pathetic futility. How can one expect, for example, the ordinary Englishman to get into touch with that fine product of child’s fun, quick fancy, alert sympathy, open-heartedness, and a deep brooding sentiment which meets him in the humour of the Irishman? It is enough to remember how he is wont to laugh his superior laugh at an Irish bull, as if this were necessarily an unconscious “howler,” whereas it may be, in reality, a charming expression of a most amiable trait of character.[270] A due recognition of the complexity of the sentiment discloses to us a point of capital importance: humour, in the sense of a perfect fusion of play and gravity, of the aggressiveness of laughter and kindly consideration, is, as already hinted, pre-eminently an endowment of individuals rather than of races. It presupposes a basis of temperament which, though it may be favoured by certain racial characters, is only realised where nature hits upon a particular proportion among the elements by the mixing of which she produces an individual; and so nice an operation is this mixture, that humour, of the full rich quality at least, is perhaps less frequently handed down from parent to child than specific forms of talent.