ur, and I think we
shall haue raine," ran an ancient weather prophet's prediction. Which
might give rise to some thoughts on the paradoxical subject of _dry_
humor.

Now in part this development is easily traced. Humor, meaning moisture
of any kind, came to have a biological significance and was applied only
to plant and animal life. It was restricted later within purely
physiological boundaries and was applied only to those "humours" of the
human body that controlled temperament. From these fluids, determining
mental states, the word took on a psychological coloring, but--by what
process of evolution did humor reach its present status! After all, the
scientific method has its weaknesses!

We can, if we wish, define humor in terms of what it is not. We can draw
lines around it and distinguish it from its next of kin, wit. This
indeed has been a favorite pastime with the jugglers of words in all
ages. And many have been the attempts to define humor, to define wit, to
describe and differentiate them, to build high fences to keep them
apart.

"Wit is abrupt, darting, scornful; it tosses its analogies in your face;
humor is slow and shy, insinuating its fun into your heart," says E. P.
Whipple. "Wit is intellectual, humor is emotional; wit is perception of
resemblance, humor of contrast--of contrast between ideal and fact,
theory and practice, promise and performance," writes another authority.
While yet another points out that "Humor is feeling--feelings can always
bear repetition, while wit, being intellectual, suffers by repetition."
The truth of this is evident when we remember that we repeat a witty
saying that we may enjoy the effect on others, while we retell a
humorous story largely for our own enjoyment of it.

Yet it is quite possible that humor ought not to be defined. It may be
one of those intangible substances, like love and beauty, that are
indefinable. It is quite probable that humor should not be explained. It
would be distressing, as some one pointed out, to discover that American
humor is based on American dyspepsia. Yet the philosophers themselves
have endeavored to explain it. Hazlitt held that to understand the
ludicrous, we must first know what the serious is. And to apprehend the
serious, what better course could be followed than to contemplate the
serious--yes and ludicrous--findings of the philosophers in their
attempts to define humor and to explain laughter. Consider Hobbes: "The
passion of