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Lesson 14 A noble gangster 贵族歹徒

There was a time when the owners of shops and businesses in Chicago had to pay large sums of money to gangsters in return for 'protection.' If the money was not paid promptly, the gangsters would quickly put a man out of business by destroying his shop. Obtaining 'protection money' is not a modern crime. As long ago as the fourteenth century, an Englishman, Sir John Hawkwood, made the remarkable discovery that people would rather pay large sums of money than have their life work destroyed by gangsters. Six hundred years ago, Sir Johan Hawkwood arrived in Italy with a band of soldiers and settled near Florence. He soon made a name for himself and came to be known to the Italians as Giovanni Acuto. Whenever the Italian city-states were at war with each other, Hawkwood used to hire his soldiers to princes who were willing to pay the high price he demanded. In times of peace, when business was bad, Hawkwood and his men would march into a city-state and, after burning down a few farms, would offer to go away if protection money was paid to them. Hawkwood made large sums of money in this way. In spite of this, the Italians regarded him as a sort of hero. When he died at the age of eighty, the Florentines gave him a state funeral and had a pictured painted which was dedicated to the memory of 'the most valiant soldier and most notable leader, Signor Giovanni Haukodue.'

曾经有一个时期,芝加哥的店主和商行的老板们不得不拿出大笔的钱给歹徒以换取\保护\。如果交款不及时,歹徒们就会很快捣毁他的商店,让他破产.榨取\保护金\并不是一种现代的罪恶行径.早在14世纪,英国人约翰.霍克伍德就有过非凡的发现:\人们情愿拿出大笔的钱,也不愿毕生的心血毁于歹徒之手.

600年前,约翰.霍克伍德爵士带着一队士兵来到意大利,在佛罗伦萨附近驻扎下来,很快就出了名.意大利人叫他乔凡尼.阿库托.每次意大利各城邦之间发生战争,霍克伍德把他的士兵雇佣给愿给他出高价的君主。和平时期,当生意萧条时,霍克伍德便带领士兵进入某个城邦,纵火烧毁一两个农场,然后提出,如向他们缴纳保护金,他们便主动撤离。霍克伍德用这种方法挣了大笔钱.尽管如此,意大利人还是把他视作某种英雄。他80岁那年死去时,佛罗伦萨人为他举行了国葬,并为他画像以纪念这位\骁勇无比的战士、杰出的领袖乔凡尼.阿库托先生.\

Lesson 17 The longest suspension bridge in the world 世界上最长的吊桥 Verrazano, an Italian about whom little is known, sailed into New York Harbour in 1524 and named it Angouleme. He described it as 'a very agreeable situation located within two small hills in the midst of which flowed a great river.' Though Verrazano is by no means considered to be a great explorer, his name will probably remain immortal, for on November 21st, 1964, the longest suspension bridge in the world was named after him. The Verrazano Bridge, which was designed by Othmar Ammann, joins Brooklyn to Staten Island. It has a span of 4,260 feet. The bridge is so long that the shape of the earth had to be taken into account by its designer. Two great towers support four huge cables. The towers are built on immense underwater platforms made of steel and concrete. The platforms extend to a depth of over 100 feet under the sea. These alone took sixteen months to build. Above the surface of the water, the towers rise to a height of nearly 700 feet. They support the cables from which the bridge has been suspended. Each of the four cables contains 26,108 lengths of wire. It has been estimated that if the bridge were packed with cars, it would still only be carrying a third of its total capacity. However, size and strength are not the only important things about this bridge. Despite its immensity, it is both simple and elegant, fulfilling its designer's dream to create 'an enormous object drawn as faintly as possible'.

1524年，一位鲜为人知的意大利人维拉萨诺驾船驶进纽约港，并将该港名为安古拉姆。他对该港作了这样的描述：―地理位置十分适宜，位于两座小山的中间，一条大河从中间流过‖。虽然维拉萨诺绝对算不上一个伟大的探险家，但他的名字将流芳百世，因为1964年11月21日建成的一座世界上最长的吊桥是以他的名字命名。

维拉萨诺大桥由奥斯马.阿曼设计，连结着布鲁克林与斯塔顿岛，桥长4,260英尺。由于桥身太长，设计者不得不考虑了地表的形状。两座巨塔支撑着4根粗大的钢缆。塔身建在巨大的水下钢盘混凝土平台上。

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平台深入海底100英尺。仅这两座塔就花了16个月才建成。塔身高出水面将近700英尺。高塔支撑着钢缆，而钢缆又悬吊着大桥，4根钢缆中的每根由26，108股钢绳组成。据估计，若桥上摆满了汽车，也只不过是桥的总承载力的1/3。然而，这座桥重要特点不仅是它的规模与强度。尽管此桥很大，但它的结构简单，造型优美，实现了设计者企图创造一个―尽量用细线条勾画出一个庞然大物‖的梦想。

Lesson 21 Daniel Mendoza 丹尼尔.门多萨

Boxing matches were very popular in England two hundred years ago. In those days, boxers fought with bare fists for prize money. Because of this, they were known as 'prize-fighters'. However, boxing was very crude, for there were no rules and a prize-fighter could be seriously injured or even killed during a match.

