Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/327



fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude."

The fact, however, that "Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing," is not an irony of fate so much as a folly of society. Later in the story the philosophizing of one of the characters leads the author to the reflection:

"Some gentlemen have made an amazing figure in literature by general discontent with the universe as a trap of dulness into which their great souls have fallen by mistake; but the sense of a stupendous self and an insignificant world may have its consolations."

Nay, the metaphysician himself does not altogether escape. Piero de Cosimo is accused of being one and repudiates the idea:

"Not I, Messer Greco; a philosopher is the last sort of animal I should choose to resemble. I find it enough to live, without spinning lies to account for life. Fowls cackle, asses bray, women chatter, and philosophers spin false reasons—that's the effect the sight of the world brings out of them."

This perception of the Idol of the Cave, and the whole trend of Eliot's argument is evidence that the pragmatic attitude existed some time before it was so vividly and enduringly defined by Professor James.

Since these various changes bring about no complete break with the satiric tradition, we may expect to find the connecting links with both the remote and the immediate past as much in evidence as are the features of novelty. Peacock's indebtedness was to the Athenian com-*