现代大学英语精读第四册 1a

　　Thinking as a Hobby

William Golding

While I was still a boy, I came to the conclusion that there were three grades of thinking;and that I myself could not think at all.

It was the headmaster of my grammar school who first brought the subject of thinkingbefore me. He had somestatuettes in his study. They stood on a high cupboard behind his desk. One was a lady wearing nothing but a bath towel. She seemed frozen in an eternal panic lest the bath towel slip down any farther, and since she had no arms, she was in an unfortunate position to pull the towel up again. Next to her, crouched 1 the statuette of a leopard 2, ready to spring down at the top drawer of a filing cabinet. Beyond the leopard was a naked, muscular gentleman, who sat, looking down, with his chin on his fist and his elbow on his knee. He seemed utterly 3 miserable 4.

Some time later, I learned about these statuettes. The headmaster had placed them where they would face delinquent 5 children, because they symbolized 6 to him to whole of life. The naked lady was the Venus. She was Love. She was not worried about the towel. She was just busy being beautiful. The leopard was Nature, and he was being natural. The naked, muscular gentleman was not miserable. He was Rodin's Thinker, an image of pure thought.

I had better explain that I was a frequent visitor to the headmaster's study, because of the latest thing I had done or left undone 7. As we now say, I was not integrated. I was, if anything, disintegrated 8. Whenever Ifound myself in a penal 9 position before the headmaster's desk, I would sink my head, and writhe 10 one shoe over the other.

The headmaster would look at me and say,

"What are wegoing to do with you?"

Well, what were they going to do with me? I would writhe my shoe some more and staredown at the worn rug.

"Look up, boy! Can't you look up?"

Then I would look at the cupboard, where the naked lady was frozen in her panic and themuscular gentleman contemplated 12 the hindquarters of the leopard in endless gloom. I had nothing to say to the headmaster. His spectacles caught the light so that you could see nothing human behind them. There was no possibility of communication.

"Don't you ever think at all?"

No, I didn't think, wasn't thinking, couldn't think - I was simply waiting in anguish 13 for the interview to stop.

"Then you'd better learn - hadn't you?"

On one occasion the headmaster leaped to his feet, reached up and put Rodin's masterpiece on the desk before me.

"That's what a man looks like when he's really thinking."

Clearly there was something missing in me. Nature had endowed the rest of the human race with a sixth sense and left me out. But like someone born deaf, but bitterly determined 14 to find out about sound, I watched my teachers to find outabout thought.

There was Mr. Houghton. He was always telling me to think. With a modest satisfaction, he would tell that he had thought a bit himself. Then why did he spend so much time drinking? Or was there more sense in drinking than there appeared to be? But if not, and if drinking were in fact ruinous to health - and Mr. Houghton was ruined, there was no doubt about that - why was he always talking about the clean life and the virtues 15 of fresh air?

Sometimes, exalted 16 by his own oratory 17, he would leap from his desk and hustle 18 usoutside into a hideous 19 wind.

"Now, boys! Deep breaths! Feel it right down inside you - huge draughts 20 of God's good air!"

He would stand before us, put his hands on his waist and take a tremendous breath. You could hear the wind trapped in his chest and struggling with all the unnatural 21 impediments. His body would reel with shock and his face go white at the unaccustomed visitation. He would stagger back to his desk and collapse 22 there, useless for the rest of the morning.

Mr. Houghton was given to high-minded monologues 23 about the good life, sexless and full of duty. Yet in the middle of one of these monologues, if a girl passed the window, his neck would turn of itself and he would watch her out of sight. In this instance, he seemed to me ruled not by thought but by an invisible and irresistible 24 spring in his nack.

His neck was an object of great interest to me. Normally it bulged 26 a bit over his collar.But Mr. Houghton had fought in the First World War alongside both Americans and French, and had come to a settled detestation of both countries. If either country happened to be prominent in current affairs, no argument could make Mr. Houghton think well of it. He would bang the desk, his neck would bulge 25 still further and go red. "You can say what you like," he would cry, "but I've thought about this - and I know what I think!"

Mr. Houghton thought with his neck.

This was my introduction to the nature of what is commonly called thought. Through them I discovered that thought is often full of unconscious prejudice, ignorance, and hypocrisy 27. It will lecture on disinterested 28 purity while its neck is being remorselessly twisted toward a skirt. Technically 29, it is about as proficient 30 as most businessmen's golf, as honest as most politician's intentions, or as coherent as most books that get written. It is what I came to call grade-three thinking, though more properly, it is feeling, rather than thought.

