On Dogmatism

I've started Orwell's Collected Essays. Much wonderful in them, of course--but I note that his tone of dogmatic certainty on every subject under the sun is more attractive in the Selected Essays, where, for some reason, fewer of his howling mistakes appear. ("England must have a socialist revolution within two years at the most, or it is doomed to be conquered by the Nazis." Ummm ...) Indeed, as the editor of the essays notes, there's more than a touch of the public-school boy in Orwell's writing, and Orwell sounds a great deal like the confident idiots he so mercilessly flays--just a Socialist idiot rather than a Conservative one. The dogmatic tone is alluring, but dangerous--something to remember as I blog about everything and sundry. Montaigne, perhaps, is still the perfect model--tentative, uncertain of everything, even of oneself.