Page:Satire in the Victorian novel (IA satireinvictoria00russrich).pdf/46

 It is therefore not wholly superfluous to ask why vice and folly are the favorite satiric goals. Psychologically it would be sufficient to say that it is because anything a man disapproves of naturally seems to him foolish if not actually vicious. But socialized man cannot admit that his reaction to anything is based on mere temperamental prejudice. Condemnation of vice and folly is of course its own justification, and humor is its own reward. Unfortunately, however, humorous condemnation is not always applicable to these offenders against taste and morality. Folly is sometimes too artless to be censured, and vice is often too serious to be ridiculed. Evidently then, yet another solution is needed, a least common denominator that will go into both, even if it does leave a remainder.

Now it happens that a body of explicit testimony, substantiated by a review of satiric practice, does indicate the existence of this unifying bond, this thing which, when present, makes both vice and folly criticizably absurd; and its generic name is deception.

This fraudulent family has two main branches: the intentional type, including hypocrisy and humbug; and the unconscious, represented by sentimentality and other forms of self-befoolment; besides a half-conscious variety, whence come vanity, snobbishness, superstition, vulgarity, and other children of perverted ambition and false reasoning. All these give plenty of scope to the satirist, even when we subtract some possibilities by the important qualification that not all that deceives is ludicrous; deception being sometimes too innocent and even altruistic and sometimes too tragic and cruel.

According to this test, anything which assumes a vir-**