Scepticism thus introduces another standpoint for the laugher and adds to the sum of laughable things. This is the standpoint of the practical man and of what we call common-sense, so far as this is knowledge shaped for the guidance of men in the ordinary affairs of life. This common-sense, as its name plainly tells us, is essentially a social phenomenon. Here, then, within the group of tendencies underlying reflection—that is to say, the kind of intellectual activity which marks the highest development of the individual point of view—we encounter the contrast between this and the social point of view. So far as we are able in our philosophic moments to “see the fun of it,” as R. {400} L. Stevenson says apropos of a modern philosopher, we join the choir of common-sense laughers—the laughing realists as distinguished from the laughing idealists.[328] From their point of view, as the history of comedy plainly illustrates, all highly abstract speculation looks amusing because of its quaint remoteness from their familiar realities and interests; because, too, of a keen suspicion of its being a vain attempt to soar above the heads of common mortals. To pull down the speculative soarer to his proper footing on our humble earthcrust is always a gratifying occupation to the lovers of mirth. Even the soarers themselves will sometimes give one another a kick downwards, the man of science loving to have his joke at the expense of the unverifiable conceptions of the metaphysician, and the latter being sometimes lucky enough to turn the tables by showing how physical science itself may, by its abstract methods, manage to strip material things, the properties and laws of which it sets out to explain, of the last shreds of reality.[329] A word may serve to define the relation of philosophic humour to the tendencies just indicated. Humour, we have found, is characterised by an inclination to reflect, and to take the large views of things which embrace relations; further, by a mirthful caprice of fancy in choosing for play-ground the confines of issues felt all the time to be serious. It grows distinctly philosophic when, as in Jean Paul or his disciple, Carlyle, the contemplation of things breaks through the limitations of the viewer’s particular world-corner, surmounts “relative” points of view, and regards humanity as a whole, with oneself projected into the spectacle, as nearly as possible as disinterested spectator. {401} We need not look for the philosophic humorist among zealous adherents of the schools. In these, as elsewhere, a fervid devotion tends, through its narrowing effect on ideas and its rigid fixation of the point of view, to shut out humour, which even in its most serious vein loves an ample reserve of space for free wanderings in search of new aspects of things. The humorist is much more likely to be found among students of philosophy who retain a measure of scholarly impartiality in relation to the competing creeds.