* If one would rather not use a doubter, a similar figure would do.
* If one would rather not use a doubter, a similar figure would do. An ironist, for example, whose sharp eye has taken radical measure of the ludicrousness of life, who through a secret understanding with the forces of life ascertains what the patient needs. He knows he commands the power of laughter; should he wish to wield it he would be sure of victory and, what is even better, of his happiness. He knows some voice is going to raise itself against him, but also that he himself is the stronger; he knows people can still be brought for a moment to appear serious – but also that, privately, they long to laugh with him; he knows that it is still possible to bring a woman for a moment to hold up her fan before her eyes when she speaks, but he also knows that behind the fan she is laughing, he knows the fan is not completely opaque, he knows one can make invisible inscriptions on it, he knows that when a woman strikes at him with the fan it is because she has understood him, he knows infallibly how laughter creeps into a person and dwells there secretly, and how once lodged there it lies in ambush and waits. Let us suppose such an Aristophanes, such a Voltaire, slightly altered, for he is also of a sympathetic nature, he loves life, loves people, and knows that even if a young, saved generation might benefit from the rebuke of laughter, in his own age for many it would mean rack and ruin. So he keeps silent and as far as possible forgets to laugh himself. But does he dare keep silent? Perhaps many will fail to see the difficulty I am referring to. They will probably consider it admirably high-minded of him to keep silent. That is not at all what I think. I believe that if any such person has not the magnanimity to keep silent he is a traitor to life. So I require this magnanimity of him. But if he has it he dares to keep silent. Ethics is a dangerous science and it may well have been out of purely ethical considerations that Aristophanes decided to let laughter pass judgement on his misguided age. Aesthetic magnanimity cannot help. Its account has no credit column for the taking of such risks. If he is silent he must enter the paradox. – Still another scenario: suppose, for example, someone is in possession of an explanation of a public hero's life, but one that explains it in a deplorable light, and yet a whole generation rests secure in this hero and has no suspicion of anything of the sort.