And this, and
no more, is meant by the application of ridicule.
But it is said, the practice is dangerous, and may be inconsistent
with the regard we owe to objects of real dignity and excellence. I
answer, the practice fairly managed can never be dangerous; men may
be dishonest in obtruding circumstances foreign to the object, and
we may be inadvertent in allowing those circumstances to impose upon
us: but the sense of ridicule always judges right. The Socrates of
Aristophanes is as truly ridiculous a character as ever was drawn:
--true; but it is not the character of Socrates, the divine moralist
and father of ancient wisdom. What then? did the ridicule of the
poet hinder the philosopher from detecting and disclaiming those
foreign circumstances which he had falsely introduced into his
character, and thus rendered the satirist doubly ridiculous in his
turn? No; but it nevertheless had an ill influence on the minds of
the people. And so has the reasoning of Spinoza made many atheists:
he has founded it, indeed, on suppositions utterly false; but allow
him these, and his conclusions are unavoidably true. And if we must
reject the use of ridicule, because, by the imposition of false
circumstances, things may be made to seem ridiculous, which are not
so in themselves; why we ought not in the same manner to reject the
use of reason, because, by proceeding on false principles,
conclusions will appear true which are impossible in nature, let the
vehement and obstinate declaimers against ridicule determine.
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