In order to assign its proper place and its value to a large spiritual tendency such as runs through human mirth, we must for a moment push our investigation into a yet more difficult and obscure region, that of philosophy. This is necessary for more than one reason. To begin, we can hardly hope to reach a clear view of the worth of the laughing impulse without the help of some clearly thought view of life as a whole; and such a “Weltanschauung” {393} seems only to be attainable at the level of philosophic reflection. There is, however, a second reason for entering this more remote and private domain of knowledge. Philosophy is a carrying forward to its highest point of development of that individual criticism of life, with which, as we have seen, the quieter tones of laughter associate themselves. It would thus seem to be desirable to inquire how far along the road of philosophic speculation this companionship of the mirthful spirit in her quieter mood is possible. This inquiry may conveniently be pursued at once as supplementary to our discussion of humour. As pointed out in the chapter on the subject, reflective humour grows out of a mutual approximation of two tendencies which seem to the unexamining person to be directly antagonistic, namely, the wholly serious turn for wise reflection and the playful bent towards laughter. In philosophic humour, touched on in our survey of the laughable in literature, this antagonism seems at first sight to be particularly sharp. The plain man, to whom philosophic speculation presents itself as something remote from all human interests as he conceives of them, may well receive a shock when he hears that it holds potentialities of a smile at least, if not of a laugh—for the person who engages in the occupation, that is to say, and not merely for him who looks on. It seems to be incumbent on us, therefore, to try to make this drawing together of impulses which look so hostile a little more intelligible. The humorist, as we have viewed him, is able through the development of his individuality to detach himself from many of the common judgments and much of the common laughter of the particular community of which he is a member. He develops his own amusing mode of contemplation, which involves a large substitution for the standards {394} of custom and “common-sense,” of the ideal standards of reason. The habit of philosophic thought may be said to complete this uplifting of the individual to ideal heights, and its concomitant process, the expansion of the view of the irrational, the essentially unfitting, the amusing. A word must suffice to indicate the way in which it does this.