e less are folly and error capable
of amusing us. It would therefore seem impossible that we should
be pleased by the foibles or absurdities of those we love. And in
fact we never enjoy seeing our own persons in a satirical light, or
any one else for whom we really feel affection. Even in farces, the
hero and heroine are seldom made ridiculous, because that would
jar upon the sympathy with which we are expected to regard them.
Nevertheless, the essence of what we call humour is that amusing
weaknesses should be combined with an amicable humanity.
Whether it be in the way of ingenuity, or oddity, or drollery, the
humorous person must have an absurd side, or be placed in an
absurd situation. Yet this comic aspect, at which we ought to wince,
seems to endear the character all the more. This is a parallel case to
that of tragedy, where the depth of the woe we sympathize with
seems to add to our satisfaction. And the explanation of the
paradox is the same. We do not enjoy the expression of evil, but
only the pleasant excitements that come with it; namely, the
physical stimulus and the expression of good. In tragedy, the
misfortunes help to give the impression of truth, and to bring out
the noble qualities of the hero, but are in themselves depressing, so
much so that over-sensitive people cannot enjoy the beauty of the
representation. So also in humour, the painful suggestions are felt
as such, and need to be overbalanced by agreeable elements. These
come from both directions, from the aesthetic and the sympathetic
reaction. On the one hand there is the sensuous and merely
perceptive stimulation, the novelty, the movement, the vivacity of
the spectacle. On the other hand, there is the luxury of imaginative
sympathy, the mental assimilation of another congenial experience,
the expansion into another life.

The juxtaposition of these two pleasures produces just that tension
and complication in which the humorous consists. We are satirical,
and we are friendly at the same time. The consciousness of the
friendship gives a regretful and tender touch to the satire, and the
sting of the satire makes the friendship a trifle humble and sad.
Don Quixote is mad; he is old, useless, and ridiculous, but he is the
soul of honour, and in all his laughable adventures we follow him
like the ghost of our better selves. We enjoy his discomfitures too
much to wish he had been a perfect Amadis; and we have besides a
shrewd suspicion that he is