"I was not gone far before I heard the sound of trumpets and alarms,
which seemed to proclaim the march of an Enemy; and as I afterwards
found was in reality what I apprehended it. There appeared at a great
distance a very shining light, and in the midst of it a person of most
beautiful aspect; her name was _Truth_. On her right hand, there
marched a male deity, who bore several quivers on his shoulders, and
grasped several arrows in his hand. His name was Wit."--_Addison._
In her essay on Heine, George Eliot writes: "Every one who has had the
opportunity of making the comparison, will remember that the effect
produced on him by some witticisms is closely akin to the effect produced
on him by subtle reasoning which lays open a fallacy or absurdity; and
there are persons whose delight in such reasoning always manifests itself
in laughter. This affinity of wit with ratiocination is the more obvious
in proportion as the species of wit is higher and deals less with words
and with superficialities than with the essential qualities of things.
Some of Dr. Johnson's most admirable witticisms consist in the suggestion
of an analogy which immediately exposes the absurdity of an action or
proposition; and it is only their ingenuity, condensation and
instantaneousness which lift them from reasoning into wit." The opinion of
George Eliot has been shared by others. Pitt declared that "all wit is
true reasoning," and Rogers says that "wit is truth." A French writer has
observed that "reason needs to be armed with the terrible epigram." And
even solemn John Milton writes of Plato's dialogues, "There is scarce one
of them, especially wherein some notable sophister lies sweating and
turmoiling under the inevitable and merciless dilemmas of Socrates, but he
that reads, were it Saturn himself, would be robbed of more than a smile."
There are in literature abundant examples of the condensed logic of
wit,--the logic that exposes a fallacy, answers an objection and
demolishes an argument, without resorting to major and minor premise and
formal conclusion. One or two of these may pave the way to the main
purpose of this chapter. "Where was your Protestant Church before Luther?"
asked a Catholic of Wilkes. "Did you wash your face this morning?" said
Wilkes. "I did, sir." "Where was your face before you washed it?" The
logic of wit as employed by Dr. Johnson, is referred to by George Eliot.
On one occasion it was debated whether a clergyman who had five years
before been guilty of some grave sin should be reinstated. Johnson
inquired whether the man had repented. It was admitted that he had.
"Then," said Johnson, "if he has repented, is he not good enough to go to
heaven?" "Certainly." "Why, sir, then there is no objection. A man who is
good enough to go to heaven is good enough to be a clergyman." Johnson
denounced Lord Bolingbroke in the following immortal analogy: "Sir, he was
a scoundrel and a coward; a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against
religion and morality, a coward because he had not resolution enough to
fire it off himself, but left half-a-crown to a beggarly Scotchman to draw
the trigger after his death."
A certain clergyman who had been addicted to bawling and roaring in the
pulpit said, "I once thought it was the thunder that killed, and know now
that it is the lightning that does the execution. I mean to thunder less
and lighten more." Sir Thomas Overbury punctures certain pretensions thus:
"The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors,
is like a potato--the only good belonging to him is underground."
Thompson, of the _Westminster Review_, defended the Radicals against the
attacks of the Whigs in this manner: "Noah was a Radical when, hearing the
world was to be drowned, he went about such a commonsense proceeding as
making for himself a ship to swim in. An antediluvian Whig would have laid
together half-a-dozen sticks for an ark and called it a 'virtual
representation.'"
The principle that underlies these instances is obvious. The form may vary
but in every case there is an analogy that serves all the purposes of
formal logic,--"an analogy which immediately exposes the absurdity of an
action or proposition." The writers of the Bible understood and employed
the same principle.