To that class in whose eyes whatever is unusual is wrong; whose ears
detect in each protest against bigotry--that parent of crime--an
insult to piety, that regent of God on earth, I would suggest to such
doubters certain obvious distinctions; I would remind them of certain
simple truths.
[Footnote 31: Preface to the second edition of "Jane Eyre." "Vanity
Fair" and "Jane Eyre" were published contemporaneously--"Vanity Fair"
(serially) in 1846-48, and "Jane Eyre" in 1847.]
Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.
To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from
the face of the Pharisee is not to lift an impious hand to the crown
of thorns. These things and deeds are diametrically opposed; they are
as distinct as vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they
should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth;
narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few,
should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ.
There is--I repeat it--a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad
action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between
them.
The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been
accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show
pass for sterling worth--to let whitewashed walls vouch for clean
shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinize and expose--to raze
the gilding, and show base metal under it--to penetrate the sepulcher,
and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.
Ahab did not like Micaiah, because he never prophesied good concerning
him, but evil: probably he liked the sycophant son of Chenaanah
better; yet might Ahab have escaped a bloody death, had he but stopt
his ears to flattery, and opened them to faithful counsel.
There is a man in our own days whose words are not framed to tickle
delicate ears; who, to my thinking, comes before the great ones of
society much as the son of Imlah came before the throned kings of
Judah and Israel; and who speaks truth as deep, with a power as
prophet-like and as vital--a mien as dauntless and as daring. Is the
satirist of "Vanity Fair" admired in high places? I can not tell; but
I think if some of those amongst whom he hurls the Greek-fire of his
sarcasm, and over whom he flashes the levin-brand of his denunciation,
were to take his warnings in time--they or their seed might yet escape
a fatal Ramoth-Gilead.
Why have I alluded to this man? I have alluded to him, reader,
because I think I see in him an intellect profounder and more unique
than his contemporaries have yet recognized; because I regard him as
the first social regenerator of the day--as the very master of that
working corps who would restore to rectitude the warped system of
things.