combination. But
such is not the case. No sooner has the interview come to an end than
the father forgets everything. On meeting his son again he barely
alludes to the scene, serious though it has been: "You, my son, whom I
am good enough to forgive your recent escapade, etc." Greed has thus
passed close to all other feelings ABSENTMINDEDLY, without either
touching them or being touched. Although it has taken up its abode in
the soul and become master of the house, none the less it remains a
stranger. Far different would be avarice of a tragic sort. We should
find it attracting and absorbing, transforming and assimilating the
divers energies of the man: feelings and affections, likes and
dislikes, vices and virtues, would all become something into which
avarice would breathe a new kind of life. Such seems to be the first
essential difference between high-class comedy and drama.

There is a second, which is far more obvious and arises out of the
first. When a mental state is depicted to us with the object of making
it dramatic, or even merely of inducing us to take it seriously, it
gradually crystallises into ACTIONS which provide the real measure of
its greatness. Thus, the miser orders his whole life with a view to
acquiring wealth, and the pious hypocrite, though pretending to have
his eyes fixed upon heaven, steers most skilfully his course here
below. Most certainly, comedy does not shut out calculations of this
kind; we need only take as an example the very machinations of
Tartuffe. But that is what comedy has in common with drama; and in
order to keep distinct from it, to prevent our taking a serious action
seriously, in short, in order to prepare us for laughter, comedy
utilises a method, the formula of which may be given as follows:
INSTEAD OF CONCENTRATING OUR ATTENTION ON ACTIONS, COMEDY DIRECTS IT
RATHER TO GESTURES. By GESTURES we here mean the attitudes, the
movements and even the language by which a mental state expresses
itself outwardly without any aim or profit, from no other cause than a
kind of inner itching. Gesture, thus defined, is profoundly different
from action. Action is intentional or, at any rate, conscious; gesture
slips out unawares, it is automatic. In action, the entire person is
engaged; in gesture, an isolated part of the person is expressed,
unknown to, or at least apart from, the whole of the personality.
Lastly--and here is the essential point--action is in exact proportion
to the f