Arguing About the Project: Approaches to Swift’s An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity and A Project for the Advancement of Religion

It does not seem unreasonable to expect that two pamphlets on the same topic, written (though not published) within a year of each other by a single author, would show a certain consistency in purpose and conclusions. This, at least, is the expectation with which many critics and scholars approach Jonathan Swift’s A Project for the Advancement of Religion, and the Reformation of Manners and An Argument to Prove, that the Abolishing of Christianity in England, May, as Things now Stand, be attended with some Inconveniences, and perhaps, not produce those many good Effects proposed thereby. ¹ Verifying this expected consistency, however, has proved difficult. Given the remarkably different, and potentially contradictory, interpretations of these two pamphlets, defining a consistent relationship between them has required both ingenuity and flexibility. Some readers argue that A Project for the Advancement of Religion and An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity are consistent with each other in intention, though these readers may then disagree about what that intention is. Other readers claim that the pamphlets are fundamentally inconsistent with each other, but then go on to argue that the pamphlets are consistent with Swift’s character, personality, or psychology. In his biography of Swift, John Middleton Murry is confident that “The Project is the ‘serious’ counterpart of the jesting Argument.” ² David Nokes, however, complains that the Project is so entirely different from the Argument “that one is astounded by a mind that can veer so violently between ideals of freedom and control.” ³ Calling the Argument and the Project “the finest and the flattest of Swift’s essays on religion and morality,” Irvin Ehrenpreis seeks a psychological explanation for their disparity:

To reconcile the two as dropped from the same noble tree, one must, I think, distinguish between the public moralist in Swift and the anonymous, playful satirist.... [P]sychologically the hidebound moralist is the necessary origin of the prankster, yet...as a literary accomplishment the prankster’s work must be read in isolation from the moralist’s. ⁴

The fundamental critical questions in comparing these pamphlets are: What was Swift’s belief about the role of morality and religion in society? Do these two pamphlets complement one another, presenting a consistent view of virtue and hypocrisy? Or do they present two competing, incompatible ideals?

The study of literature can be a circular endeavor. We examine texts and draw conclusions about the author, and then apply those conclusions back to the texts. Ideally, this circularity acts as a process of continual refinement: interpretations of a text are tested against the understanding we have constructed of the author, and our understanding of the author is tested against further interpretations of the texts. Inconsistencies among individual texts are often resolved at the level of the author, whether we identify the author as a historical individual or emphasize the author-function as a textual boundary. It is possible, however, that the desire to find consistency within the person of the author results in premature closure, obscuring or eliminating possibilities for further exploration. Inconsistencies within a text or between texts may, in fact, be inconsistencies within the culture or society in which the text was produced, inconsistencies which members of that society may not recognize as such. The discrepancy between “ideals of freedom and control” noted by David Nokes may not be the inconsistency of a single mind, but rather an inconsistency inherent in early eighteenth-century English culture. I would like to suggest a new way of looking at the Argument and the Project as complementary explorations of the role of religion in society. I believe that we need a new way of looking at these pamphlets in order to extricate ourselves (at least temporarily) from the debates over Swift’s use of irony and his attitude toward hypocrisy which have dominated discussions of these pamphlets.

An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, written in 1708, is the more familiar of these two pamphlets to most of Swift’s twentieth-century readers. The writer (I shall avoid questions of satirical personae for the moment) declares his intention to argue “in Defence of nominal Christianity” (PW, 2:28) against the general opinion of the majority, which is, according to the pamphlet, in favor of abolishing Christianity entirely. In the course of his argument, he addresses and refutes eight “great Advantage[s] proposed by the Abolishing of Christianity” (2:28), showing either that the benefits proposed by the abolishers are already universally enjoyed under the present Gospel system, or that the present system is not itself the cause of the abolishers’ complaints. Having rejected the advantages claimed for the abolishing of Christianity, the writer goes on to suggest further “Inconveniences that may happen, if the Gospel should be repealed” (2:35), including the possibility that the church may be thus endangered or that the kingdom may be left vulnerable to Popery. If, however, it is still thought necessary to abolish Christianity, the writer proposes that all religion, not merely Christianity, be abolished, since “the Quarrel is not against any particular Points of hard Digestion in the Christian System; but against Religion in general; which, by laying Restraints on human Nature, is supposed the great Enemy to the Freedom of Thought and Action” (2:38). Finally, the writer notes that there may be some slight expense involved in eliminating Christianity, and he wonders why England should waste money to destroy a system which can safely, and more cheaply, be ignored.

A Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners, written in 1709, offers a scheme “for the Improvement of Religion and Morals” which will “be the best natural Means for advancing the publick Felicity of the State, as well as the present Happiness of every Individual” (PW, 2:44). This scheme calls for the queen, who is the ultimate source of political advancement, to “make Piety and Virtue become the Fashion of the Age” simply by making “them necessary Qualifications for Favour and Preferment” (2:47). The writer of the Project believes that his “Method is so easy and obvious, and some present Opportunities so good; that, in order to have this Project reduced to Practice, there seems to want nothing more than to put those in mind, who by their Honour, Duty, and Interest are chiefly concerned” (2:45). He begins by outlining “the Wickedness of the Age” (2:45), stressing the ways that society rejects virtue and encourages vice, and then points out the ease with which his plan could be implemented. Without enacting any new laws, the queen’s influence would allow her to make “Morality and Religion...fashionable Court-Virtues” (2:48). Once piety and virtue were established as the “necessary Step to Favour and Preferment; can it be imagined, that any Man would openly offend against it, who had the least Regard for his Reputation or his Fortune?... How ready therefore would most Men be to step into the Paths of Virtue and Piety, if they infallibly led to Favour and Fortune?” (2:50). Self-interest would be the powerful motivation behind the suppression of vice. The improvement of discipline in the army, the elimination of excessive drinking, the elimination of gaming, an improvement in university education, and a reformation of the stage would all be possible if an adherence to virtue served the interest of each person. “Neither am I aware,” claims the writer,

of any Objections to be raised against what I have advanced; unless it should be thought, that the making Religion a necessary Step to Interest and Favour, might encrease Hypocrisy among us: And I readily believe it would. But if One in Twenty should be brought over to true Piety by this, or the like Methods, and the other Nineteen be only Hypocrites, the Advantage would still be great.

(2:56–57)

The writer concludes, appropriately, that it is even in the queen’s own interest, for the sake of her position in posterity and that of her nation in the present, to make self-interest the means to induce virtue and piety in her subjects.

The difficulties in interpreting these two pamphlets originate in the question of Swift’s stance toward the assertions made in each text. In order to measure the compatibility of these texts, readers must decide whether Swift means what he says in these pamphlets and, if so, how he means it. One text is clearly built upon a fictional or false understanding of the world; the other appears (not quite so clearly) to be a ‘serious’ or ‘genuine’ statement about the world. We are made aware of the fictional status of the Argument by the author’s reference to the unlikely fact that the country appears set on abolishing Christianity. This violates the reader’s understanding of what constitutes the ‘real’ context of the pamphlet; contemporaries of Swift (as well as twentieth-century readers with a smattering of history) recognize that no such formal plan for abolishing Christianity existed. ⁵ The reader is thus alerted to the existence of a fictional framing context around this pamphlet. Unfortunately, awareness of a fictional context does not tell us how to interpret the author’s meaning. The Project, on the other hand, lacks any such overtly fictionalizing introduction. The context for this pamphlet appears to be the world recognized by the reader as ‘real.’ This lack of an obviously fictional frame suggests that Swift intends his reader to accept the text as a genuine assertion about an actual situation; it forces the reader to begin reading the Project as ‘serious,’ at least until some further clue throws the accepted context into question. If we accept the Project as genuine, however, are we justified in using it as an interpretive key to unlock the meaning of Swift’s Argument?

Ironic and satiric are the terms most often used to describe the stance that Swift adopts toward his assertions in many of his writings. These ubiquitous descriptive terms cover a multitude of sins in critical discussions of Jonathan Swift, but they usually fail to explain the text or piece of text that they describe. If an acceptable definition of irony is ‘saying one thing but meaning its opposite,’ ⁶ then this definition would seem to provide a means for determining the actual intent of a speaker or writer employing irony: simply substitute words that mean the opposite of certain key words actually used. This method may be useful for simple ironic utterances, but it seems entirely inadequate for explaining the complex use of irony in extended texts like Swift’s. ⁷ To describe as ironic the stances that Swift adopts in much of his writing requires a far more complex definition of irony. This definition would have to call into question the notion that irony functions like an on/off switch, in which ‘serious’ and ‘ironic’ are mutually exclusive binary options. Edward W. Rosenheim Jr. suggests that “except in those instances in which it describes a patently sarcastic, ‘inversional’ situation, the use of the term [irony] does little to disclose the precise nature of the fictional posture, the degree to which it departs from the satirist’s authentic position, or the nature of the authentic position itself.” ⁸ And it is precisely these questions of position that have troubled the critics who seek to compare the Project and the Argument.

