150 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



tions, exalting trifles into the plane of the magnificent form perennial 

 sources of humor. 



Active Thought Humor. — This type of thought humor is as complex 

 and infinite in variety as thought itself. Cicero was the first to have 

 extensively considered it, and even he apologized for his number of 

 headings. He says, " I have divided these matters into too many head- 

 ings already." He includes : deceiving expectation, satirizing the 

 tempers of others, playing humorously upon our own, comparing a 

 thing with something worse (Bain's degradation theory), dissembling, 

 uttering apparent absurdities, pretended misunderstandings, wishing 

 the impossible, uniting discordant particulars (Krapelin's theory of the 

 comic), concealed suspicion of ridicule. He illustrates the latter by 

 " the Sicilian who, when a friend of his made lamentations to him, 

 saying that his wife had hanged herself upon a fig tree, said, I beseech 

 you give me some shoots of that tree, that I may plant them." 



Cicero's 6 list has been considerably increased by later writers with- 

 out contributing anything essentially new. I shall not attempt to in- 

 crease the list. I wish here to emphasize some of the more common 

 ways by which active thought uses the material, already detailed, in 

 the interest of humor. Some of the simpler uses are seen in childhood 

 in their " fooling " and playful deception. The vigorous use that the 

 child makes of "April fool" is an example. The child employs the 

 recognition jDrocess for humorous effects in his mimicry, drawings and 

 riddles. To draw an object with doubtful resemblance and require 

 an adult to identify it affords him pleasure. Constructive imagina- 

 tion is put to the service of humor by the various forms of roguery. 

 A negro boy asked my brother of twelve if he had seen a stray cow. 

 " Did she wear a small bell ? " asked my brother. " Yeah, dat's de 

 cow." " Did she have a short tail ? " " Yeah, dat's de veay cow." 

 " Then I haven't seen her." The essential principle in cartooning is to 

 display an association formed either by evident or obscure resemblances. 

 Both wit and humor of the highest type depend upon the power of 

 perceiving unusual, exaggerated and remote relationships. Mark 

 Twain stands alone in this country in the use of exaggerated relation- 

 ships. Groos 7 has marshaled considerable evidence to show that the 

 higher mental processes may be used in the service of play. Kant 

 pointed out that play and humor are closely related, if not actually 

 crossing each other. This suggests the notion that every process 

 exerted in the service of play may at the same time, or under slightly 

 different conditions, be used for purposes of humor. The making and 

 solving of conundrums and riddles, impromptu and otherwise, are prac- 

 tised no less for their humor than for their play value. I hardly need 

 mention the coarse type of active thought humor which makes a 

 liberal use of profanity and other vulgarisms. 



6 Cicero, " Oratory and Orators," p. 304, Bonn's edition. 

 1 Groos, Karl, " The Play of Man," pp. 152-158. 



