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and various disquisitions upon humor and laughter would seem to
support him. Its social nature is emphasized by Edwin Paxton Hood:
The sources of all laughter and merriment are in the cordial sympathies
of our nature. Laughter is very nearly related to the highest and most
instinctive wisdom; it stands at no distant remove from Judgment on
the one hand, and Imagination on the other; and it is a proof of a
healthy nature, for both thinking and acting.
C.S. Evans in his article "On Humor in Literature" gives a hint of the

evolutionary process of its mechanism and its higher refinement:
On the lower plane of humor you get a laugh by the most
unimaginative means--merely conceive a recognized humorous
situation, or bring several things together according to a recipe, and the
thing is done. Every practised comedian, in literature or on the stage, is
an adept at it. But the creation of character, the expression--in terms of
the words and actions of men and women--of that "social gesture"
which is laughter's source, is a much greater thing, for there we touch
the symbolism which is the soul of art.
The Function of Humor
In an article entitled "Why Do We Laugh?" William McDougall
discusses scientifically the value of laughter:
Laughter of man presents a problem with which philosophers have
wrestled in all ages with little success. Man is the only animal that
laughs. And, if laughter may properly be called an instinctive reaction,
the instinct of laughter is the only one peculiar to the human species....
We are saved from this multitude of small sympathetic pains and
depressions by laughter, which, as we have seen, breaks up our train of
mental activity and prevents our dwelling upon the distressing situation,
and which also provides an antidote to the depressing influence in the
form of physiological stimulation that raises the blood-pressure and
promotes the circulation of the blood. This, then, is the biological
function of laughter, one of the most delicate and beautiful of all
nature's adjustments. In order that man should reap the full benefits of
life in the social group, it was necessary that his primitive sympathetic
tendencies should be strong and delicately adjusted. For without this,
there could be little mutual understanding, and only imperfect
cooperation and mutual aid in the more serious difficulties and
embarrassments of life. But, in endowing man with delicately
responsive sympathetic tendencies, nature rendered him liable to suffer
a thousand pains and depressions upon a thousand occasions of mishap
to his fellows, occasions so trivial as to call for no effort of support or
assistance. Here was a dilemma--whether to leave man so little
sympathetic that he would be incapable of effective social life; or to
render him effectively sympathetic and leave him subject to the
perpetually renewed pains of sympathy, which, if not counteracted,
would seriously depress his vitality and perhaps destroy the species.

Nature, confronted with this problem, solved it by the invention of
laughter. She endowed man with the instinct to laugh on contemplation
of these minor mishaps of his fellow men; and so made them occasions
of actual benefit to the beholder; all those things which, apart from
laughter, would have been mildly displeasing and depressing, became
objects and occasions of stimulating beneficial laughter....
For laughter is no exception to the law of primitive sympathy; but
rather illustrates it most clearly and familiarly; the infectiousness of
laughter is notorious and as irresistible as the infection of fear itself....
The great laugher is the person of delicately responsive sympathetic
reactions; and his laughter quickly gives place to pity and comforting
support, if our misfortune waxes more severe. Such persons are in little
danger of giving offense by their laughter; for we detect their ready
sympathy and easily laugh with them; they teach us to be humorous.
H. Merian Allen in his essay "Little Laughs in History" says "The
relaxation of a full laugh clears the brain, restores fit contact with one's
fellows, and so smoothes the way for the solving of knotty problems."
Linus W. Kline, Ph.D., further elucidates the psychical office of humor
as follows:
The psychical function of humor is to delicately cut the surface tension
of consciousness and disarrange its structure that it may begin again
from a new and strengthened base. It permits our mental forces to
reform under cover, as it were, while the battle is still on. Then, too, it
clarifies the field and reveals the strategetic points, or, to change the
figure, it pulls off the mask and exposes the real man. No stimulus,
perhaps more mercifully and effectually breaks the surface tension of
consciousness, thereby conditioning the mind for a stronger forward
movement, than that of humor. It is the one universal dispensary for
human kind: a medicine for the poor, a