Like ironic, satiric is a descriptive term more often used than examined. Rosenheim points out that “most of the studies of Swift’s writings tend to assume that what Swift produced can often be called satiric and either to ignore or to take for granted the precise nature of his performance qua satire” (p. 7; emphasis in original). For the purposes of his own study, Rosenheim provides, after extensive discussion, this definition of satire: “satire consists of an attack by means of a manifest fiction upon discernible historic particulars” (p. 31). His “spectrum” of satire “begins...where traditional polemic rhetoric discards literal argument in favor of manifest fiction” and ends at the point where satire begins to “approach comedy, in which objects of attack or ridicule are either without meaningful historic reality or so general as to prevent our finding in them any significant particulars” (p. 31). In addition, Rosenheim asserts, by means of this definition of satire we can “establish...the explicit object under attack, the precise nature of the satiric fiction, and, correspondingly, the true position from which the attack proceeds” (p. 40). This definition, though provocative, does not live up to Rosenheim’s claims in the case of these two pamphlets. To recognize the Argument as “an attack by means of a manifest fiction” does not provide one with the tools to extract Swift’s “true position” from the satiric fiction. Even where there is general agreement among critics about the identity of the satiric victim, there is often very little agreement about either the nature of this attack or its meaning.

Identifying the victim of Swift’s satire, understanding the nature of Swift’s fictional stance, and extrapolating from that fictional stance to Swift’s genuine position have been the goals of critics in numerous examinations of An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity. Most critics begin in agreement: according to Rosenheim, Swift’s Argument, “it is commonly agreed, is satiric throughout” (p. 38), and Nokes judges it to be, “by common consent, one of the showpieces of his irony” (p. 98). Most critics also seem willing to identify the defender of nominal Christianity as the target of the satiric attack. “The victim can only be the nominal Christian himself, the lip service church member”; “as for Swift’s attitude towards nominal Christianity, there is general agreement that in the Argument he treats it satirically.” ⁹ Critics also willingly equate the nominal Christianity defended in the pamphlet with hypocrisy: “The second [of the two forms of Christianity identified by Swift in the Argument], the nominal, is modern hypocrisy, preserving the name of Christian without either the faith or the charity.” The irony of the Argument is “at the expense of a hypocritical ‘nominal christianity’”; it “clearly satirizes those who practice Christian hypocrisy.” ¹⁰ They part company, however, over just what it means to say that Swift adopts an ironic stance toward the nominal Christianity which his pamphlet purports to defend.

Some critics, assuming, not unreasonably, that Swift would have found hypocrisy unacceptable, argue that he is simply attacking the hypocrisy he perceives in his society by satirically depicting it in the Argument as nominal Christianity. Swift’s goal in this attack is to exhort his audience to live lives of genuine Christian virtue grounded in true Christian faith. Rosenheim claims that “the Argument is not only persuasive satire, but persuasion of a sort which is largely ‘homiletic.’ Swift’s audience is, as it were, a huge congregation whose errors and vices are isolated and excoriated” (p. 46). Similarly, J. A. Richardson suggests that the pamphlet was written specifically to certain of Swift’s Whiggish friends as a “mild rebuke to their rationalism” and to remind them “of their old allegiance to religion and restraint.”

In the Argument, Swift caricatures liberal rationalists as deists, freethinkers, and atheists...while at the same time assuming all the world, including the reader, has gone over to atheism. In doing so, he rebukes his readers for leaning in a direction that might encourage atheism and he reminds them of their loyalties to established Christianity. ¹¹

According to Richardson, Swift holds up the ideal of real Christianity “as a measure of society” that is “absolute and necessary,” but always with the awareness “that ideals are unrealizable because of the fallen condition of humanity.” Finally, Richardson stresses that “the rebuke to the reader in the Argument...is carried out in a friendly, confident tone.” ¹² Though Richardson’s reading is extreme, it nevertheless exemplifies the conclusions of critics who interpret Swift’s irony as meaning the opposite of what he says. According to these critics, instead of defending nominal Christianity, Swift must be attacking hypocrisy and defending real Christianity.

