From this point of view, we may see that the comedy of manners is not, fundamentally, so different from that of character as is often maintained. It breaks with the moral order of stable societies, no doubt, and turns its back rather rudely on this order. Yet it may still, in a sense, be said to adopt the social point of view. That is to say, it envisages {377} the seemly as that which falls in with the code of manners which happens to obtain at the time. Its standard of fitness is, like that of the savage and of Molière, the customs of the tribe. It is the sour-tempered and suspicious husband, for whom Macaulay expresses so droll a concern, who in this inverted world becomes the anti-social kind of person. The large indulgence of this society is but an expansion of the indulgence common to Terence and to Molière. A sub-conscious awareness of the topsy-turvyness of things is with us as we look; and the quaint fancifulness of the inversion—if only like Lamb we can refuse for a moment to take serious views—is distinctly refreshing. In saying that we go to meet comedy in the play-mood, in which our habits of moral approbation and disapprobation, and even of estimation of social values, are lulled to a sleep more or less profound, it is not meant that these serious tendencies in us can be ignored by the writer of comedy. As implied above, they mould our forms of the seemly, unknowingly to us perhaps, even as we look. And more, though inhibited by the play-like mood, they have force; and should the showman go too far, say in the direction of stripping off the veil of decency, they may wake up and make an end of the comic enjoyment. Just as tragic fear and pity may give way to physical revulsion when horror obtrudes itself, so when in comedy the unclean thrusts into view its ugly head, a sort of physical revulsion may silence laughter. The latitude in these matters conceded from time to time to comic art will, it is evident, vary greatly with the particular ratio between the vigours of the mirthful and moral tendencies. The presentation of the comic aspects of men’s behaviour on the stage is narrowly limited. As Sainte-Beuve reminds us, a whole people may have a fit (_accès_) of mania. If {378} this happen to be the war-fury we shall have given us, as pointed out above, unmistakable elements of comic situation and character. Indeed, if a person who has just been in the midst of a wild “Jingoism” without losing his head will read Molière’s plays he will not fail to be struck by numerous resemblances. And here, as in comedy, the figures have their comical contours and poses thrown into relief by a social background, as much superior to any single community at a particular moment, as a community to one of its members. Yet no national comedy could in these days follow Aristophanes and use such promising material, nor are we likely as yet to have a comedy for the civilised world.