"There is still one question before us. If humor be what we have claimed
for it, not a mere farce, but the depicting of the whole of human life,
then we should expect that the highest literature should be found to
contain it. We should expect to find it everywhere; that it should satisfy
all that desire which a reading in theology, or philosophy, or science, or
history, or a study in art, has created in man. Are there, then, any great
books, or still more any great forces in human life which seem devoid of
it? Is there any humor in the gospels? This is a dilemma that must be
faced; for if humor be life itself, how can human life in its highest
development dispense with it?"--_Shorthouse._