Resisting Passive Resistance
Daniel Defoe can get a bit long-winded in his metaphorical associations. It’s not entirely his fault; such curlicues of prose was—as Grandpa Simpson might note—“the style at the time.” Take this example, for instance:
“I take the Doctrines of Passive Obedience, &c. among the States-men, to be like the Copernican System of the Earths Motion among Philosophers; which, though it be contrary to all antient Knowledge, and not capable of Demonstration, yet is adher’d to in general, because by this they can better solve, and give a more rational Account of several dark Phanomena in Nature, than they could before.”
What he is basically saying here is that passive obedience to the Crown is generally engaged not because of any empirical evidence that it works, but rather because it makes enough sense to enough people to be accepted as a likely fact. Worth noting, of course, is that passive obedience did work well enough for Gandhi and Martin Luther King to perhaps be more factually accurate than the Copernican system of planetary movement. Also worth noting, especially, is that nearly everything the narrator of this text writes runs directly contrary to Defoe's own actual personal philosophies and beliefs.
Cartesian Mechanics
Another rather extensively worked out example of metaphor put to use for the purpose of irony is the narrator’s satirical description of Defoe’s own personal conviction that Descartes’ explanation for how the soul works is pure absurdity
“As for the Demonstrations of the Soul’s Existence…they very aptly show it, like a Prince, in his Seat, in the middle of his Palace the Brain, issuing out his incessant Orders to innumerable Troops of Nerves, Sinews, Muscles, Tendons, Veins, Arteries, Fibres, Capilaris…”
And on the metaphor carries for another thirty-two words before a period finally shows up at the end of the sentence. Not that the metaphor ends there; rather, just the sentence. The metaphor of the soul being “like a Prince” relentlessly proceeds forth for more than another hundred words.
The Dissenters
One of the most obvious clues that the narrator’s views are not to be confused with that of the author occurs in a description of the British Dissenter movement, of which Defoe was most assuredly a part and for which he was a spokesman. The narrator views the Dissenters with suspicion quite familiar to anyone who has watched the privileged play the victim. Here, the description is not of a clockwork orange, but a clockwork cabal existing between the Dissenters and the High-Church:
“the Dissenters are the Dial-Plate, and the High-Church the Movement, the Wheel within the Wheels, the Spring and the Screw to bring all things to Motion, and make the Hand on the Dial-plate point which way the Dissenters please.”
To the Point
This is not to suggest that Defoe can only create a sharp metaphor through verbosity. Every now and then—actually, a lot more often—the narrator rips of a truly satisfying burn on the general state of mankind:
“Conscience has one large Ware-house, and the Devil another; the first is very seldom open’d”
In truth, the metaphor does actually go on a bit longer, but the real meat of its meaning is in this short excerpt. Not an entirely original thought, to be sure, but the image cuts deep.
Science Fiction
Ultimately, the best way for a modern reader to adapt to the much more pointed complexities of an allegory of British politics is to simply enjoy the text as science fiction. One of the essential hallmarks of that genre is weird, futuristic machinery. A certain “engine” capable of quite a few mysterious and almost magical capacities is easily applied here:
“This Engine is wholly applied to the Head, and Works by Injection; the chief Influence being on what we call Fancy, or Imagination, which by the heat of strong Ideas, is fermented to a strange heighth, and is thus brought to see backward and forward every way, beyond it self”
