LAUGHTER AT THE CRIME SCENE

it isn't a matter of right and wrong or pleasant and painful but of good and bad ... the baby moralist is persistent in his analysis ... he likes to be pleased and doesn't like to be frustrated ... the child learns the pleasures of being right and the pain of being wrong ... it's left to the adult sometimes in old age to investigate good and evil their meaning and their future ... abstract evil at first annoys him ... he has after all all his life been fighting the real thing off ... but as with any investigation that's going at all smoothly there's logic and humor and a good deal of play ... if play only in the mind ... not just the position and contraposition of premises but enemy riflemen firing on squads trying to cross the street ... not just necessity and free will but coming home from the doctor with bad news ... indeed over it all disease diagnosis despair and death ... or maybe not ... before the first two there usually is a good deal of laughter ... and before the third there may come a reappraisal of the fourth ... before we come to despair we may come to believe death's womb is pierced by light