irit with human emotions; but, on the
other hand, it is difficult to see how complex emotions, not connected
with any material needs and impulses, can be found existing in
organisms, unless the same emotions exist in the mind of their Creator.
If the thrush bursts into song on the bare bush at evening, if the
child smiles to see the bulging hairy cactus, there must be, I think,
something joyful and smiling at the heart, the inmost cell of nature,
loving beauty and laughter; indeed, beauty and mirth must be the natural
signs of health and content. And then there strike in upon the mind two
thoughts. Is, perhaps, the basis of humour a kind of selfish security?
Does one primarily laugh at all that is odd, grotesque, broken, ill at
ease, fantastic, because such things heighten the sense of one's own
health and security? I do not mean that this is the flower of modern
humour; but is it not, perhaps, the root? Is not the basis of laughter
perhaps the purely childish and selfish impulse to delight, not in
the sufferings of others, but in the sense which all distorted things
minister to one--that one is temporarily, at least, more blest than
they? A child does not laugh for pure happiness--when it is happiest, it
is most grave and solemn; but when the sense of its health and soundness
is brought home to it poignantly, then it laughs aloud, just as
it laughs at the pleasant pain of being tickled, because the tiny
uneasiness throws into relief its sense of secure well-being.

And the further thought--a deep and strange one--is this: We see how all
mortal things have a certain curve or cycle of life--youth, maturity,
age. May not that law of being run deeper still? we think of nature
being ever strong, ever young, ever joyful; but may not the very shadow
of sorrow and suffering in the world be the sign that nature too grows
old and weary? May there have been a dim age, far back beyond history or
fable or scientific record, when she, too, was young and light-hearted?
The sorrows of the world are at present not like the sorrows of age, but
the sorrows of maturity. There is no decrepitude in the world: its heart
is restless, vivid, and hopeful yet; its melancholy is as the melancholy
of youth--a melancholy deeply tinged with beauty; it is full of
boundless visions and eager dreams; though it is thwarted, it believes
in its ultimate triumph; and the growth of humour in the world may be
just the shadow of hard fact falling upon the gene