Here I go again with a 2025 Deal Me In Challenge. I skipped a year but this year I have someone to keep me company and push me to actually accomplish something. So we’ll see how it goes.
2025 Deal Me In Challenge
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Category Archives: Essay
A Midsummer Night’s Dream by G.K. Chesterton
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1897) Giovanni Boldini
~ source Wikiart
“The greatest of Shakespeare’s comedies is also, from a certain point of view, the greatest of his plays.”
Or so G.K. Chesterton says with regard to Shakespeare’s well-known comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It appears Chesterton and I differ radically. Even with three readings and two performances, A Midsummer Night’s Dream has left me somewhat unimpressed. I’m not sure if it’s the silliness that puts me off, but the comedic aspect of it fails in my opinion and I’ve never been able to find much meaning in it at all. Can Chesterton change my mind and reveal to me the appeal of this play that I’ve perhaps been missing? Let’s find out!
The Great Ideas ~ The Answer to Darwin
In The Darwinian Theory of Man’s Origin, Adler of course explained Darwin’s theory of evolution and the evidence that anchors it. Here in The Answer to Darwin, he continues with the evidence, adds to it more current research and the gives some evidence of his own to the contrary.
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (1799) Francisco Goya ~ source Wikiart
Adler reminds us that Darwin never built his theory on the anatomical or physiological resemblance between the higher animals and man, nor embriological similarities or fossils. He rested his whole argument on mental power, in respect to the differences and similarities. “The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.” What evidence did Darwin use for his conclusion? It is all on the basis of human and animal behaviour. He claims animals reason, use tools and use speech the same as man but to a lesser degree. Adler then gives examples of experiments of animal behaviour since Darwin’s day, all seemingly to support Darwin’s theory. But Adler does not believe they are indisputable and he is going to dispute them. He believes that men differ essentially from all other animals in kind, and his evidence will be presented under three different headings:
- Only humans make artistically
- Only humans think discursively
- Only humans associate politically
An Apology for Idlers by Robert Louis Stevenson
Idle Hours (1895) by Henry Siddons Mowbray ~ source Wikimedia Commons
In An Apology for Idlers, Stevenson takes up the call to support and promote idlers, however not idlers in the common sense. Idleness “does not consist of doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognized in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling class …” There is a great deal in favour of diligence but there is also something to be said against it; Stevenson has picked up his pen to do so.
Stevenson first targets school, saying that books are all well and good in their place but “they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life”. The streets give just as good an education, as Dickens and Balzac discovered, as you can learn to see things from a new perspective.
Idle Afternoon (c.1874) by Gillett Holdredge ~ source Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
England Your England by George Orwell
“As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me”
As we can tell from the first line, Orwell wrote England Your England during the conflict of World War II yet the essay turns out not to be about the war but about something very dear to Orwell’s heart: the British people.
Orwell states that the people in the planes trying to kill him must be very much like the British people; but patriotism and national loyalty trumps all, a fact that Hitler and Mussonlini were able to grasp. Differences between nations are based on differences in outlook and the English are highly differentiated, distinctive and recognizable from their country terrain, to their visual appearance, to their manners. Yet while these attributes can vary substantially from area to area, the English have a common national identity. How is that possible among so many differences? Orwell investigates.
What I Demand of Life by Frank Swinnerton
My Deal-Me-In Challenge has been going the way of my other challenges this year, but I thought with a few months left in the year, I might try to resurrect it and at least finish well. We’ll see …. In any case, I drew the queen of Spades, which gave me an essay entitled, What I Demand of Life by Frank Swinnerton.
The Great Ideas ~ The Darwinian Theory of Man’s Origin
From How Different Are Humans? we move to the Darwinian Theory of Man, the argument and evidence for his origin and nature. While Darwin did not present his theory until his second book, The Descent of Man, he relied on his first book, Origin of Species for the truths of his theory.
The Great Ideas ~ How Different Are Humans?
The discussion continues from How To Think About Man, with the examination of the two questions, the nature of man and the origin of man. In the last talk/essay, both opposing views were presented: before Darwin man was seen as having a special, distinct nature, but after Darwin he is see only differing in degree from other animals but is otherwise the same.
Adler wishes to approach this issue logically as it is important to see the issue clearly in order to access both arguments. Luckman says that they have received letters criticizing Adler for taking the side of Darwin and Adler expresses his delight. He implies his view is the exact opposite and is pleased with the error as it proves he is so far presenting the argument without any personal bias. He does not plan to argue either for or against any one side, merely to present the issues logically and fairly.
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| Young Man (The impassioned singer) Giovane uomo (Il cantore appassionato) Giogorgione source Wikiart |
Differences in Kind and Differences in Degree
Adler begins with the definition of man. There have been many definitions, but defining him as a “rational animal” is the most accurate, as it underlies all the other definitions. However it is not the definition but the interpretation of it that is the issue as it implies humans alone are rational.
