Another and more passive type of the egoist is the epicurean. He asks only to have his tastes gratified, and, being devoted to material comfort, demands little of the world but material supplies. Epicurianism is marked by an indulgent good-humor so long as it is itself indulged, and when not gratified sinks into nothing worse than peevishness. Though it may be a deplorable trait, it is not a ridiculous one in itself, and is therefore satirized only when in conjunction with something that produces an incongruity. The constant stream of satire directed against the epicurean clergy, for instance, is due to the sense of an incompatibility between a profession which inculcates simplicity at least, if not actual asceticism, and a régime of sensuous indulgence. Those who are legitimately worldly, as for example the patrician triad depicted by Thackeray,—Miss Crawley, the Countess of Kew, and Madam Bernstein,—may not be admirable, but neither are they absurd.
In Adrian Harley we have the egoistic epicure in all his plump perfection. Meredith hastens, however, to exculpate the founder of the hedonistic philosophy:[398]
“Adrian was an epicurean; one whom Epicurus would have scourged out of his garden, certainly; an epicurean of our modern notions.”
The combination in him of cynic, self-pamperer, and Sir Oracle forms a type which Meredith especially delights to dishonor, because its own smugness puts a splash of color, as it were, on the bull’s-eye and renders it more conspicuous. Not only is the epicure pierced with many an ironic shaft, but the Wise Youth is made the veritable error incarnate of the Feverel tragedy. For it was his Fabian policy, dictated and obeyed, that knotted still more the sad tangle, just as it was Austin Wentworth’s simple manly directness that proved the knot could be cut easily by prompt and silent action. Indeed, in these two characters we see exemplified throughout the story the false Florimell of vanity and the true Florimell of pride,—the pride that is too proud to do an unworthy or debasing deed, and the vanity that can counterfeit successfully until confronted by the genuine reality.
Egoism within bounds is a perfectly sane and rational thing, but to keep it within bounds is exceedingly difficult. When given over to an irrational rule it grows into fanaticism. For the fanatic owes his monomania to the force of a strong personality, which engenders the unmitigated assurance of being right, plus the perverted reasoning that characterizes the sentimentalist. He is always foolish, but seldom a hypocrite, as his deception usually extends to himself. His selfishness is of the opposite sort from the epicure’s. What he seeks is not a soft berth and personal acquisitions, but a chance to impose his opinions on a misguided world, and to dominate over converts or subjects. In his milder moods he only dreams of happy schemes and far-reaching reforms, but when charged with energy his proselyting zeal tends to make him tyrannical.
In some form or other he appears on the pages of almost every Victorian novelist. That the faddist is a favorite subject with Peacock is well known. Lytton gives a delightful contribution in the Uncle Jack of The Caxtons, whose “bewitching enthusiasm and convincing calculation” led him into alluring speculations that invariably proved disastrous to the members of his family. Not financial but missionary and philanthropic zeal animate the souls immortalized by Dickens,—Mrs. Jellyby and Mrs. Pardiggle, Reverend Honeythunder, and the Snagsbys. Brontë and Kingsley specialize in the religious bigot. The former satirizes the Jesuit in Villette, but not St. John Rivers, who is drawn seriously. The latter gives a vivid picture in his Mrs. Locke and the Calvinistic preachers, and another, of the opposite type, done with more partisanship and less sympathy, in the vicar and Argemone in Yeast. Trollope is more interested in the sociological zealot. He introduces him as the author, Mr. Popular Sentiment; the “Barchester Brutus,” Mr. John Bold; the demagogue, Ontario Moggs, son of a capitalist, and advocate of labor unions; and some characters in the Parliamentary Series. A sample from a harangue of Moggs will serve to illustrate the fair-mindedness that accompanies Trollope’s love of parody. He quotes and then comments:[399]
“‘Gentlemen, were it not for strikes, this would be a country in which no free man could live. By the aid of strikes we will make it the Paradise of the labourer, and Elysium of industry, an Eden of artisans.’ There was much more of it, but the reader might be fatigued were the full flood of Mr. Moggs’s oratory to be let loose upon him. And through it all there was a germ of truth, and a strong dash of true, noble feeling; but the speaker had omitted as yet to learn how much thought must be given to a germ of truth before it can be made to produce fruit for the multitude. And then, in speaking, grand words come so easily, while thoughts—even little thoughts—flow so slowly!”
Mrs. Proudie herself is above all a politician, and justifies her existence by turning her religious bigotry into the channel of ecclesiastical polity, a procedure that well might cause the gentle bishop to quake:[400]
“When Mrs. Proudie began to talk about the souls of the people he always shook in his shoes. She had an eloquent way of raising her voice over the word souls that was qualified to make any ordinary man shake in his shoes.”
She rejoices in an opportunity to condone with a member of the Clerical Opposition over a disappointment she has done her best to bring upon it:[401]