The tardy steps of reason, and at once
By this prompt impulse urge us to depress
The giddy aims of foily: Tho' the light 265
Of truth slow-dawning on th' inquiring mind
At length unfolds, thro' many a subtile tie,
How these uncouth disorders end at last
In public evil; yet benignant heav'n
the vanity and error of its authors. 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 rendering the satyrist 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 Spinosa 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.
