Kelling's Reason in Madness A Tale of a Tub.pdf

Reason in Madness: A Tale of a TubAuthor(s): Harold D. KellingReviewed work(s):Source: PMLA, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Mar., 1954), pp. 198-222Published by: Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/460138 .Accessed: 01/11/2011 10:45

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REASON IN MADNESS: A TALE OF A TUB

BY HAROLD D. KELLING

O JUDGE from most criticism of Swift's Tale of a Tub, the work is a skillful and powerful failure, because the faults Swift parodies have

distilled into his own pen. For though the Tale is clearly meant to be an expose of the literary sins of formless, ephemeral, and subjective writing, critics find that the brilliance of the book results from Swift's being guilty of just those sins. One critic finds in the Tale both confusion and the intrusion of Swift's "insane egotism" and his "sense of insecurity,"' while other critics find order but at the expense of the other qualities. Mrs. Miriam K. Starkman examines the intellectual background of the book thoroughly and concludes that the confusion is the reader's rather than Swift's but that the Tale is a learned work of merely biographical and historical interest, a "meaningful and prodigiously skillful espousal of a lost cause." Ricardo Quintana and Robert C. Elliott find that the Tale has unity but only because Swift's point of view, that man is essentially irrational, informs all sections of the book.2 Most of the critics, then, find Swift expressing his subjective attitudes and lacking a subject upon which he could comment with any objectivity and universality. "So diverse is this subject matter," says Elliott, "that one can not pos- sibly find in it alone a principle of organization."

The critics may be right. But before we consign Swift's most complex and most immediately impressive work either to the ranks of splendid failures or to the annals of literary history, we should reixamine it in order to see whether it is not, as critics have discovered to be true of James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, a book in which the qualities of order, universality, and objectivity are somewhat too mysteriously concealed beneath the surface and have to be dug out. It is hardly possible to maintain, in view of the attitude towards vision and imagination expressed in the Tale, that the book has the imaginative unity of Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake, that it is the product of the mythic imagination described in Joyce's Portrait of the Artist; but I should like to suggest that the Tale is organized in the old, classical or neo-classical way and that it has a central subject not too unlike the subject of Joyce's Portrait, a subject which Swift treats with the objectivity and universality de-

F. R. Leavis, "The Irony of Swift," in Determinations (London, 1934), pp. 79-108. 2 Starkman, Swift's Satire on Learning in A Tale of a Tzb (Princeton, 1950); Quintana,

The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1936), pp. 85-96; Elliott, "Swift's Tale of a Tub: An Essay in Problems of Structure," PMLA, LXVI (1951), 441-455.

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manded in the Portrait. The subject is not seventeenth-century religion or seventeenth-century learning any more than the subject of Joyce's Portrait is the Catholic religion, monkish learning, or Irish politics, but a narrower subject vitally related to learning and religion: literature or rhetoric. George Sherburn suggests this subject (though he still seems to interpret the book biographically and historically) in objecting to Quin- tana's description of the Tale as an "attack on the irrational":

Actually what Swift attacks (though in a sense all his work is expose rather than attack) is the perversion of reason. Such perversion (due to self-love) is marked by selfish calculation, subtlety, intentionally confusing complexity, a thirst for novelty, and (among other things) persuasive or delusive rhetoric.

Quintana's enthusiastic interpretation of the Tale of a Tub might have brought out another striking aspect of the work, had he considered it as inspired in part by this dislike of the deluding powers of perverted reason, or more specifically by Swift's dislike of proselytizing, of people who wish to force their opinions upon others.3

I would go a little further than Sherburn and suggest that the expose of delusive rhetoric, instead of being merely another striking aspect of the work, is one side of the central subject, rhetoric in general, or literature, and that Swift has also treated the other side by enunciating and illustrating principles of good rhetoric. The Tale is an oration against rhetoric and at the same time an example of good rhetoric. If this is valid, Swift has not written a formless, obscure, excessively learned work in which he expresses only his own opinions or his psyche. And it is even possible that, though the Tale lacks the universal appeal of Gulliver's Travels, it was, as Swift said in the Apology, "calculated to live as long as our language and our taste admit no great alterations." It is, I suggest, a work of general literary or rhetorical criticism, using as material the learned and religious literature of the seventeenth century. While the working out of a young writer's critical philosophy does not have the wide appeal possessed by the mature literary treatment of man and society in Gulliver's Travels, if the Tale is rhetorical criticism and rhetoric is, as Aristotle said, an offshoot of politics, the emphasis of the work is not merely literary, in a narrow sense of the word, and the Tale may be of interest to even the general reader.

It is the prefatory material and the sections ironically called digressions which make it clear that rhetoric is the subject, which carry on the direct discussion of rhetoric, and in which the conventional structure of an oration is followed (though not so closely and explicitly as in Erasmus'

* "Methods in Books about Swift," SP, xxxv (Oct. 1938), 650.

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Praise of Folly).4 In the prefatory material we are given an elaborate exordium, ostensibly aimed at getting the reader's attention and concili- ating him, by, for example, promising that there is no satire in what follows. The narration, the reasons for speaking or writing, is provided in the Preface. And in the Introduction we are told that rhetoric is the subject when the modern author presents his proposition, the statement and definition of the subject. In the first paragraph of the Introduction, the modern author states the subject of his panegyric, rhetoric which is over the heads of the audience: "Whoever hath an ambition to be heard in a crowd, must press, and squeeze, and thrust, and climb, with indefatigable pains, till he has exalted himself to a certain degree of altitude above them." At the end of the next paragraph, however, the modern author points out two major "inconveniences" in the airy edifices erected by the modern's ambitious orators: "First, That the foundations being laid too high, they have been often out of sight, and ever out of hearing. Secondly, That the materials being very transitory, have suffered much from inclemencies of air, especially in these north-west regions." Swift thus indicates to the reader that, rather than a panegyric, he is writing a satire on delusive rhetoric, and he hints at the rest of his subject, rhetoric which is not over the heads of the audience and transitory but rhetoric aimed at the reason, which the audience can understand and which lasts.

In the next paragraph the modern author presents his partition, the dividing of the subject and the indication of the main topics. "Therefore, towards the just performance of this great work," he says, "there remain but three methods that I can think on; whereof the wisdom of our an-

4 Swift is obviously following the tradition of Erasmus, Lucian, and others, and writing a mock panegyric (see the Introduction to Hoyt Hudson's edition of Erasmus' Praise of Folly for a discussion of this tradition). The case for Swift's adherence to the conventional form of an oration is seemingly weakened by the fact that instead of a summary and moving peroration we are given the flat Conclusion. But if we accept James L. Clifford's illuminat- ing analysis ("Swift's Mechanical Operation of the Spirit," in Pope and his Contemporaries, Essays presented to George Sherburn, pp. 135-146), the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit is the real conclusion and the peroration of the Tale. In it, as Clifford shows, Swift's basic themes are made unforgettable; it is the most "moving," i.e., the most revolting section of the Tale of a Tub volume. It is, even more than the rest of the volume, clearly concerned with rhetoric, with the questions, "by what methods this teacher arrives at his gifts, or spirit, or light; and by what intercourse between him and his assembly, it is cultivated and supported." The first section deals with the audience and the second with the orator, particularly with delivery in the discussion of the Art of Canting. A rhetorical vocabulary- example, disposition, gesture, motion, argument-is used more frequently than in the Tale. It seems probable that Swift is not only following the conventional structure of an oration in the Tale, writing the Mechanical Operation as the peroration, but is making the fact that rhetoric is his subject clearest in the peroration.

