For men approach truth from the
circumference, and, acquiring a knowledge at most of one or two points
of that circle of which God is the centre, are apt to assume that the
fixed point from which it is described is that where they stand.
Moreover, "Ridentem dicere verum, quid vetat?"
I side rather with your merry fellow than with Dr. Young when he says:
Laughter, though never censured yet as sin,
* * * * *
Is half immoral, be it much indulged;
By venting spleen, or dissipating thought,
It shows a scorner, or it makes a fool;
And sins, as hurting others or ourselves.
* * * * *
Yet would'st thou laugh (but at thine own expense),
This counsel strange should I presume to give--
"Retire, and read thy Bible, to be gay."
With shame I confess it, Dr. Young's "Night Thoughts" have given me as
many hearty laughs as any humorous book I ever read.
Men of one idea,--that is, who have one idea at a time,--men who
accomplish great results, men of action, reformers, saints, martyrs, are
inevitably destitute of humor; and if the idea that inspires them be
great and noble, they are impervious to it. But through the perversity
of human affairs it not infrequently happens that men are possessed by a
single idea, and that a small and rickety one--some seven months' child
of thought--that maintains a querulous struggle for life, sometimes to
the disquieting of a whole neighborhood.
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