I might mention the humorists, of whom
you here in California have had your share. The humorists, however,
only half escape the genteel tradition; their humour would lose its
savour if they had wholly escaped it. They point to what contradicts
it in the facts; but not in order to abandon the genteel tradition,
for they have nothing solid to put in its place. When they point out
how ill many facts fit into it, they do not clearly conceive that this
militates against the standard, but think it a funny perversity in the
facts. Of course, did they earnestly respect the genteel tradition,
such an incongruity would seem to them sad, rather than ludicrous.
Perhaps the prevalence of humour in America, in and out of season, may
be taken as one more evidence that the genteel tradition is present
pervasively, but everywhere weak. Similarly in Italy, during the
Renaissance, the Catholic tradition could not be banished from the
intellect, since there was nothing articulate to take its place; yet
its hold on the heart was singularly relaxed. The consequence was that
humorists could regale themselves with the foibles of monks and of
cardinals, with the credulity of fools, and the bogus miracles of the
saints; not intending to deny the theory of the church, but caring for
it so little at heart that they could find it infinitely amusing that
it should be contradicted in men's lives and that no harm should come
of it.
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