Adler moves to the distinction between “kind” and “degree” which is important to understand to move ahead in the examination of the issues. He gives an analogy of two lines of different lengths. They have the same traits, only one is longer and one is shorter. They differ in degree. However, a circle and a square do not have common traits — one has angles and one does not — their differences are differences in kind.
Luckman says many scientists believe that the difference between kind and degree, is itself a difference of kind or degree; he gives the example of a many-many-sided polygon which eventually approaches and appears like a circle. Adler does not agree with this statement. No matter how closely the polygon will appear like a circle, it will never be a circle; “difference in degree is never difference in kind and vice versa.” When two things differ in degree, there always can be intermediates, such as an intermediate line between the two in his above example, but there is no intermediates between differences in kind. They can have things in common, but there will always be a property or charcteristic that the other completely lacks. The one with the additional property will be hierachically above the other.
Luckman interjects, saying that it seems that Adler’s definition of difference in kind is accepted by evolutionists and he wants to know how Adler thinks they differ. After all, apes are different from horses and therefore so must man be different. He does not see the issue. Adler says there is one, and he intends to make it clear.
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| Man and Ape Stanley Pinker source Wikiart |
Differences in Kind Exclude Intermediate Forms
Adler claims Luckman made a misstatement and although the evolutionists do see some forms of life as lower and some higher, they believe they differ only in degree. How does Adler know this? Because evolutionists believe in the continuity of nature. There would be “no underlying continuity in nature …. unless intermediate varieties were possible as between different species in the scale of thing or the greater things”. These intermediate varieties must be possible, even if they are only missing links. Those species which the biologist classifies as kinds are only apparent kinds, yet with the definition of man, they are real kinds.
Adler offers two conceptions:
- a conception of species with missing links between them, with intermediate varieties
- a conception of species without any missing links or without any intermediate varieties
The present biological understanding is that species are only apparent kinds, separated by the possibility of intermediate varieties and therefore can be a difference in degrees.
One more fact, modern science has hypothesized that if all possible forms of life or every species ever know existed on earth at the same time, there would be no species, just individual differences in degree. The philosophical conception is species are real kinds with no intermediate varieties; modern biology sees the kinds with a possibility of intermediate varieties.
We get back to the question of how man differs from other animals: if in kind there is no intermediate varieties possible, but if in degree there are possibilities of intermediate varieties.
Adler emphasizes that so far he has only presented the facts without prejudice to one side or the other. Next time, he is going to present the evidence and arguments from the evolutionist’s point of view, that man only differs in degree which sets the stage for natural evolution. He will then produce arguments and evidence for the opposing side, that man differs essentially in kind which would make a natural evolutionary process impossible.
Phew! This talk became hard to follow about halfway through but I do believe I get Adler’s point. His next essay/talk is The Darwinian Theory of Man’s Origin.
Doodles in the Dictionary by Aldous Huxley
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| Henri Toulouse-Lautrec source Wikimedia Commons |
Ah, my first essay by Aldous Huxley and I didn’t know what style to expect. He first begins by lamenting the insufferable boredom experienced by having to learn Greek and Latin in school. Even the mention of these subjects he still finds tedious and can only find one benefit of having been forced through hours of searching for words in his Lexicon:
“I hate to think of all that wasted time. And yet, in view of the fact that most human beings are destined to pass most of their lives at jobs in which it is impossible for them to take the slightest interest, this old-fashioned training with the dictionary may have been extremely salutary. At least it taught one to know and expect the worst of life. Whereas the pupil in a progressive school, where everything is made to seem entertaining and significant, lives in a fool’s paradise.”
When his bookseller friend requested his presence to view an item that he was extremely thrilled to purchase, Huxley was dismayed to find that it was a Latin dictionary. However, when he found it wasn’t just any Latin dictionary, but the one owned by the famous painter, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, his interest was piqued.
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| source Wikipedia |
Toulouse-Lautrec created these “doodles in the dictionary” when he was sixteen years old, a mere two years after two accidents which would change his life forever. First, he broke one leg, and then the other, and neither leg grew again, therefore upon adulthood, he had the legs of a fourteen year old and the body of a man. Having to live as a “dwarfish monster”, Lautrec immersed himself in his drawing and painting.
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| Aristide Bruant on His Bicycle (1892) Henri Toulouse-Lautrec source Wikiart |
Huxley muses that up to the age of ten, the muse of genius is within every child, but with instruction that muse disintegrates until only one in four thousand people have any talent for art. He calls this fact an “unsolved riddle” and hopes one day to learn the answer, whereupon education will be able to be transformed into a “social and individual reconstruction”. Hmmm ……. who would decide what needed to be reconstructed and why? Who would be doing the reconstructing and under what premise? It’s all very vague and rather disturbing.
