XVI On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity
A critic once remonstrated with me saying, with an air of
indignant reasonableness, "If you must make jokes, at least you need
not make them on such serious subjects." I replied with a natural
simplicity and wonder, "About what other subjects can one make
jokes except serious subjects?" It is quite useless to talk
about profane jesting. All jesting is in its nature profane,
in the sense that it must be the sudden realization that something
which thinks itself solemn is not so very solemn after all.
If a joke is not a joke about religion or morals, it is a joke about
police-magistrates or scientific professors or undergraduates dressed
up as Queen Victoria. And people joke about the police-magistrate
more than they joke about the Pope, not because the police-magistrate
is a more frivolous subject, but, on the contrary, because the
police-magistrate is a more serious subject than the Pope.
The Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction in this realm of England;
whereas the police-magistrate may bring his solemnity to bear quite
suddenly upon us. Men make jokes about old scientific professors,
even more than they make them about bishops--not because science
is lighter than religion, but because science is always by its
nature more solemn and austere than religion.
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