If you try to
expound any other philosophic system to me, you will find not merely
that I can detect no flaw in it (except the one great flaw just
suggested), but also that I haven't, after a minute or two, the
vaguest notion of what you are driving at. `Very well,' you say,
`instead of trying to explain all things all at once, I will explain
some little, simple, single thing.' It was for sake of such shorn
lambs as myself, doubtless, that M. Bergson sat down and wrote about--
Laughter. But I have profited by his kindness no more than if he had
been treating of the Cosmos. I cannot tread even a limited space of
air. I have a gross satisfaction in the crude fact of being on hard
ground again, and I utter a coarse peal of--Laughter.
At least, I say I do so. In point of fact, I have merely smiled.
Twenty years ago, ten years ago, I should have laughed, and have
professed to you that I had merely smiled. A very young man is not
content to be very young, nor even a young man to be young: he wants
to share the dignity of his elders. There is no dignity in laughter,
there is much of it in smiles. Laughter is but a joyous surrender,
smiles give token of mature criticism. It may be that in the early
ages of this world there was far more laughter than is to be heard
now, and that aeons hence laughter will be obsolete, and smiles
universal--every one, always, mildly, slightly, smiling.
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