to be laughed at; by those at least who possess that most
indefinable of faculties, the sense of the ridiculous. As long as
man possesses muscles especially formed to enable him to laugh, we
have no right to suppose (with some) that laughter is an accident
of our fallen nature; or to find (with others) the primary cause of
the ridiculous in the perception of unfitness or disharmony. And
yet we shrink (whether rightly or wrongly, we can hardly tell) from
attributing a sense of the ludicrous to the Creator of these forms.
It may be a weakness on my part; at least I will hope it is a
reverent one: but till we can find something corresponding to what
we conceive of the Divine Mind in any class of phenomena, it is
perhaps better not to talk about them at all, but observe a stoic
"epoche," waiting for more light, and yet confessing that our own
laughter is uncontrollable, and therefore we hope not unworthy of
us, at many a strange creature and strange doing which we meet,
from the highest ape to the lowest polype.

But, in the meanwhile, there are animals in which results so
strange, fantastic, even seemingly horrible, are produced, that
fallen man may be pardoned, if he shrinks from them in disgust.
That, at least, must be a consequence of our own wrong state; for
everything is beautiful and perfect in its place. It may be
answered, "Yes, in its place; but its place is not yours. You had
no business to look at it, and must pay the penalty for
intermeddling." I doubt that answer; for surely, if man have
liberty to do anything, he has liberty to search out freely his
heavenly Father's works; and yet every one seems to have his
antipathic animal; and I know one bred from his childhood to
zoology by land and sea, and bold in asserting, and honest in
feeling, that all without exception is beautiful, who yet cannot,