Humor is as difficult of definition as is poetry. It is an intimate quality of the mind, which predisposes a man to look for remote and unreal analogies and to present them gravely as if they were valid. It sees that many of the objects valued by men are illusions, and it expresses this conviction by assuming that other manifest trifles are important. It is the deadly enemy of sentimentality and affectation, for its vision is clear. Although it turns everything topsy-turvy in sport, its world is not a chaos nor a child's play-ground, for humor is based on keen perception of truth. There is no method--except the highest poetic treatment--which reveals so distinctly the falsehoods and hypocrisies of the social and economic order as the _reductio ad absurdum_ of humor; for all human institutions have their ridiculous sides, which astonish and amuse us when pointed out, but from viewing which we suddenly become aware of relative values before misunderstood. But just as poetry may degenerate into a musical collection of words and painting into a decorative association of colors, so humor may degenerate into the merely comic or amusing. The laugh which true humor arouses is not far removed from tears. Humor indeed is not always associated with kindliness, for we have the sardonic humor of Carlyle and the savage humor of Swift; but it is naturally dissociated from egotism, and is never more attractive than when, as in the case of Charles Lamb and Oliver Goldsmith, it is based on a loving and generous interest in humanity.