One says
Champagne, another Claret, another Burgundy, but the last one observes
knowingly that he should like that best for which he should not have to
pay. Now in this there is certainly a fault, for the answer is not
applicable to the question. Brown's theory is that the ludicrous arises
from the contemplation of incongruities, and he finds himself somewhat
puzzled when he considers that the incongruities in science--in
chemistry, for instance--do not make us laugh. He is at some trouble to
explain that the importance of the subject renders us serious. But had
he recognised the fact that the ludicrous implies condemnation, he would
have seen that we could not be amused at incongruities in science,
because we have a strong conviction that they are not real but only
apparent. Some very ignorant persons, as he observes, do occasionally
laugh at philosophic truths. I knew a lady who laughed at being told of
the great distance of the planets, and a gentleman assured me that a
friend of his, a man who had such shrewdness that he rose from the
lowest ranks and acquired L100,000, would never believe that the earth
was round!
Jean Paul, taking the same admiration view, observes that "women laugh
more than men, and the haughty Turk not at all." But are not these facts
referable to comparative excitability and apathy, and also to the
multiplicity and variety of female ideas compared with the dulness of
the Moslem's apprehension.
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