To what a degree does this ridiculous diversion molest the soul, when all her faculties are summoned together upon this trivial account! and how fair an opportunity she herein gives every one to know and to make a right judgment of himself?
I do not more thoroughly sift myself in any other posture than this: what passion are we exempted from in it?
Anger, spite, malice, impatience, and a vehement desire of getting the better in a concern wherein it were more excusable to be ambitious of being overcome; for to be eminent, to excel above the common rate in frivolous things, nowise befits a man of honour.

What I say in this example may be said in all others.

Every particle, every employment of man manifests him equally with any other.
Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding human condition ridiculous and vain, never appeared abroad but with a jeering and laughing countenance; whereas Heraclitus commiserating that same condition of ours, appeared always with a sorrowful look, and tears in his eyes: "Alter Ridebat, quoties a limine moverat unum Protuleratque pedem; flebat contrarius alter." ["The one always, as often as he had stepped one pace from his threshold, laughed, the other always wept."-- Juvenal, Sat., x.

28.] [Or, as Voltaire: "Life is a comedy to those who think; a tragedy to those who feel." D.W.] I am clearly for the first humour; not because it is more pleasant to laugh than to weep, but because it expresses more contempt and condemnation than the other, and I think we can never be despised according to our full desert.

Compassion and bewailing seem to imply some esteem of and value for the thing bemoaned; whereas the things we laugh at are by that expressed to be of no moment.