Poetry · Chapter
Incurable explained
This brief chapter reflects on the incurable nature of the reformer's zeal, suggesting that while one may recover from other vices and passions, the desire to improve the world is a spiritual affliction that cannot be cured.
What happens
This brief chapter reflects on the incurable nature of the reformer's zeal, suggesting that while one may recover from other vices and passions, the desire to improve the world is a spiritual affliction that cannot be cured.
Themes in this chapter
Hypocrisy and Corruption
The chapter implies that the reformer's zeal, though seemingly virtuous, is itself a kind of incurable vice or folly, suggesting a critique of moral self-deception.
Key passages
“From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy— From any kind of vice, or folly, Bias, propensity or passion That is in prevalence and fashion, Save one, the sufferer or lover May, by the grace of God, recover.”
A person can be cured of most common vices and emotional afflictions through divine grace.
The poem lists typical human failings that are curable, setting up the contrast with the one exception.
“Alone that spiritual tetter, The zeal to make creation better, Glows still immedicably warmer. Who knows of a reformed reformer?”
Only the obsessive drive to reform the world is an incurable spiritual disease, and no one has ever seen a reformer who gave up that mission.
The final lines deliver the ironic punchline: the reformer's passion is the one thing that cannot be changed.