Without being directly amiable, weak people may have something attractive from a humorous point of view. There is an old method, based on the nature of the case, by means of which they are most sure of pleasing. Personal amiability can invest weakness only for a time with the lustre of freedom and the form of strength, yet it is always on the point of transforming itself into something base or odious. Against this downfall, however, it can secure itself by the acceptance of an inexorable fate; for viewed in a fatalistic light it arouses only laughter and deteriorates wholly into the comical. This general application Paludan-Müller has succeeded in making with perhaps more depth, and, from a psychological standpoint, more correctness, than has ever before been employed. His Adam is a theoretician, who always has at his command a ready supply of half-conscious sophistry, and who throughout his entire life casts the responsibility of his pitiful weakness alternately upon mere chance and upon stem necessity. If, notwithstanding all this, the total impression be not unconditionally comical, it is because of a circumstance that Mendelssohn in his "Rhapsodien" has thus keenly and justly characterized: "We cease to laugh," said he, "at persons who are dear to us, or in any way near to us, as soon as their faults or follies begin to assume an important character." Every one, however, is his own nearest neighbor, and if a continual "Thou art the man" be hurled at us, it becomes impossible for us to laugh. In the course of the narrative, the author of "Adam Homo" is continually telling us indirectly what he utters directly in the last canto, as follows:-- "Thou, too, shalt make one day the selfsame journey, When thou at length with life on earth art done; And as the actor needs initiation, So thou must make beforehand preparation. "In Homo's stead thyself thou well mightst be, And words that served for Homo's just confession, When him behind the grave's dark brink we see, Might rouse the thought: View all with due discretion; Whate'er applies to him, applies as well to me." Even the most ludicrous matters in such a case cease to be wholly absurd, and absolute terror at thought of the possibilities that dwell within his own soul readily seizes the reader, especially the youthful reader, in considering passages which the author had meant to have a purely poetic effect. Thus, for instance, in the place where Homo has become lord chamberlain, we read:-- "There swayed his solitude a wondrous feeling; His soul seemed freed from every narrowing band; Within his heart of hearts he blessed the hand That dealt his wounds and gave him means of healing, That now so tenderly was balsam dealing, That helped his spirit ruin to withstand. A guiding Providence he saw most clearly, And, deeply moved, his thanks he gave sincerely."