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cestors being highly sensible, has, to encourage all aspiring adventurers, thought fit to erect three wooden machines for the use of those orators, who desire to talk much without interruption. These are, the pulpit, the ladder, and the stage-itinerant." Now if we took the modern author's division seriously, we would expect that, in the rest of the Tale, preaching represented by the pulpit, faction or political oratory represented by the ladder, and Grub-Street writing represented by the stage-itinerant were to be considered in turn. We would expect also that legal oratory would not be considered, in spite of its traditionally close association with rhetoric, since the modern has grown fond of the number three and has arbitrarily rejected the Bench and Bar from his list of oratorial machines. But as the rest of the Introduction makes clear, the modern author does not follow his system. Rather than considering preaching, political oratory, and Grub-Street writing separately, he lumps together all kinds of rhetorical communication, including legal oratory, and re- duces them to the level of Grub-Street productions.

While the modern author follows the modern forms and divides his subject, then, Swift indicates the unity of his subject. By parodying "that prudent method observed by many other philosophers and great clerks, whose chief art in division has been to grow fond of some proper mystical number," Swift makes his point that deceptive rhetoric is not divided into several kinds-religious, learned, Grub-Street, legal-but that all rhetoric aimed over the heads of the audience has certain characteristics in common (as, he implies, does all rhetoric which is aimed at the reason). The unity of the subject is unwittingly admitted by the modern author, who says in concluding his discussion of the oratorial machines, "Now this physico-logical scheme of oratorial receptacles or machines contains a great mystery; being a type, a sign, an emblem, a shadow, a symbol, bearing analogy to the spacious commonwealth of writers, and to those methods, by which they must exalt themselves to a certain eminency above the inferior world." The oratorial machines bear analogy to the spacious commonwealth of writers and they represent methods, no longer divisions, of delusive rhetoric.

Having informed the careful reader (and only a careful reader can understand the Tale) that there are characteristics common to all good and bad rhetoric, Swift proceeds to identify, though not directly or simply, the characteristics of delusive rhetoric and to indicate, by opposition, the characteristics of rational rhetoric, in the modern author's explana- tion of the symbolism of his wooden machines. The pulpit represents obscurity and the use of abstract language: "By the pulpit are adum- brated the writings of our modern saints in Great Britain, as they have spiritualized and refined them, from the dross and grossness of sense and

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human reason." The ladder represents the intrusion of the author's personality and his dogmatic opinions into his work (the ladder symbolizes faction), formlessness (the orators of the ladder are turned off "before they can reach within many steps of the top") and plagiarism (the ladder is a "preferment attained by transferring of property, and a confounding of meum and tuum"). And the stage-itinerant symbolizes superficiality and ephemerality, the lack of content resulting from pandering to the taste of the times, the concern with novelty for its own sake: "Under the stage-itinerant are couched those productions designed for the pleasure and delight of mortal man; such as Six-penny-worth of Wit, Westminster Drolleries, Delightful Tales, Compleat Jesters, and the like; by which the writers of and for Grub Street, have in these latter ages so nobly triumphed over time." Swift, whose position is the opposite of the modern author's, is announcing that he will ridicule the characteristics which the modern will praise and illustrate, and he is indicating that he will defend and illustrate writing addressed to human reason, in which the author does not intrude, in which borrowed learning is inte- grated into a carefully organized work, and which can, if we read carefully, triumph over time.

In the rest of the Tale Swift follows his scheme of exposing the characteristics of delusive rhetoric symbolized in the oratorial machines. In the digressions and the prefatory material the expose is explicit. Ob- scurity and abstraction are exposed, for example, in the material involving the Rosicrucians; plagiarism is treated in the Digression in the Mod- ern Kind; the intrusion of the author is parodied throughout the Tale, particularly in the Preface; ephemerality is a constant theme, particularly in the Dedication to Prince Posterity; and formlessness is of course parodied throughout the Tale. "Modern" or Grub-Street writing, which displays the characteristics of all delusive rhetoric, not merely the characteristics of learned rhetoric, is discussed. The Digression on Critics deals not merely with literary critics but with all writers who use destructive criticism as a means of winning the approval of the audience (it applies, for example, to Puritan methods in controversy and to the polemics of Hobbes and other philosophers). A Digression in the Modern Kind and A Digression in Praise of Digressions satirically exaggerate tendencies to pretentiousness, obscurity, and sensationalism which can be found in religious and philosophical writing as well as in Grub-Street writing. Although the digressions ostensibly deal with learning, then, we can hardly be persuaded by the modern writer's rhetoric that the learning displayed is meaningful and important, and it is apparent that the digressions, using learned writing as material, are really concerned with rhetoric, not with learning. In all the digressions Swift, rather than ad-

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vancing learned theories which are opposed to the modern author's, stresses the fact that his rhetorical theory is the opposite of the modern's and he gives us illustrations of good rhetorical practice; since we are not fooled by the modern writer, the digressions are examples of non-delusive rhetoric.

Now if we see that rhetoric is the subject of the whole Tale, the prefatory material makes important contributions to the meaning. In the various prefatory sections, the modern author rambles on, dedicating and prefacing, observing all the modern forms; and if there is no central subject, Sherburn is justified in saying in A Literary History of England that the "multiplication of preliminaries to the Tale, though each is in itself a gem, is excessive." But since all of the sections are parodies of the ways in which rhetoric-learned, religious, or other-can be used to keep the reader from thinking about what is said, by appealing for toler- ance towards the writer, by flattery, by directions for reading the following treatise, each prefatory section helps to develop the central subject, and not merely on the negative side. For Swift is able to prevent each preliminary section from becoming that which is being exposed. The Dedication to Lord Somers, parodying fulsome and false dedications written merely to sell more copies of a book, is a convincing compliment to Somers and, because there is no tedious harangue on Somers' virtues and his friendship for the writer, a dedication which does not distract the reader's attention from the content of the Tale. The dedication and the prefatory material, as well as the digressions, deal importantly with the content, the definition of good and bad rhetoric.

The sections containing the allegory of the three coats present more of a problem, since in these sections rhetoric is mentioned only rarely and they seem to be concerned with an entirely separate subject, religion. But if we see that rhetoric has been announced as the subject of the whole Tale and if we look closely at the sections of coat allegory, it is apparent that the coat allegory is not really concerned with religion but is an example of Grubaean rhetoric. The allegory is not written from the point of view of an Anglican clergyman, interested in demonstrating the necessity of interpreting the New Testament reasonably and applying its "plain easy directions," but from the point of view of a Grub-Street writer intent on proving that Jack and Peter have purposes and use methods similar to his own and are, in fact, along with Wotton and the other learned moderns, members of the Grub-Street brotherhood and successful delusive orators. Both Jack and Peter depart from traditional forms (both ignore the will), they talk obscurely and over the heads of an audience (Peter tries to prove that bread contains the quintessence of beef, mutton, veal, venison, partridge, plum-pudding, and custard;

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Jack says that a copy of the father's will is meat, drink, cloth, the philosopher's stone, and the universal medicine), they are of course violently attached to their own opinions, they plagiarize (some writers affirm that Jack copied his Aeolists from the original at Delphos), they follow their fancy rather than their reason, they are, finally, madmen and therefore admirable moderns. And in trying to prove that Jack and Peter are his brethren, the modern author does not write a sermon or a serious dissertation on religion but uses the methods of the "Grubaean Sages," who have "always chosen to convey their precepts and their arts, shut up within the vehicles of types and fables."

