Molière’s supremacy in the comic use of character is seen, first of all, in the selection of his types, which have each a large amusing aspect inherent in the character itself, and capable of being set forth in a sufficient variety of manifestation. We see this at once by comparing his best-known characters with those of his predecessors. In Molière we have, what Coleridge tells us is wanting in Ben Jonson, the presentation of the laughable defect as “a prominence {365} growing out of, and nourished by, the character which still circulates in it”.[306] The simple-minded ambition of the Bourgeois gentilhomme, the pious over-confidence of Orgon, the intractable misanthropy of Alceste—these, as traits broad-based in the character, offer large possibilities of comic development. The next point to be noted in this new art is the mode of presentation of the character which is to hold the eye in amused contemplation. The pointing effect of contrast is present, as in all good art; what is noteworthy is the admirable simplicity of the method of contrasting. This is rendered possible by the type selected and the point of view adopted. To Molière, the man taken with vain conceit, the opinionated prig, the unsociable critic of society and the rest, are aberrations from a normal type, the socially adapted person. The Harpagons, the Orgons, the Arnolphes, the Alcestes, the Sganarelles and the others, have their amusing lop-sidedness, their characteristic tendency swollen to the ridiculous proportions of a tumor, defined from the first by the antithesis in which they are set to the normal members of society. The orderly world, pleading for a reasonable accommodation to the usages of men, is sometimes represented by the judicious friend, _e.g._, Alceste, Arnolphe; not seldom by the wife, _e.g._, Madame Jourdain; at other times by the brother, _e.g._, of Sganarelle; and, now and again, even by the privileged and saucy maid, _e.g._, of Orgon, of M. Jourdain. In this juxtaposition the comic poet exhibits clearly enough the anti-social tendency of the inflated characteristic. The outrage to woman in the rigorous treatment of their wards by Arnolphe and Sganarelle, the harshness of Alceste’s demands on the high-spirited girl he woos, {366} the menace in Jourdain’s craze to the stability of the home, the cruel bearing of Harpagon’s avarice on his son—all this is made quite plain to the spectator; and the exposure of this maleficent tendency in the perverse attitude serves somehow to strengthen the comic effect.