-
Thinking as a
Hobby
William Golding
1.
W
hile 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.
2.
I
t
was
the
headmaster
of
my
grammar
school
who
first
brought
the subject of thinking before
me.
He
had
some
statuettes
（
小雕像）
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
，
crouch
ed
the
statuette
of
a
leopard, 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
miserable.
3.
S
ome
time
later,
I
learned
about
these
statuettes.
The headmaster
had placed them where they would
face
delinquent
children,
because
they
symbolized
to 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 was
Nature,
and
he
was
being
natural.
The
muscular
gentleman
was
not
miserable.
He
was
Rodin's
Thinker, an image of
pure thought.
4.
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. As we now say,
I was not
integrated
.
I
was,
if
anything
,
disintegrated.
Whenever I
found myself in a
penal
position before
the
headmaster's
desk
I
would
sink
my
head,
and
writhe
one shoe over the
other
5.
T
he headmaster would look at
me and say,
6.
What are we going to do with
you?
7.
W
ell, what
were
they going to do with me? I would
writhe
my
shoe
some
more
and
stare
down
at
the
worn rug.
8.
L
ook up, boy! Can't you look
up?
I would look up at the
cupboard, where the
naked lady was
frozen in her panic and the muscular
gentleman
contemplated
the
hindquarters(
后腿及臀
部
) 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 behind them. There was
no
possibility of communication.
9.
Don't you ever think at
all?
10.
No, I didn't think, wasn't thinking,
couldn't thin
k
—
I was simply waiting in
anguish
for the interview
to stop.
11.
12.
On one
occasion the headmaster leaped to his feet,
reached up and put Rodin's masterpiece
on the desk
before me.
13.
what
a
man
looks
like
when
he's
really
thinking.
14.
Clearly
there
was
something
missing
in
me.
Nature had
endow
ed the rest of the
human race
with
a sixth
sense
and left me out. But like someone
born
deaf, but bitterly determined to
find out about sound,
I
began
to
watch
my
teachers
to
find
out
about
thought.
15.
There was Mr.
Houghton. He
was
always telling
me
to
think.
With
a
modest
satisfaction,
he
would
tell me that he had
thought a bit himself. Then why
did
he
spend
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
healt
h
—
and Mr. Houghton was
ruined, there was
no doubt about
tha
t
—
why was he always talking
about the
clean
life
and the virtues of fresh air?
16.
Sometimes,
exalted
by his own
oratory
, he would
leap
from
his
desk
and
hustle
us
outside
into
a
hideous
wind.
17.
boys!
Deep
breaths!
Feel
it
right
down
inside
yo
u
—
huge draughts of God's good
air!”
18.
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
impediment
s.
His
body
would
reel
with
shock
and
his
face
go
white
at
the
unaccustomed
visitation
. He would stagger
back to
his
desk
and
collapse
there,
useless
for
the
rest
of
the morning.
19.
Mr.
Houghton
was
given
to
high-minded
monologues about the
good
life, sexless and full of
duty.
Yet
in
the
middle
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
spring
in his
neck.
20.
His
neck
was
an
object
of
great
interest
to
me.
Normally
it
bulge
d
a
bit
over
his
collar.
But
Mr.
Houghton
had
fought
in
the
First
World
War
alongside Americans and French, and had
come to a
settled
detestation
of
both
countries.
If
either
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 still
further and go red.
would
cry,
I've
thought
about
thi
s
—
and
I
know what I think!
21.
Mr. Houghton thought with his neck.
22.
This was my
introduction to the nature of what is
commonly
called
thought.
Through
him
I
discovered
that thought is often full of
unconscious
prejudice,
ignorance
and
hypocrisy
.
It
will
lecture
on
disinterested
purity
while
its
neck
is
being
remorselessly
twisted
toward
a
skirt.
Technically,
it is about as proficient
as most businessmen's golf,
as
honest
as
most
politicians'
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.
24.
True,
often
there
is
a
kind
of
innocence
in
prejudice,
but
in
those
days
I
viewed
grade-three
thinking
with
contempt
and
mockery
.