His allegory illustrates perfectly the qualities symbolized in the oratorial machines, especially the qualities of subjectivity and dogmatism. He starts with the subjective and paradoxical thesis that the best religion is that which deceives best-religion is a coat and the finer the better- and he goes on to develop dogmatically the implications of that thesis as if they were true and incontestable. When Peter fails to persuade his brothers that bread is the quintessence of beef and plum-pudding, Martin and Jack try to restore their coats to the primitive state. Martin almost succeeds and is lost from the ranks of the moderns. The Grubaean therefore concentrates on Jack, who founds the "epidemic sect of Aeo- lists," a successful system of delusive rhetoric. In the Digression on Madness, Jack represents religion in the group of mad orators who deceive themselves and then others, "a strong delusion always operating from without as vigorously as from within." And finally, in Section xI, we learn that Jack and Peter are almost exactly similar; both are mad, both follow imagination rather than reason. The modern author has followed his original equation of religion and deception to its logical conclusion and has proved his point, that the best religion is the most deceptive. And in doing so he has not only demonstrated the subjectivity and partisanship of delusive rhetoric but has written obscurely (in Sec- tion vi he desires that the learned commentators "will proceed with great caution upon certain dark points"-and the allegory would be dark indeed without the notes which Wotton and Swift thoughtfully provided), he has neglected form, as he casually points out in the beginning of Section xi, and he has larded his allegory with plagiarized phrases.

Swift obviously does not allow the modern writer to convince us that the best religion is the most superficial and deceptive. Nor, however, does he develop the normal Anglican point of view that the New Testament, interpreted by reason, should serve as a guide. His emphasis is not upon religion but upon the way an inflexible and decorated allegory-whether used in a sermon or in Reynard the Fox-can be used to deceive an audience. His distrust of an allegory which insists upon an absolutely valid

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relationship between two different objects or conceptions is shown in other places-in the Digression Concerning Critics in the Tale and in Gulliver's Travels, for example.5 In the coat allegory he is merely using religious material to express that distrust; by making absurd the modern's equation of religion and the conclusions he draws from that equation, he exposes not Catholics and Dissenters but the faults of the alle- gorical method and of delusive rhetoric in general.

It can of course be objected that such an interpretation makes the "Tale proper," the coat allegory, play a relatively unimportant part in the book. That objection can be answered, however, by reading the sections of coat allegory, noticing the simplicity of the texture, the elaborate decoration of a single point, the frequency of dialogue, and the raciness of the diction. Only in Section Ili, in the discussion of the clothes philosophy, and in Section vm, on the Aeolists, are there passages over which we have to puzzle. Read by themselves, the sections of the coat allegory are superficial and amusing; and Swift indicates that it was his purpose to make them seem superficial when the modern author says in the Digression in the Modern Kind, "throughout this divine treatise, [I] have skilfully kneaded up both [instruction and diversion] together, with a layer of utile and a layer of dulce." Read separately, the coat allegory illustrates writing which is superficial and aims only at delight, and the digressions illustrate writing which goes below the surface (too far below) and aims at instruction. The modern writer encourages his readers, who, except for the learned readers mentioned in A Farther Digression, are interested only in entertainment, to skip the digressions and find delight in the coat allegory. We of course fall into a trap (as some anthologists have done) if we take the modern author seriously and read the coat allegory or the digressions separately, looking for pure delight in the coat allegory or solemn instruction in the digressions. Read in context, the coat allegory is not superficial, because it is so closely related to the digressions both by the subject and by themes and images. It illustrates fairly economically the characteristics of delusive rhetoric (it is only rarely, as in Section iv with its multiplication of Peter's inventions, that the texture becomes so light that the coat allegory is an imitation rather than a parody) and themes and images from the digressions- the body of the Tale-are woven into the coat.

Swift follows his rhetorical theory all through the Tale, then, con-

5 Swift's distrust of rigid allegory has the same basis as his objection to metaphors or similes which ignore the differences between the things compared. When, e.g., Tindal writes, "And the body-politic, whether ecclesiastical or civil, must be dealt with after the same manner as the body-natural," Swift comments, "What, because it is called a body, and is a simile, must it hold in all circumstances?" (Prose Works, ed, T, Scott, II, 110).

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stantly illustrating good rhetoric at the same time that he exposes bad rhetoric. But it is in the Digression on Madness, where the modern author unites his two subjects and investigates the cause of the success of all writers or speakers who influence public opinion, that Swift makes most clear the opposition between his rhetorical theory and the modern author's. Swift builds up the details of the modern's theory in the digressions, constantly undercutting it with general hints at an acceptable theory, and in the climactic Digression on Madness he states the opposition by the clear antithesis, reason and madness. Swift skillfully maneu- vers the modern author into reducing his delusive rhetoric to the product of a mad orator addressed to a mad audience. In the various digressions the Grubaean, since he is a learned man, has frequent recourse to the "places of logic" such as definition, parts, effects, things adjoining, con- traries. And in the Digression on Madness he attempts to clinch his case for the moderns by an argument from the important place of logic, cause. What impels a writer or speaker, he asks, to try to "reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and heighth of his own?" What qualities in the audience allow him to succeed? He triumphantly finds that the cause for the use and success of delusive rhetoric is the same cause which is responsible for the establish- ment of new empires by conquest: modern writers, like conquerors, are mad, and they succeed in bringing over others because the audience too is mad. Man is essentially irrational.

That is the modern's point but it is not Swift's. Swift's position is the opposite: "the brain in its natural position and state of serenity, disposeth its owner to pass his life in the common forms, without any thought of subduing multitudes to his own power, his reasons, or his visions." Orators and audience are not essentially irrational but are capa- ble of reason. Swift has carried the modern writer's position to its logical and absurd conclusion, by creating a mad world in which the modern's rhetoric is appropriate. In effect, he has dramatized the characteristics of delusive rhetoric by personifying them in the symbols of a mad orator and a mad audience. Modern writing is formless; a madman is vague and disoriented. Modern writing is factional and the author intrudes; a madman is completely introverted. Modern writing is abstracted from the dross and grossness of sense and human reason; a madman has taken leave of reality. Modern writers plagiarize and in their ephemeral writing seek novelty for its own sake; a madman has no sense of property and no memory of the past. But Swift is not maintaining that delusive orators and their audiences are mad and therefore not responsible for their actions. He has exaggerated the characteristics of delusive rhetoric to make them perfectly ridiculous, and his point is rather that actual writers and

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speakers who use the methods symbolized in the oratorial machines are knaves, and audiences who are moved by such methods are fools. Both orators and audiences should know better. An orator who is not a knave and an audience not composed of fools will use reason.

