What salt is to food, wit and humor are to conversation and literature. "You do not," an amusing writer in the Cornhill has said, "expect humor in Thomas à Kempis or Hebrew Prophets;" but we have Solomon's authority that there is a time to laugh, as well as to weep.
"To read a good comedy is to keep the best company in the world, when the best things are said, and the most amusing things happen." [3]
It is not without reason that every one resents the imputation of being unable to see a joke.
Laughter appears to be the special prerogative of man. The higher animals present us with proof of evident, if not highly developed reasoning power, but it is more than doubtful whether they are capable of appreciating a joke.
Wit, moreover, has solved many difficulties and decided many controversies.
"Ridicule shall frequently prevail,
And cut the knot when graver reasons fail." [4]
A careless song, says Walpole, with a little nonsense in it now and then, does not misbecome a monarch, but it is difficult now to realize that James I. should have regarded skill in punning in his selections of bishops and privy councillors.
The most wasted of all days, says Chamfort, is that on which one has not laughed.
It is, moreover, no small merit of laughter that it is quite spontaneous. "You cannot force people to laugh; you cannot give a reason why they should laugh; they must laugh of themselves or not at all…. If we think we must not laugh, this makes our temptation to laugh the greater." [5] Humor is, moreover, contagious. A witty man may say, as Falstaff does of himself, "I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men."
But one may paraphrase the well-known remark about port wine and say that some jokes may be better than others, but anything which makes one laugh is good. "After all," says Dryden, "it is a good thing to laugh at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness," and I may add, of health.