Both emotions and gods must be respected, according to Racine's overall dramatic conception. Neither reason nor passion is 'bad' merely an excess or an imbalance of one at the expense of the other. Similarly, Swift's dry, droll tone suggests his love of reason, wit, and his arch view of social niceties and conventions for which people have a great deal of emotional affection. But Swift is not advocating a triumph of reason over emotion or emotion over reason because he is satirizing people who do not take a compassionate view of the starving Irish. Rather, Swift suggests that it is equally irrational to cling to reason, and say it is economically rational to ignore people in need. The 'rational' extension of this

Despite living in vastly different time periods and deploying entirely different literary techniques in their respective genres of drama and political satire, Racine and Swift do share a common theme and philosophical heart -- balancing reason and passion is required to be fully human. Passion is not to be pitted 'against' reason; instead the two must be fused.