Reason is a crucial word in the Digression on Madness and therefore in the Tale and a word which, since it now has connotations of coldness and dry logic, has been responsible for misinterpretations of the Tale. Since Swift does not define reason and does not state his positive theory of rhetoric with sufficient clarity for a modern reader, I shall discuss briefly the meaning of reason and the theory of rhetoric which Swift illustrates in the Tale. Reason had many meanings in Swift's time, of course, and there were conflicting theories of rhetoric; but some of the seventeenth-century Anglicans use "reason" with the meaning it has in the Tale and develop a rhetorical theory similar to Swift's. Since they define reason and develop their theories in more detail than Swift does in A Tale of a Tub, they can give us clues to the rhetorical positives of the book.

Like Swift, the Anglicans whom I shall discuss (chiefly Robert South, Isaac Barrow, and Simon Patrick)6 were intensely concerned with the dangers of demagoguery. South says, for example, "a plausible, insig- nificant word, in the mouth of an expert demagogue, is a dangerous and dreadful weapon." And though they were primarily interested in the oratory of the pulpit rather than the rhetoric of the ladder or the stage- itinerant, the characteristics which they attacked in the non-conformist preachers are those which Swift symbolized in the three wooden machines. They find that the Puritans speak over the heads of the audience, using abstract and obscure language. South says of the Puri- tans, "And these impertinent and unpremeditated enlargements, they look upon as the motions and breathings of the Spirit, and therefore much beyond those carnal ordinances of sense and reason."7 The intrusion into a sermon of a preacher's private imaginings is attacked. In Simon Patrick's Friendly Debate we have this dialogue after the conformist has asked the non-conformist what is meant by an "experimental" preacher: "N. C. I mean, one that preaches his own Experiences in the

I am dealing with only a very few of the Anglican preachers of the seventeenth century and I am looking for similarities rather than differences, since my purpose is merely to elucidate the meaning of "reason" and to amplify the positive rhetorical theory of the Tale. The Anglican preachers are considered in some detail and the origin of their rhetorical theories is discussed in W. F. Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson (London, 1932).

7 South, Sermons (Oxford, 1823), n, 123; III, 36.

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ways of God. C, You do not well know what you mean. For this is either the same that I now told you: or else it may signifie no more than one that preaches his own Fancie."8 The non-conformists are attacked for their lack of interest in form; the conformist in A Continuation of the Friendly Debate says, "And so many of your Prayers have [no form] at all; but are then thought most heavenly, when they are most confused."9 Like Swift, the Anglicans denounce the search for novelty and the mechanical use of someone else's words.

In general, the Anglicans attack the non-conformists for, like the mad orator of the Digression on Madness, plucking the strings of the audience's passions, and they defend the appeal to reason. "So their Fancies or their Affections be but tickled," the conformist of the Friendly Debate says of a non-conformist audience, "they care not whether it be with Reason or without" (p. 173). While examples could be multiplied to show that the seventeenth-century Anglicans anticipate Swift's expose of delusive rhetoric, I am concerned here, as an elucidation of Swift's positives in the Tale, with what the Anglicans meant by reason and preaching "with Reason."

Now "reason" is one of the words which Hooker called "bugs words, because what they mean you do not indeed as you ought apprehend,"'0 and it can have a great many different meanings for different writers. But the meaning which it has for the Anglican preachers when they refer to human reason, reason which is used in rhetoric, is fairly simple and untechnical. It is obvious, first of all, that reason was considered to be dependent upon the evidence of the senses. Robert South says, "Reason discoursing upon grounds of religion, builds only upon another world; but sense fixes upon this. And since religion borrows much from reason, and reason itself has all conveyed to it by sense; it is no wonder if all knowledge and desire resolves into sense, as its first foundation" (v, 406). Evidence of the senses was trusted, then, but only if it were corrected by reason or understanding. South's position is the normal one: "It is the ennobling office of the understanding, to correct the fallacious and mis- taken reports of sense, and to assure us that the staff in the water is straight, though our eye would tell us it is crooked" (I, 387).

Reason, which has all conveyed to it by sense, can still correct the mis- taken reports of sense because it makes use of experience. The reason consults the memory, in which the results of past sense experience are stored; it compares things present with things past and comes to conclu-

8 A Friendly Debate Between a Conformist and a Non-Conformist, 5th ed. (London, 1669), p. 35.

9 (London, 1669), p. 108. 10 Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. I, Ch. vii, 6 n. (Works, Oxford, 1874, p. 222).

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sions. "The ways that lead us to the knowledg of all Conclusions, of which we have any knowledg," says John Hales, " . . . are but two: first, Experience; secondly, Ratiocination; and the one of these is commonly the way to the other, by comparing one thing with another, and applying Actives and Passives, and thence producing sundry Con- clusions."" An individual knows that the stick is straight before it is put into the water and after it is taken out. If an individual is confronted with a moral problem, he makes a reasonable choice if he remembers the results of his actions in similar situations in the past and avoids a harmful action. Reason is closely connected with experience, then, and the two terms are sometimes used almost synonymously.12

According to the Anglicans, reason is not a very sophisticated faculty; it is simply common sense, which applies the results of experience. But the orator, whose duty it was to appeal to reason, had to be extremely sophisticated and skillful, since he was not to impose his reason on members of his audience but to enable them to use their own reason. It is the law of conversation, says Isaac Barrow, that a man has an "absolute right to use and follow his own reason; and he that affects to deprive any man thereof, will pass for a petty tyrant, a clown, or an idiot." The An- glicans, who were concerned with addressing a large and unlearned audience, had therefore to deal with common sense experiences. John Eachard, objecting as Swift does to the use of outlandish metaphors taken from objects or events in the Indies or at the bottom of the sea, points out that Christ used metaphors involving objects "plain and familiar, even almost to children themselves, that can but taste and see; and to men of the lowest education and meanest capacities." Gilbert Burnet says that "the Reasons of them [things] must be made as sensible to the People as possible. . . . For the carrying these Matters beyond the plain Observation of Mankind, makes that the Whole is looked on as a piece of Rhetorick."'3

The Anglicans had, moreover, to stay at the level of particular experience if the reader were to use his own judgment. They consistently attack the use of "round and general words" and advocate the use of particulars. Instead of using precepts to persuade, therefore, they favored

1 "A Letter to an Honourable Person, concerning the Weapon-Salve," in Golden Re- mains of the Ever Mlemorable Mr. John Hales (London, 1688), p. 361.

;2 The phrases "reason and experience" or "common sense and experience" are extremely frequent in the writings of the Anglicans (and in Swift). A particularly clear example of the use of reason and experience as synonyms occurs in South, III, 171.

13 Barrow, Works, ed. A. Napier (Cambridge, Engl., 1859), II, 218; The Grounds and Oc- casions of the Contempt of the Clergy Enquired into (London, 1670) (in E. Arber, An English Garner. vn, 274); Burnet, A Discourse of the Pastoral Care (London, 1692), p. 219.

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examples, which, as Barrow said, transform a "notional universality into the reality of singular subsistence." Precepts, Barrow points out, "are de- livered in an universal and abstracted manner, naked, and void of all cir- cumstantial attire, without any intervention, assistance, or suffrage of sense." Good examples, on the other hand, represent the business "like a picture exposed to sense, having the parts orderly disposed and completely united, suitably clothed and dressed up in its circumstances" (iI, 500). John Hales, similarly, praises the use of parables as the "plainest and most familiar way," which "stoops to the capacity of the Learner, as being drawn either from Trees, or Beasts, or from some ordinary, common and known actions of men" (p. 170).

