Thinking as a hobby课文电子版.pdf

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1、Thinking as aThinking as a HobbyHobbyWilliam Golding1.While I was still a boy,I came to the conclusion thatthere were three grades of thinking;and that Imyself could not think at all.2.It was the headmaster of my grammar school whofirst brought the subject of thinking beforeme.Hehad some statuettes（

2、小雕像）in his study.Theystood on a high cupboard behind his desk.One wasa lady wearing nothing but a bath towel.Sheseemed frozen in an eternal panic lest the bath towelslip down any farther;and since she had no arms,she was in an unfortunate position to pull the towelup again.Next to her，crouched the s

3、tatuette of aleopard,ready to spring down at the top drawer of afiling cabinet.Beyond the leopard was a nakedmuscular gentleman,who sat,looking down,withhis chin on his fist and his elbow on his knee.Heseemed utterly miserable.3.Some time later,I learned about these statuettes.The headmaster had pla

4、ced them where they wouldface delinquent children,because they symbolizedto him the whole of life.The naked lady was Venus.She was Love.She was not worried about the towel.She was just busy being beautiful.The leopard wasNature,and he was being natural.The musculargentleman was not miserable.He was

5、RodinsThinker,an image of pure thought.4.I had better explain that I was a frequent visitor tothe headmasters study,because of the latest thing Ihad done or left undone.As we now say,I was notintegrated.Iwas,ifanything,disintegrated.Whenever I found myself in a penal position beforethe headmasters d

6、esk I would sink my head,andwrithe one shoe over the other5.The headmaster would look at me and say,6.What are we going to do with you?7.Well,what were they going to do with me?I wouldwrithe my shoe some more and stare down at theworn rug.8.Look up,boy!Cant you look up?9.Then I would look up at the

7、cupboard,where thenaked lady was frozen in her panic and the musculargentleman contemplated the hindquarters(后腿及臀部)of the leopard in endless gloom.I had nothing tosay to the headmaster.His spectacles caught the lightso that you could see nothing behind them.There wasno possibility of communication.9

8、.Dont you ever think at all?10.No,I didnt think,wasnt thinking,couldnt thin k I was simply waiting in anguish for the interviewto stop.11.Then youd better learn-hadnt you?12.On one occasion the headmaster leaped to his feet,reached up and put Rodins masterpiece on the deskbefore me.13.Thats what a m

9、an looks like when hes reallythinking.14.Clearly there was something missing in me.Nature had endowed the rest of the human race witha sixth sense and left me out.But like someone borndeaf,but bitterly determined to find out about sound,I began to watch my teachers to find out aboutthought.15.There

10、was Mr.Houghton.He was always tellingme to think.With a modest satisfaction,he wouldtell me that he had thought a bit himself.Then whydid he spend much time drinking?Or was theremore sense in drinking than there appeared to be?But if not,and if drinking were in fact ruinous tohealth and Mr.Houghton

11、was ruined,there wasno doubt about that why was he always talkingabout the clean life and the virtues of fresh air?16.Sometimes,exalted by his own oratory,he wouldleap from his desk and hustle us outside into ahideous wind.17.Now,boys!Deep breaths!Feel it right downinside you huge draughts of Gods g

12、ood air!”18.He would stand before us,put his hands on hiswaist and take a tremendous breath.You could hearthe wind,trapped in his chest and struggling with allthe unnatural impediments.His body would reelwithshockandhisfacegowhiteattheunaccustomed visitation.He would stagger back tohis desk and coll

13、apse there,useless for the rest ofthe morning.19.Mr.Houghtonwasgiventohigh-mindedmonologues about the good life,sexless and full ofduty.Yet in the middle of these monologues,if agirl passed the window,his neck would turn of itselfand he would watch her out of sight.In this instance,he seemed to me r

14、uled not by thought but by aninvisible and irresistible spring in his neck.20.His neck was an object of great interest to me.Normally it bulged a bit over his collar.But Mr.Houghton had fought in the First World Waralongside Americans and French,and had come to asettled detestation of both countries

15、.If eitherhappened to be prominent in current affairs,noargument could make Mr.Houghton think well of it.He would bang the desk,his neck would bulge stillfurther and go red.You can say what you like,hewould cry,but Ive thought about this and Iknow what I think!21.Mr.Houghton thought with his neck.22

16、.This was my introduction to the nature of what iscommonlycalledthought.ThroughhimIdiscovered that thought is often full ofunconsciousprejudice,ignorance and hypocrisy.It will lectureon disinterested purity while its neck is beingremorselessly twisted toward a skirt.Technically,it is about as profic

