"Humour of the philosophical pedigree can 'bring us up short', break us out of our commonplace acceptance, our slumber dogmatic, and require us to reassess what we thought we knew, or ask questions about that which had previously lain fallow in our thinking. Humour may awaken the 'sleeping metaphors' that all of us live by...." "The philosopher Sydney Smith (1771 - 1845) identified the salutary effect of humour on the human character ... he comments, 'A man might sit down systematically, and successfully, to the study of wit as he might to the study of mathematics ... by giving up only six...