文字处理机英语100个经典故事

2021年1月11日发(作者：艾育华)
1
We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where
people first learned to write. But there are some parts of the world where even
now people cannot write. The only way that they can preserve their history is to
recount it as sagas--legends handed down from one generation of story-tellers
to another. These legends are useful because they can tell us something about
migrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what they
did. Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian
peoples now living in the Pacific Islands came from. The sagas of these people
explain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.
But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their
sagas, if they had any, are forgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor
legends to help them to find out where the first 'modern men' came from.
Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, be-
cause this is easier to shape than other kinds. They may also have used wood
and skins, but these have rotted away. Stone does not decay, and so the tools of
long ago have remained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without
trace.
2
Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends ? Because they destroy so
many insects, and insects include some of the greatest enemies of the human
race. Insects would make it impossible for us to live in the world; they would
devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection
we get from insect-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat
insects but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed
by spiders. Moreover, unlike some of the other insect eaters, spiders never do
the least harm to us or our belongings.
Spiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them.
One can tell the difference almost at a glance for a spider always has eight legs
and an insect never more than six.
How many spiders are engaged in this work on our behalf ? One authority on
spiders made a census of the spiders in a grass field in the south of England, and
he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre, that is something
like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy for
at least half the year in killing insects. It is impossible to make more than the
wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures, not content
with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that the weight of all the in-
sects destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would be greater than the total
weight of all the human beings in the country.
T. H. GILLESPIE Spare that Spider from The Listener
3
Modern alpinists try to climb mountains by a route which will give them good
sport, and the more difficult it is, the more highly it is regarded. In the pioneering
days, however, this was not the case at all. The early climbers were looking for
the easiest way to the top because the summit was the prize they sought, especi-
ally if it had never been attained before. It is true that during their explorations
they often faced difficulties and dangers of the most perilous nature, equipped
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in a manner which would make a modern climber shudder at the thought, but
they did not go out of their way to court such excitement. They had a single aim,
a solitary goal--the top!
It is hard for us to realize nowadays how difficult it was for the pioneers. Ex-
cept for one or two places such as Zermatt and Chamonix, which had rapidly
become popular, Alpine villages tended to be impoverished settlements cut off
from civilization by the high mountains. Such inns as there were were generally
dirty and flea- ridden; the food simply local cheese accompanied by bread often
twelve months old, all washed down with coarse wine. Often a valley boasted no
inn at all, and climbers found shelter wherever they could--sometimes with the
local priest (who was usually as poor as his parishioners), sometimes with shep-
herds or cheesemakers. Invariably the background was the same: dirt and
poverty, and very uncomfortable. For men accustomed to eating seven- course
dinners and sleeping between fine linen sheets at home, the change to the Alps
must have been very hard indeed.
4
In the Soviet Union several cases have been reported recently of people who
can read and detect colours with their fingers, and even see through solid doors
and walls. One case concerns an 'eleven-year-old schoolgirl, Vera Petrova, who
has normal vision but who can also perceive things with different parts of her
skin, and through solid walls. This ability was first noticed by her father. One
day she came into his office and happened to put her hands on the door of a
locked safe. Suddenly she asked her father why he kept so many old newspapers
locked away there, and even described the way they were done up in bundles.
Vera's curious talent was brought to the notice of a scientific research institute
in the town of UIyanovsk, near where she lives, and in April she was given a
series of tests by a special commission of the Ministry of Health of the Russian
Federal Republic. During these tests she was able to read a newspaper through
an opaque screen and, stranger still, by moving her elbow over a child's game of
Lotto she was able to describe the figures and colours printed on it; and, in an-
other instance, wearing stockings and slippers, to make out with her foot the
outlines and colours of a picture hidden under a carpet. Other experiments
showed that her knees and shoulders had a similar sensitivity. During all these
tests Vera was blindfold; and, indeed, except when blindfold she lacked the
ability to perceive things with her skin. lt was also found that although she
could perceive things with her fingers this ability ceased the moment her hands
were wet.
Lesson 5
The gorilla is something of a paradox in the African scene. One thinks one
knows him very well. For a hundred years or more he has been killed, captured,
and imprisoned, in zoos. His bones have been mounted in natural history
museums everywhere, and he has always exerted a strong fascination upon scien-
tists and romantics alike. He is the stereotyped monster of the horror films and
the adventure books, and an obvious (though not perhaps strictly scientific) link
with our ancestral past.
Yet the fact is we know very little about gorillas. No really satisfactory photo-
graph has ever been taken of one in a wild state, no zoologist, however intrepid,
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has been able to keep the animal under close and constant observation in the
dark jungles in which he lives. Carl Akeley, the American naturalist, led two
expeditions in the nineteen-twenties, and now lies buried among the animals he
loved so well. But even he was unable to discover how long the gorilla lives, or
how or why it dies, nor was he able to define the exact social pattern of the
family groups, or indicate the final extent of their intelligence. All this and many
other things remain almost as much a mystery as they were when the French
explorer Du Chaillu first described the animal to the civilized world a century
ago. The Abominable Snowman who haunts the imagination of climbers in the
Himalayas is hardly more elusive.
Lesson 6
People are always talking about' the problem of youth '. If there is one--which
I take leave to doubt-- then it is older people who create it, not the young them-
selves. Let us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all
human beings--people just like their elders. There is only one difference be-
tween an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before
him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where
the rub is.
When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain--that I was
a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded
as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing, being a problem gives
you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the young are busily engaged
in seeking.
I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom, and they have not a
dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort. They are not anxious
social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things. All this seems tO
me to link them with life, and the origins of things. It's as if they were in some
sense cosmic beings in violent an lovely contrast with us suburban creatures.
All that is in my mind when I meet a young person. He may be conceited, ill-
mannered, presumptuous of fatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary
cliches about respect for elders--as if mere age were a reason for respect. I
accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he
is wrong.
Lesson 7
I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill be-
tween the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet
one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on
the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936
Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies
of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.
Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive. You play to win,
and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win. On the village
green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it
is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as soon as the question of
prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be dis-
graced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who
has played even in a school football match knows this. At the international level
3
sport is frankly mimic warfare. But the significant thing is not the behaviour of
the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the
nations. who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously
believe-- at any rate for short periods--that running, jumping and kicking a ball
are tests of national virtue.
