NOTES AND COMMENTS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 185, 19 May 1938, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS

ORIGINS OF HUMOUR. Humour defies definition. As Chesterton says, it boasts of being indefinable. Indeed, says the “Listener,” to attempt to define it would be as sad a business as attempting to explain a joke. And if the nature of humour is indeterminate, its origins seem equally obscure. Mr J. B. Morton says that humour has its roots in religion. The scientists on the other hand have told us that humour and laughter have their beginnings in the exultations of the savage over his fallen foe \ and certainly if we want some modern confirmation of this latter theory, we need look no farther than the nursery, where nature in the raw is seldom mild. Here we find that few things amuse a child so much as the sight of someone else discomforted. The man who sits down on a chair that isn’t there may raise Cain, but he seldom fails to raise a. laugh. And it may be that because there is. something of the child (and not a little of a savage) in most of us, the knockabout type of humour has, and always has had, a universal appeal. Joey the clown sends laughter ringing down the ages. DISEASE RESISTANCE. Hundreds of thousands of working hours are lost during the year through illness which is largely superficial in character, writes Lord Aberdale, chairman of the National Fitness Council of Great Britain, in a recent article. Coughs, colds, influenza of. a mild type, bronchitis, etc., all reduce the efficiency of the worker and cause absence from work and consequent lowering of production. I doubt if figures are available showing the amount of faulty workmanship due to partial illness, but it must be considerable. If the standard of fitness were raised a very great deal of this would be eliminated. It is all a matter of resistance, and il an average human being is given a reasonable living condition his body will build up tremendous powers of resistance to disease in spite of the fact that he is carrying millions of germs about with him every minute of his life. It is only when his resistance is lowered by contact with cold and damp or when he is the victim of functional disorders that the bacteria within him make a successful onslaught on his system.