True, often there is a kind of innocence 31 in prejudices, but in those days I viewed grade-three thinking with contempt and mockery. I delighted to confront a pious 32 lady who hated the Germans with the proposition that we should love our enemies. She taught me a great truth in dealing 33 with grade-three thinkers; because of her, I no longer dismiss lightly a mental process which for nine-tenths of the population is the nearest they will ever get to thought. They have immense solidarity 34. We had better respect them, for we are outnumbered and surrounded. A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

Grade-two thinking is the detection of contradictions. Grade-two thinkers do not stampede easily, though often they fal linto the other fault and lag behind. Grade-two thinking is a withdrawal 35, with eyes and ears open. It destroys without having the power to create. It set me watching the crowds cheering His Majesty 36 the King and asking myself what all the fuss was about, without giving me anything positive to put in the place of that heady patriotism 37. But there were compensations. To hear people justify 38 their habit of hunting foxes by claiming that the foxes like it. To her our Prime Minister talk about the great benefit we conferred on India by jailing people like Nehru and Gandhi. To hear American politicians talk about peace and refuse to join the League of Nations. Yes, there were moments of delight.

But I was growing toward adolescence 39 and had to admit that Mr. Houghton was not the only one with an irresistible spring in his neck. I, too, felt the compulsive hand of nature and began to find that pointing out contradiction could be costly 40 as well as fun. There was Ruth, for example, a serious and attractive girl. I was an atheist 41 at the time. And she was a Methodist. But, alas 42, instead of relying on the Holy Spirit to convert me, Ruth was foolish enough to open her pretty mouth in argument. She claimed that the Bible was literally 43 inspired. I countered by saying that the Catholics believed in the literal inspiration of Saint Jerome's Vulgate, and the two books were different. Argument flagged.

At last she remarked that there were an awful lot of Methodists and they couldn't bewrong, could they - not all those millions? That was too easy, said I restively 44 (for the nearer you were to Ruth, the nicer she was to be near to) since there were more Roman Catholics than Methodists anyway; and they couldn't be wrong, could they - not all those hundreds of millions? An awful flicker 45 of doubt appeared in her eyes. I slid my arm round her waist and murmured that if we were counting heads, the Buddhists 46 were the boys for my money. She fled. The combination of my arm and those countless 47 Buddhists was too much for her.

That night her father visited my father and left, red-cheeked and indignant. I was given the third degree to find out what had happened. I lost Ruth and gained an undeserved reputation as a potential libertine 48.

Grade-two thinking, though it filled life with fun and excitement, did not make for content. To find out the deficiencies of our elders satisfies the young ego 11 but does not make for personal security. It took the swimmer some distance from the shore and left him there, out of his depth. A typical grade-two thinker will say, "What is truth?" There is still a higher grade of thought which says, "What is truth?" and sets out to find it.

But these grade-one thinkers were few and far between. They did not visit my grammar school in the flesh though they were there in books. I aspired 49 to them, because I now saw my hobby as an unsatisfactory thing if it went no further. If you set out to climb a mountain, however high you climb, you have failed if you cannot reach the top.

I therefore decided 50 that I would be a grade-one thinker. I was irrelevant 51 at the best of times. Political and religious systems, social customs, loyalties 52 and traditions, they all came tumbling down like so many rotten apples off a tree. I came up in the end with what mustalways remain the justification 53 for grade-one thinking. I devised a coherent system for living. It was a moral system, which was wholly logical. Of course, as I readily admitted, conversion 54 of the world to my way of thinking might be difficult, since my system did away with a number of trifles, such as big business, centralized government, armies, marriage...

It was Ruth all over again. I had some very good friends who stood by me, and still do. But my acquaintances vanished, taking the girls with them. Young people seemed oddly contented 55 with the world as it was. A young navy officer got as red-necked as Mr. Houghton when I proposed a world without any battleships in it.

Had the game gone too far? In those prewar days, I stood to lose a great deal, for the sake of a hobby.

Now you are expecting me to describe how I saw the folly 56 of my ways and came back to the warm nest, where prejudices are called loyalties, pointless actions are turned into customs by repetition, where we are content to say we think when all we do is feel.

But you would be wrong. I dropped my hobby and turned professional.