satire

A FULL AND TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE BATTLE FOUGHT LAST FRIDAY BETWEEN THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN BOOKS 
IN THE  SAINT JAMES'S LIBRARY

That is the title of a satirical essay by Jonathan Swift that I recently read. The essay is a response to the current (late 1600's) academic battle that was raging.  More specifically, Swift wrote it in defense of his mentor, Sir William Temple, who was an outspoken opponent of those in academia who elevated the importance of Moderns while diminishing the relevance of the Ancients. Within the satire there is a very short sub-analogy of a meeting between a spider and a bee.

The bee's summation of his encounter with the spider acutely expresses Swift's position:

Bee (Ancients) to Spider(Moderns):"You boast indeed of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say , if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; and, though I would by no means lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you are  somewhat obliged, for an increase in broth, to a little foreign assistance... and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to destroy another. So that, in short, the question comes all to this; whether is the nobler being of the two, that which, by a lazy contemplation of four inches round (his web), by an overweening pride, feeding and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all but flybane and a cobweb; or that which, by a universal range, with long search, much study, true judgement, and distiction of things, brings home honey and wax."

Yikes.