As I grew older, and learned to look on
the two heads as types, they gave rise to many reflections, raising a
question perhaps impossible to solve: whether the vices and follies of
men were to be washed away, or exploded by a broadside of honest
laughter. I believe it is Southwell who says that Mary Magdalene went to
Heaven by water, and it is certain that the tears that people shed for
themselves are apt to be sincere; but I doubt whether we are to be saved
by any amount of vicarious salt water, and, though the philosophers
should weep us into another Noah's flood, yet commonly men have lumber
enough of self-conceit to build a raft of, and can subsist a good while
on that beautiful charity for their own weaknesses in which the nerves
of conscience are embedded and cushioned, as in similar physical straits
they can upon their fat.
[Footnote 1: Countless--_i.e._, perpetual--smile.]
On the other hand, man has a wholesome dread of laughter, as he is the
only animal capable of that phenomenon--for the laugh of the hyena is
pronounced by those who have heard it to be no joke, and to be classed
with those [Greek: gelasmata agelasta] which are said to come from the
other side of the mouth. Whether, as Shaftesbury will have it, ridicule
be absolutely the test of truth or no, we may admit it to be relatively
so, inasmuch as by the _reductio ad absurdum_ it often shows that
abstract truth may become falsehood, if applied to the practical affairs
of life, because its relation to other truths equally important, or to
human nature, has been overlooked.
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