On The Other Hand, The Pleasure Caused By Laughter, Even On The Stage, Is Not An Unadulterated Enjoyment; It Is Not A Pleasure That Is Exclusively Esthetic Or Altogether Disinterested. It Always Implies A Secret Or Unconscious Intent, If Not Of Each One Of Us, At All Events Of Society As A Whole. In Laughter We Always Find An Unavowed Intention To Humiliate, And Consequently To Correct Our Neighbour, If Not In His Will, At Least In His Deed.
When It Is Said That An Object Occupies A Large Space In The Soul Or Even That It Fills It Entirely, We Ought To Understand By This Simply That Its Image Has Altered The Shade Of A Thousand Perceptions Or Memories, And That In This Sense It Pervades Them, Although It Does Not Itself Come Into View.
In Just The Same Way The Thousands Of Successive Positions Of A Runner Are Contracted Into One Sole Symbolic Attitude, Which Our Eye Perceives, Which Art Reproduces, And Which Becomes For Everyone The Image Of A Man Who Runs.
In Laughter We Always Find An Unavowed Intention To Humiliate And Consequently To Correct Our Neighbour.
And I Also See How This Body Influences External Images: It Gives Back Movement To Them.
Knowledge, In So Far As It Is Directed To Practical Matters, Has Only To Enumerate The Principal Possible Attitudes Of The Thing Towards Us, As Well As Our Best Possible Attitude Towards It. Therein Lies The Ordinary Function Of Ready-made Concepts, Those Stations With Which We Mark Out The Path Of Becoming. But To Seek To Penetrate With Them Into The Inmost Nature Of Things, Is To Apply To The Mobility Of The Real A Method Created In Order To Give Stationary Points Of Observation On It.
In Short, Intelligence, Considered In What Seems To Be Its Original Feature, Is The Faculty Of Manufacturing Artificial Objects, Especially Tools To Make Tools, And Of Indefinitely Urging The Manufacture.
Laughter Appears To Stand In Need Of An Echo, Listen To It Carefully: It Is Not An Articulate, Clear, Well-defined Sound; It Is Something Which Would Fain Be Prolonged By Reverberating From One To Another, Something Beginning With A Crash, To Continue In Successive Rumblings, Like Thunder In A Mountain.
Instinct Perfected Is A Faculty Of Using And Even Constructing Organized Instruments; Intelligence Perfected Is The Faculty Of Making And Using Unorganized Instruments.
Laughter Is, Above All, A Corrective. Being Intended To Humiliate, It Must Make A Painful Impression On The Person Against Whom It Is Directed. By Laughter, Society Avenges Itself For The Liberties Taken With It. It Would Fail In Its Object If It Bore The Stamp Of Sympathy Or Kindness.
The Prestige Of The Nobel Prize Is Due To Many Causes, But In Particular To Its Twofold Idealistic And International Character: Idealistic In That It Has Been Designed For Works Of Lofty Inspiration; International In That It Is Awarded After The Production Of Different Countries Has Been Minutely Studied And The Intellectual Balance Sheet Of The Whole World Has Been Drawn Up. Free From All Other Considerations And Ignoring Any But Intellectual Values, The Judges Have Deliberately Taken Their Place In What The Philosophers Have Called A Community Of The Mind.