In their emphasis on reason, then, these writers, like Swift in A Tale of a Tub, are trying to combat the rhetoric of those who impose their opinions upon an audience by talking or writing over their heads and at the same time appealing to their lower passions. They do not, however, advocate combatting such rhetoric by appealing merely to the intellect, to reason as a cold, logical faculty. Working in the area of rhetoric, they aim to persuade, to move, rather than to present truth, and they realize the necessity of appealing to the passions. "The pleasures of the sensitive, inferior appetites," says Robert South, "though they are not in themselves the best objects, yet they are certainly the best representations and conveyances of such objects to the mind; since without some kind of sensible dress, things too fine for men's apprehensions can never much work upon their affections" (III, 132). They realize that it is necessary to appeal to interest, "the grand wheel and spring that moves the whole uni- verse." "For, if we will be but true to the first principles of nature," says South, "we shall find, that all arguments made use of to persuade the mind of man, must be founded upon something that is grateful, acceptable, and pleasing to nature; and that, in short, is a man's easy and com- fortable enjoyment of himself, in all the powers, faculties, and affections, both of his soul and body" (IIm, 137). They realize the necessity of adapt- ing their sermons to the audience: "With ordinary minds, such as much the greatest part of the world are, it is the suitableness, not the evidence of a truth, that makes it to be assented to" (South, I, 166).

In theory and practice the Anglicans differ from the non-conformists whom they attack in that, though they move the passions of their audiences, they do so through the reason or understanding. Using words which refer to particular and common sense experiences, using familiar examples, they demonstrate vividly and movingly the probable consequences of a particular action and allow the reader to use his reason, to consult his past experience, and to judge the validity of the writer's or speaker's conclusions. The advocates and practitioners of the rhetoric

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of reason did not regard even their uneducated audiences as fools but as human beings possessed of the gift of reason, the use of which it was the duty of the writer to encourage. He must help his audience to "look through ... things, and scan them exactly, valuing them, not according to fallacious impressions of sense, or illusive dreamings of fancy, but according to sound dictates of reason" (Barrow, III, 45). He must help the audience to avoid the usual habit of men, which Barrow describes: "in our taxations of things we do ordinarily judge (or rather not judge, but fancy, not hearing or regarding any dictate of reason) like beasts; prizing things merely according to present sense or show, not examining their intrinsic natures, or looking forward into their proper fruits and conse-

quences" (III, 62). To do this, the writer or speaker must have a profound knowledge of human nature, of the experience and the motives of his audience, as well as skill in language. He cannot preach only his own experiences; if he does, says Robert South, he will do little else but "shew the world how easily fools may be imposed upon by knaves" (III, 20).

These writers, then, did not abjure human learning, from which they could learn a great deal about the nature of man and his motives, nor did they forbid the use of the art of rhetoric. As long as they appealed to reason they could use rhetorical devices and therefore, Isaac Barrow argues in a sermon "Against Foolish Talking and Jesting" (II, 1-35), they could use wit and humor, or facetious discourse, since it is difficult "to define the limits which sever rhetoric and raillery." A manner of speaking "out of the simple and plain way (such as reason teacheth and proveth things by)" is justified because "good reason may be apparelled in the garb of wit." By using facetious discourse, a writer can get the audience to listen and can "give reason some competent scope, some fair play with them." Barrow's sermon demonstrates very clearly the Angli- can attitude towards rhetoric and satire, and is of particular interest in relation to A Tale of a Tub. It is, in fact, almost a discourse in the simple and plain way on the subject which the Tale treats in its witty and hu- morous way. It is permissible, says Barrow, to expose things base and vile to due contempt: "When to impugn them with downright reason, or to check them by serious discourse, would signify nothing; then repre- senting them in a shape strangely ugly to the fancy, and thereby raising derision at them, may effectually discountenance them." And in a sentence Barrow expresses what I take to be the justification of the method of the Tale: "He that will contest things apparently decided by sense and experience, or who disavows clear principles of reason, ap- proved by general consent, and the common sense of men, what other hopeful way is there of proceeding with him, than pleasantly to explode his conceits?"

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The Anglicans I have mentioned demanded, then, that a preacher know not only his subject, religion, but the art of persuasion, and their rhetorical theory is sophisticated and complex. They consider the nature of language and find in the senses and experience common denominators for communication. They consider the psychology of the audience and they are aware of all the available means of persuasion. It is probably true that because they emphasized the appeal to common sense as a way of persuading a large and unlearned audience and because they were primarily interested in practical morality, in bringing religion down to meddle with the lives of their congregations, their sermons lack the heroic and exalted note of earlier sermons. But because of their emphases and because they saw preaching as an art, their theory was one which suited ideally the needs of a satirist who was intent on using the actions of men as material for lasting literature. Swift may have got his rhetorical principles from other sources, but those principles were current in the writings of the Anglicans. He shared their positives-reason, common sense, the common forms-and their rhetorical principles, and in the Tale he refers to those positives and applies those principles to all kinds of literature. His subject is the art of persuasion and religious literature is only one of the kinds.

In the Digression on Madness, as I have said, Swift confronts madness with "reason," and it would seem to be obvious that his position is directly opposite to the modern author's and is the position of the Angli- cans just discussed. The modern writer, now blissfully mad, having succeeded in exalting himself above his audience, having proved to his own satisfaction that his position is irrefutable, contemptuously dismisses the opposing position of Swift and the Anglicans and thus states their theory of the rhetoric of reason. When he asks himself, "from what faculty of the soul the disposition arises in mortal man, of taking it into his head to advance new systems, with such an eager zeal, in things agreed on all hands impossible to be known," he calmly replies, not expecting a rational response, that these grand innovators are mad, "having generally proceeded in the common course of their words and actions, by a method very different from the vulgar dictates of unrefined reason." Swift is clearly announcing that he is an advocate of the rhetoric of reason. Again, when the modern author says that it is the "humble and civil design" of every innovator in the empire of reason "to reduce the notions of all mankind exactly to the same length, and breadth, and heighth of his own," Swift is indicating that a humble and civil orator will adapt his discourse to the reason of the audience and will not try to impose his own opinions.

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But there are two frequently quoted and interpreted, and certainly crucial paragraphs (pages 494 to 497 in the Oxford edition), in which Swift has been seen using his own reason and trying to impose his opinions on the audience of the Tale. In the first paragraph there is no evidence that he is doing so; his position is clearly still the opposite of the modern's. The modern rejects and therefore states for Swift the position that the writer or speaker cannot preach his private experience, he must not seek novelty for its own sake, he must appeal to common sense, he must be learned: "For the brain, in its natural position and state of serenity, disposeth its owner to pass his life in the common forms, without any thought of subduing multitudes to his own power, his reason, or his visions; and the more he shapes his understanding by the pattern of human learning, the less he is inclined to form parties after his particular notions, because that instructs him in his private infirmities, as well as in the stubborn ignorance of the people." The modern writer states the opposite of Swift's position when he praises the ideal of his orator, "when a man's fancy gets astride of his reason, when imagination is at cuffs with the senses, and common understanding, as well as common sense, is kicked out of doors." When the Grubaean says, "Those entertainments and pleasures we most value in life, are such as dupe and play the wag with the senses," Swift is obviously referring to the doctrine that the senses and sense experience provide the common denominators for rational communication and that it is the duty of the writer or speaker to give fair play to the individual reason. The Grubaean lightly dismisses the memory in comparison to the imagination, which is "acknowledged to be the womb of things, and the other allowed to be no more than the grave." But Swift is depending on his audience's remembering the traditional role of the memory as the repository of sense experience, to be consulted by the reason.