I
delighted
to
confront
a
pious
lady
who
hated
the
Germans
with
the
proposition
that
we
should
love
our
enemies.
She
taught
me
a
great
truth
in
dealing
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
. We had better
respect them, for we are
outnumber
ed
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.
25.
Grade-
two
thinking
is
the
detection
of
contradictions.
Grade-two
thinkers
do
not
stampede
easily,
though often they
fall into
other
fault
and
lag
behind
.
Grade-two
thinking
is
a
withdrawal,with
eyes
and
ears
open.
It
destroys
without
having
the
power
to
creat.
It
set
me
watching
the
crowds
cheering
His
Majesty
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.
But
there
were
hear
people
justify
their
habit
of
hunting
foxes
by claiming
that
the foxes
liked it. To hear our Prime Minister
talk about the
great
benefit
we
confer
red
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.
26. But I was growing toward
adolescence 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
as
well
as
fun.
There
was
Ruth,
for
example,
a
serious
and
attractive
girl.
I
was
an
atheist
at
the
time. And she was a
Methodist
. But, alas,
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
inspire
d. I countered by
saying that the Catholics
believed in
the literal inspiration of Saint Jerome's
Vulgate,
and
the
two
books
were
different.
Argument
flag
ged.
27. At last she remarked that there
were an awful lot
o
f
Methodist,
and
they
couldn’t
be
wrong,
could
they
—
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
were
more
Roman
Catholics
than
Methodists
anyway;
and
they
couldn't
be
wrong,
could
they---not
all
those
hundreds
of
millions?
An
awful
flicker
of
doubt appeared in her eye
s
（
她眼中扑闪着疑虑
）
.
I slid my arm around her waist
and murmured that
if we were counting
heads,
the Buddhists were the
boys for my money.
She fled.
The combination of
my
arm
and
those
countless
Buddhists
was
too
much for
her.
28.
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
.
29. 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 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,
is
truth?
There
is
still
a
higher
grade
of
thought
which says,
30.
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 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.
31.
I
therefore
decided
that
I
would
be
a
grade-one
thinker.
I
was
irreverent
at
the
best
of
times
.
Political
and
religious
systems,
social
customs,
loyalties
and
traditions,
they
all
came
tumbling
down like so many
rotten apples off a tree. I came
up
in
the
end
with
what
must
always
remain
the
justification
for
grade-one
thinking.
I
devised
a
coherent system for living.
It was a moral systems
which was wholly
logical. Of course, as I readi1y
adimitted,
conversion
of
the
world
to
my
way
of
thinking
might
be
difficul
t,
since
my
system
did
away with
a
number of
trifle
s, such as
big business,
centralized government,
armies, marriage
….
32. 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
with
the
world as
it was. A young navy officer got as red
necked as Mr. Houghton when I proposed
a world
without 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
a
hobby.
34. Now you are
expecting me to describe how I saw
the
folly
of my
ways and came back to the
warm
nest,
where
prejudices
are
called
loyalties,
pointless
actions
are
turned
into
customs
by
repetition,
and
we
are
content
to
say
we
think
when all
we do is feel.
35. But you
would be wrong. I dropped my hobby and
turned professional.
Notes to the Text
1. About the author
William
Golding 1911-1993),
a
British writer who
won the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1993 . and who
is
known especially for his novel
Lord of
the Flies
.
Golding
was
born
in
Comwall
and
educated
at
Brasenose
College,
Oxford.
Before
WWII,
he
worked
as
a
writer,
actor.
and
producer
with
small
theatre
companies and
as a teacher.
During
the war
he served in the Royal Navy in command
of a rocket
ship.
He
returned
to
writing
and
teaching
after
the
war.
Lord
of
the
Flies
did
not
appear
until
1954
when
it
was
an
immediate
success.
The
intrinsic
cruelty of
man
is
at
the heart
of
many of
Golding's
novels.
He
often
presents
isolated
individuals
or
small groups in extreme situations
dealing with man
in his basic condition
stripped of trappings, creating
the
quality of a fable. His novels are remarkable for
their strikingly varied settings.