Lesson 8
Parents have to do much less for their children today than they used to do, and
home has become much less of a workshop. Clothes can be bought ready made,
washing can go to the laundry, food can be bought cooked, canned or preserved,
bread is baked and delivered by the baker, milk arrives on the doorstep, meals
can be had at the restaurant, the works' canteen, and the school dining-room.
It is unusual now for father to pursue his trade or other employment at home,
and his children rarely, if ever, see him at his place of work. Boys are therefore
seldom trained to follow their father's occupation, and in many towns they have
a fairly wide choice of employment and so do girls. The young wage- earner often
earns good money, and soon acquires a feeling of economic independence. In
textile areas it has long been customary for mothers to go out to work, but this
practice has become so widespread that the working mother is now a not un-
usual factor in a child's home life, the number of married women in employment
having more than doubled in the last twenty-five years. With mother earning
and his older children drawing substantial wages father is seldom the dominant
figure that he still was at the beginning of the century. When mother works
economic advantages accrue, but children lose something of great value if
mother's employment prevents her from being home to greet them when they
return from school.
Lesson 9
Not all sounds made by animals serve as language, and we have only to turn to
that extraordinary discovery of echo- location in bats to see a case in which the
voice plays a strictly utilitarian role.
To get a full appreciation of what this means we must turn first to some recent
human inventions. Everyone knows that if he shouts in the vicinity of a wall or
a mountainside, an echo will come back. The further off this solid obstruction
the longer time will elapse for the return of the echo. A sound made by tapping
on the hull of a ship will be reflected from the sea bottom, and by measuring the
time interval between the taps and the receipt of the echoes the depth of the
sea at that point can be calculated. So was born the echo-sounding apparatus,
now in general use in ships. Every solid object will reflect a sound, varying ac-
cording to the size and nature of the object. A shoal of fish will do this. So it is a
comparatively simple step from locating the sea bottom to locating a shoal of
fish. With experience, and with improved apparatus, it is now possible not only
to locate a shoal but to tell if it is herring, cod, or other well-known fish, by the
pattern of its echo.
A few years ago it was found that certain bats emit squeaks and by receiving
the echoes they could locate and steer clear of obstacles--or locate flying insects
on which they feed. This echo- location in bats is often compared with radar, the
principle of which is similar.
Lesson 10
4
In our new society there is a growing dislike of original, creative men. The mani-
pulated do not understand them; the manipulators fear them. The tidy com-
mittee men regard them with horror, knowing that no pigeonholes can be found
for them. We could do with a few original, creative men in our political life--if
only to create some enthusiasm, release some energy--but where are they? We
are asked to choose between various shades of the negative. The engine is falling
to pieces while the joint owners of the car argue whether the footbrake or the
handbrake should be applied. Notice how the cold, colourless men, without
ideas and with no other passion but a craving for success, get on in this society,
capturing one plum after another and taking the juice and taste out of them.
Sometimes you might think the machines we worship make all the chief appoint-
ments, promoting the human beings who seem closest to them. Between mid-
night and dawn, when sleep will not come and all the old wounds begin to ache,
I often have a nightmare vision of a future world in which there are billions of
people, all numbered and registered, with not a gleam of genius anywhere, not
an original mind, a rich personality, on the whole packed globe. The twin ideals
of our time, organization and quantity, will have won for ever.
Lesson 11
Alfred the Great acted as his own spy, visiting Danish camps disguised as a
minstrel. In those days wandering minstrels were welcome everywhere. They
were not fighting men, and their harp was their passport. Alfred had learned
many of their ballads in his youth, and could vary his programme with acrobatic
tricks and simple conjuring.
While Alfred's little army slowly began to gather at Athelney, the king himself
set out to penetrate the camp of Guthrum, the commander of the Danish in-
vaders. These had settled down for the winter at Chippenham: thither Alfred
went. He noticed at once that discipline was slack: the Danes had the self-
confidence of conquerors, and their security precautions were casual. They lived
well, on the proceeds of raids on neighbouring regions. There they collected
women as well as food and drink, and a life of ease had made them soft.
Alfred stayed in the camp a week before he returned to Athelney. The force
there assembled was trivial compared with the Danish horde. But Alfred had
deduced that the Danes were no longer fit for prolonged battle : and that their
commissariat had no organization, but depended on irregular raids.
So, faced with the Danish advance, Alfred did not risk open battle but harried
the enemy. He was constantly on the move, drawing the Danes after him. His
patrols halted the raiding parties: hunger assailed the Danish army. Now Alfred
began a long series of skirmishes--and within a month the Danes had sur-
rendered. The episode could reasonably serve as a unique epic of royal espionage!
Lesson 12
What characterizes almost all Hollywood pictures is their inner emptiness. This
is compensated for by an outer impressiveness. Such impressiveness usually
takes the form of truly grandiose realism. Nothing is spared to make the setting,
the costumes, all of the surface details correct. These efforts help to mask the
essential emptiness of the characterization, and the absurdities and trivialities of
the plots. The houses look like houses, the streets look like streets; the people
look and talk like people; but they are empty of humanity, credibility, and moti-
5
vation. Needless to say, the disgraceful censorship code is an important factor
in predetermining the content of these pictures. But the code does not disturb
the profits, nor the entertainment value of the films; it merely helps to prevent
them from being credible. It isn't too heavy a burden for the industry to bear.
In addition to the impressiveness of the settings, there is a use of the camera,
which at times seems magical. But of what human import is all this skill, all this
effort, all this energy in the production of effects, when the story, the representa-
tion of life is hollow, stupid, banal, childish ?
Lesson 13
Oxford has been ruined by the motor industry. The peace which Oxford once
knew, and which a great university city should always have, has been swept ruth-
lessly away; and no benefactions and research endowments can make up for the
change in character which the city has suffered. At six in the morning the old
courts shake to the roar of buses taking the next shift to Cowley and Pressed
Steel, great lorries with a double deck cargo of cars for export lumber past
Magdalen and the University Church. Loads of motor-engines are hurried
hither and thither and the streets are thronged with a population which has no
interest in learning and knows no studies beyond servo-systems and distributors,
compression ratios and camshafts.