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| Artilleryman Saddling His Horse (1879) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec source Wikiart |
In any case, early on it was evident that Toulouse-Lautrec had rare talent for drawing and he was also proficient in Latin, earning prizes for translation and composition. While his drawings at sixteen showed a maturity and flair that was unsurpassed for his age, his first master Bonnat was lukewarm with his praise. In a letter to his Uncle Charles, Toulouse-Lautrec communicated his teacher’s comments: “Your painting isn’t bad; it’s clever, but still it isn’t bad. But your drawing is simply atrocious.” Judging from a comment from another student, Huxley believes Toulouse-Lautrec had a propensity to exaggerate his subjects, to “prettify” them in a way that was perhaps not pleasing. Yet Huxley believes that facts are perhaps not so immutable as we perceive them, and that everyone can view each reality differently. And facts can also cover a variety of disciplines: for example, he says, the H-bomb can at once be involved in physics, chemistry, physiology, medicine, genetics, psychology, politics, economics, ethics and even be an aesthetic fact, as the cloud it makes is quite beautiful. Toulouse-Lautrec simply chose to communicate in his art the aspects that preoccupied him and “found no incompatibility between truth to nature and distortion.” His exaggeration perhaps brought life to his art, which would align with Hsieh Ho, the fourth dynasty Chinese artist who stated that the First Principle of Chinese Painting “…. is that, through a vitalizing spirit, a painting should possess the movement of life,” and the sinologist, Osvald Siren agreed, “that the First Principle refers to something beyond the material form, call it character, soul, or expression. It depends on the operation of the spirit, or the myserious breath of life, by which the figures may become as though they were moving or breathing.”
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| Fishing Boat (1880) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec source Wikiart |
Huxley brings the subject of the horse into his essay, lamenting its passing into the history of transport and surmising that it was heading towards extinction. It embodied the expression of life from its splendid grace, from the thoroughbred down to the old hack; in modern times we are only left with man who is a graceless uninteresting creature. The advent of the automobile, and in fact all technology, detracts from life and therefore from our enjoyment of it. Lautrec’s father had advocated for the health of the outdoors but sadly, Lautrec was not destined for such a life because of his accident and became, instead, fascinated by the race-track, Montmartre known for its public dancing and cabarets, alcohol and prostitutes.
“The drunks and tarts, the lecherous gentlemen in top hats, the sensation-hunting ladies in feather boas, the stable boys, the lesbians, the bearded surgeons performing operations with a horrifying disregard of the first principles of asepsis ……. these became the subject matter of most of Lautrec’s pictures, the environment in which he liked to live. He portrayed them simply as curiosities, passing no moral judgment, but simply rendering the intrinsic oddity of what he saw around him.”
His interest in the theatre grew, of which sketches can be seen in the dictionary of jesters, actors and actresses. He did not portray women in a sexual way nor with any discrimination, only executing them as he would any other subject, “from memory and with appropriate distortions, rendered their life-movement, now graceful, now grotesque, and the underlying rhythm of the mysterious spirit that manifests itself within that movement.”
And so concludes an essay that I thought would be an educational treatise and ended up being about the creation of art, and secondary the sad demise of a creative talent. Huxley did not reveal that Lautrec died from the effects of alcoholism and syphilis at the age of 36 years old.
Next up is classic children’s book, The Finn Family Moomintroll. I absolutely love this book; it is tied for my all-time favourite children’s classic. I can’t wait to read it again and share some unique Moomintroll adventures!
Week 9 – Deal Me In Challenge – Two of Spades
Politics and the English Language by George Orwell
I haven’t yet read enough of Orwell’s works to decide whether I like him or not, but one thing I have learned in our short acquaintance is that he’s not one to prevaricate or candy-coat his ideas. If you don’t want his opinions, don’t read him, and if you do, get ready to duck!
Orwell begins his essay, Politics and the English Language, by speculating on the impending collapse of the English Language. Is its demise a mirroring of society’s cultural suicide, simply an innocuous descent that is only natural given the state of our world? Yet Orwell believes that there is not just a natural cause, but more pointedly, political and economic ones, and even the effects themselves can become causes that reinforce the original cause. For example:
“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier to us to have foolish thoughts.”
There is a remedy though: if we clean up our bad habits when applying language to thoughts, our thoughts will become clearer.
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| A Song Without Words (1919) John William Godward source Wikiart |
Orwell now gives five writing examples exemplifying problems with how people use language:
- an essay by Professor Harold Laski (who uses 5 negatives in 53 words)
- a paragraph from Interglossa by Professor Lancelot Hogben (mixed metaphors)
- an essay on psychology in Politics (meaninglessness)
- a Communist pamphlet (stale phrases)
- a letter in the Tribune (words and meaning part company)
The two main problems in all these examples are a “staleness of imagery” and a “lack of precision”. Modern English prose is ripe with these issues, but they crop up continuously in political writing. Instead of sticking with concrete thoughts, the abstract creepy in, melting away the valuable meaning of ideas, instead consisting of a stringing together of hackneyed phrases. He then lists examples of the ways that the adequate construction of prose is habitually avoided.
