To give an historical sketch of
the growth and development of modern Humour would be a task that
might well claim the energies of some literary man; it seems to me
surprising that some German philosopher has not attempted a
scientific classification of the subject. It would perhaps be best
done by a man without appreciation of humour, because only then
could one hope to escape being at the mercy of preferences; it
would have to be studied purely as a phenomenon, a symptom of the
mind; and nothing but an overwhelming love of classification would
carry a student past the sense of its unimportance. But here I
would rather attempt not to find a formula or a definition for
humour, but to discover what it is, like argon, by eliminating
other characteristics, until the evasive quality alone remains.
It lies deep in nature. The peevish mouth and the fallen eye of the
plaice, the helpless rotundity of the sunfish, the mournful gape
and rolling glance of the goldfish, the furious and ineffective
mien of the barndoor fowl, the wild grotesqueness of the babyroussa
and the wart-hog, the crafty solemn eye of the parrot,--if such
things as these do not testify to a sense of humour in the Creative
Spirit, it is hard to account for the fact that in man a perception
is implanted which should find such sights pleasurably entertaining
from infancy upwards.
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