Theoretically the marriage of an old seat of learning and tradition with a new
and wealthy industry might be expected to produce some interesting children.
It might have been thought that the culture of the university would radiate out
and transform the lives of the workers. That this has not happened may be the
fault of the university, for at both Oxford and Cambridge the colleges tend to
live in an era which is certainly not of the twentieth century, and upon a planet
which bears little resemblance to the war-torn Earth. Wherever the fault may
lie the fact remains that it is the theatre at Oxford and not at Cambridge which
is on the verge of extinction, and the only fruit of the combination of industry
and the rarefied atmosphere of learning is the dust in the streets, and a pathetic
sense of being lost which hangs over some of the colleges.
Lesson 14
Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there is a justi-
fication for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be
killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been
cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known
human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do,
the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it-
so at least it seems to me---- is to make your interests gradually wider and more
impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes in-
creasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should
be like a river--small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing
passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider,
the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any
visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual
being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from
the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And it, with the
decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will be not unwelcome.
6
I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what
I can no longer do, and content in the thought that what was possible has been
done.
Lesson 15
When anyone opens a current account at a bank, he is lending the bank money,
repayment of which he may demand at any time, either in cash or by drawing a
cheque in favour of another person. Primarily, the banker- customer relationship
is that of debtor and creditor--who is which depending on whether the cus-
tomer's account is in credit or is overdrawn. But, in addition to that basically
simple concept, the bank and its customer owe a large number of obligations to
one another. Many of these obligations can give rise to problems and complica-
tions but a bank customer, unlike, say, a buyer of goods, cannot complain that
the law is loaded against him.
The bank must obey its customer's instructions, and not those of anyone else.
When, for example, a customer first opens an account, he instructs the bank to
debit his account only in respect of cheques drawn by gives the bank
specimens of his signature, and there is a very firm rule that the bank has no
right or authority to pay out a customer's money on a cheque on which its cus-
tomer's signature has been makes no difference that the forgery may
have been a very skilful one: the bank must recognize its customer's signature.
For this reason there is no risk to the customer in the modern practice, adopted
by some banks, of printing the customer's name on his cheques. If this facilitates
forgery it is the bank which will lose, not the customer.
Lesson 16
The deepest holes of all are made for oil,and they go down to as much as 25,000
feet. But we do not need to send men down to get the oil out, as we must with
other mineral deposits. The holes are only borings, less than a foot in diameter.
My particular experience is largely in oil, and the search for oil has done more to
improve deep drilling than any other mining activity. When it has been decided
where we are going to drill, we put up at the surface an oil derrick. It has to be
tall because it is like a giant block and tackle, and we have to lower into the
ground and haul out of th. ground great lengths of drill pipe which are rotated
by an engine at the top and are fitted with a cutting bit at the bottom.
The geologist needs to know what rocks the drill has reached, so every so often
a sample is obtained with a coring bit. It cuts a clean cylinder of rock, from which
can be seen he strata the drill has been cutting through. Once we get down to
the oil,it usually flows to the surface because great pressure, either from gas or
water,is pushing it. This pressure must be under control,and we control it by
means of the mud which we circulate down the drill pipe. We endeavour to
avoid the old, romantic idea of a gusher, which wastes oil and gas. We want it to
stay down the hole until we can lead it off in a controlled manner.
Lesson 17
The fact that we are not sure what 'intelligence' is, nor what is passed on, does
not prevent us from finding it a very useful working concept, and placing a cer-
tain amount of reliance on tests which 'measure' it.
In an intelligence test we take a sample of an individual's ability to solve
puzzles and problems of various kinds, and if we have taken a representative
7
sample it will allow us to predict successfully the level of performance he will
reach in a wide variety of occupations.
This became of particular importance when, as a result of the 1944 Education
Act, secondary schooling for all became law, and grammar schools, with the ex-
ception of a small number of independent foundation schools, became available
to the whole population. Since the number of grammar schools in the country
could accommodate at most approximately 25 per cent of the total child popu-
lation of eleven-plus, some kind of selection had to be made. Narrowly academic
examinations and tests were felt, quite rightly, to be heavily weighted in favour
of children who had had the advantage of highly-academic primary schools and
academically biased homes. Intelligence tests were devised to counteract this
narrow specialization, by introducing problems which were not based on specifi-
cally scholastically- acquired knowledge. The intelligence test is an attempt to
assess the general ability of any child to think, reason, judge, analyse and syn-
tiesize by presenting him with situations, both verbal and practical, which are
within his range of competence and understanding.
Lesson18
Two factors weigh heavily against the effectiveness of scientific in in-
dustry. One is the general atmosphere of secrecy in which it is carried out, the
other the lack of freedom of the individual research worker. In so far as any
inquiry is a secret one, it naturally limits all those engaged in carrying it out
from effective contact with their fellow scientists either in other countries or in
universities, or even , often enough , in other departments of the same firm. The
degree of secrecy naturally varies considerably. Some of the bigger firms are en-
gaged in researches which are of such general and fundamental nature that it is a
positive advantage to them not to keep them secret. Yet a great many processes
depending on such research are sought for with complete secrecy until the stage
at which patents can be taken out. Even more processes are never patented at all
but kept as secret processes. This applies particularly to chemical industries,
where chance discoveries play a much larger part than they do in physical and
mechanical industries. Sometimes the secrecy goes to such an extent that the
whole nature of the research cannot be mentioned. Many firms, for instance,
have great difficulty in obtaining technical or scientific books from libraries be-
cause they are unwilling to have their names entered as having taken out such
and such a book for fear the agents of other firms should be able to trace the kind
of research they are likely to be undertaking.
Lesson19
A gentleman is, rather than does. He is interested in nothing in a professional
way. He is allowed to cultivate hobbies, even eccentricities, but must not prac-
tise a vocation. He must know how to ride and shoot and cast a fly. He should
have relatives in the army and navy and at least one connection in the diplo-
matic service. But there are weaknesses in the English gentleman's ability to rule
us today. He usually knows nothing of political economy and less about how
foreign countries are governed. He does not respect learning and prefers 'sport '.
