society composed of pure intelligences there would probably be no
more tears, though perhaps there would still be laughter; whereas
highly emotional souls, in tune and unison with life, in whom every
event would be sentimentally prolonged and re-echoed, would neither
know nor understand laughter. Try, for a moment, to become
interested in everything that is being said and done; act, in
imagination, with those who act, and feel with those who feel; in a
word, give your sympathy its widest expansion: as though at the
touch of a fairy wand you will see the flimsiest of objects assume
importance, and a gloomy hue spread over everything. Now step aside,
look upon life as a disinterested spectator: many a drama will turn
into a comedy. It is enough for us to stop our ears to the sound of
music, in a room where dancing is going on, for the dancers at once
to appear ridiculous. How many human actions would stand a similar
test? Should we not see many of them suddenly pass from grave to
gay, on isolating them from the accompanying music of sentiment? To
produce the whole of its effect, then, the comic demands something
like a momentary anesthesia of the heart. Its appeal is to
intelligence, pure and simple.

This intelligence, however, must always remain in touch with other
intelligences. And here is the third fact to which attention should
be drawn. You would hardly appreciate the comic if you felt yourself
isolated from others. Laughter appears to stand in need of an echo,
Listen to it carefully: it is not an articulate, clear, well-defined
sound; it is something which would fain be prolonged by
reverberating from one to another, something beginning with a crash,
to continue in successive rumblings, like thunder in a mountain.
Still, this reverberation cannot go on for ever. It can travel
within as wide a circle as you please: the circle remains, none the