It is the second paragraph which has been most confusing and mis- leading, because critics have decided that the meaning of "reason" changes abruptly and comes to mean, not "common sense" possessed by anyone in his right mind but the destructive intelligence of Swift the satirist. "In the proportion that credulity is a more peaceful possession of the mind than curiosity," the paragraph starts, "so far preferable is that wisdom, which converses about the surface, to that pretended philosophy, which enters into the depths of things, and then comes gravely back with information and discoveries, that in the inside they are good for nothing." Here and up to the last line of the paragraph, F. R. Leavis assumes, there are only two alternatives offered to the reader; we must choose to accept either surface wisdom or the conclusions of pretended philosophy, reached by the over-curious "reason"

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of the scientist or mechanist philosopher or anatomizing satirist, which goes far below the surface. Swift deludes the reader, Leavis assumes, into accepting the first alternative, surface wisdom. " 'Credulity'," he says, "standing ironically for the 'common forms'-the sane, socially sus- tained, common-sense illusions-is the positive that the reader must associate himself with and rest on for safety." Consequently, when the reader comes to the end of the paragraph and finds that his position is that of "being a fool among knaves," he suddenly reverses his position and accepts the second alternative, the view that if we look below the surface we shall find everything worthless. According to Leavis, Swift destroys all illusion and, instead of persuading the reader to use his reason to see things as they are, forces the reader to accept the satirist's private conclusions that things are rotten below the surface.

Robert C. Elliott disagrees with Leavis' conclusion that there is nothing left after the "fools among knaves" line; there is left, he says, "the integrity which enables Swift to face reality, as he sees it, without com- promise." But he agrees with Leavis that "reason" means the private reason of Swift the satirist-"not the 'reason' of the Augustan Enlighten- ment, associated with the 'common Forms' and common sense" -which opens and pierces and mangles. Both interpretations assume that reason, which all along in the Tale has been a faculty possessed by any sane person, enabling him to come to common sense conclusions, has become a faculty possessed only by Swift, which goes below the surface and finds little (Elliott) or nothing (Leavis) good.

But there is no justification for thinking that Swift has, irresponsibly and without telling the reader, changed the meaning of "reason." In the paragraph there is the third alternative, "reason" with its usual meaning, "common sense," and Swift, instead of, as Leavis and Elliott believe, giving the reader a choice of the modern's superficial wisdom or Swift's destructive conclusions, is telling the reader to use his own common sense in understanding the paragraph. Swift gives us two absurd choices; we can either credulously accept the modern author's notion that things are all they appear to be on the surface, or the opposite notion that in the inside everything is rotten. But the commonsense attitude, learned from experience, is that things are not all they seem to be, yet they are not all worthless; people, for example, are neither perfectly good nor perfectly evil. And it is this commonsense attitude, to which Swift has appealed all through the Tale, that he now explicitly refers to with the word "reason." The modern author first, in his praise of credulity, elimi- nates reason from the discussion by saying, "The two senses, to which all objects first address themselves, are the sight and the touch; these never examine farther than the colour, the shape, the size, and whatever other

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qualities dwell, or are drawn by art upon the outward of bodies." Here there is no room for the use of the senses besides sight and touch, or for experience. Then, however, the modern brings reason into the discussion, when he says, "and then comes reason officiously with tools for cutting, and opening, and mangling, and piercing, offering to demonstrate, that they are not of the same consistence quite through." Swift is calling into play the reader's commonsense attitude that things are not all they seem; he is indicating that credulity is foolish. The modern author, however, seems to reject the use of reason, as he goes on, "Now I take all this to be the last degree of perverting nature; one of whose eternal laws it is, to put her best furniture forward." (Again, the common sense attitude is that "nature," that which is normal and common, is not glittering and deceptive.) But he does not really reject the use of reason; he rejects only extreme cynicism which he perversely calls reason. He uses not the tools of reason-the other senses and experience-but the tools of the scientist or the mechanist philosopher or the destructive satirist. He says in the next sentence that "reason is certainly in the right" in doubting appearances, but he gives us the results of some late experiments to prove his point: "Last week I saw a woman flayed, and you will hardly believe how much it altered her person for the worse. Yesterday I ordered the carcass of a beau to be stripped in my presence, when we were all amazed to find so many unsuspected faults under one suit of clothes. Then I laid open his brain, his heart, and his spleen; but I plainly perceived at every operation, that the farther we proceeded, we found the defects increase upon us in number and bulk."

These experiments and conclusions are not based on the use of reason but are the experiments and conclusions of a madman, who has gone far beyond commonsense limits. The commonsense attitude (to state it simply and neglect the effectiveness with which Swift stimulates that attitude by his vivid and moving images) is that, for one thing, beaux and harlots (eighteenth-century prostitutes were punished by flaying) are not examples of "nature" putting her best furniture forward, and, for another thing, the experiments do not make use of the senses and experience but show a distrust of reason. Anyone who used common sense would realize that a flaying would alter a woman's person for the worse and would know, furthermore, that a woman, particularly a harlot, was not all that she seemed on the surface. He would know, without lay- ing open the brain, the heart, and the spleen (which of course would prove nothing), that the clothes of a beau covered a multitude of faults, and not merely physical but moral faults. The commonsense attitude that beaux and harlots are worthless ot evil members of society needs no logical or scientific proof. The modern writer, a scientist (as he is all

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through the Tale) who does not trust the senses, or a mechanist philosopher who uses logic or imagination to go beyond the evidence of sense, or a destructive satirist, has attempted to discredit reason but has succeeded only in showing the ridiculousness of complete distrust of the senses and experience.

The reader's commonsense attitudes enable him to see the ridiculousness of either of the modern author's extremes, and "reason" retains its usual meaning in the paragraph, rather than being identified with extreme curiosity. At the end of the paragraph the modern author rejects both pretended philosophy and reason, and praises the man who can "content his ideas with the films and images that fly off upon his senses from the superficies of things." "Such a man," he says, "truly wise, creams off nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up." Philosophy and reason, not philosophy which is the same as reason; if philosophy means "pretended philosophy" (and it can of course refer to true or reasonable philosophy) the distinction is carefully preserved. Reason remains as the faculty which allows an individual to judge for himself, on the basis of past experience, whether a particular object or action is good or bad for him, which enables him to see things as they are for him.

And the man who judged for himself, confronted with the statement that only sour and dregs are left for reason and philosophy to lap up, would react with the attitude that what the modern called sour and dregs could be, if not pure cream, at least palatable. Swift shared the philosophical position as well as the rhetorical theory of the Anglicans, and according to them reason was not expected to lead either to cynicism or to perfect felicity, but to contentment. Isaac Barrow says in a sermon on contentment: "But if we judge of things, as God declareth, as impartial and cautious reason dictateth, as experience diligently observed (by their fruits and consequences) discovereth them to be, we shall have little cause to be affected by the want or presence of any such thing which is wont to produce discontent" (III, 123). The psychological effect which the Tale is constructed to produce in the reasonable reader, who judges things "as experience diligently observed (by their fruits and consequences) discovereth them to be," is contentment, a "mighty level in the felicity and enjoyments of mortal men."

