Unit Eightkab
l Am a Highbrow
Aldous Huxley①
［1］To a great extent, of cour,it is just a matter of taste. I am a highbrow for the same reason that I am an eater of strawberries. I enjoy the eating of strawberries and I enjoy the process and experiences which are commonly qualified by the name of “highbrow”.
［2］Converly, I am not a lowbrow, becau I do not enjoy lowbrow process and experiences. Thus I derive a great deal less pleasure from jazz and thrillers than from the music, let us say, of Beethoven or the novels, for example, of Dostoievsky②；and the x appeal of the girls on the covers of magazines ems to me less thrilling than the more complicated appeal to a great variety of feelings made by a Rubens,③an EI Greco,④ a Constable⑤,a Seurat.⑥
［3］Again, I find the watching of hor racing or football matches less agreeable as an oc
神色cupation than the acquisition and co-ordination of knowledge. Read-ing ems to me more entertaining than bridge or cross-word puzzles. And the slaughtering of animals for fun is a pastime that leaves me either cold with disgust or hot with indignation.
赶快的英文
［4］There is no disputing, says the proverb, about taste-though, in fact, human beings spend at least half their leisure doing nothing el-and if highbrowism and lowbrowism were exclusively(as it is certain that they are in great part)matters of individual taste, there would be no more to say about them than what I have said in the preceding lines.
［5］But more than mere taste is at stake⑦;and,realising this, the supporters of either party have rationalid their preferences in terms of⑧ arguments that involve an appeal to more objective standards than tho of a simple personal preference.
椅子英语
［6］Thus lowbrows are never weary of condemning highbrows for their “inhumanity”,nor of admiring themlves for being so admirably“human”.At the same time they argue that they must be in the right becau they are so much more numerous than the highbrows. To the attacks of the lowbrows(attacks which have grown increasingly vocal and violent in
the cour of⑨ the last few years)the highbrows generally reply in a tone of patronising contempt.
tired怎么读［7］They start, like the Pharie B10 in the parable, by thanking God that they are not as other men are, and proceed to paint a picture of tho other men, hardly more flattering than that which Swift B11 painted of the Yahoos B12.Then explicitly or implicitly, they associate their highbrowism with virtue, and speak of their own learned refinements as good and of their adversaries’ ignorance and crudity as bad.
同位语从句讲解facebook mesnger［8］Each party’s arguments em to me equally futile and each party’s emotional attitude equally deplorable. Thus the lowbrows’ appeal to numbers cuts no ice B13at all. In 1600 the earth was not the centre of the univer becau the majority then suppod it was; nor, becau she had more readers, was Ella Wheeler WilcoxB14 a better poet than Father Hopkins B15.
［9］As for the lowbrows claim to be specially“human”,I for one B16 have never been able to understand why it should be“inhuman”to u the faculties that distinguish us from
道歉英文pigs and gee and“human”to u tho which we share with the lower animals.
［10］The highbrows rever the numerical argument and imply that, becu they are so few, they must therefore be right. But where they chiefly offend is in their pharisaical lf-congratulation and contempt for others. In the past, the highbrows were alone in expressing a feeling of superiority; the lowbrows humbly accepted the position assigned to them.
［11］Recently, however, there has been a change, and lowbrows now adopt towards highbrows exactly the same attitude as highbrows have always adopted towards them. Each highbrow did and does congratulate himlf on being unique in his unlikeness to other men; and converly each lowbrow now congratulates himlf on being in some mystical way unique in his likeness-on being, so to say, outstandingly average and extraordinarily ordinary. The snarlings of their respective egotisms add yet another discordant note to the contemporary babel.
［12］In point of fact B17,the question of rightness or wrongness simply does not enter i
冷战怎么办nto the dispute. The difference between highbrows and lowbrows is esntially quantitative, not qualitative. In certain respects (though not, perhaps, in others) the life of the highbrow is fuller than that of the lowbrow.
［13］He is interested in a greater number and a greater variety of things; and his knowledge enables him rationally to co-ordinate more facts of experience than the lowbrow can do. The lowbrow lives in a world where events are isolated and unconnected; the highbrow, in one where knowledge has fud the isolated happenings into what is at least a partially comprehensible whole.
［14］In a certain n, even the works of art admired by highbrows are quantitatively more considerable than the works admired by lowbrows. A Dostoievsky novel contains, explicitly or by implication, all that a thriller contains, plus a great deal more.
