I remember having, upon one occasion, visited the Mammertine prison at
Rome with a young friend preparing for the army, and his asking me "What
had St. Peter and St. Paul done to be confined here?" "They were here
for being Christians," I replied, "Oh, were St. Peter and St. Paul
Christians? I suppose they were put in prison by these horrid Roman
Catholics."
We may say generally that any fresh acquisition of knowledge destroys
one source of amusement and opens another. But if our mental powers were
to become perfect, which they never will, we should cease to laugh at
all. Wisdom or knowledge--the study of our own thoughts or of those of
others--has a tendency to alter our general views, and affects our
appreciation of humour, even where it affords no special information on
the subject before us. Upon given premises the conclusions of the highly
cultivated are different from those of others; and intellectual humour
is that which generally they enjoy most--finding more pleasure in
thought than in emotion. No doubt they sometimes appreciate what is
lighter, especially when a reaction taking place after severe study,
they feel like children let out to play. But ordinarily they certainly
appreciate most that rare and subtle humour which inferior minds cannot
understand. Herbert Spencer is probably correct that "we enjoy that
humour most at which we laugh least.
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