No doubt the Geographical Society had this investigation in mind
in not paying my expenses. Certainly on my return I was at once
assailed with the question on all sides, "Have they got a sense of
humour? Even if it is only a rudimentary sense, have they got it
or have they not?" I propose therefore to address myself to the
answer to this question.
A peculiar interest always attaches to humour. There is no quality of
the human mind about which its possessor is more sensitive than the
sense of humour. A man will freely confess that he has no ear for
music, or no taste for fiction, or even no interest in religion. But
I have yet to see the man who announces that he has no sense of
humour. In point of fact, every man is apt to think himself possessed
of an exceptional gift in this direction, and that even if his humour
does not express itself in the power either to make a joke or to
laugh at one, it none the less consists in a peculiar insight or
inner light superior to that of other people.
The same thing is true of nations. Each thinks its own humour of
an entirely superior kind, and either refuses to admit, or admits
reluctantly, the humorous quality of other peoples. The Englishman
may credit the Frenchman with a certain light effervescence of mind
which he neither emulates nor envies; the Frenchman may acknowledge
that English literature shows here and there a sort of heavy
playfulness; but neither of them would consider that the humour of
the other nation could stand a moment's comparison with his own.
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