SUPERIORITY.

With respect to the laughter from superiority, as it is a sign of the consciousness of superiority which may be either from ignorance, seeing only part of the truth, or from intelligence, seeing the whole truth, the ignorance or the intelligence may be discovered by the laughter.

Ought not the laughter from ignorance, which is often a source of pain in the object of the laugher, to be a source of pleasure as it is a tacit acknowledgment of superiority? The laughter, for instance, in a public assembly, at any depression of superiority is a tacit acknowledgment of the superiority; and although often the cause of pain from the imagination of insulted dignity, ought rather to be the cause of pleasure; and thus what is frequently the source of pain in the object of the laughter, may be converted into the consciousness that the laugher himself is the true object of commiseration.

May it not, in general, be considered as true, that this tendency to laughter is the sign of a mind which does not take an extensive survey of things, but looks only at the angles and corners and parts of the truth.

"Merrily conceited men," says Lord Bacon, “seldom penetrate further than the superficies of things which is the point where the jest lies."

Locke says, "And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common observation, that men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason: for wit lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found the least difference or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy: judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another. This is a way of proceeding quite contrary to metaphor and allusion, wherein for the most part lies that entertainment and pleasantry of wit, which strikes so lively on the fancy, and therefore is so acceptable to all people, because its beauty appears at first sight, and there is required no labour of thought to examine what truth or reason the agreeableness of the picture, and the gaity of the fancy: and it is a kind of an affront to go about to examine it by the severe rules of truth and good reason; whereby it appears that it consists in something that is not perfectly conformable to them."

So too, Hartley observes, "Persons who give themselves much to mirth, wit, and humour, must thereby greatly disqualify their understandings for the search after truth; inasmuch as by the perpetual hunting after apparent and partial agreements and disagreements as in words, and indirect accidental circumstances, whilst the true natures of the things themselves afford real agreements and disagreements, that are very different,

or quite opposite, a man must by degrees pervert all his notions of things themselves, and become unable to see them as they really appear to considerate soberminded inquirers. He must lose all his associations of the visible ideas of things, their names, symbols, &c. with their useful practical relations and properties; and get, in their stead, accidental, indirect, and unnatural conjunctions of circumstances, that are really foreign to each other, or oppositions of those that are united."

MALICIOUS WIT.

Lord Burleigh, in his advice to his son, says-" Be not scurrilous in thy conversation, nor satirical in your jests: the one will make thee unwelcome to all company, the other will pull on quarrels and get thee hatred of thy best friends; for sulphurous jests, when they savour too much of truth, leave a bitterness in the minds of those that are touched: and, though I have already pointed at this inclusive, yet I think it necessary to leave it to thee as a special caution; because I have seen so many prone to quip and gird, as they would rather lose their friends than their jests. And if by chance their boiling brains yield any quaint scoff, they travail to be delivered of it, like a woman with child: these nimble apprehensions are but the froth of wit."

Gauden, in his life of Hooker, says-"There was no gift of grace more eminent in Mr. Hooker, than that

mosaic work of a meek and smooth temper. He was without any point or pungency by way of personal reflections, or satiric bitterness. He writes as intent to the cause and subject matter, not to the quality or infirmity of the person; keeping to that golden saying in his preface, 'There will come a time when three words, uttered with charity and meekness, will receive a far more blessed reward, than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit.""

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