Swift's particular concern in the Tale is with persuading people to think for themselves, not about beaux or harlots or madness or learning or religion, but about delusive rhetoric, which he and the Anglicans saw as one of the main causes, if not the main cause, of human discontent. And in the Digression on Madness he compels his readers to use their own judgment by presenting them with rhetoric which is so lacking in

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common sense that it sets the reader's mind upon its mettle. The modern writer tries to convince his audience that they should blindly accept whatever he says, including his implicit attitude that beaux and harlots are all they seem on the surface, and he offers as the only alternative a completely negative attitude that all "nature," like the beaux and harlots, is worthless, and that the writer or speaker cannot follow nature or he will reveal nothing but corruption. He gives the reader a choice of "an art to sodder and patch up the flaws and imperfections of nature" or the art, "so much in present esteem, of widening and exposing" the flaws and imperfections of nature. But Swift leaves the way open for the reader to realize that nature is not represented by beaux and harlots and consequently that nature is not so corrupt that it has to be patched up, and that a rational orator can follow nature and help us to see things as they are.

Throughout the Tale of a Tub Swift follows a similar pattern. The reader is constantly given two unacceptable alternatives because the modern author, using his imagination and avoiding the use of reason, flies too high or sinks too low. There is an important clue to Swift's method, in the celebrated Bird of Paradise passage in Section vIIi:

And whereas the mind of Man, when he gives the spur and bridle to his thoughts, doth never stop, but naturally sallies out into both extremes, of high and low, of good and evil; his first flight of fancy commonly transports him to ideas of what is most perfect, finished, and exalted; till, having soared out of his own reach and sight, not well perceiving how near the frontiers of height and depth border upon each other; with the same course and wing, he falls down plumb into the lowest bottom of things, like one who travels the east into the west, or like a straight line drawn by its own length into a circle. Whether a tincture of malice in our natures make us fond of furnishing every bright idea with its reverse; or whether reason, reflecting upon the sum of things, can, like the sun, serve only to enlighten one half of the globe, leaving the other half by necessity under shade and darkness; or, whether fancy, flying up to the imagination of what is highest and best, becomes overshot, and spent, and weary, and suddenly falls, like a dead bird of paradise, to the ground; or whether, after all these meta- physical conjectures, I have not entirely missed the true reason; the proposition, however, which has stood me in so much circumstance, is altogether true....

The modern author has used only his "fancy" and has "entirely missed the true reason." But by making the two extremes ridiculous and indicating that the reader must find his own meaning, using his common sense, Swift appeals to reason, using the methods of the Anglicans' rational rhetoric.

In effect, the Tale of a Tub is a dialogue between two kinds of delusive orators, both contained within the schizoid modern author; the one, the

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author as he sees himself, uses abstractions and obscurity, finds everything good, and warns us against those who would strip off the fair exterior; the other, the modern as he is unconsciously, uses particulars which reveal rottenness everywhere and is thus a vitriolic satirist. Both of them are dogmatists, who try to force their attitudes on the audience. But Swift is neither naive panegyrist nor bitter cynic and he is not trying to force his opinions upon the sane reader. In the Digression Concern- ing Critics, for example, the panegyrist defines and praises his True Critic in general terms as "a discoverer and collector of writers' faults," but he unconsciously reveals his satiric nature in his particular references to critics as asses without horns, snarling dogs, young rats, and serpents without teeth. Now Swift is certainly not trying to get the reader to believe that critics should collect writers' faults, nor on the other hand is he saying that all critics are serpents without teeth. If he believed the latter he would hardly write the critical and satiric Tale of a Tub. He clearly indicates the normal view of a critic as a restorer of ancient manu- scripts or one who invents and draws up rules for himself and the world, "by observing which, a careful reader might be able to pronounce upon the productions of the learned, form his taste to a true relish of the sublime and the admirable, and divide every beauty of matter and style from the corruption that apes it." The reasonable reader can accept this definition because such a critic allows him to use his own judgment, and he can see, furthermore, that Swift is this kind of a critic in the Tale. Swift is drawing up rules by illustrating the principles of rational rhetoric that particulars communicate more clearly than generals, that references to commonsense experiences give a reader a chance to use his own reason, and that the author's attitudes should not be imposed on the reader. The modern author as unconscious satirist is a rational orator in his use of particular references to commonsense experiences, but he mistakes his mad and rotten world for the normal and natural world. Swift appeals to reason because he compels the reader to see that the modern author has gone too far and stimulates the reader's normal and natural responses.

In the same way, in other digressions, the Grubaean praises modern writing, unaware of the fact that he exposes it by his particular references, and Swift indicates the reasonable norm of good writing. A Digression in the Modern Kind starts with a panegyric on the moderns' "great design of an everlasting remembrance, and never-dying fame," which they have accomplished because their endeavors have been "so highly serviceable to the general good of mankind." This is a valid (though pompous and general) statement of some of the aims of literature (it deals only with utile, not with dulce). But the modern continues, "To

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this end, I have some time since, with a world of pains and art, dis- sected the carcass of human nature, and read many useful lectures upon the several parts, both containing and contained; till at last it smelt so strong, I could preserve it no longer." Such a statement makes it clear to the reader that "modern" writing is ridiculous and that writingwhich will last and serve the general good must deal with man as a reasonable animal, not a dead carcass; it must follow nature, not the warped fancies of a cynic. And later in the same digression Swift makes his position clearer by having the modern praise Wotton's "sublime discoveries upon the subject of flies and spittle" and his own New Help of Smatterers, or the Art of Being Deep-learned and Shallow-read, while at the same time he condemns Homer because of his unsatisfactory dissertation upon tea and his unreliable method of salivation without mercury. Homer, who follows nature, who is concerned with man, who instructs by pleasing, and whose poetry has served the general good of mankind, is presented as a norm, making clearer the ridiculousness of the modern writer's high pretences to fame and value and of his disgusting and unnatural methods and attitudes.

The same technique operates in the other digressions, in the prefatory material, and, though less obviously, in the coat allegory. From the beginning of the coat allegory, the modern author concentrates on the fair exterior of man and religion and finds it good; man is a suit of colorful and beautiful clothes and religion is a cloak. As long as he stays at the surface and deals in obscure generalizations, the modern finds nothing to blame. But the moment he looks below the surface he finds only corruption; under the suit of clothes, man is nothing but a senseless un- savory carcass, and conscience is a pair of breeches which covers lewdness as well as nastiness and "is easily slipt down for the service of both." Swift thus appeals to reason, using details of common experience, to make it clear from the beginning that we are to accept neither the modern's superficial optimism nor his underlying cynicism about man and religion. As the coat allegory continues, the coats take on more fantastic decorations and the "religious" projects of Jack and Peter become an increasingly thin veil for the corruption underneath; Peter invents the whispering office for the ease of midwives, bawds, parasites, and buffoons, "in short, of all such as are in danger of bursting with too much wind," and Jack invents the sect of Aeolists, who maintain that the original cause of all things is wind. The modern author continues to praise Jack and Peter, but his particular references to objects of experience empha- size strongly the madness and rottenness of their projects; the Aeolists propagate their doctrines by belching, and the sourer the better; the

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modern quotes approvingly Jack's statement that the "eyes of the under-

standing see best, when those of the senses are out of the way," but he shows Jack bouncing his head into a post or falling into a kennel.

