'I cannot tread even a limited space of air'

 'I suffer from a strong suspicion that things in general cannot be accounted for through any formula or set of formulae, and that any one philosophy, howsoever new, is no better than another. That is in itself a sort of philosophy, and I suspect it accordingly; but it has for me the merit of being the only one I can make head or tail of. If you try to expound any other philosophic system to me, you will find not merely that I can detect no flaw in it (except the one great flaw just suggested), but also that I haven't, after a minute or two, the vaguest notion of what you are driving at.' This is Max Beerbohm, in 'Laughter', the last essay (and one of the best) in his collection, And Even Now. I'm with him on philosophy in general, much though I've enjoyed sampling the more entertaining philosophers – Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer – but have never read Bergson, whose essay on laughter inspired Beerbohm's own. Alas, Bergson's essay did not help Max: 'I have profited from his kindness no more than if he had been treating of the Cosmos. I cannot tread even a limited space of air. I have a gross satisfaction in the crude fact of being on hard ground again, and I utter a coarse peal of – Laughter.'
  In fact, as Beerbohm straight away admits, he did no such thing; he merely smiled. 'The joyous surrender' of hearty laughter, he suspects, is becoming a thing of the past. 'It may be that in the early ages of this world there was far more laughter than is to be heard now, and that aeons hence laughter will be obsolete, and smiles universal – everyone, always, mildly, slightly, smiling.' He adduces examples of wild, tumultuous laughter from the annals of literary history – Byron and Moore convulsed with helpless mirth over the line 'When Rogers o'er his labour bent' (with even Rogers himself joining in); and Johnson's mighty fit of laughter one night by Temple Bar, when Johnson 'to support himself, laid hold of one of the posts at the side of the foot pavement, and sent forth peals so loud that in the silence of the night his voice seemed to resound from Temple Bar to Fleet Ditch.' Such laughter would indeed be a rare thing nowadays, when loud, raucous laughter is common enough, but seldom betokens mirth or good cheer, more a form of self-assertion bordering on aggression. Mercifully, the real thing – helpless, joyous laughter – still comes naturally to children, as it always did: I remember well the fits of irresistible giggles that would convulse me in boyhood, often, agonisingly, on solemn occasions. The most uninhibited, joyful laugh-er I know today is my second youngest grandson, William, who abandons himself to mirth with absolute delight and can end up literally rolling on the floor. Laughter survives; it surely always will.