For these critics, however, Swift’s Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners becomes a difficult complication. “Both works deal with the subject of religious hypocrisy in England, yet while the Argument clearly satirizes those who practice Christian hypocrisy, the Project appears to advocate hypocrisy as a means of strengthening the church.” How can the two be reconciled? Even worse, it seems that “generally, readers agree that the Project is a serious pamphlet.” ¹³ Maurice Quinlan, though not comparing the Project to the Argument, argues strongly for the seriousness of the former pamphlet. He points out that although certain

remarks of a satiric or ironic nature appear throughout Swift’s essay...these are only glancing blows, the kind of whimsical remarks that a person of Swift’s mercurial nature could hardly keep from making, even when writing a serious work. And except for these satiric asides, the Project is written in an entirely serious vein. ¹⁴

The assumption here is that if the Project is serious, then it must provide unmediated access to Swift’s genuine beliefs, which, unfortunately, seem to contradict the agreed upon interpretation of the Argument.

Lisa Herb Smith deals with this apparent difficulty by attempting to show that, even though Swift’s purposes are different in each pamphlet, he remains consistent with Biblical teachings in both.

Swift’s Project, as opposed to being a sacrilegious encouragement to nominal Christianity, can now be viewed as a work that attempts to propose a biblically-consistent solution to what he views as a serious problem—flagrant wrongdoing among the English people.... Thus, Swift’s Argument uses complex irony to satirize the unbelief and immorality of his countrymen, while his Project encourages a program of biblical obedience for all persons.

(pp. 32–33)

The different emphases of the two pamphlets, according to Smith, are simply because Swift chose to focus on different issues of Christianity in each; the Argument deals with belief and the Project deals with obedience.

Unwilling to treat the Project as an entirely serious tract, William Bragg Ewald Jr. proposes that Swift may have written it from behind one of his satiric masks, as a ‘projector-author.’ Ewald believes that the ironic distance between Swift and this persona may not be very wide, and he cautiously points out that “In many ways [the ‘projector-author’] does speak for Swift.... This author is much more like Swift than his ‘projectors’ usually are.” ¹⁵ However, Ewald is convinced that Swift’s apparent endorsement of hypocrisy in the Project cannot be serious: “To propose to turn a nation into a race of hypocrites in order to improve them is to criticize their faults with vicious satire” (p.46). Swift may be serious about some parts of this pamphlet, but not about hypocrisy as a means of moral reform.

A somewhat more strenuous attempt to account for apparent inconsistencies between these two pamphlets is undertaken by Leland Peterson. Peterson, like Ewald, has trouble reading the Project

as a serious reformation tract. It poses something of a problem in our discussion of Swift’s moral and ethical position, his fundamental sincerity, consistency, and even his integrity, for the work seems to advocate hypocrisy, a vice consistently satirized and anathematized in such works as A Tale of a Tub, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and Gulliver’s Travels. In the Project, Swift seems to be a Mandevillian or Machiavellian cynic who can see no way to reform the English except by appealing to the grossest forms of self-interest.

(p. 54)

Starting from a belief that Swift could not have seriously advocated hypocrisy, Peterson then concludes that he can reconcile the disparities he sees between Swift’s Project and his other writings, especially his sermons, “by reading the Project as mainly ironic and satiric” (p. 58). This reading, which goes far beyond Ewald’s tentative suggestions of a satiric persona, requires the construction of an elaborate context in which the pamphlet can be interpreted as ironic. In the end, however, Peterson can declare “the Project is not only a satiric thrust against the Society for the Reformation of Manners and projectors, not only another shocking exposure of nominal Christianity (like the Argument), but chiefly a political satire designed to embarrass the Whig ministry” (p. 62). Peterson’s effort to reinterpret the Project as another version of the Argument generated several years worth of debate in the pages of PMLA, but few critics seem to have been influenced by his interpretation. ¹⁶ Both Claude Rawson, who declares the Project is “quite wrongly but understandably considered by some critics to be ironical” (p. 46), and David Nokes, who believes it is “totally without a trace of irony” (p. 95), explicitly discount Peterson’s conclusion.

