"Finally, there is another service political satires render, which is peculiarly necessary to a government based on discussion. One of the greatest evils in such a state is the presence of mere words and phrases, and of the vague Pecksniffian virtues. Now to satire cant and humbug are proper game. It brings fine professions down to fact, points the contrast between the commonplace reality and its tinsel dress, and by the dread of ridicule raises the standard of plain-dealing. Other means of criticism as well act as a check on more opprobrious faults in public life. But satire is the best agent to keep us free from taking words for substance."
Apparently, then, we may conclude that deception
in some form is, so far as any one thing can be, the basic
object of satire, or at least is so considered by those who
reflect upon it. But we must admit here as elsewhere that
to recognise a phenomenon is easier than to account for it.
Not that it is difficult to account for the deception itself. No instinct is more fundamental and irresistible than that of concealment. The primary fear of molestation or harm in which it originates becomes, in a social state of sophistication and artifice, fear of exposure. With increased development, such complex and opposing factors as pride and shame, avarice and generosity, ostentation and modesty, lead us to hide things. We hide all sorts of things, good and bad; faults, virtues, deficiencies, accomplishments, hoardings, and charities. We hide from ourselves as well as from others. The left hand is as a rule not on terms of confiding intimacy with the right, whetherIn his Temper of the Seventeenth Century in English Literature, Wendell contributes another link to the chain of evidence:
"Sincere or not, satire is essentially a kind of writing which pretends to unmask pretense."]
- ↑ Political Satire in English Poetry, 240.
