“The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from the sudden conception of eminency in ourselves by comparison with the inferiority of others, or with our own formerly.”  According to Professor Bain, “Laughter results from the degradation of some person or interest possessing dignity in circumstances that excite no other strong emotion.”  Even Kant, desisting for a time from his contemplation of Pure Reason, gave his attention to the human phenomenon of laughter and explained it away as “the result of an expectation which of a sudden ends in nothing.”  Some modern cynic has compiled a list of the situations on the stage which are always “humorous.”  One of them, I recall, is the situation in which the clown-acrobat, having made mighty preparations for jumping over a pile of chairs, suddenly changes his mind and walks off without attempting it.  The laughter that invariably greets this “funny” maneuver would seem to have philosophical sanction.  Bergson, too, the philosopher of creative evolution, has considered laughter to the extent of an entire volume.  A reading of it leaves one a little disturbed.  Laughter, so we learn, is not the merry-hearted, jovial companion we had thought him.  Laughter is a stern mentor, characterized by “an absence of feeling.”  “Laughter,” says M. Bergson, “is above all a corrective, it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is directed.  By laughter society avenges itself for the liberties taken with it.  It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of sympathy or kindness.”  If this be laughter, grant us occasionally the saving grace of tears, which may be tears of sympathy, and, therefore, kind!

But, after all, since it is true that “one touch of humor makes the whole world grin,” what difference does it make what that humor is; what difference why or wherefore we laugh, since somehow or other, in a sorry world, we do laugh?

Of the test for a sense of humor, it has already been said that it is the ability to see a joke.  And, as for a joke, the dictionary, again a present help in time of trouble, tells us at once that it is, “something said or done for the purpose of exciting a laugh.”  But stay!  Suppose it does not excite the laugh expected?  What of the joke that misses fire?  Shall a joke be judged by its intent or by its consequences?  Is a joke that does not produce a laugh a joke at all?  Pragmatically considered it is not.  Agnes Repplier, writing on Humor, speaks of “those beloved writers whom we hold to be humorists because they have made us laugh.”  We hold them to be so—­but there seems to be a suggestion that we may be wrong.  Is it possible that the laugh is not the test of the joke?  Here is a question over which the philosophers may wrangle.  Is there an Absolute in the realm of humor, or must our jokes be judged solely by the pragmatic test?  Congreve once told Colly Gibber that there were many witty speeches in one of Colly’s plays, and many that looked witty, yet were not really what they seemed at first sight!  So a joke is not to be recognized even by its appearance or by the company it keeps.  Perhaps there might be established a test of good usage.  A joke would be that at which the best people laugh.