'Every Condition Indulges Some Darling Fallacy'

George Orwell remains a problem for this reader. His fiction is idea-heavy and never comes to life. He was a casual, though not ideological, anti-Semite. He never entirely shed the socialist delusion. And yet he wrote a handful of essays that rank among the finest in the language. He’s awfully good on Dickens and Kipling, and scattered through his journalism are essential nuggets of good prose. “Bookshop Memories” is a gem. In the column he published on this date, March 22, in 1946, titled “In Front of Your Nose,” he writes: 

“[W]e are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

 

Orwell’s point applies most obviously to politics but its applications are nearly universal. Homo sapiens is the species that lies, most often to ourselves. “To see what is in front of one’s nose,” he writes, “needs a constant struggle.” Orwell seemed to have had little regard for Dr. Johnson, though he is here echoing the earlier essayist’s The Adventurer #69:

 

“[T]the universal conspiracy of mankind against themselves: every age and every condition indulges some darling fallacy; every man amuses himself with projects which he knows to be improbable, and which, therefore, he resolves to pursue without daring to examine them. Whatever any man ardently desires, he very readily believes that he shall some time attain . . .”