Edgar Allan Poe

Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences - Original Edition Edgar Allan Poe

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 entitled Jeremy Diddler. He 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.