Laughter an Essay on the Meaning of the Comic – Henri Bergson

“Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.  It may, perchance, have happened to you, when seated in a railway carriage or at table d’hote, to hear travellers relating to one another stories which must have been comic to them, for they laughed heartily. Had you been one of their company, you would have laughed like them, but, as you were not, you had no desire whatever to do so. A man who was once asked why he did not weep at a sermon when everybody else was shedding tears replied: “I don’t belang to the parish!” What that man thought of tears would be still more true of laughter. “(Bergson,  1921: 6).

Bergson, H. (1921). Laughter an essay on the meaning of the comic. The Macmillan Company.