sense of spiritual confidence and Christianity play with the 
games and sports of his time. Play goes with an awareness of 
huge disproportion between the ostensible situation and the 
real stakes. A similar sense hovers over the game situation, as 
such. Since the game, like any art form, is a mere tangible 
model of another situation that is less accessible, there is 
always a tingling sense of oddity and fun in play or games that 
renders the very earnest and very serious person or society 
laughable. When the Victorian Englishman began to lean 
toward the pole of seriousness, Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw 
and G. K. Chesterton moved in swiftly as countervailing force. 
Scholars have often pointed out that Plato conceived of play 
dedicated to the Deity, as the loftiest reach of man’s religious 
impulse.

     Bergson’s famous treatise on laughter sets forth the idea