Note 53 — LORD CHESTERFIELD’S LETTERS, SENTENCES, AND MAXIMS. (continued 4)

Chesterfield had at once perceived the emptiness of the saying, which is certainly not in ipsissimis verbis of Lord Shaftesbury. “We have,” says Carlyle, in his “Essay on Voltaire,” “oftener than once endeavored to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury—which, however, we can find nowhere in his works,—that ridicule is the test of truth.” In the “Characteristics of Enthusiasm,” sec. 2, there is this sentence, which comes very near it:—“How is it, etc., that we (Christians) appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule”; but further on (p. 11, ed. 1733, vol. i.) he asks: “For what ridicule can lie against reason? or how can any one of the least justice of thought admire a ridicule wrong placed? Nothing is more ridiculous than this itself.” Shaftesbury often returns to this subject; see “Errors in Wit,” etc.