We may say generally that any fresh acquisition of knowledge destroys one source of amusement and opens another. But if our mental powers were to become perfect, which they never will, we should cease to laugh at all. Wisdom or knowledge--the study of our own thoughts or of those of others--has a tendency to alter our general views, and affects our appreciation of humour, even where it affords no special information on the subject before us. Upon given premises the conclusions of the highly cultivated are different from those of others; and intellectual humour is that which generally they enjoy most--finding more pleasure in thought than in emotion. No doubt they sometimes appreciate what is lighter, especially when a reaction taking place after severe study, they feel like children let out to play. But ordinarily they certainly appreciate most that rare and subtle humour which inferior minds cannot understand. Herbert Spencer is probably correct that "we enjoy that humour most at which we laugh least." But we must not conclude from this rule that we can at will by repressing our laughter increase our pleasure. The statement refers to the cases of different persons or of the same person under different circumstances. Rude and uneducated people would little feel the humour at which they could not laugh, and some grave people entirely miss much that is amusing. "The nervous energy," he says, "which would have caused muscular action, is discharged in thought," but this presupposes a very sensitive mental organization into which the discharge can be made. Where this does not exist, laughter accompanies the appreciation of humour, and in silence there would be little pleasure. The cause of mirth also differs as the persons affected, and the farce which creates a roar in the pit will often not raise a smile in the boxes. Swift writes--"Bombast and buffoonery, by nature lofty and light, soar highest of all in the theatre, and would be lost in the roof, if the prudent architect had not contrived for them a fourth place called the twelvepenny gallery and there planted a suitable colony." That emotionable ebullition affords a lower class less enjoyment than intellectual action gives a higher order of mind, must be somewhat uncertain. A thoughtful nature is probably happier than an emotional, but it is difficult to compare the pleasure derived from intellectual, moral, and sensuous feelings. It is a common saying that "there is no disputing taste," and in this respect we allow every man a certain range. But when he transgresses this limit he often becomes ludicrous, especially to those whose tastes rather tend in the opposite direction. The strange figure and accoutrements of Don Quixote raised great laughter among the gay ladies at the inn, and induced the puissant knight-errant to administer to them the rebuke "Excessive laughter without cause denotes folly."