This third condition is automatism.  We have pointed it out from the outset of this work, continually drawing attention to the following point:  what is essentially laughable is what is done automatically.  In a vice, even in a virtue, the comic is that element by which the person unwittingly betrays himself—­the involuntary gesture or the unconscious remark.  Absentmindedness is always comical.  Indeed, the deeper the absentmindedness the higher the comedy.  Systematic absentmindedness, like that of Don Quixote, is the most comical thing imaginable:  it is the comic itself, drawn as nearly as possible from its very source.  Take any other comic character:  however unconscious he may be of what he says or does, he cannot be comical unless there be some aspect of his person of which he is unaware, one side of his nature which he overlooks; on that account alone does he make us laugh. [Footnote:  When the humorist laughs at himself, he is really acting a double part; the self who laughs is indeed conscious, but not the self who is laughed at.] Profoundly comic sayings are those artless ones in which some vice reveals itself in all its nakedness:  how could it thus expose itself were it capable of seeing itself as it is?  It is not uncommon for a comic character to condemn in general terms a certain line of conduct and immediately afterwards afford an example of it himself:  for instance, M. Jourdain’s teacher of philosophy flying into a passion after inveighing against anger; Vadius taking a poem from his pocket after heaping ridicule on readers of poetry, etc.  What is the object of such contradictions except to help us to put our finger on the obliviousness of the characters to their own actions?  Inattention to self, and consequently to others, is what we invariably find.  And if we look at the matter closely, we see that inattention is here equivalent to what we have called unsociability.  The chief cause of rigidity is the neglect to look around—­and more especially within oneself:  how can a man fashion his personality after that of another if he does not first study others as well as himself?  Rigidity, automatism, absent-mindedness and unsociability are all inextricably entwined; and all serve as ingredients to the making up of the comic in character.

In a word, if we leave on one side, when dealing with human personality, that portion which interests our sensibility or appeals to our feeling, all the rest is capable of becoming comic, and the comic will be proportioned to the rigidity.  We formulated this idea at the outset of this work.  We have verified it in its main results, and have just applied it to the definition of comedy.  Now we must get to closer quarters, and show how it enables us to delimitate the exact position comedy occupies among all the other arts.  In one sense it might be said that all character is comic, provided we mean by character the ready-made element in our personality, that mechanical element which resembles a piece of clockwork wound