A writer who undertakes to discourse on laughter has to encounter more than one variety of irritating objection. He finds to his dismay that a considerable part of his species, which has been flatteringly described as the laughing animal, has never exercised its high and distinguishing capacity. Nay, more, he soon learns that a good many oppose themselves to the practice and are laughter-haters. This kind of person (ὁ μισόγελως) is so possessed with the spirit of seriousness that the opposite temper of jocosity appears to him to be something shockingly wrong. All audible laughter is for him an ill-bred display, at once unsightly as a bodily contortion, and, as a lapse from the gravity of rea…
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