lves, the world has little liking and
less respect. In the folk-lore of all races, despite the
sentimentalization of abasement for dramatic effect, it is always power
and grandeur that count in the end. The whole point of the story of
Cinderella, the most widely and constantly charming of all stories, is
that the Fairy Prince lifts Cinderella above her cruel sisters and
stepmother, and so enables her to lord it over them. The same idea
underlies practically all other folk-stories: the essence of each of
them is to be found in the ultimate triumph and exaltation of its
protagonist. And of the real men and women of history, the most
venerated and envied are those whose early humiliations were but
preludes to terminal glories; for example, Lincoln, Whittington,
Franklin, Columbus, Demosthenes, Frederick the Great, Catherine, Mary of
Magdala, Moses. Even the Man of Sorrows, cradled in a manger and done to
death between two thieves, is seen, as we part from Him at last, in a
situation of stupendous magnificence, with infinite power in His hands.
Even the Beatitudes, in the midst of their eloquent counselling of
renunciation, give it unimaginable splendor as its reward. The meek
shall inherit--what? The whole earth! And the poor in spirit? They shall
sit upon the right hand of God!...

IV

THE BURDEN OF HUMOR

What is the origin of the prejudice against humor? Why is it so
dangerous, if you would keep the public confidence, to make the public
laugh? Is it because humor and sound sense are essentially antagonistic?
Has humanity found by experience that the man who sees the fun of life
is unfitted to deal sanely with its problems? I think not. No man had
more of the comic spirit in him than William Shakespeare, and yet his
serious reflections, by the sheer force of their sublime obviousness,
have pushed their way into the race's arsenal of immortal platitudes.
So, too, with Aesop, and with Balzac, and with Dickens, to come down the
scale. All of these men were fundamentally humorists, and yet all of
them achieved what the race has come to accept as a penetrating
sagacity. Contrariwise, many a haloed pundit has had his occasional
guffaw. Lincoln, had there been no Civil War, might have survived in
history chiefly as the father of the American smutty story--the only
original art-form that America has yet contributed to literature.
Huxley, had he not been the greatest intellectual duellist of his age,
might have been i