Life Does Not Proceed By The Association

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

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.

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 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.

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.