tes a specimen of a class which
helps to characterize a period. Dandies exist at all times, but vary in
detail. The fatuity and vanity of all dandies are features for the
etholog; the follies of the dandy of a period belong to the biolog. Beau
Brummel would be a model for a biolog. The etholog is apt to overlook
his best subjects. He cannot himself escape from his own times enough to
recognize them. He never satirizes the reigning features. The American
etholog never satirizes democracy, or the politician, or the newspaper.
The etholog wants a big party or a strong sentiment behind him. It is
not until after skepticism about a ruling "way" has formed in the minds
of a large section of the masses that the etholog makes himself the
mouthpiece of it. We have no satire yet on militarism, or imperialism,
or the Monroe doctrine. A protective tariff is a grand object for
satire, but so long as the masses believe in it satire is powerless. The
same is true of any folkway so long as it is not yet doubted. Satire is
then blasphemy. While a way is prevalent there is pathos about it (sec.
178), as there is now amongst us about democracy, but there never can be
satire, and pathos at the same time, in the same society, about the same
thing. One might have believed that nothing need be sacred to the
theaters of Paris, but a few years ago a play was written which set the
French Revolution in a different light from the now consecrated
commonplace in regard to it. It was found impossible to produce it. A
marionette player and his wife made fun of Pere Duchesne on the
boulevard during the Revolution. Both were guillotined.[2038] These
facts limit very much the high moral function sometimes ascribed to
satire. It never gets into action until the mischief is done. It never
squelches a folly at its commencement. That function belongs to educated
reason, but educated reason is not in the masses.

+633. Dickens as a biolog.+ Charles Dickens was a biolog. His novels
contain very little evidence of the manners and customs of his time, and
what they do contain is forced and untrue. He invented characters whose
names have become common nouns and adjectives for individual types which
are found in all societies at all times (Pecksniff, Micawber,
Turveydrop, Uriah Heep, etc.), but which may, at a time, be especially
common and produce fine specimens.

+634. Early Jewish plays.+ Ezekiel (an Alexandrian Jew, fl. c. 200 B.C.)
is said to have written a