Despite their differences, the critics discussed above all tend to accept Swift’s Argument as an attack on hypocrisy and a defence of real Christianity. But there are other critics who are not satisfied by the notion that in the Argument Swift is utterly rejecting nominal Christianity.

Read superficially, the Argument attacks hypocrisy by describing and ‘defending’ the residual utilitarian functions of religious institutions in a society whose ethos and impetus are to be found elsewhere. Yet, when we describe the work as ironic, what exactly do we mean? The society described here is one in which occasional conformity or the nominal Christianity of the Project have been universally accepted as governing principles. Swift gives us a parody of nominalism, yet at the same time recommends it to us.

(Nokes, p. 101)

For these critics, Swift’s Project “claims pragmatically not only that hypocrisy is better than open vice, but that it can be put to psychological use in support of virtue” (Rawson, p. 46); that is, the enforcement of moral order can psychologically mold individuals. “Hypocrisy ceases to be a vice, and becomes instead a form of utilitarian virtue” (Nokes, p. 98). John Kay, arguing that in the Project Swift “speaks directly to his purpose, in his own voice,” compares Swift’s endorsement of hypocrisy to similar admissions by various reforming societies that their efforts might lead to hypocrisy. According to Kay, Swift’s Project supports, rather than satirizes, the goals and methods of these reforming societies, and Swift’s occasionally sarcastic tone “does not indicate a lack of seriousness...but rather [his] personal distaste for the solution he proposes.” ¹⁷ Davis, Murry, and Ehrenpreis all refer to Swift’s investment in defending the Test Act, itself a sort of nominal Christianity, as support for this pro-hypocrisy interpretation. Davis states that Swift’s “main intention” in the Argument is to meet “all criticisms put forward by those whose design was to destroy the power and influence of the Church by the repeal of the Test Act.” Murry even dismisses Swift’s use of an ironic stance in the Argument, describing that pamphlet as a “defence of nominal Christianity,” just a “comical” version of the Project. ¹⁸ Other critics, though, do not deny the significant presence of irony in the Argument, but Swift’s endorsement of hypocrisy in the Project is read back into the Argument, complicating his ironic position. No longer does Swift fight the good fight against hypocrisy; now he “ironically praises but actually deplores it” while simultaneously implying “that ‘occasional conformity’ must be enforced.” The Argument contains “an attack that both intensifies the distaste for ‘hypocrisy’ and at the same time asserts a practical if contemptuous preference for it.” These potentially antithetical attitudes seem to be resolved in Rawson’s description of Swift as a “disillusioned idealist” who is “pained into sarcastic (but not unmeaning) praises of an otherwise unacceptable compromise” (pp. 50–51). Ehrenpreis laments having “abandoned [Swift] to an awkward posture,” but feels forced to admit that “however hot the scorn I may have allowed him to drop upon hypocrisy, I have still represented him as encouraging it in preference to a naked career of vice. No other implication can be drawn from the logic of the Argument” (2:89). It is with heavy hearts that these critics reveal the ‘hypocrite’s Swift’ behind these pamphlets.

For the most part, critics who address the Argument and the Project find themselves in one of the two camps I have described. To make a sweeping oversimplification of the dilemma that these two groups of critics face: the Project seems seriously, or nonironically, to recommend hypocrisy; the Argument seems satirically to attack hypocrisy. So either the Argument must actually recommend hypocrisy or the Project must not seriously recommend hypocrisy. To choose the former is to accept a darker interpretation of Swift as either a hard-headed, moral realist or a cynical, disillusioned idealist who defends nominal Christianity (the conclusion of Ehrenpreis, Kay, Nokes, Murry, and Rawson). To choose the latter is to imagine a more orthodox, pious Swift who genuinely hopes for both an inner and an outer reformation among his countrymen, and who could never make an endorsement of the vice of hypocrisy part of a policy for the advancement of the Church (the conclusion of Smith, Richardson, Ewald, and Peterson).

