The Philosophy of Laughter and Smiling. By George Vasey. (James
Burns.)---Mr. Vasey, condemning laughter, promotes it. How can we help laughing when he says, "If people become studious and intelligent (which all human beings ought to become), the spasm of laughter is seldom heard ;" and " If a man's mind be occupied by good and useful ideas, how can it be possible for him to laugh?" and when he proposes to sweep away those "extremely stupid and vulgar books," Jack the Giant-Killer, Puss in Boots, &c.? One does not laugh indeed when he speaks of Milton's exquisite lines, " But come thou, goddess fair and free," as an "invocation to the indulgence of the grossest, the most vitiating, the moat brntifying of all the sensual appetites." But ridicule, anger, and argument would be alike wasted on such a writer. Our readers will anyhow find in the book and its illustrations a complete antidote to the writer's gloomy and fantastic "philosophy."
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