Thinking as a Hobby
by William Golding
While I was still a boy, I came to the conclusion that there were three grades of thinking; and since I was later to claim thinking as my hobby, I came to an even stranger乐理教程 conclusion - namely, that I mylf could not think at all.
I must have been an unsatisfactory child for grownups to deal with. I remember how incomprehensible they appeared to me at first, but not, of cour, how I appeared to them. It was the headmaster of my grammar school who first brought the subject of thinking before me - though neither in the way, nor with the result he intended. He had some statuettes in his study. They stood on a high cupboard behind his desk. One was a lady wearing nothing but a bath towel. She emed 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 the statuette of a leopard, ready to spring down at the top drawer of a filing cabinet labeled A-AH. My innocence端午节的风俗习惯 interpreted this as the victim's
邯郸龙湖公园last, despairing cry. 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 emed utterly mirable.
飞饭Some time later, I learned about the statuettes. The headmaster had placed them where they would face delinquent children, becau they symbolized to him to whole of life. The naked lady was the Venus of Milo. 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 mirable. He was Rodin's Thinker, an image of pure thought. It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.
I had better explain that I was a frequent visitor to the headmaster's study, becau of the latest thing I had done or left undone. As we now say, I was not integrated. I was, if anything, disintegrated; and I was puzzled. Grownups never made n. Whenever I found mylf in a penal position before the headmaster's desk, with the statuettes glimmering whitely above him, I would sink my head, clasp my hands behind my back, and writhe one shoe over the other.
The headmaster would look opaquely at me through flashing spectacles. "What are we 日森洗车机going to do with you"
Well, what were they going to do with me I would writhe my shoe some more and stare down 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 the muscular gentleman contemplated 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 e 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 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 plonked Rodin's masterpiece on the desk before me.
"That's what a man looks like when he's really thinking."
I surveyed the gentleman without interest or comprehension.
"Go back to your class."
Clearly there was something missing in me. Nature had endowed the rest of the human race with a sixth n and left me out. This must be so, I mud, on my way back to the class, since whether I had broken a window, or failed to remember Boyle's Law, or been late for school, my teachers produced me one, adult answer: "Why can't you think"
As I saw the ca, I had broken the window becau I had tried to hit Jack Arney with a cricket ball and misd him; I could not remember Boyle's Law becau I had never bothered to learn it; and I was late for school becau I preferred looking over the bridge into the river. In fact, I was wicked. Were my teachers, perhaps, so good that they could n
ot understand the depths of my depravity Were they clear, untormented people who could direct their every action by this mysterious business of thinking The whole thing was incomprehensible. In my earlier years, I found even the statuette of the Thinker confusing. I did not believe any of my teachers were naked, ever. Like someone born deaf, but bitterly determined to find out about sound, I watched my teachers to find out 整式方程的定义about 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 himlf. Then why did he spend so much time drinking Or was there more n 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 of fresh air He would spread his arms wide with the action of a man who habitually spent his 尿血是怎么回事女性time striding along mountain ridges.
"Open air does me good, boys - I know it!"
Sometimes, exalted by his own oratory, he would leap from his desk and hustle us outside into a hideous wind.
"Now, boys! Deep breaths! Feel it right down inside you - huge draughts of God's good air!"
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