The problem set for society is not the virtues of the type so much as its adequacy
for its function, and here grave difficulties arise. He refuses to consider suf-
ficiently the wants of the customer, who must buy, not the thing he desires but
8
the thing the English gentleman wants to sell. He attends inadequately to techno-
logical development. Disbelieving in the necessity of large-scale production in
the modern world, he is passionately devoted to excessive secrecy, both in finance
and method of production. He has an incurable and widespread nepotism in
appointment, discounting ability and relying upon a mystic entity called
'character,' which means, in a gentleman's mouth, the qualities he traditionally
possesses himself. His lack of imagination and the narrowness of his social loyal-
ties have ranged against him one of the fundamental estates of the realm. He is
incapable of that imaginative realism which admits that this is a new world to
which he must adjust himself and his institutions, that every privilege he formely
took as of right he can now attain only by offering proof that it is directly relevant
to social welfare.
Lesson20
In the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physio-
logical and mental state of the workers has been completely neglected. Modern
industry is based on the conception of the maximum production at lowest cost,
in order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much money as
possible. It has expanded without any idea of the true nature of the human beings
who run the machines, and without giving any consideration to the effects pro-
duced on the individuals and on their descendants by the artificial mode of exist-
ence imposed by the factory. The great cities have been built with no regard for
us. The shape and dimensions of the skyscrapers depend entirely on the neces-
sity of obtaining the maximum income per square foot of ground, and of offering
to the tenants offices and apartments that please them. This caused the construc-
tion of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowded
together. Civilized men like such a way of living. While they enjoy the comfort
and banal luxury of their dwelling,they do not realize that they are deprived of
the necessities of life. The modern city consists of monstrous edifices and of
dark, narrow streets full of petrol fumes,coal dust, and toxic gases, torn by the
noise of the taxi-cabs, lorries and buses, and thronged ceaselessly by great
crowds. Obviously, it has no been planned for the good of its inhabitants.
Lesson21
In the early days of the settlement of Australia, enterprising settlers unwisely
introduced the European rabbit. This rabbit had no natural enemies in the An-
tipodes, so that it multiplied with that promiscuous abandon characteristic of
rabbits. It overran a whole continent. It caused devastation by burrowing and
by devouring the herbage which might have maintained millions of sheep and
cattle. Scientists discovered that this particular variety of rabbit (and apparently
no other animal) was susceptible to a fatal virus disease, myxomatosis. By infect-
ing animals and letting them loose in the burrows, local epidemics of this disease
could be created. Later it was found that there was a type of mosquito which
acted as the carrier of this disease and passed it on to the rabbits. So while the
rest of the world was trying to get rid of mosquitoes, Australia was encouraging
this one. It effectively spread the disease all over the continent and drastically
reduced the rabbit population. lt later became apparent that rabbits were de-
veloping a degree of resistance to this disease, so that the rabbit population was
unlikely to be completely exterminated. There were hopes, however, that the
9
problem of the rabbit would become manageable.
Ironically, Europe, which had bequeathed the rabbit as a pest to Australia
acquired this man-made disease as a pestilence. A French physician decided to
get rid of the wild rabbits on his own estate and introduced myxomatosis. It did
not, however, remain within the confines of his estate. It spread through France
where wild rabbits are not generally regarded as a pest but as a sport and a useful
food supply, and it spread to Britain where wild rabbits are regarded as a pest
but where domesticated rabbits, equally susceptible to the disease, are the basis
of a profitable fur industry. The question became one of whether Man could con-
trol the disease he had invented.
Lesson22
There has long been a superstition among mariners that porpoises will save
drowning men by pushing them to the surface, or protect them from sharks by
surrounding them in defensive formation. Marine Studio biologists have pointed
out that, however intelligent they may be, it is probably a mistake to credit dol-
phins with any motive of life-saving. On the occasions when they have pushed to
shore an unconscious human being they have much more likely done it out of
curiosity or for sport,as in riding the bow waves of a ship. In 1928 some porpoises
were photographed working like beavers to push ashore a waterlogged mattress.
If, as has been reported, they have protected humans from sharks, it may have
been because curiosity attracted them and because the scent of a possible meal
attracted the sharks. Porpoises and sharks are natural enemies. It is possible
that upon such an occasion a battle ensued, with the sharks being driven away
or killed.
Whether it be bird, fish or beast, the porpoise is intrigued with anything that
is alive. They are constantly after the turtles, the Ferdinands of marine life, who
peacefully submit to all sorts of indignities. One young calf especially enjoyed
raising a turtle to the surface with his snout and then shoving him across the
tank like an aquaplane. Almost any day a young porpoise may be seen trying
to turn a 300-pound sea turtle over by sticking his snout under the edge of his
shell and pushing up for dear life. This is not easy, and may require two porpoises
working together. In another game, as the turtle swims across the oceanarium,
the first porpoise swoops down from above and butts his shell with his belly.
This knocks the turtle down several feet. He no sooner recovers his equilibrium
than the next porpoise comes along and hits him another crack. Eventually the
turtle has been butted all the way down to the floor of the tank. He is now satis-
fied merely to try to stand up, but as soon as he does so a porpoise knocks him
flat. The turtle at last gives up by pulling his feet under his shell and the game
is over.
Lesson23
It is fairly clear that the sleeping period must have some function, and because
there is so much of it the function would seem to be important. Speculations
about its nature have been going on for literally thousands of years, and one odd
finding that makes the problem puzzling is that it looks very much as if sleeping
is not simply a matter of giving the body a rest.' Rest ', in terms of muscle relaxa-
tion and so on, can be achieved by a brief period lying, or even sitting down. The
body's tissues are self- repairing and self-restoring to a degree, and function best
10
when more or less continuously active. In fact a basic amount of movement occurs
during sleep which is specifically concerned with preventing muscle inactivity.
If it is not a question of resting the body, then perhaps it is the brain that needs
resting? This might be a plausible hypothesis were it not for two factors. First the
electroencephalograph (which is simply a device for recording the electrical
activity of the brain by attaching electrodes to the scalp) shows that while there
is a change in the pattern of activity during sleep, there is no evidence that the
total amount of activity is any less. The second factor is more interesting and
more fundamental. In l960 an American psychiatrist named William Dement
published experiments dealing with the recording of eye- movements during
sleep. He showed that the average individual's sleep cycle is punctuated with
peculiar bursts of eye-movements, some drifting and slow, others jerky and rapid.