None of the critical interpretations I have summarized here deserves to be rejected out of hand. Each illustrates insights gained from particular critical choices in reading Swift’s Argument and Project. I believe, however, that by focusing primarily on locating the irony or satire in these pamphlets, critics have been forced down certain interpretive paths. Irony and satire, as I have tried to suggest, are especially vexed subjects. The standard, and simplistic, definition of irony accepted by many critics forces them to choose between two poles: the apparent, straightforward, surface meaning of the text and the inverse or opposite of that surface meaning. The continued expectation that Swift must somehow be saying the same thing in different ways has limited the possible interpretations to the either-or choice I have outlined above. Critics have been trapped in an interpretive scheme which requires that one pamphlet be held up against the other in order to reveal Swift’s authentic position, without any real justification for which pamphlet should be the subject of examination and which the tool of measurement. Rather than study these pamphlets as a closed system, or as if one were simply a key for interpreting the other, it might be more fruitful to ask how their similarities and differences reflect wider cultural concerns.

I would like to reexamine the Argument and the Project without, for the moment, reference to each other or to the question of Swift’s adoption of an ironic position. In his analysis of Swift’s satire, Rosenheim suggests that an author’s use of a “manifest fiction” is crucial to satire (p. 31). By slightly expanding this notion of a fictional creation, I believe that both of these pamphlets can be usefully described.

Each pamphlet presents a description of a fictional world different from the ‘real’ world inhabited by the reader. One pamphlet is written as though from within its fictional world, as if the fictional world described by the writer were shared by the reader, and the other is written to propose its fictional world as a potential alternative to the ‘real’ world shared by the reader and the writer. In the Argument, the fictional world is referred to as existing in the present; in the Project, it is imagined as a future possibility. The significance of these pamphlets is to be found, I believe, in the fictional worlds they construct.

The fictional world of the Argument is one in which Christianity exists only as a name, a lingering vestige of a former age. “The System of the Gospel, after the Fate of other Systems is generally antiquated and exploded” (2:27). The present society is, in fact, built on principles entirely different from those of the “Gospel System.” The actual values of (real) Christianity would be “utterly inconsistent with our present Schemes of Wealth and Power” (2:28), and to attempt to apply those values to the society

would be to dig up Foundations; to destroy at one Blow all the Wit, and half the Learning of the Kingdom; to break the entire Frame and Constitution of Things; to ruin Trade, extinguish Arts and Sciences with the Professors of them; in short, to turn our Courts, Exchanges and Shops into Desarts.

(2:27)

Despite the vestigial name of Christianity, there is no danger that religion will restrain the freedom of thought or action of the members of this society: “Blasphemy we know is freely spoke a Million of Times in every Coffee-House and Tavern, or whereever else good Company meet” (2:29); “Is not every Body freely allowed to believe whatever he pleaseth; and to publish his Belief to the World whenever he thinks fit...?” (2:29). No one in this society suffers inconvenience, prejudice, or disadvantage for failing to believe, or to say he believes, in the Gospel system (see 2:29–30). In this society, Christianity functions only as a target for the exercise and distraction of wits, philosophers, and enthusiasts, as a means of identification for Party supporters, and as a sort of seasoning for the men of pleasure whose lives lack sufficient spice. The fictional society of the Argument is one without any form of restraint on thought or action, even though it retains the name of a system that once exercised “an Influence upon Mens Belief and Actions” (2:27).

Swift’s Project proposes a fictional world in which each person’s political and economic success is dependent upon his ability to act according to strict moral constraints imposed by the queen. By requiring “Piety and Virtue” as the “necessary Qualifications for Favour and Preferment,” the queen will make “it every Man’s Interest and Honour to cultivate Religion and Virtue” (2:47). In this world, virtuous action is motivated by self-interest, and immoral, unethical, or antisocial actions are restrained by self-interest. Virtue in this society is primarily a matter of restraint: restraining oneself from drunkenness, from whoring, from gaming, from fraud, deceit, and corruption, from witty abuse of the clergy, from blasphemy. Or more accurately, it is the appearance of restraint which matters most in the world of the Project; those who conceal their vices are, by the standards of the Project, as ‘virtuous’ as those who have no vices. Thus, virtuous restraint becomes, for some (or perhaps all) inhabitants of this world, simply a matter of restraining oneself from revealing one’s vices openly. The impetus for restraint is provided by the queen’s enforcement of the moral standards of Christianity, but the restraint itself does not require faith, belief, or even assent from the members of the society regarding the truth of Christianity. Virtuous restraint requires only interest in protecting and advancing oneself.

