inorganic to the organic. Bad cheese symbolises the startling prodigy of
matter taking on vitality. It symbolises the origin of life itself. And
it is only about such solemn matters as the origin of life that the
democracy condescends to joke. Thus, for instance, the democracy jokes
about marriage, because marriage is a part of mankind. But the democracy
would never deign to joke about Free Love, because Free Love is a piece
of priggishness.

As a matter of fact, it will be generally found that the popular joke is
not true to the letter, but is true to the spirit. The vulgar joke is
generally in the oddest way the truth and yet not the fact. For
instance, it is not in the least true that mothers-in-law are as a class
oppressive and intolerable; most of them are both devoted and useful.
All the mothers-in-law I have ever had were admirable. Yet the legend of
the comic papers is profoundly true. It draws attention to the fact that
it is much harder to be a nice mother-in-law than to be nice in any
other conceivable relation of life. The caricatures have drawn the worst
mother-in-law a monster, by way of expressing the fact that the best
mother-in-law is a problem. The same is true of the perpetual jokes in
comic papers about shrewish wives and henpecked husbands. It is all a
frantic exaggeration, but it is an exaggeration of a truth; whereas all
the modern mouthings about oppressed women are the exaggerations of a
falsehood. If you read even the best of the intellectuals of to-day you
will find them saying that in the mass of the democracy the woman is the
chattel of her lord, like his bath or his bed. But if you read the comic
literature of the democracy you will find that the lord hides under the
bed to escape from the wrath of his chattel. This is not the fact, but
it is much nearer the truth. Every man who is married knows quite well,
not only that he does not regard his wife as a chattel, but that no man
can conceivably ever have done so. The joke stands for an ultimate