17、ient as most businessmens golf,as honest as most politicians intentions,or ascoherent as most books that get written.It is what Icame to call grade-three thinking,though moreproperly,it is feeling,rather than thought.24.True,often there is a kind of innocence inprejudice,but in those days I viewed g

18、rade-threethinking with contempt and mockery.I delightedto confront a pious lady who hated the Germanswith the proposition that we should love ourenemies.She taught me a great truth in dealingwith grade-three thinkers;because of her,I nolonger dismiss lightly a mental process which fornine tenths of

19、 the population is the nearest theywill ever get to thought.They have immensesolidarity.We had better respect them,for we areoutnumberedandsurrounded.Acrowdofgrade-three thinkers,all shouting the same thing,all warming their hands at the fire of their ownprejudices,will not thank you for pointing ou

20、t thecontradictionsintheirbeliefs.Manenjoysagreement as cows will graze all the same way onthe side of a hill.25.Grade-twothinkingisthedetectionofcontradictions.Grade-twothinkersdonotstampede easily,though often they fall into otherfault and lag behind.Grade-two thinking is awithdrawal,with eyes and

21、 ears open.It destroyswithout having the power to creat.It set mewatching the crowds cheering His Majesty theKing and asking myself what all the fuss wasabout,without giving me anything positive to putin the place of that heady patriotism.But therewere compensations.To hear people justify theirhabit

22、 of hunting foxes by claiming that the foxesliked it.To hear our Prime Minister talk about thegreat benefit we conferred on India by jailingpeople like Nehru and Gandhi.To hear Americanpoliticians talk about peace and refuse to join theLeague of Nations.Yes,there were moments ofdelight.26.But I was

23、growing toward adolescence and had toadmit that Mr.Houghton was not the only onewith an irresistible spring in his neck.I,too,feltthe compulsive hand of nature and began to findthat pointing out contradiction could be costly aswell as fun.There was Ruth,for example,aserious and attractive girl.I was

24、 an atheist at thetime.And she was a Methodist.But,alas,insteadof relying on the Holy Spirit toconvert me,Ruthwas foolish enough to open her pretty mouth inargument.She claimed that the Bible was literallyinspired.I countered by saying that the Catholicsbelieved in the literal inspiration of Saint J

25、eromesVulgate,andthetwobookswere different.Argument flagged.27.At last she remarked that there were an awful lotof Methodist,and they couldnt be wrong,couldthey not all those millions?That was too easy,said I restively(for the nearer you were to Ruth,the nicer she was to be near to)since there werem

26、ore Roman Catholics than Methodists anyway;and they couldnt be wrong,could they-not allthose hundreds of millions?An awful flicker ofdoubt appeared in her eyes（她眼中扑闪着疑虑）.I slid my arm around her waist and murmured thatif we were counting heads,the Buddhists were theboys for my money.She fled.The com

27、bination ofmy arm and those countless Buddhists was toomuch for her.28.That night her father visited my father and left,red-cheeked and indignant.I was given the thirddegree to find out what had happened.I lost Ruthand gained an undeserved reputation as a potentiallibertine.29.Grade-two thinking,tho

28、ugh it filled life with funand excitement,did not make for content.To findout the deficiencies of our elders satisfies theyoung ego but does not make for personal security.It took the swimmer some distance from the shoreand left him there,out of his depth.A typical grade-two thinker will say,What is

29、truth?There is still a higher grade of thoughtwhich says,What is truth?and sets out to find it.30.But these grade-one thinkers were few and farbetween.They did not visit my grammar school inthe flesh though they were there in books.Iaspired to them,because I now saw my hobby asan unsatisfactory thin

30、g if it went no further.If youset out to climb a mountain,however high youclimb,you have failed if you cannot reach the top.31.I therefore decided that I would be a grade-onethinker.I was irreverent at the best of times.Political and religious systems,social customs,loyalties and traditions,they all

31、 came tumblingdown like so many rotten apples off a tree.I cameup in the end with what must always remain thejustification for grade-one thinking.I devised acoherent system for living.It was a moral systemswhich was wholly logical.Of course,as I readi1yadimitted,conversion of the world to my way oft

32、hinking might be difficult,since my system didaway with a number of trifles,such as big business,centralized government,armies,marriage.32.It was Ruth all over again.I had some very goodfriends who stood by me,and still do.But myacquaintances vanished,taking the girls with them.young people seemed o

33、ddly contented with theworld as it was.A young navy officer got as rednecked as Mr.Houghton when I proposed a worldwithout a battleships in it.33.Had the game gone too far?In those prewar days,I stood to lose a great deal,for the sake of ahobby.34.Now you are expecting me to describe how I sawthe fo

