Diddling - Considered as One of the Exact Sciences E-Book

Edgar Allan Poe

• Herausgeber: SAMPI Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 19

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In this humorous essay, Poe satirically presents "diddling" — petty swindling and clever trickery — as if it were a formal science with its own principles and rules. Through exaggerated examples and mock-serious analysis, he portrays the "diddler" as an ingenious manipulator who thrives on gullibility, turning everyday situations into opportunities for small but artful deception.

Leseprobe

Diddling - Considered as One of the Exact Sciences

Edgar Allan Poe

SYNOPSIS

In this humorous essay, Poe satirically presents “diddling” — petty swindling and clever trickery — as if it were a formal science with its own principles and rules. Through exaggerated examples and mock-serious analysis, he portrays the “diddler” as an ingenious manipulator who thrives on gullibility, turning everyday situations into opportunities for small but artful deception.

Keywords

Satire, Deception, Swindling

NOTICE

This text is a work in the public domain and reflects the norms, values and perspectives of its time. Some readers may find parts of this content offensive or disturbing, given the evolution in social norms and in our collective understanding of issues of equality, human rights and mutual respect. We ask readers to approach this material with an understanding of the historical era in which it was written, recognizing that it may contain language, ideas or descriptions that are incompatible with today's ethical and moral standards.

Names from foreign languages will be preserved in their original form, with no translation.

Diddling - Considered as One of the Exact Sciences

Hey, diddle diddleThe cat and the fiddle

Since the world began there have been two Jeremys. The one wrote a Jeremiad about usury, and was called Jeremy Bentham. He has been much admired by Mr. John Neal, and was a great man in a small way. The other gave name to the most important of the Exact Sciences, and was a great man in a great way—I may say, indeed, in the very greatest of ways.

Diddling—or the abstract idea conveyed by the verb to diddle—is sufficiently well understood. Yet the fact, the deed, the thing diddling, is somewhat difficult to define. We may get, however, at a tolerably distinct conception of the matter in hand, by defining—not the thing, diddling, in itself—but man, as an animal that diddles. Had Plato but hit upon this, he would have been spared the affront of the picked chicken.

Very pertinently it was demanded of Plato, why a picked chicken, which was clearly “a biped without feathers,” was not, according to his own definition, a man? But I am not to be bothered by any similar query. Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man. It will take an entire hen-coop of picked chickens to get over that.