Using the objects of ordinary experience, Swift thus makes it impossible for a reader to accept either of the modern writer's extremes. His chief emphasis is upon making ridiculous both windy panegyric and anatomizing satire. But Swift does not fall into the trap he has laid for the modern; he does not content himself with widening and exposing flaws but sodders up the imperfections which the modern has found in nature. He provides a norm for the reader in the will, the New Testa- ment, which can be interpreted and applied if man uses his reason, and which does not prescribe religious factionalism but, as Martin says in Section vi, "agreement and friendship and affection" between religious sects. Swift's religious position is that the individual must use his own reason in interpreting and following the truths of the New Testament. But since the Tale of a Tub is not primarily concerned with religion, particularly not with Swift's religious opinions, Swift does not develop this normal attitude. His function in the Tale is to force readers to think for themselves about religion and other matters and to warn them against delusive rhetoric, which was to be found particularly in religious writing and speaking. Having done that, it was his rhetorical theory that the rest was up to the individual reason; as he said in Contests and Dissensions in Greece and Rome, "common sense and plain reason, while men are dis- engaged from acquired opinions, will ever have some general influence upon their minds."

In the same way, using two unacceptable extremes, Swift compels the reader to use his own judgment in determining the structure of the Tale. On the one hand the modern author, using abstractions, praises digressions, those "late refinements in knowledge," as a "great modern im- provement"; but when he descends to particulars he unwittingly de- nounces digressions completely. He compares books containing digressions to soups and fricassees and ragouts and says that some people argue "that digressions in a book, are like foreign troops in a state, which argue the nation to want a heart and hands of its own, and often either subdue the natives, or drive them into the most unfruitful corners." Swift is certainly not praising digressions, nor is he saying that a writer must write directly and simply and avoid all seeming digressions. He is concerned rather with encouraging the reader to find the heart and the hands of a book for himself and determine what is relevant. In the Tale of a Tub he compels the reader to determine exactly what constitutes a digression, by labeling the more important sections of the book digressions, putting his announcement of the subject in an Introduction, and

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forcing the reader to ferret out for himself the subject and its develop- ment. Swift makes the unity of the Tale clear, as I have tried to show, if we read with extreme care and do not take the modern author seriously. The book is concerned with rhetoric, it is written consistently from the point of view of the modern author, a delusive orator, and the various sections are tied together not only by the subject and the narrator but by the various themes and images-the clothes philosophy and the tailor image, for example-which run through the whole book.

Swift uses the rhetoric of reason, then, at the same time that he exposes delusive rhetoric. He uses words which refer to commonsense experiences, he defines his abstractions by means of particulars, he does not impose his opinions, and he uses the method of example rather than giving us precepts. Isaac Barrow said that in a good example, "you see at once described the thing done, the quality of the actor, the manner of doing, the minute seasons, measures, and adjuncts of the action; with all which you might not perhaps by numerous rules be acquainted; and this in the most facile, familiar, and delightful way of instruction, which is by experience, history, and observation of sensible events" (II, 500). It is because the quality of the actor, the modern author, is made so clear by his mad opinions and projects that the reader of the Tale cannot accept either his superficial and abstract precepts or his personal and bitter attacks. Because Swift was exposing delusive rhetoric he used an extreme example of a delusive orator as his narrator, and the appeal to reason in the Tale is hidden deep beneath the madness. But it is worth looking for, not merely because the Tale of a Tub is delightful and amusing and exhibits most impressively Swift's "vehemence and rapidity of mind, ... copiousness of images, and vivacity of diction," but because the book is perhaps the most skillful and important piece of rhetorical criticism in the English language. It is Swift's Essay on Rhetorical Criti- cism, and no one knew better than Swift the ways language could be misused as well as the ways it could be used best. It is a work which is relevant not only to seventeenth-century literature but to all literature which aims to persuade; the characteristics of sophistic rhetoric have not changed and the principles of rational rhetoric, which are essentially the principles of classical rhetoric, are still valid.

Tempting as it is to follow the modern author's advice and "take seven of the deepest scholars . . .and shut them up close for seven years in seven chambers, with a command to write seven ample commentaries on this comprehensive discourse," it is more to the point to set readers to work at reading and understanding the Tale as a work of criticism. While it is a richer and more amazing work if we are familiar with all varieties of seventeenth-century literature, the principles and examples

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222 Reason in Madness: "A Tale of a Tub"

still apply to our modern philosophical, religious, political, scientific, and popular speaking and writing, and of course to literature in the narrow sense, if we peruse the book "with a world of application, again and again." As Mrs. Starkman points out, we are the heirs of Swift's "moderns," and though Swift failed to exterminate the moderns of his day that is no reason for not giving him a chance to warn us against the dangers of abstraction, obscurity, factionalism, and formlessness in our modern rhetoric. If Swift's principles are not directly applicable to modern rhetoric, still the experience of reading and understanding the Tale of a Tub can help to teach us what to look for and what to look out for. The Tale is not easy to understand (as this essay may testify entirely too well) but in spite of the complexity the book can communicate pre- cisely and clearly. And in times like Swift's and ours, precise communication must be difficult.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

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Issue Table of ContentsPMLA, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Mar., 1954), pp. i-viii+1-344Volume Information [pp. i-viii]Front Matter [pp. 1-2]Champions of the Great Tradition [pp. 3-11]Report on the Foreign Language Program [pp. 12-21]The Meaning of Eliot's Rose-Garden [pp. 22-33]Sherwood Anderson and Eduardo Mallea [pp. 34-45]Conrad's Two Stories of Initiation [pp. 46-56]Bernard Shaw, Philosopher [pp. 57-75]George Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature: The New England Background [pp. 76-88]Hawthorne on Romantic Love and the Status of Women [pp. 89-98]The Dual Aspects of Evil in "Rappaccini's Daughter" [pp. 99-109]Thoreau's Feminine Foe [pp. 110-116]Emerson and the Organic Metaphor [pp. 117-130]Wordsworth's River Duddon Sonnets [pp. 131-141]The Neo-Platonic Concept of Time in Blake's Prophetic Books [pp. 142-155]Schiller's Philosophy of History in His Jena Lectures of 1789-90 [pp. 156-172]Diderot's Supposed Contribution to D'Holbach's Works [pp. 173-188]Patterns of Imagery in Pope's Arbuthnot [pp. 189-197]Reason in Madness: A Tale of a Tub [pp. 198-222]Joseph Glanvill, Anglican Apologist: Old Ideas and New Style in the Restoration [pp. 223-250]"Grateful Vicissitude" in Paradise Lost [pp. 251-264]Catiline and the Nature of Jonson's Tragic Fable [pp. 265-277]Hamlet, Don Quijote, La vida es sueo: The Quest for Values [pp. 278-313]Renaissance Names in Masquerade [pp. 314-323]Eye, Mind, and Hand in Michelangelo's Poetry [pp. 324-336]Notes, Documents, and Critical CommentTennyson's Princess and Vestiges [pp. 337-343]

Kelling's Reason in Madness A Tale of a Tub.pdf

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