2.
She seemed
frozen in eternal panic lest the bath
towel slip down any farther;
(para. 2)
is
a
conjunction
often
used
with
words
expressing
fear
to
introduce
the
reason
for
a
particular
emotion,
here,
panic
More
examples:
He was
afraid lest they should take him for a spy.
She was afraid lest she
should be dismissed.
The word is formal and old-fashioned.
3.
Rodin’s
Thinker
(para. 3)
Auguste Rodin
(84
0
—
1917) was a
French sculptor.
His most famous works
are the
Kiss
and the
Thinker.
4.
The
leopard
was
nature,
and
he
was
being
natural.
(para. 3)
being
is
the
past
continuous
tense
form
of
When
the
verb
is
used
in the
continuous
tense
(either
present
or
past)
it
means
acting/behaving
in
a
manner
specified
by
the
adjective that follows, e. g.
I think Golding is being
too critical when he says
that
nine-tenth
of
the
population
are
grade-three
thinkers.
Don't
you
think
Lao
Wang
is
being
helpful
today?
Note
Certain adjectives such as tall, large, green,
etc.
cannot
be
used
with
the
continuous
tense
forms
of
5.
He would stand before us,
put his hands on his
waist and take a
tremendous breath.
(para. 19)
Here,
three
parallel
verb
phrases
are
employed
to
describe
what
Mr.
Houghton
used
to
do.
This
method
of
expressing
ideas
of
equal
importance
in
the
same
or
similar
grammatical
form
is
called
PARALLELISM.
The
parallel
construction
can
be
classified
into
the
following categories: Ii t and series,
Exercises
1.
Study how these words are used.
1) to slip
(l) to accidentally slide a short
distance quickly or fall
by sliding
Not
knowing
that
the
ground
was
now
covered
with thin ice, he slipped and broke his
arm.
(2) to move quickly,
smoothly, or secretly
Weare
not going to let these criminals slip through
our fingers.
Nobody
was
aware
how
he
had
slipped
into
the
room.
(3) to
give someone something quietly or secretly
Before
I
went
he
slipped
a
pistol
into
my
hand
saying I
might·
need it.
When
he
was sure
that
nobody
was
watching,
he
slipped the note through the window.
If she is out, just slip
the letter under the door.
Slip
n.
A slip of
paper
(a small or narrow piece of paper)
I remember I wrote it down on a slip of
paper, but
I can't find it now.
I saw a slip of paper in
the doorway, but I didn't
think it was
important, so I threw it away.
A slip of the tongue / pen
(something that you say or
write
when
you
meant
to
say
or
write
something
else)
Did
I
say
that?
That
was
a
slip
of
the
tongue.
I
didn't
mean it.
2)
lest
conj. (fml)
so
as to
prevent
the
possibility
of;
for fear
that
Her
health
was
such
that
she
would
not
go
out
in
the sun even in winter lest she have a
sunstroke.
Many parents say
that they have to be slave drivers
to
their
children
lest
they
cannot
survive
the
bitter social competition when they
grow up.
This
crazy
man
put
his
wife
under
lock
and
key
whenever he went out lest she see
another man.
3) to
integrate:
to combine; to unite; to
unify; to mix;
to merge; to join or
help someone to join in the life
and
customs of a group or society
It is risky but necessary to integrate
into the
world market.
It took many years to integrate those
millions
of immigrants.
integrated
adj.
Today
all
public
facilities
are
integrated.
(no
longer segregated)
It
is
our
hope
to
make
all
the
courses
and
teaching materials
integrated
integration
n.
Some
historians
say
that
integration
is
always
followed by
disintegration and the same is true vice
versa
The
best
way
to
achieve
national
integration
probably
is
through
the
development
of
interdependent economic relations.
integral
adj.
Political
reform
is
an
integral
aspect
of
our
modernization effort.
Taiwan is an integral part of our
territory.
4) rule n.
(1) an official instruction
about what is allowed or
what should be
done, especially in a
game,
organization, or job
规则
This is the rule of our bank, and I
have to follow
it.