People woken during these periods of eye- movements generally reported that
they had been dreaming. When woken at other times they reported no dreams. If
one group of people were disturbed from their eye-movement sleep for several
nights on end, and another group were disturbed for an equal period of time but
when they were not exhibiting eye-movements, the first group began to show
some personality disorders while the others seemed more or less unaffected. The
implications of all this were that it was not the disturbance of sleep that mattered,
but the disturbance of dreaming.
Lesson24
Walking for walking's sake may be as highly laudable and exemplary a thing as
it is held to be by those who practise it. My objection to it is that it stops the
brain. Many a man has professed to me that his brain never works so well as
when he is swinging along the high road or over hill and dale This boast is not
confirmed by my memory of anybody who on a Sunday morning has forced me
to partake of his adventure. Experience teaches me that whatever a fellow-guest
may have of power to instruct or to amuse when he is sitting in a chair, or stand-
ing on a hearth-rug, quickly leaves him when he takes one out for a walk. The
ideas that come so thick and fast to him in any room, where are they now ? where
that encyclopaedic knowledge which he bore so lightly ? where the kindling fancy
that played like summer lightning over any topic that was started ? The man's
face that was so mobile is set now; gone is the light from his fine eyes. He says
that A (our host) is a thoroughly good fellow. Fifty yards further on, he adds
that A is one of the best fellows he has ever met. We tramp another furlong or so
and he says that Mrs A is a charming woman. Presently he adds that she is one
of the most charming women he has ever known. We pass an inn. He reads
vapidly aloud to me:'The King's Arms. Licensed to sell Ales and Spirits.' I
foresee that during the rest of the walk he will read aloud any inscription that
occurs. We pass a milestone. He points at it with his stick, and says' Uxminster.
II Miles.' We turn a sharp corner at the foot of the hill. He points at the wall,
and says' Drive Slowly.' .I see far ahead, on the other side of the hedge bordering
the high road, a small notice-board. He sees it too. He keeps his eye on it. And
in due course.'Trespassers,' he says, 'will be Prosecuted.' Poor man !--mentally
a wreck.
Lesson25
How it came about that snakes manufactured poison is a mystery. Over the
11
periods their saliva, a mild, digestive juice like our own, was converted into a
poison that defies analysis even today. It was not forced upon them by the sur-
vival competition; they could have caught and lived on prey without using
poison just as the thousands of non-poisonous snakes still do. Poison to a snake
is merely a luxury; it enables it to get its food with very little effort, no more
effort than one bite. And why only snakes ? Cats, for instance, would be greatly
helped; no running rights with large, fierce rats or tussles with grown rabbits-
just a bite and no more effort needed. In fact it would be an assistance to all the
carnivorae--though it would be a two-edged weapon -When they fought each
other. But, of the vertebrates, unpredictable Nature selected only snakes (and
one lizard). One wonders also why Nature, with some snakes concocted poison
of such extreme potency.
In the conversion of saliva into poison one might suppose that a fixed process
took place. It did not; some snakes manufactured a poison different in every re-
spect from that of others, as different as arsenic is from strychnine, and having
different effects. One poison acts on the nerves, the other on the blood.
The makers of the nerve poison include the mambas and the cobras and their
venom is called neurotoxic. Vipers (adders) and rattlesnakes manufacture the
blood poison, which is known as haemolytic. Both poisons are unpleasant, but
by far the more unpleasant is the blood poison. It is said that the nerve poison
is the more primitive of the two, that the blood poison is , so to speak, a newer
product from an improved formula. Be that as it may, the nerve poison does its
business with man far more quickly than the blood poison. This,however,means
nothing. Snakes did not acquire their poison for use against man but for use
against prey such as rats and mice, and the effects on these of viperine poison is
almost immediate.
Lesson26
William S. Hart was, perhaps, the greatest of all Western stars, for unlike Gary
Cooper and John Wayne he appeared in nothing but Westerns. From 1914 to
1924 he was supreme and unchallenged. It was Hart who created the basic
formula of the Western film, and devised the protagonist he played in every film
he made, the good-bad man, the accidental, noble outlaw, or the honest but
framed cowboy, or the sheriff made suspect by vicious gossip; in short, the indi-
vidual in conflict with himself and his frontier environment.
Unlike most of his contemporaries in Hollywood, Hart actually 'knew some-
thing of the old West. He had lived in it as a child when it was already disappear-
ing, and his hero was firmly rooted in his memories and experiences, and in both
the history and the mythology of the vanished frontier. And although no period
or place in American history has been more absurdly romanticized, myth and
reality did join hands in at least one arena, the conflict between the individual
and encroaching civilization.
Men accustomed to struggling for survival against the elements and Indian
were bewildered by politicians, bankers and business- men, and unhorsed by
fences, laws and alien taboos. Hart's good-bad man was always an outsider,
always one of the disinherited, and if he found it necessary to shoot a sheriff or
rob a bank along the way, his early audiences found it easy to understand and
forgive, especially when it was Hart who, in the end, overcame the attacking
12
Indians.
Audiences in the second decade of the twentieth century found it pleasant to
escape to a time when life, though hard, was relatively simple. We still do; living
in a world in which undeclared aggression, war, hypocrisy, chicanery, anarchy
and impending immolation are part of our daily lives, we all want a code to
live by.
Lesson27
Why does the idea of progress loom so large in the modern world ? Surely be-
cause progress of a particular kind is actually taking place around us and is
becoming more and more manifest. Although mankind has undergone no general
improvement in intelligence or morality, it has made extraordinary progress
the accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge began to increase as soon as the
thoughts of one individual could be communicated to another by means of
speech. With the invention of writing, a great advance was made, for knowledge
could then be not only communicated but also stored. Libraries made education
possible, and education in its turn added to libraries: the growth of knowledge
followed a kind of compound-interest law, which was greatly enhanced by the
invention of printing. All this was comparatively slow until, with the coming
science, the tempo was suddenly raised. Then knowledge began to be accumu-
lated according to a systematic plan. The trickle became a stream; the stream
has now become a torrent. Moreover, as soon as new knowledge is acquired, it
is now turned to practical account. What is called 'modern civilization' is not
the result of a balanced development of all man's nature, but of accumulated
knowledge applied to practical life. The problem now facing humanity is: What
is going to be done with all this knowledge ? As is so often pointed out, knowledge
is a two-edged weapon which can be used equally for good or evil. It is now being
used indifferently for both. Could any spectacle, for instance, be more grimly
whimsical than that of gunners using science to shatter men's bodies while, close
at hand, surgeons use it to restore them ? We have to ask ourselves very seriously
what will happen if this twofold use of knowledge, with its ever-increasing
power, continues.