Questions about the truth of Christianity are irrelevant in both of these fictional worlds. In the world of the Argument, Christianity exists in name only because it is irrelevant to the “ethos and impetus” of the society that still bears its name (Nokes, p. 101). Whether we read Swift as exhorting his readers to ‘real Christianity,’ as cynically recommending nominal Christianity, or (a third option not considered by the critics) as suggesting that even the name of Christianity be dropped from such a society to which it no longer applies, it is clear that the issue is only that of Christianity’s status as a set of moral constraints. Similarly, the society described in the Project has no need to address its members’ faith or belief in the truth of Christianity. Even though Swift uses words like “religion” and “piety” in the Project, he is not particularly interested in Christianity as anything but a source for rules of public morality. There is a “complete failure to suggest or imply any other reasons for accepting Christianity. Nowhere is there a hint of faith, or a whisper of a hope of salvation” (Nokes, p. 101). Belief, faith, and even motivation do not matter in the fictional worlds Swift presents in each of these pamphlets.

One of the unquestioned critical assumptions about these two pamphlets is that the Project recommends hypocrisy, which is also assumed to be essentially identical to the nominal Christianity discussed in the Argument. Every critic’s interpretation of these pamphlets is the product of an opinion about Swift’s attitude toward hypocrisy. ¹⁹ Despite the fact that Swift himself uses the word “hypocrisy” in the Project (2:56–57), I think it is worth asking whether anything like hypocrisy can even exist in the fictional worlds of these pamphlets. Hypocrisy is generally seen as either a problem for Swift or the result of cynicism in Swift because it involves dishonesty and deception. A hypocrite pretends to be what he is not or to believe what he does not in order to deceive others. Hypocrites assume an appearance of virtue in order to make others believe that they are virtuous. Thus, hypocrisy is a sin of intention; that is, the hypocrite consciously hides his real motivation beneath an insincere mask of virtue. This sort of hypocrisy, however, has no place in the world of the Project—a world in which one is judged solely by one’s public actions. No one in that society requires or expects purity of motives; in fact, self-interest is assumed to be the motivation behind all virtuous actions. Claims to a personal religious faith or superior sense of morality are irrelevant in a world where virtue is defined solely by the ability to restrain oneself according to the standards of religion and piety. In order to deserve the name of virtuous, one need not believe in the religious foundation of a morality; one need only act according to certain moral dictates. Hypocrisy becomes meaningless.

If hypocrisy lacks meaning in the world of the Project, then it is even more difficult to imagine in the world of the Argument. No restraining moral dictates of any kind are present in Swift’s description of that world. Nominal Christianity itself, as Swift describes it in the Argument, cannot be called a kind of hypocrisy, since no one acts according to, or claims belief in, the Gospel system (see 2:29–30). The only absolute acknowledged by the members of that society is freedom of thought and action (see 2:38). The name of Christian is still attached to the society, but in order to be a hypocrite, a member of the society would have to claim belief in or adherence to the morality of that religion, which, apparently, no one does.

In his descriptions of the fictional worlds of the Argument and the Project, Swift consistently ignores or avoids questions of inner faith, personal belief, and transcendent truth. Such unverifiable and uncontrollable concepts are entirely removed from his consideration. Instead, Swift is concerned in the Project with the possibility of implementing moral constraints, and in the Argument, with the problems of eliminating all moral constraints. As a result, both pamphlets effectively present morality as an ultimately arbitrary matter of cultural convention. Swift’s descriptions of these fictional worlds might suggest that all social systems or norms, including religion and morality, are necessarily contingent. For the purposes of the Project, any religion that will provide moral guidelines can serve to structure society, and the project described in the pamphlet will serve equally well to advance any religious system. One lesson that may be drawn from the Argument is that once any moral system ceases to be applicable to a society, it should be unsentimentally discarded. The conclusion in both pamphlets is that the beliefs of individual members of the society are of no consequence to the moral structure of the society.

I do not wish to suggest that the conclusions I have drawn were, in fact, the opinions which Swift held or wished to communicate. Instead, I have attempted to propose an alternative to the traditional approaches to these pamphlets. Rather than continue to ask only how Swift does or does not say what he means in the Project and the Argument, we need to begin to ask how these two pamphlets articulate the relativism and pragmatism developing within the culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England.