Laughter Is, Above All, A Corrective. Being

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.

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.

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 Varying The Manufacture.

I Believe That The Time Given To Refutation In Philosophy Is Usually Time Lost. Of The Many Attacks Directed By Many Thinkers Against Each Other, What Now Remains? Nothing, Or Assuredly Very Little. That Which Counts And Endures Is The Modicum Of Positive Truth Which Each Contributes. The True Statement Is, Of Itself, Able To Displace The Erroneous Idea, And Becomes, Without Our Having Taken The Trouble Of Refuting Anyone, The Best Of Refutations.

In Laughter We Always Find An Unavowed Intention To Humiliate And Consequently To Correct Our Neighbour.