Lesson28
No two sorts of birds practise quite the same sort of flight; the varieties are infi-
nite, but two classes may be roughly seen. Any ship that crosses the pacific is
accompanied for many days by the smaller albatross, which may keep company
with the vessel for an hour without visible or more than occasional movement of
wing. The currents of air that the walls of the ship direct upwards, as well as in
the line of its course are enough to give the great bird with its immense wings
sufficient sustenance and progress. The albatross is the king of the gliders, the
class of fliers which harness the air to their purpose, but must yield to its opposi-
tion. In the contrary school the duck is supreme. It comes nearer to the engines
with which man has 'conquered' the air, as he boasts. Duck, and like them the
pigeons, are endowed with steel-like muscles, that are a good part of the weight
of the bird, and these will ply the short wings with irresistible power that they
can bore for long distances through an opposite gale before exhaustion follows.
Their humbler followers, such as partridges, have a like power of strong propul-
sion, but soon tire. You may pick them up in utter exhaustion, if wind over the
13
sea has driven them to a long journey. The swallow shares the virtues of both
schools in highest measure. It tires not nor does it boast of its power; but belongs
to the air, travelling it may be six thousand miles to and from its northern nesting
home feeding its flown young as it flies and slipping through a medium that
seems to help its passage even when the wind is adverse. Such birds do us good,
though we no longer take omens from their flight on this side and that, and even
the most superstitious villagers no longer take off their hats to the magpie and
wish it good-morning.
Lesson29
A young man sees a sunset and, unable to understand or to express the emotion
that it rouses in him, concludes that it must be the gateway to a world that lies
beyond. It is difficult for any of us in moments of intense aesthetic experience to
resist the suggestion that we are catching a glimpse of a light that shines down
to us from a different realm of existence, different and, because the experience is
intensely moving, in some way higher. And, though the gleams blind and dazzle,
yet do they convey a hint of beauty and serenity greater than we have known or
imagined. Greater too than we can describe, for language, which was invented
to convey the meanings of this world, cannot readily be fitted to the uses of
another.
That all great art has this power of suggesting a world beyond is undeniable.
In some moods Nature shares it. There is no sky in June so blue that it does not
point forward to a bluer, no sunset so beautiful that it does not waken the vision
of a greater beauty, a vision which passes before it is fully glimpsed, and in
passing leaves an indefinable longing and regret. But, if this world is not merely
a bad joke, life a vulgar flare amid the cool radiance of the stars, and existence
an empty laugh braying across the mysteries; if these intimations of a something
behind and beyond are not evil humour born of indigestion, or whimsies sent by
the devil to mock and madden us, if, in a word, beauty means something, yet we
must not seek to interpret the meaning. If we glimpse the unutterable, it is un-
wise to try to utter it, nor should we seek to invest with significance that which
we cannot grasp. Beauty in terms of our human meanings is meaningless.
Lesson30
Each civilization is born, it culminates, and it decays. There is a widespread
testimony that this ominous fact is due to inherent biological defects in the
crowded life of cities. Now, slowly and at first faintly, an opposite tendency is
showing itself. Better roads and better vehicles at first induced the wealthier
classes to live on the outskirts of the cities. The urgent need for defence had also
vanished. This tendency is now spreading rapidly downwards. But a new set of
conditions is just showing itself. Up to the present time, throughout the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, this new tendency placed the home in the immediate
suburbs, but concentrated manufacturing activity, business relations, govern-
ment, and pleasure in the centres of the cities. Apart from the care of children
and periods of sheer rest, the active lives were spent in the cities. In some ways
the concentration of such activities was even more emphasized, and the homes
were pushed outwards even at the cost of the discomfort of commuting. But, if
we examine the trend of technology during the past generation, the reasons for
this concentration are largely disappearing. Still more, the reasons for the choice
14
of sites for cities are also altering. Mechanical power can be transmitted for
hundreds of miles, men can communicate almost instantaneously by telephone,
the chiefs of great organizations can be transported by airplanes, the cinemas can
produce plays in every village, music, speeches, and sermons can be broadcast.
Almost every reason for the growth of the cities,concurrently with the growth of
civilization has been profoundly modified.
Lesson31
Many people in industry and the Services, who have practical experience of
noise, regard any investigation of this question as a waste of time; they are not
prepared even to admit the possibility that noise affects people. On the other
hand, those who dislike noise will sometimes use most inadequate evidence to
support their pleas for a quieter society. This is a pity, because noise abatement
really is a good cause. and it is likely to be discredited if it gets to be associated
with bad science.
One allegation often made is that noise produces mental illness. A recent article
in a weekly newspaper, for instance, was headed with a striking illustration of a
lady in a state of considerable distress, with the caption 'She was yet another
victim, reduced to a screaming wreck '. On turning eagerly to the text, one learns
that the lady was a typist who found the sound of office typewriters worried her
more and more until eventually she had to go into a mental hospital. Now the
snag in this sort of anecdote is of course that one cannot distinguish cause and
effect. Was the noise a cause of the illness, or were the complaints about noise
merely a symptom? Another patient might equally well complain that her neigh-
bours were combining to slander her and persecute her, and yet one might be
cautious about believing this statement.
What is needed in the case of noise is a study of large numbers of people living
under noisy conditions, to discover whether they are mentally ill more often than
other people are. The United States Navy, for instance, recently examined a very
large number of men working on aircraft carriers: the study was known as
Project Anehin. It can be unpleasant to live even several miles from an aerodrome;
if you think what it must be like to share the deck of a ship with several squad-
rons of jet aircraft, you will realize that a modern navy is a good place to study
noise. But neither psychiatric interviews nor objective tests were able to show
any effects upon these American sailors. This result merely confirms earlier
American and British studies: if there is any effect of noise upon mental health
it must be so small that present methods of psychiatric diagnosis cannot find it.