Dying Metaphors: These are metaphors between the good and bad, a garbage dump of metaphors that have lost all expressive power and are used only to avoid the trouble of creating new evocative phrases. Whenever inconsistent phrases are mixed or the original meaning is convoluted, it is evidence that the person is not particularly interested in what they are saying.
Operators of Verbal False Limbs: Used to avoid choosing correct verbs and nouns but give the appearance of a harmony by expanding the sentence with the use of extra syllables. Examples of such are: make itself felt, exhibit a tendency to, etc. In addition, the passive voice is preferred instead of the active, noun constructions are employed instead of gerunds (by examination instead of by examining), verbs are cut down by -ize and de- formations, clichéd statements are presented as intelligent by the not un- formation, clean conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by phrases such as, with respect to, the fact that, etc, and sentence completions are made to sound mundane by such phrases as deserving serious consideration, etc.
Pretentious Diction: Catch words are used to adorn simple statements to give biased judgements an appearance of scientific authority. He goes on to describe specific words used in political writings, claiming the result is slovenliness and vagueness, to obscure the real issues.
Meaningless Words: Passages with a complete dearth of meaning abound in many areas of writing, but principally in art and literary criticism. Orwell gives a few examples, such as:
“The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far it signifies ‘something not desirable.’ The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice, have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of régime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”
In an attempt to show that modern writing does not choose words for meaning nor does it evoke powerful images for clarity, Orwell gives first an example from Ecclesiastes, and then his own modern translation. His experiment is quite fascinating:
Ecclesiastes:
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, or yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
Modern English:
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
He then analyzes them to show the weakness of the translation and claims modern writing is lazy, borrowing ideas and phrases and “gumming” them together in order to use minimal mental effort; also there is often an attempt to convey emotional meaning without attention to detail nor the actual point.
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| Language is Not Transparent Mel Bochner source Wikiart |
A responsible writer will ask himself the following questions when writing:
What am I trying to say?
What words will express it?
What image or idiom will make it clearer?
Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
Could I put it more shortly?
Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
However, Orwell says, most writers are contend to string together cliches, obscuring their meaning even to themselves.
In politics, the writing is particularly dreadful, all the literary mistakes converging and causing the viewers to feel that “one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy,” who is being transformed into a machine by the very words he speaks. By the constant bombardment of meaningless jargon, people’s consciousness becomes sleepy and allows atrocities to be labelled as pacification, or transfer of population, or elimination of unreliable elements. This particular phraseology has no metaphor content and therefore images are lacking, allowing the reader/listener to easily dismiss the human connection and thus controlling our emotional response to it. Inflated euphemisms are used to justify cruelty.
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| The Treachery of Images (1948) Rene Magritte source Wikiart |
Yet while thoughts are able to corrupt language, the reverse is also true. You can catch this impoverished writing, like a disease, and have your mind affected by it. Orwell admits that in his essay he has committed some of the literary crimes he is attempting to reveal. The only way to avoid these faults is to continually be on guard against them. We can start by eradicating worn-out phrases and metaphors, but the change must go deeper. He goes on to explain what these changes do not imply, then gives the reader rules to follow when intuition fails:
- Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
By applying these rules, one could still write badly, but one could not write the drivel of which he has been speaking or using as examples. His goal with his essay is not to consider “the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought.”
For:
“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
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| Young Girl Learning to Write Camille Corot source Wikiart |
A very powerful essay by Orwell and one that requires time and deep thought to digest. On most points, I agree with him wholeheartedly, but there are a few minor claims that poke at my passion for words. To use less words that have Greek or Latin roots, seems overly particular. These words have been in use for centuries and add to the language instead of detracting from it. And while Orwell didn’t directly say that he takes offence at larger more complex words, the appearance in his examples was to severely diminish them (sorry, if I misread you, George, but that was my impression). While I certainly do not advocate using complex words to diminish meaning or cloak intent, I do think that they are valuable for enjoyment in reading. Would one rather have a French seven course dinner, or MacDonald’s? If one is discerning in the culinary arts, certainly the former. However, just as the ingredients for the seven course dinner would have to be used with style and attention, so must complex words be, when writing.
My next choice for my Deal Me In Challenge is suppposed to be a children’s classic, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aitken, but I’m having some trouble finding it (yes, those of you who know of my “issue” of losing my DMI choices can laugh at me), so next week might find a different post appearing. Time shall reveal!
Week 5 – Deal Me In Challenge – Eight of Spades
