Chapter 44
Hypocrisy: the pretence of virtue or piety; dissembling, false profession and the gap between words and deeds.
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Hypocrisy is the pretence of a virtue one lacks: the show of piety without faith, of friendship without affection, of public spirit without care for the public. It covers a family of related faults, including feigning, dissembling, false profession, and the plain gap between what a man says and what he does. It is a great idea for these books because nearly every one of them meets it. Scripture denounces it, the Stoic and the Christian moralist examine the soul for it, the dramatist builds plots on its exposure, and the political writer finds it at the root of faction and tyranny. Underneath runs a question none of these authors can avoid. If the inward self is hidden, how is true virtue ever to be known from its counterfeit?
The clearest definition comes late, from Fielding, who calls hypocrisy the concealing of vices under the appearance of their opposite virtues. He sets it apart from vanity as a second source of affectation1. Bacon draws a finer line between dissimulation, the mere hiding of oneself, and simulation, the positive profession of what one is not. The second he judges the more culpable, since it springs from natural falseness and destroys trust2. Hobbes places the fault in the same family as vain-glory, the feigning of abilities we know we lack3. He notes too that men dignify obstinate opinion with the name of conscience, pretending to know what they only think4. Locke treats affectation as a counterfeit, the putting on of dispositions one does not have, and says it is naturally hated5.
The ancient starting point is intellectual rather than moral. Socrates exposes those who hide their pretence of knowledge behind slander6. He calls the fear of death a conceit of wisdom, a seeming to know the unknown7. He asks that his sons be reproved if they pretend to be something when they are nothing8. Marcus Aurelius turns the inquiry inward. He asks his own ruling faculty whether it is playing the hypocrite9, and he counts hypocrisy a pestilence of the understanding10. The Christian writers deepen the difficulty. Thomas à Kempis says nature itself deceives under the appearance of good, while grace makes no false pretences11. Milton’s narrator calls hypocrisy the one evil neither man nor angel can discern, for Satan’s feigned zeal deceives even Uriel12.
Is disguise, then, natural to us? Aeschylus’s chorus says men prize the semblance of truth over truth: they shed feigned tears for the grieving and put on forced smiles for the joyful13. Pascal goes furthest. Man is “only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy,” he writes, and society rests on mutual flattery, since we speak differently of men in their absence14. Hobbes holds that hearts are blotted with counterfeiting that only God can read15, and he notes that wine strips away the dissimulation sober men keep up16. Locke traces the habit to childhood. Children show their true temper before art teaches them a dissembled outside17, and slavish discipline breeds only an obedience that lasts while the rod is in view18. Andersen’s emperor and courtiers praise invisible cloth from fear of seeming unfit19. Even after a child exposes the sham, the emperor keeps it up20. Against this pessimism Raleigh holds that no one can long maintain a counterfeit behaviour, for the heart shows at the tongue’s end21.
Not every gap between word and deed is hypocrisy, and several authors take care to say so. Burke observes that many who love virtue act ill “not from hypocrisy or affectation,” because words stir feeling apart from conduct22. Yet he grants that tears shed only at the stage, and never at real suffering, would be “the tears of hypocrisy”23. Mill insists that servile abhorrence of heretics, however selfish, is genuine sentiment and not pretence24. Rousseau quotes Charron on people whose lives simply fail to accord with the religion they profess25. The Laws in the *Crito* charge Socrates with exactly such a gap, between professing to prefer death and fleeing26. That he refuses to flee is his answer.
How, then, is the pretender found out? Confucius thinks the show deceives no one, not even Heaven27. Socrates exposes Meletus’s professed zeal for the young by asking him who improves them28. Montaigne makes death the final test, the last act in which the mask falls and it appears whether one’s philosophy came from the heart or only the mouth29,30. Cicero says genuine love is hard to tell from feigned until it is tested31. Manzoni grants that hypocrisy can mimic professions of humility but calls life the touchstone of profession32. Emerson tells how Philip Neri tested a nun’s claimed prophetic gifts with muddy boots: where there was no humility, there was no miracle33. Raleigh adds that God’s eye pierces all our formality34.