That does not prove that it does not exist; but it does mean that noise is less
dangerous than, say, being brought up in an orphanages--which really is a mental
health hazard.
Lesson 32
It is animals and plants which lived in or near water whose remains are most
likely to be preserved, for one of the necessary conditions of preservation is quick
burial, and it is only in the seas and rivers, and sometimes lakes, where mud and
silt have been continuously deposited, that bodies and the like can be rapidly
covered over and preserved.
But even in the most favourable circumstances only a small fraction of the
creatures that die are preserved in this way before decay sets in or, even more
15
likely, before scavengers eat them. After all, all living creatures live by feeding
on something else, whether it be plant or animal, dead or alive, and it is only by
chance that such a fate is avoided. The remains of plants and animals that lived
on land are much more rarely preserved, for there is seldom anything to cover
them over. When you think of the innumerable birds that one sees flying about,
not to mention the equally numerous small animals like field mice and voles
which you do not see, it is very rarely that one comes across a dead body, except,
of course, on the roads. They decompose and are quickly destroyed by the
weather or eaten by some other creature.
It is almost always due to some very special circumstances that traces of land
animals survive, as by falling into inaccessible caves, or into an ice crevasse, like
the Siberian mammoths, when the whole animal is sometimes preserved, as in
a refrigerator. This is what happened to the famous Beresovka mammoth which
was found preserved and in good condition. In his mouth were the remains of
fir trees--the last meal that he had before he fell into the crevasse and broke his
back. The mammoth has now been restored in the Palaeontological Museum in
Leningrad. Other animals were trapped in tar pits, like the elephants, sabre-
toothed cats, and numerous other creatures that are found at Rancho la Brea,
which is now just a suburb of Los Angeles. Apparently what happened was that
water collected on these tar pits, and the bigger animals like the elephants ven-
tured out on to the apparently firm surface to drink, and were promptly bogged
in the tar. And then, when they were dead, the carnivores, like the sabre- toothed
cats and the giant wolves, came out to feed and suffered exactly the same fate.
There are also endless numbers of birds in the tar as well.
Lesson33
From the seventeenth- century empire of Sweden, the story of a galleon that
sank at the start of her maiden voyage in 1628 must be one of the strangest tales
of the sea. For nearly three and a half centuries she lay at the bottom of Stock-
holm harbour until her discovery in 1956. This was the Vasa, royal flagship of
the great imperial fleet.
King Gustavus Adolphus, 'The Northern Hurricane', then at the height of
his military success in the Thirty Years' War, had dictated her measurements
and armament. Triple gun-decks mounted sixty- four bronze cannon. She was
intended to play a leading role in the growing might of Sweden.
As she was prepared for her maiden voyage on August 10, 1628, Stockholm
was in a ferment. From the Skeppsbron and surrounding islands the people
watched this thing of beauty begin to spread her sails and catch the wind. They
had laboured for three years to produce this floating work of art; she was more
richly carved and ornamented than any previous ship. The high stern castle was
a riot of carved gods, demons, knights, kings, warriors,mermaids, cherubs; and
zoomorphic animal shapes ablaze with red and gold and blue, symbols of courage,
power, and cruelty, were portrayed to stir the imaginations of the superstitious
sailors of the day.
Then the cannons of the anchored warships thundered a salute to which the
Vasa fired in reply. As she emerged from her drifting cloud of gun smoke with
the water churned to foam beneath her bow, her flags flying, pennants waving,
sails filling in the breeze, and the red and gold of her superstructure ablaze with
16
colour, she presented a more majestic spectacle than Stockholmers had ever seen
before. All gun-ports were open and the muzzles peeped wickedly from them.
As the wind freshened there came a sudden squall and the ship made a strange
movement, listing to port. The Ordnance Officer ordered all the port cannon to
be heaved to starboard to counteract the list, but the steepening angle of the decks
increased. Then the sound of rumbling thunder reached the watchers on the
shore, as cargo, ballast, ammunition and 400 people went sliding and crashing
down to the port side of the steeply listing ship. The lower gun-ports were now
below water and the inrush sealed the ship's fate. In that first glorious hour, the
mighty Vasa, which was intended to rule the Baltic, sank with all flags flying--in
the harbour of her birth.
Lesson 34
This is a sceptical age, but although our faith in many of the things in which our
forefathers fervently believed has weakened, our confidence in the curative
properties of the bottle of medicine remains the same as theirs. This modern
faith in medicines is roved by the fact that the annual drug bill of the Health
Services is mounting to astronomical figures and shows no signs at present of
ceasing to rise. The majority of the patients attending the medical out-patients
departments of our hospitals feel that they have not received adequate treatment
unless they are able to carry home with them some tangible remedy in the shape
of a bottle of medicine, a box of pills, or a small jar of ointment, and the doctor
in charge of the department is only too ready to provide them with these require-
ments. There is no quicker method of disposing of patients than by giving them
what they are asking for, and since most medical men in the Health Services are
overworked and have little time for offering time-consuming and little-appre-
ciated advice on such subjects as diet, right living, and the need for abandoning
bad habits, etc., the bottle, the box, and the jar are almost always granted them.
Nor is it only the ignorant and ill-educated person who has such faith in the
bottle of medicine, especially if it be wrapped in white paper and sealed with a
dab of red sealing-wax by a clever chemist. It is recounted of Thomas Carlyle
that when he heard of the illness of his friend, Henry Taylor, he went off
immediately to visit him, carrying with him in his pocket what remained of a
bottle of medicine formerly prescribed for an indisposition of Mrs Carlyle's.
Carlyle was entirely ignorant of what the bottle in his pocket contained, of the
nature of the illness from which his friend was suffering, and of what had pre-
viously been wrong with his wife, but a medicine that had worked so well in one
form of illness would surely be of equal benefit in another, and comforted by
the thought of the help he was bringing to his friend, he hastened to Henry
Taylor's house. History does not relate whether his friend accepted his medical
help, but in all probability he did. The great advantage of taking medicine is that
it makes no demands on the taker beyond that of putting up for a moment with a
disgusting taste, and that is what all patients demand of their doctors-- to be
cured at no inconvenience to themselves.
