A Tale of a Tub is a mass of text seemingly cobbled together for the purpose of deliberately confusing the reader, but its digression after digression cannot mask the 'inevitable theme of loss, which is ultimately found in all of Swift's works. Satire contrasts the present with an ideal of past perfection, and the comparison always shows the lack of the modern. The church adulterates religion; the moderns, the ancients; critics, the author. The narrator of Swift's text seems to believe that the moment a great work or idea is presented, it may be pure, but it will always degrade with time. Since it is impossible to return to this previous state, there is a strong sense of disappointment that weighs down the most transparent spirit and humor. The entire tale may be nothing more than a joke, aimed not only at moderns and the church, but also at the public.1 But no matter how many crude jokes or attacks Swift makes, the point of the story is not just to laugh at the expense of others , but mourn the fall of an ideal that can never exist again. It is impossible to return to an original source in the Tale because the narrator appears to contain a model of a linear timeline in his head. As time passes, the distance between each passing moment and the point of origin must increase, and any attempt to return to the beginning must fail. Just as it is impossible for someone living in the eighteenth century to return to the first, so a man who is taught to be a modern can never think exactly like an ancient. Thanks to this vision, the narrator can almost be seen as a modern-day phenomenologist. This philosophy states the impossibility of observing any object as it really is, since the viewer is separated from the object... in the center of the paper... it must be inferior to the original. And if his talent cannot be used to enhance the glory of the classics, then it might as well be used to condemn the moderns. If all writing is ultimately a corruption of what came before it, as the narrator seems to believe, then it is better to write about something that is despised rather than revered. Sometimes the Tale seems to be nothing more than a joke, because of all the digressions and incomprehensible passages that are inserted. Swift claims that he is giving his readers exactly what they want, because humanity "receives a much greater advantage by being misguided than by being educated" and happiness "is a perpetual possession of being well deceived" (327, 351). Swift sees this as the exact problem that is ruining current learning and puts it under readers' noses to frustrate them with the very method they are promoting