Certain philosophers have described man as a cooking animal, others as a
tool-making animal, others, again, as a laughing animal. No creature
save man, say the advocates of the last definition, seems to have any
"sense of humour." However this may be, there can be little doubt that
man in all ages of which we have any knowledge has possessed that
faculty which perceives ridiculous incongruities in the relative
positions of certain objects, and in the actions and sayings of
individuals, which we term the "sense of the ludicrous." It is not to be
supposed that a dog or a cat--albeit intelligent creatures, in their own
ways--would see anything funny or laughable in a man whose sole attire
consisted in a general's hat and sash and a pair of spurs! Yet _that_
should be enough to "make even a cat laugh"! Certainly laughter is
peculiar to our species; and gravity is as certainly not always a token
of profound wisdom; for
The gravest beast's an ass;
The gravest bird's an owl;
The gravest fish's an oyster;
And the gravest man's a _fool_.
Many of the great sages of antiquity were also great humorists, and
laughed long and heartily at a good jest. And, indeed, as the Sage of
Chelsea affirms, "no man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be
altogether, irreclaimably bad.
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