Lesson 35
Many strange new means of transport have been developed in our century, the
strangest of them being perhaps the hovercraft. In 1953, a former electronics
engineer in his fifties, Christopher Cockerell, who had turned to boat-building
17
on the Norfolk Broads, suggested an idea on which he had been working for
many years to the British Government and industrial circles. It was the idea of
supporting a craft on a' pad ', or cushion, of low-pressure air, ringed with a cur-
tain of higher pressure air. Ever since, people have had difficulty in deciding
whether the craft should be ranged among ships, planes, or land vehicles--for it
is something in between a boat and an aircraft. As a shipbuilder, Cockerell was
trying to find a solution to the problem of the wave resistance which wastes a good
deal of a surface ship's power and limits its speed. His answer was to lift the
vessel out of the water by making it ride on a cushion of air, no more than one or
two feet thick. This is done by a great number of ring-shaped air jets on the
bottom of the craft. It 'flies', therefore, but it cannot fly higher--its action de-
pends on the surface, water or ground, over which it rides.
The first tests on the Solent in 1959 caused a sensation. The hovercraft
travelled first over the water, then mounted the beach, climbed up the dunes,
and sat down on a road. Later it crossed the Channel, riding smoothly over the
waves, which presented no problem.
Since that time, various types of hovercraft have appeared and taken up regular
service--cruises on the Thames in London, for instance, have become an annual
attraction. But we are only at the beginning of a development that may transport net-
sea and land transport. Christopher Cockerell's craft can establish transport
works in large areas with poor communications such as Africa or Australia; it
can become a 'flying fruit-bowl', carrying bananas from the plantations to the
ports, giant hovercraft liners could span the Atlantic; and the railway of the
future may well be the 'hovertrain', riding on its air cushion over a single rail,
which it never touches, at speeds up to 300 m.p.h.--the possibilities appear
unlimited.
Lesson 36
Our knowledge of the oceans a hundred years ago was confined to the two-dimen-
sional shape of the sea-surface and the hazards of navigation presented by the
irregularities in depth of the shallow water close to the land. The open sea was
deep and mysterious,and anyone who gave more than a passing thought to the
bottom confines of the oceans probably assumed that the sea-bed was flat. Sir
James Clark Ross had obtained a sounding of over 2,400 fathoms in 1836 but
it was not until 1800, when H.M.S. Porcupine was put at the disposal of the
Royal Society for several cruises, that a series of deep soundings was obtained
in the Atlantic and the first samples were collected by dredging the bottom.
Shortly after this the famous H.M.S. Challenger expedition established the study
of the sea-floor as a subject worthy of the most qualified physicists and geologists.
A burst of activity associated with the laying of submarine cables soon confirmed
the Challenger's observation that many parts of the ocean were two to three miles
deep, and the existence of underwater features of considerable magnitude.
Today enough soundings are available to enable a relief map of the Atlantic to
be drawn and we know something of the great variety of the sea-bed's topo-
graphy. Since the sea covers the greater part of the earth's surface it is quite
reasonable to regard the sea-floor as the basic form of the crust of the earth, with
superimposed upon it the continents, together with the islands and other features
of the oceans. The continents form rugged tablelands which stand nearly three
18
miles above the floor of the open ocean. From the shore-line out to a distance
which may be anywhere from a few miles to a few hundred miles runs the gentle
slope of the continental shelf, geologically part of the continents. The real
dividing-line between continents and oceans occurs at the foot of a steeper slope.
This continental slope usually starts at a place somewhere near the ice-fathom
mark and in the course of a few hundred miles reaches the true ocean-floor at
2,500-3,000 fathoms. The slope averages about 1 in 30, but contains steep,
probably vertical, cliffs, and gentle sediment-covered terraces, and near its lower
reaches there is a long tailing-off which is almost certainly the result of material
transported out to deep water after being eroded from the continental masses.
Lesson 37
The Victorians, realizing that the greatest happiness accorded to man is that
provided by a happy marriage, endeavoured to pretend that all their marriages
were happy. We, for our part, admitting the fact that no feat of intelligence and
character is so exacting as that required of two people who desire to live per-
manently together on a basis of amity, are obsessed by the problem of how to
render the basic facts of cohabitation simpler and more reasonable, in order that
unhappy marriages may less frequently result. The Victorians would have con-
sidered it 'painful' or 'unpleasant' were one to point out that only four marriages
out of every ten are anything but forced servitudes. We ourselves start from this
very assumption and try to build from it a theory of more sensible relations be-
tween the sexes. Of all forms of arrant untruthfulness Victorian optimism ap-
pears to me to have been the most cowardly and the most damaging.
Truth, therefore, is an attitude of the mind. lt is important, if one does not
wish to inconvenience and to bore one's friends, not to tell lies. But it is more
important not to think lies, or to slide into those mechanical and untruthful
habits of thought which are so pleasant and so easy as descents to mental inepti-
tude. The victorian habit of mind (which I consider to have been a bad habit of
mind) was unduly preoccupied by what was socially and morally convenient.
Convenience is, however, in all affairs of life, an execrable test of value. One
should have the courage to think uncomfortably, since it is only by rejecting the
convenient that one can come to think the truth.
Not, after all, that there is any such thing as truth. At best we can approach
to some relative approximation. On the other hand, there is surely such a thing
as untruth. One is generally aware when one has said something, or acted in some
way which has left on other people an impression not strictly in accordance with
the facts. One is generally aware, also. when one has thrust aside an inconvenient
thought and slid into its place another thought which is convenient. One's
awareness in the former case is in general more acute than in the latter, since we
are more on the look-out for the lies we utter than for those we merely think. In
fact, however, it is the untruthful thought which is the more vicious of the two.
Spoken lies are invariably tiresome and may actually be dishonest. But con-
tinuous lying in the mind, a disease to which the Anglo-Saxon is peculiarly ex-
posed, spells the destruction of human thought and character.
Lesson 38
Appreciation of sculpture depends upon the abi8lity to respond to form in three
dimensions. That is perhaps why sculpture has been described as the most
19