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The world's increasing gravity. The higher the culture of a man rises, the greater the number of topics are removed from joking or mockery. Voltaire was heartily grateful to heaven for inventing marriage and the church, for taking such good care for our merriment. But he and his time, and the sixteenth century before him, mocked these topics to their limit; any joke about them today comes too late and especially much too cheap to tempt buyers. Now we inquire after causes; this is the age of seriousness. Who still cares to see the lighter side of the differences between reality and pretentious appearance, between that which man is and that which he wants to present? We feel these contrasts very differently when we seek their reasons. The more thoroughly a person understands life, the less he will mock, though in the end he might still mock the "thoroughness of his understanding."