the Union with them in 1707 and they can't get out. The Scotch
don't want Home Rule, or Swa Raj, or Dominion status, or anything;
they just want the English. When they want money they go to London
and make it; if they want literary fame they sell their books to
the English; and to prevent any kind of political trouble they take
care to keep the Cabinet well filled with Scotchmen. The English
for shame's sake can't get out of the Union, so they retaliate by
saying that the Scotch have no sense of humour. But there's nothing
in it. One has only to ask any of the theatrical people and they
will tell you that the audiences in Glasgow and Edinburgh are the
best in the British Isles--possess the best taste and the best
ability to recognise what is really good.

The reason for this lies, I think, in the well-known fact that the
Scotch are a truly educated people, not educated in the mere sense
of having been made to go to school, but in the higher sense of
having acquired an interest in books and a respect for learning.
In England the higher classes alone possess this, the working class
as a whole know nothing of it. But in Scotland the attitude is
universal. And the more I reflect upon the subject, the more I
believe that what counts most in the appreciation of humour is not
nationality, but the degree of education enjoyed by the individual
concerned. I do not think that there is any doubt that educated
people possess a far wider range of humour than the uneducated
class. Some people, of course, get overeducated and become hopelessly
academic. The word "highbrow" has been invented exactly to fit the
case. The sense of humour in the highbrow has become atrophied,
or, to vary the metaphor, it is submerged or buried under the
accumulated strata of his education, on the top soil of which
flourishes a fine growth of conceit. But even in the highbrow the