现代大学英语精读4 1b

　　The Pleasures of Learning*/Gilbert Highet

As most schools are set up today, learning is compulsory 1. It is an "Ought: even worse, a Must, enforced by regular hours and rigid 2 discipline. And the young sneer 3 at the Oughts and resist the Musts with all their energy. The feeling often lasts through a lifetime. For too many of us, learning appears to be a surrender of our own will to external direction, a sort of enslavement.

This is a mistake. Learning is a natural pleasure, inborn 4 and instinctive 5, one of the essential pleasures of the human race. Watch a small child, at an age too young to have had any mental habits implanted by training. Some delightful 6 films made by the late Dr. Arnold Gesell of Yale University show little creatures who can barely talk investigating problems with all the zeal 7 and excitement of explorers, making discoveries with the passion and absorption of dedicated 8 scientists. At the end of each successful investigation 9, there comes over each tiny face an expression of pure heartfelt pleasure.

When Archimedes discovered the principle of specific gravity by observing his own displacement 10 of water in a bathtub, he leaped out with delight, shouting, "Heureka, heureka!" ("I have found it, I have found it!") The instinct which prompted his outburst, and the rapture 11 of its gratification, are possessed 12 by all children.

But if the pleasure of learning is universal, why are there so many dull, incurious people in the world? It is because they were made dull, by bad teaching, by isolation 13, by surrender to routine; sometimes, too, by the pressure of hard work and poverty; or by the toxin 14 of riches, with all their ephemeral and trivial delights. With luck, resolution and guidance, however, the human mind can survive not only poverty but even wealth.

This pleasure is not confined to learning from textbooks, which are too often tedious. But it does include learning from books. Sometimes, when I stand in a big library like the Library of Congress, or Butler Library at Columbia, and gaze round me at the millions of books, I feel a sober, earnest delight hard to convey except by a metaphor 15. These are not lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice, as inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed by electric waves beyond the range of our hearing; and just as the touch of button on our stereo will fill the room with music, so by opening one of these volumes, one can call into range a voice far distant in time and space, and hear it speaking, mind to mind, heart to heart.

But, far beyond books, learning means keeping the mind open and active to receive all kinds of experience. One of the best-informed men I ever knew was a cowboy who rarely read a newspaper and never a book but who had ridden many thousands of miles through one of the western states. He knew his state as thoroughly 16 as a surgeon knows the human body. He loved it, and understood it. Not a mountain, not a canyon 17 which had not much to tell him; not a change in the weather that he could not interpret. And so, among the pleasures of learning, we should include travel: travel with an open mind, an alert eye and a wish to understand other peoples, other places, rather than looking in them for a mirror image of oneself. If I were a young man today I resolve to see-no, to learn all the 50 states before I was 35.

Learning also means learning to practice, or at least to appreciate, an art. Every new art you learn appears like a new window on the universe; it is like acquiring a new sense. Because I was born and brought up in Glasgow, Scotland, a hideous 18 19th century industrial city, I did not understand the slightest thing about architecture until I was in my 20s. Since then, I have learned a little about the art, and it has been a constant delight. In my mind I have a permanent album containing bright pictures of the Blue Mosque 19 in Istanbul, the little church of St. John Nepomuk in Munich, the exquisite 20 acropolis of Lindos standing 21 high above the shining Rhodian sea.

Crafts, too, are well worth exploring. A friend of mine took up bookbinding because his doctor ordered him to do something that would give him relaxation 22 and activity without tension. It was a difficult challenge at first, but he gradually learned to square off the paper and the boards, sew the pages, fasten on the backstrip, and maintain precision and neatness throughout.

Within a few years, this initially 23 rather dull hobby had led him into fresh fields of enjoyment 24. He began to collect fine books from the past five centuries; he developed an interest in printing; eventually, he started a private press and had the joy of producing his own elegant books. Many other crafts there are, and most of them contain one essential pleasure: the pleasure of making something that will last.

As for reading books, this contains two different delights. One is the pleasure of apprehending 25 the unexpected, such as when one meets a new author who has a new vision of the world. The other pleasure is of deepening one's knowledge of a special field. One might enjoy reading about the Civil War, and then be drawn 26 to a particularly moving part of it-the underground railway, say, which carried escaping slaves northward 27 to freedom. One would then be impelled 28 to visit the chief way stations along the route, reconstructing the lives of those resolute 29 organizers and thankful fugitives 30.

Tradition says that Ptolemy, the great astronomer 31 of the Greek and Roman world, worked peacefully in his observatory 32 under the clear skies of northern Egypt for 40 years. Many and great were his explorations of the starry 33 universe. For instance, he described astronomical 34 refraction in a way that was not improved for over 1000 years. Ptolemy wrote just one poem, but it expressed his whole life:

Mortal I know I am, short-lived; and yet, whenever

I watch the multitude of swirling 35 stars,

then I no longer tread this earth, but rise to feast

with God, and enjoy the food of the immortals 36.

Learning extends our lives (as Ptolemy said) into new dimensions. It is cumulative 37. Instead of diminishing in time, like health and strength, its returns go on increasing, provided...

Provided that you aim, throughout your life, as you continue learning, to integrate your thought, to make it harmonious 38. If you happen to be an engineer and also enjoy singing in a glee club, connect these two activities. They unite in you; they are not in conflict. Both choral singing and engineering are examples of the architectonic ability of man: of his power to make a large plan and to convey it clearly to others. Both are esthetic 39 and depend much on symmetry. Think about them not as though they were dissociated, but as though each were one aspect of a single unity 40. You will do them better, and be happier.

This is hard advice to give to young students. They are explosive, exploratory and insurrectionary. Instead of intergrating their lives, they would rather seek outward, and even try to move in opposite directions simultaneously 41.

Much unhappiness has been suffered by those people who have never recognized that it is as necessary to make themselves into whole and harmonious personalities 42 as to keep themselves clean, healthy and financially solvent 43. Wholeness of the mind and spirit is not a quality conferred by nature, or by God. It is like health, virtue 44 and knowledge. Man has the capacity to attain 45 it; but to achieve it depends on his own efforts. It needs a long, deliberate effort of the mind and the emotions, and even the body.

During our earthly life, the body gradually dies; even the emotions become duller. But the mind in most of us continues to live, and even grows more lively and active, enjoys itself more, works and plays with more expansion and delight.

Many people have played themselves to death, or eaten and drunk themselves to death. Nobody has ever thought himself to death. The chief danger confronting us is not age. It is laziness, sloth 46, routine, stupidity,--forcing their way in like wind through the shutters 47, seeping 48 into the cellar like swamp water.

Many who avoid learning, or abandon it, find that life is drained dry. They spend 30 years in a club chair looking glumly 49 out at the sand and the ocean; on a porch swing waiting for somebody to drive down the road. But that is not how to live.

No learner has ever run short of subjects to explore. The pleasures of learning are indeed pleasures. In fact, the word should be changed. The true name is happiness. You can live longest and best and most rewardingly by attaining 50 and preserving the happiness of learning.