34、lly of my ways and came back to thewarmnest,whereprejudicesarecalledloyalties,pointless actions are turned into customs byrepetition,and we are content to say we thinkwhen all we do is feel.35.But you would be wrong.I dropped my hobby andturned professional.Notes to the TextNotes to the Text1.About

35、the author1.About the authorWilliam Golding 1911-1993),a British writer whowon the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.and whois known especially for his novelLord of the Flies.Golding was born in Comwall and educated atBrasenoseCollege,Oxford.BeforeWWII,heworked as a writer,actor.and producer with s

36、malltheatre companies and as a teacher.During the warhe served in the Royal Navy in command of a rocketship.He returned to writing and teaching after thewar.Lord of the Flies did not appear until 1954when it was an immediate success.The intrinsiccruelty of man is at the heart of many of Goldingsnove

37、ls.He often presents isolated individuals orsmall groups in extreme situations dealing with manin his basic condition stripped of trappings,creatingthe quality of a fable.His novels are remarkable fortheir strikingly varied settings.2.She seemed frozen in eternal panic lest the bathShe seemed frozen

38、 in eternal panic lest the bathtowel slip down any farther;towel slip down any farther;(para.2)Lest is a conjunction often used with wordsexpressing fear to introduce the reason for aparticular emotion,here,eternal panic.Moreexamples:He was afraid lest they should take him for a spy.She was afraid l

39、est she should be dismissed.The word is formal and old-fashioned.3.Rodins ThinkerRodins Thinker(para.3)Auguste Rodin(84 01917)was a French sculptor.His most famous works are the Kiss and the Thinker.4.TheThe leopardleopard waswas nature,nature,andand hehe waswas beingbeingnatural.natural.(para.3)Was

40、 being is the past continuous tense form ofbe.When the verb be is used in the continuoustense(eitherpresentorpast)itmeansacting/behavinginamannerspecifiedbytheadjective that follows,e.g.I think Golding is being too critical when he saysthat nine-tenth of the population are grade-threethinkers.Dont y

41、ou think Lao Wang is being helpfultoday?Note Certain adjectives such as tall,large,green,etc.cannot be used with the continuous tense formsof be.5.He would stand before us,put his hands on hisHe would stand before us,put his hands on hiswaist and take a tremendous breath.waist and take a tremendous

42、breath.(para.19)Here,three parallel verb phrases are employed todescribe what Mr.Houghton used to do.Thismethod of expressing ideas of equal importance inthe same or similar grammatical form is calledPARALLELISM.The parallel construction can be classified into thefollowing categories:Ii t and series

43、,Exercises1.Study how these words are used.1.Study how these words are used.1)to slip1)to slip(l)to accidentally slide a short distance quickly or fallby slidingNot knowing that the ground was now coveredwith thin ice,he slipped and broke his arm.(2)to move quickly,smoothly,or secretlyWeare not goin

44、g to let these criminals slip throughour fingers.Nobody was aware how he had slipped into theroom.(3)to give someone something quietly or secretlyBefore I went he slipped a pistol into my handsaying I mightneed it.When he was sure that nobody was watching,heslipped the note through the window.If she

45、 is out,just slip the letter under the door.SlipSlipn.A slip ofA slip of paper(a small or narrow piece of paper)I remember I wrote it down on a slip of paper,butI cant find it now.I saw a slip of paper in the doorway,but I didntthink it was important,so I threw it away.A slip of the tongue/penA slip

46、 of the tongue/pen (something that you say orwrite when you meant to say or write somethingelse)Did I say that?That was a slip of the tongue.Ididnt mean it.2)2)lestlest conj.(fml)so as to prevent the possibility of;for fear thatHer health was such that she would not go out inthe sun even in winter l

47、est she have a sunstroke.Many parents say that they have to be slave driversto their children lest they cannot survive thebitter social competition when they grow up.This crazy man put his wife under lock and keywhenever he went out lest she see another man.3)to integrate:3)to integrate:to combine;t

48、o unite;to unify;to mix;to merge;to join or help someone to join in the lifeand customs of a group or societyIt is risky but necessary to integrate into theworld market.It took many years to integrate those millionsof immigrants.integratedintegratedadj.Today all public facilities are integrated.(nol

49、onger segregated)It is our hope to make all the courses andteaching materials integratedintegrationintegrationn.Some historians say that integration is alwaysfollowed by disintegration and the same is true viceversaThe best way to achieve national integrationprobablyisthroughthedevelopmentofinterdep

50、endent economic relations.integralintegraladj.Political reform is an integral aspect of ourmodernization effort.Taiwan is an integral part of our territory.4)rule n.4)rule n.(1)an official instruction about what is allowed orwhat should be done,especially in agame,organization,or job 规则This is the r