Over all this hangs the great practical controversy: is feigning ever permissible? Machiavelli answers plainly. A prince should seem merciful, faithful and religious while standing ready to act otherwise, and the appearance matters more than the virtue35. Bacon is more measured. He treats dissimulation as the weaker man’s policy36, but he concedes that secrecy will by necessity require some feigned inclination37. Macaulay notes that Machiavelli is popularly supposed to have invented the hypocrite, though his real offence was candour about what others disguise38. Penn allows the small prudence of not seeming to see all one sees39. Hamlet’s tongue and soul become deliberate “hypocrites” when he resolves to speak daggers but use none40.
Against all this stands the demand for sincerity. Marcus repeatedly makes freedom from hypocrisy part of the good life41,42,43. More’s Hythloday refuses to feign approval of evil decrees in council44. He also refuses the preachers’ trick of bending Christ’s doctrine to worldly manners45. Penn prefers plain speaking and says masks serve betrayal46. The psalmist will not go in with dissemblers47.
The hardest version of the question concerns belief under pressure. More’s Utopians do not force unbelievers to feign belief, because they detest falsehood48. Mill, taught by his father to conceal his unbelief, saw that the alternative was avowal or hypocrisy, and twice chose avowal49. Long suggests that the outward conformity of Antoninus was prudent rather than false50. Penn will not allow neutrality where religion calls: the neutral is either coward or hypocrite51. Woolman sets men who feigned scruple to escape service beside those whose scruples were real52.
In friendship the stakes are intimate. Cicero holds that the good friend practises no pretence of feeling, and that open dislike is more ingenuous than studied concealment53. He describes the flatterer’s feigned agreement as the death of frankness54,55. Plutarch describes parasites who mix flattery with feigned boldness so that their obsequiousness passes for conviction56. Emerson thinks sincerity possible only alone or with one true friend. Once a second person enters, compliments and concealment begin57. Elsewhere he denounces lying hospitality outright58. Stevenson calls the feigning of emotion the worst lie, since truth to sentiment is what makes intimacy possible59. Yet the demand for candour can itself be counterfeited. Swift mocks those who parade that they “cannot dissemble”60. Bacon notes that modesty may be an art of ostentation61, and Franklin admits he would be proud even of his humility62. Penn denies that affected humility is any virtue63. Voltaire’s Quaker damns courtesies like “humble servant” as a traffic of lies64, and Emerson mocks the English fiction of unbroken noble descent65.
The poets and storytellers show feigned love and kindness at its most destructive. Cervantes’s Don Fernando professes love and friendship to satisfy lust and then abandons the girl66, using feigned tears to credit his vows67. Lothario praises the virtue of the wife he has seduced68. Burns denounces the seducer’s smooth dissembling69. Malcolm observes how easily the false man shows unfelt sorrow70. Edmund plays the reluctant, loyal brother while framing Edgar71. Satan approaches Eve with hate “under show of love well feigned”72. Samson names Dalila’s appeal “feigned religion, smooth hypocrisy”73. Beatrice Cenci calls her father’s feast of joy “bold hypocrisy”74. Cleopatra stages a languishing love she does not feel75, and Aladdin denounces the Moor who posed as a loving uncle76.
The comic stage makes the hypocrite its centre. Joseph Surface passes for a miracle of benevolence77 and confesses that he gains a name for charity without expense78. The screen reveals him and Lady Teazle names him “Mr. Hypocrite”79. Sir Peter’s “Moral to the last!” closes the case80,81.
Religious hypocrisy is the commonest theme of all, and here the scriptural sources are decisive. In Luke, Jesus says the Pharisees clean the outside of the cup while the inside is full of extortion82. He calls hypocrisy their leaven and warns that all hidden things will be revealed83. He condemns those who make long prayers for a pretence84, and the Pharisee whose display of fasting is rejected while the humble publican goes home justified85. He calls hypocrite the man who sees the mote but not the beam86, and those who loose their own ox on the sabbath but condemn a healing87. The Koran pronounces woe on those who make a show of prayer and withhold from the needy88. Its hypocrites pray lazily to be seen and are doomed to the lowest hell89. They say with their mouths what is not in their hearts90, and desert in danger yet grow greedy after victory91. The Gita condemns outward restraint while the heart dwells on the senses92, and penance displayed for fame93. Dante’s hypocrites pace in cloaks gilded outside and leaden within94. Malory’s abbot reads the swan, white without and black within, the same way95.
