While recognizing the application of wit in humor and the association between wit and sophism (in defending oneself unjustly), Barrow contends that wit may and should "serve under the banner of truth and virtue":
[s]ince men are so irreclaimably disposed to mirth and laughter, it may be well to set them in the right pin, to divert their humour into the proper channel, that they may please themselves in deriding things which deserve it, ceasing to laugh at that which requireth reverence or horror.
Like Cicero who insists on the distinction between the decent laughter and the indecent laughter, Barrow draws a line between what makes a proper laughing matter and what does not: "[t]he proper objects of common mirth and sportful divertissement are mean and petty matters" ("Against Foolish Talking and Jesting"). All matters by nature grave, divine, or virtuous should not fall prey to jesting, for that does not help Christians maintain "their habitual composedness, gravity, and modesty" (Figueroa-Dorrego & Larkin-Galiñanes 188).
*Of course Cicero is a predecessor to Barrow in that he treats humor as a rhetorical device. Barrow, however, assumes an unprecedented laudatory attitude toward humor and laughter. His observation of various rhetorical and social functions of humor bears striking similarities to that of Liu Xie's. This coincidence across cultures makes him stand apart from his predecessors.
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