“If you believe that our civilization is founded in common-sense (and it is the first condition of sanity to believe it), you will, when contemplating men, discern a Spirit overhead; not more heavenly than the light flashed upward from glassy surfaces, but luminous and watchful; never shooting beyond them, nor lagging in the rear; so closely attached to them that it may be taken for a slavish reflex, until its features are studied. It has the sage’s brows, and the sunny malice of a faun lurks at the corners of the half-closed lips drawn in an idle wariness of half tension. That slim feasting smile, shaped like the long-bow, was once a big round satyr’s laugh, that flung up the brows like a fortress lifted by gunpowder. The laugh will come again, but it will be of the order of the smile, finely tempered, showing sunlight of the mind, mental richness rather than noisy enormity. Its common aspect is one of unsolicitous observation, as if surveying a full field and having leisure to dart on its chosen morsels without any fluttering eagerness. Men’s future upon earth does not attract it; their honesty and shapeliness in the present does; and whenever they wax out of proportion, overblown, affected, pretentious, bombastical, hypocritical, pedantic, fantastically delicate; whenever it sees them self-deceived or hoodwinked, given to run riot in idolatries, drifting into vanities, congregating in absurdities, planning shortsightedly, plotting dementedly; whenever they are at variance with their professions, and violate the unwritten but perceptible laws binding them in consideration one to another; whenever they offend sound reason, fair justice; are false in humility or mined with conceit, individually, or in the bulk--the Spirit overhead will look humanely malign and cast an oblique light on them, followed by volleys of silvery laughter. That is the Comic Spirit.” With Kant, however, the other theory of Aristotle came into notice. Kant declared, “Laughter is the affection arising from the sudden transformation of a strained expectation into nothing.” This was dubbed by Emerson, “Frustrated Expectation,” and describes the Disappointment Theory as Sudden Glory describes the Derision Theory. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets of the World of Humor. There are many other theories and sub-theories, there are long and prosy books written about them, but are outside our Outline. A general understanding of the humorous element is all we are after and that has now been set forth. * * * * * A question closely akin to What is Humor? is What is a Sense of Humor? The phrase seems self-explanatory, and is by no means identical with the thing itself. Nor are the two inseparable. Humor and the sense of humor need not necessarily lie in the same brain.