The moderns press the charge further, against formalism itself. Luther argues that judging Christian life by outward works breeds hypocrisy. Monastic orders, he says, keep the form of godliness while denying its power96,97, and vestments and fasts can be performed by the impious98. Raleigh calls us “comedians in religion”99. Pascal warns that imitating saintly externals breeds self-satisfaction100, and he grants that the Church, judging by conduct, must tolerate disguised hypocrites whom only God sees through101. Bunyan’s Formalist and Hypocrisy climb over the wall rather than enter by the gate102. His By-ends asks whether one may feign zeal for advantage and remain honest103, and Christian calls religion used as a stalking-horse for gain the Pharisees’ sin104,105. Jonson’s Subtle mocks Puritan holy vizards worn to win legacies106.
Molière gives the type its name. Tartuffe excuses seduction by casuistry, arguing that intention rectifies the deed and secret sin is no sin107. Burns’s Holy Willie professes zeal against sinners while confessing his own lust108, and Burns ironically begs wit to spare Hypocrisy’s holy robe109. Yet Molière’s Cléante insists that mask must not be confused with face, nor counterfeit coin with honest110. He urges Orgon not to condemn every pious person for one impostor111. Burke likewise warns posterity not to make war on religion for the abuses of its hypocrites112. Hypocrisy can also run the other way. Bacon calls the great atheists hypocrites who handle holy things without feeling113. Pascal tells the bravado of impiety to be honest at least114. And Hobbes shows founders of states pretending divine inspiration to win obedience115.
Against the clergy the charge becomes institutional. Luther sets the pope’s foot-kissing and pomp against Christ’s humility116, and says Rome uses the pretext of war on the Turks to collect money it never spends117. Calvin says the clergy wear the name of Church while being its plagues118. Dante had already called Boniface VIII “chief of the new Pharisees”119. Milton foretells churchmen feigning spiritual motives to seize secular power120. Thackeray pities Swift for binding himself by vows to a lifelong hypocrisy121. The charge is easily traded between parties. The Jansenists find their professed obedience branded hypocrisy whatever they do122, Burns’s rival ministers call each other “hypocrite”123, and Defoe turns the accusation into irony124.
In politics the pretext replaces the mask. Dryden shows Marius, Cinna and Sylla cloaking vengeance under the names of liberty and reform125. The Federalist warns of ambition behind “the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people”126, and Washington of pretended patriotism127. Milton’s Satan himself poses as patron of liberty128. Burke says hypocrisy delights in sublime speculation because it never intends to act129, and he calls the demand for clerical poverty the “cant and gibberish of hypocrisy”130. More exposes kings who cloak extortion in a show of justice131. Milton exposes licensing pretexts that mask monopoly132, and Adam Smith exposes trade corporations that claim to govern a trade while restraining it133. Hume adds that philosophy too can mask indolence134, and that experience teaches us how rarely the disinterestedness men profess is real135.
Whole societies are indicted as well. Goldsmith’s heroine defines the age’s hypocrisy as condemning in public what one practises in private136. Ruskin accuses a nation that professes a revelation condemning the love of money while it acts on no other love137. Mazzini describes an age in which belief is extinct and only its pretence remains138. The historical portraits are mixed. Plutarch’s Caesar feigns resentment at being called king139, and Hugo stages Cromwell’s “august farce” of refusing the crown140. Yet Taine dismisses the view of Cromwell as a hypocrite and finds instead a visionary141.
Several questions remain open. Emerson trusts that the moral law of the universe leaves no room for hypocrisy142. Hobbes and Pascal think only God can read the heart. Carlyle sees men trimming between worn-out symbols and hypocrisy143, and Mill commends Rousseau’s lesson against the hypocrisies of artificial society144. Between Machiavelli’s counsel to seem and Marcus’s resolve never to play a part, and between Pascal’s man made all of disguise and Raleigh’s heart that betrays itself at the tongue, these books leave the reader with the same problem the Gospel posed. The hidden will be revealed, but in the meantime we must judge by deeds alone.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
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