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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2017
In this essay no distinction will be made between humor and the comic spirit. While, no doubt, the form and content of humor is apt to bring to the listener or reader results differing from those of any expression of the comic spirit, the inherent differences only then become conspicuous when the social and individual causes of both prevent them from being integrated. In judging things sub specie aeternitatis humor is apt to equalize differences, and the comic spirit is apt to emphasize contrasts. The representational attribute of humor in relation to the intention of understanding is a certain innocence of the spirit, confidence, sometimes credulity; that of the comic strain answers those demands of human insight which should be considered as correlatives of man's complicated nature. Nevertheless, the distance between humor and comedy can be shortened when the latter is willing to be less critical and the former less innocent. To be sure, this approach does not aim to improve the understanding of the psychology of humor and of the comic spirit; but it aims to simplify issues which since Kant have sometimes been unduly magnified in their oppositions.
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