I never thought about a writer “surrendering” to words until reading this essay by George Orwell. It is easy to reuse phrases in original writing because it takes less work and time than coming up with something new. I am taking an environmental ethics class this semester and we recently spent a week talking about the claim that nature has “intrinsic value,” or good in itself. Environmentalists wanted to defend the protection of the environment philosophically, so they decided to label nature as “intrinsically valuable” because that had worked with the ethical defense of human beings. Now I love the environment and believe it should be protected, but nature and humans are different. Every environmental intrinsic value argument has failed because other philosophers can tear it apart on the basis that in ethics, humans do the valuing. Without humans, there is no value. Environmentalists need to come up with a new argument and unique phrasing that applies solely to protection of nature. That way, their meaning is precise and their arguments cannot be dismissed so quickly.