The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

But the word is ill-chosen, and indicates a misconception. The characteristic of your true hypocrite is the assumption of a virtue which not only he has not, but which he is incapable of possessing, and in which he does not believe. The hypocrite may have, most likely has, (for he is a man of brains,) a conscious rule of life, but it is never that of the person to whom his hypocrisy is directed. Tartufe incarnates him once for all. Tartufe is by conviction an atheist and a sensualist; he despises all who regard life from the contrasted point of view. But among Englishmen such an attitude of mind has always been extremely rare; to presume it in our typical money-maker who has edifying sentiments on his lips is to fall into a grotesque error of judgment. No doubt that error is committed by the ordinary foreign journalist, a man who knows less than little of English civilization. More enlightened critics, if they use the word at all, do so carelessly; when speaking with more precision, they call the English "pharisaic"--and come nearer the truth.