88
RICHARD WOLLHEIM
But is it anything else as well? In answering this question I want
to avoid a larger question that enjoys a certain vogue in England
at the moment and in which it would
be
only too easy to get
im–
mersed: that is, Orwell as a case. This larger question arises from
considering all of Orwell's books together, the books he wrote
against the future as well as those he wrote against the present,
both
Animal Farm
and 1984, on the one hand, and
Down and Out
in Paris and London
and
The Road to Wigan Pier,
on the other
hand, and then asking whether the earlier books lead on to the
later books and where the later books lead,
if,
that is, they lead any–
where at all.
But whatever we make of the larger question I am certain
what answer we should give to the narrower question. Of course
The Road to Wigan Pier
is more than its defects. More specifically,
its merit resides in the question that it raises and round which, in
its fluid way, the book is centered. The answers that Orwell gives
to his question are seldom interesting and sometimes downright
silly. Even at his best Orwell suffered from two failings which stood
in the way of his being much of a thinker; he was too argumenta–
tive, and he was too forgetful. Too argumentative, in that when he
could not make up his mind on the merits of an issue he preferred
to take both sides, each against the other. Too forgetful, in that
he often seems to have been quite unable to remember on one page
what he wrote on another. But, as I say, the merit of
The Roa,d to
Wigan Pier,
what saves it from the scrap heap,
is
the question that
it poses; and that question might be rendered as, What is it really
to
be
a Socialist?
Now it is nowadays held to be one sign of philosophical
naivete to ask questions of the form, What is a real
xl
or What is
it really to
be
an
xl
For, the argument runs, any such fonn of
words serves to conflate, and hence to confuse, two very different
issues that might be raised. One is the verbal, often trivial issue,
What is the meaning, or definition, of
x?
and the other is the
normative or ethical question, which can be formulated more satis–
factorily as, What ought an
x
to
be
like? or, What is a good
xl
Now
these two question, the verbal and the ethical, are evidently differ-
