Curiosities & wonders > Reflections upon laughter

UPON LAUGHTER. 23
wifdomare various. A truly wife man, who
places the dignity of human nature in good
affettions and fuitable attions, may be apt to
laugh at thofe who employ their moft fblemn
and ftrong affettions about what, to the wife
man, appears perhaps very ufelefs or mean.
The fame folemnity of behaviour and keen-
nefs of paffion, about a place or ceremony,
which ordinary people only employ about the
abfblute neceflaries of life, may make them
laugh at their betters. When a gentleman
of pleafure, who thinks that good fellowfhip
and gallantry are the only valuable enjoyments
oflife,obferves men, with great folemnity and
earneftnefs, heaping up money, without ufing
it, or incumbering themfelves with purchafes
and mortgages, which the gay gentleman, with
his paternal revenues, thinks very filly affairs,
he may make himfelf very merry upon them:
and the frugal man, in his turn, makes the
fame jeft of the man of pleafure. Thefuccefs-
ful gamefter, whom no difafter forces to lay
afide the trifling ideas of an amufement in his
play, may laugh to- fee the ferious looks and
paffions of the graveft bufmefs arifing in the
lofer, amidft the ideas of a recreation. There
is indeed in thefe laft cafes an opinion of fu-
periority in the Laugher; but this is not the
proper occafion of his Laughter; otherwife I
fee not how we fhould ever meet with a com-
pofed