“Humour” is a word that has a rather curious history. It properly meant a fluid. (Compare the word “humid,” meaning moist) The mediaeval doctors used to teach that there were four chief fluids, or humours, in the body, namely blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy; and that a man’s physical and mental qualities were determined by the proportion in which these were mixed.
If blood were predominant, he would be of a sanguine (hopeful from Latin Sanguis blood’) temperament; if phlegm, he would be phlegmatic, or stolid and unemotional; if choler, he would be choleric, or easily roused to anger; if melancholy (literally, “black bile”) he would be gloomy and pessimistic.
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This old doctrine of “humours” is, of course, considered now to be nonsense; but the word humour has remained in the sense of temperament, mood, or temper. So we speak of being in a good humour, or a bad humour, meaning a good or bad mental mood.
The word humour by itself means the power to appreciate and enjoy wit and fun and what is comical; as when we say of a man that he has a keen sense of humour, or of a funny book that it is very humorous.
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Good humour, as a characteristic, means good temper a cheerful, kindly and genial disposition. A good humoured person is one who is not easily provoked or irritated, who takes things in a genial and friendly spirit, and so is easy to get on with, and is a pleasant companion.
A good-humoured person is naturally popular. Sour, irritable, peevish, and irascible people are not loved. People do not readily make friends with such, for they are always giving and taking offence. But all people like the company of a good-humoured man, with his pleasant smile and jolly laugh, and kindly and genial manners.
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Good humour is also a valuable defence to its possessor against the worries and battles of life. It prevents him from worrying about trifles, and getting upset with every misfrotune.
The typical character of a good hum soured man is fiction is Mark Tapley, in Dickens’s “Martin Chuzzlewit,” who always prided himself on keeping a smiling face and meeting the worst misfortunes with a cheery laugh. He is, perhaps, an impossible character; but it would do us no harm to try to follow his sunny example.
Good humour, therefore, makes for happiness. The good humoured man makes others happy with his cheery presence, and is able to keep himself happy even under cloudy skies.