'And So Proceed Ad Infinitum'

Informal but rigorously observed men’s room etiquette dictates that one pay no attention to one’s fellow patrons of the toilettes publiques. Your business there is private and the Golden Rule of mutual discretion remains, for most of us, self-enforced.

Recently, I have found myself modestly bending the rules as I observe who washes his hands – and for how long, and whether they use the soap dispenser-- and who does not. My findings are disturbing, if we are to believe what public-health authorities tell us. Some men skip the sink entirely. Some permit a squirt or two to moisten their hands, followed by a swift shake and a sprint past the paper towels. Admittedly, I’ve observed a few who appear to be preparing for surgery. Their washups are painstaking and protracted, as infection experts recommend. Are they thinking of their health, the health of others or merely virtue-signaling?

I want to make it clear that I’m not a germaphobe, one of those neurotics who wallpapers the toilet seat, but bathroom matters always bring to mind Jonathan Swift. Among his recurrent themes are matters excremental, most famously in “The Lady’s Dressing Room.” But our present obsession with microorganisms recalls a passage in another poem, one ostensibly satirizing poets. These lines are from “On Poetry: A Rhapsody” (1733):

“The Vermin only teaze and pinch

Their Foes superior by an Inch.

So, Nat’ralists observe, a Flea

Hath smaller Fleas that on him prey,

And these have smaller yet to bite ’em,

And so proceed ad infinitum:

Thus ev’ry Poet, in his Kind

Is bit by him that comes behind.”

In his notes in The Complete Poems (1983), Pat Rogers refers to Swift’s participation in “the microscopical fad” following development of the microscope in the latter half of the seventeenth century by von Leeuwenhoek and others. Swift’s intent is satirical. He makes fun of the vicious competitiveness that reigned among the poets of his day (and, one might add, ours). I love the rhyme “bite ’em”/ “ad infinitum.” We might think of the poem as an expression of belief in the infinite regress assumed by ultra-clean true believers: One can never be sufficiently clean.