The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-07-07
THE HUMORs OF METAPHYSICS.

One of the most remarkable charac
teristics of DR.. MaItineau's metaphy-
sizes is the humor with which he treats
the fundamental issues, wherever they
are not involved with matters too grave
to admit of such treatment. 1t has
often been 50 with the greater think
ers. Plato's dialogues are often full
of humor, and of humor of the most
genuine kind; and so far is it from be-
ing quality alien to the discussion of
the ultimate issues of the thinker, that
there is probably no world in which
there is deeper insight given into the
springs of those sudden metamorpnoses
Of attitude and feeIing II me apt vari
ations on which humor consists, than
the world of the deeper psychology and
metaphysics. Thus, when Socrates is
trying to explain the mysteries of i'm
plicit and explicit knowledge, and to
discover how it is that man may
blunder about that to the accurate
knowledge of which he has a sure clew
in the resources of his own mind, Plato
describes him as suggesting that
though he possesses the knowledge, in
the sense of having access to it, he has
not positively got it till he lays his ap-
prehensive mind upon it, and that
even in doing so, he may lay it some
times upon the wrong item, and so, in
stead of catching the bit of knowledge
of which he is in search, catch some
thing of which he is not at allin search,
and Socrates likens such man to the
possessor of an aviary of all sorts of
birds, some in hocks, some in small
groups, some solitary, who, when he is
in search of a particular pigeon, gets
hold instead, of ringdove, and so
proves that winged thing which he
in some sense possesses, is yet not
absolutely his,-that though he knows
what he wants, he does not know it
well enough to fix upon it without first
capturing something which he mistakes
for that of which he is in search. This
imaginary aviaIy of PlatO's, in which
false and true opinions are flying about
like ring doves and pigeons and other
more solitary birds, with an owner
close at hand, but without master
sufficiently intimate with them to dis
criminate them infallibly the one from
the other, is humorous enough sym
boil of almost all metaphysical and psy-
Geological systems, where the most eX-
perienced thinkers are always putting
out their hands for a lark and catching
a pigeon, or putting out their hands
for a dove and catching, perhaps, an
ill-omened raven. Hence, dry as the
deeper subjects of philosophy are usu
ally held to be; it is very common to
find humorists of the truest kind
among those who are able to treat them
with the greatest power. Pascal was
such a one; so was Coleridge; so in our
own day have been the late DR.. Ward,
DIR. Martineau, and Cardinal Newman.
In the volumes just published by DR..
Martineau on "a study of Religion"
there are, we need hardly say, innum-
erable discussions in which the more
solemn theme is not directly involved,
50 that the thinker is able to treat the
outlying provinces OF philosophy with
that comprehensiveness and ease which
afford room for the evidence of the
humor to which We refer. For exam
pie, in dealing with Mr.. J. S. Mills
explanation of his view as to the belief
in an external world, DR.. Martineau re-
marks that Mr.. Mill relies in part on
the fact that every thinker finds him
self confirmed by others in this belief,
though the very question at issue is