One of the most colourful figures in boxing history was Daniel Mendoza, who was born in 1764. The use of gloves was not introduced until 1860, when the Marquis of Queensberry drew up the first set of rules. Though he was technically a prize-fighter, Mendoza did much to change crude prize-fighting into a sport, for he brought science to the game. In his day, Mendoza enjoyed tremendous popularity. He was adored by rich and poor alike.

Mendoza rose to fame swiftly after a boxing-match when he was only fourteen years old. This attracted the attention of Richard Humphries who was then the most eminent boxer in England. He offered to train Mendoza and his young pupil was quick to learn. In fact, Mendoza soon became so successful that Humphries turned against him. The two men quarrelled bitterly and it was clear that the argument could only be settled by a fight. A match was held at Stilton, where both men fought for an hour. The public bet a great deal of money on Mendoza, but he was defeated. Mendoza met Humphries in the ring on a later occasion and he lost for a second time. It was not until his third match in 1790 that he finally beat Humphries and became Champion of England. Meanwhile, he founded a highly successful Academy and even Lord Byron became one of his pupils. He earned enormous sums of money and was paid as much as 100 pounds for a single appearance. Despite this, he was so extravagant that he was always in debt. After he was defeated by a boxer called Gentleman Jackson, he was quickly forgotten. He was sent to prison for failing to pay his debts and died in poverty in 1836.

两百年前，拳击比赛在英国非常盛行。当时，拳击手们不戴手套，为争夺奖金而搏斗。因此，他们被称作―职业拳击手‖。不过，拳击是十分野蛮的，因为当时没有任何比赛规则，职业拳击手有可能在比赛中受重伤，甚至丧命。

拳击史上最引人注目的人物之一是丹尼尔.门多萨，他生于1764年。1860年昆斯伯里侯爵第一次为拳击比赛制定了规则，拳击比赛这才用上了手套。虽然门多萨严格来讲不过是个职业拳击手，但在把这种粗野的拳击变成一种体育运动方面，他作出了重大贡献。是他把科学引进了这项运动。门多萨在他的全盛时期深受大家欢迎，无论是富人还是穷人都对他祟拜备至。

门多萨在14岁时参加一场拳击赛后一举成名。这引起当时英国拳坛名将理查德.汉弗莱斯的注意。他主动提出教授门多萨，而年少的门多萨一学就会。事实上，门多萨不久便名声大振，致使汉弗莱斯与他反目为敌。两个人争吵不休，显而易见，只有较量一番才能解决问题。于是两人在斯蒂尔顿设下赛场，厮打了一个小时。公众把大笔赌注下到了门多萨身上，但他却输了。后来，门多萨与汉弗莱斯再次在拳击场上较量，门多萨又输了一场。直到1790年他们第3次对垒，门多萨才终于击败汉弗莱斯，成了全英拳击冠军。同时，他建立了一所拳击学校，办得很成功，连拜伦勋爵也成了他的学生。门多萨挣来大笔大笔的钱，一次出场费就多可达100英镑。尽管收入不少，但他挥霍无度，经常债台高筑。他被一个叫杰克逊绅士的拳击手击败后很快被遗忘。他因无力还债而被捕入狱，最后于1836年在贫困中死去。

Lesson 24 A skeleton in the cupboard ―家丑‖

We often read in novels how a seemingly respectable person or family has some terrible secret which has been concealed from strangers for years. The English language possesses a vivid saying to describe this sort of situation. 第 2 页 共 50 页

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The terrible secret is called ?a skeleton in the cupboard‘. At some dramatic moment in the story, the terrible secret becomes known and a reputation is ruined. The reader's hair stands on end when he reads in the final pages of the novel that the heroine, a dear old lady who had always been so kind to everybody, had, in her youth, poisoned every one of her five husbands.

It is all very well for such things to occur in fiction. To varying degrees, we all have secrets which we do not want even our closest friends to learn, but few of us have skeletons in the cupboard. The only person I know who has a skeleton in the cupboard is George Carlton, and he is very proud of the fact. George studied medicine in his youth. Instead of becoming a doctor, however, he became a successful writer of detective stories. I once spent an uncomfortable weekend which I shall never forget at his house. George showed me to the guest-room which, he said, was rarely used. He told me to unpack my things and then come down to dinner. After I had stacked my shirts and underclothes in two empty drawers, I decided to hang one of the two suits I had brought with me in the cupboard. I opened the cupboard door and then stood in front of it petrified. A skeleton was dangling before my eyes. The sudden movement of the door made it sway slightly and it gave me the impression that it was about to leap out at me. Dropping my suit, I dashed downstairs to tell George. This was worse than ?a terrible secret‘; this was a real skeleton! But George was unsympathetic. ?Oh, that,‘ he said with a smile as if he were talking about an old friend. ?That's Sebastian. You forget that I was a medical student once upon a time. ‘

在小说中，我们经常读到一个表面上受人尊重的人物或家族，却有着某种多年不为人所知的骇人听闻的秘密。英语中有一个生动的说法来形容这种情况。惊人的秘密被称作―柜中骷髅‖。在小说的某个戏剧性时刻，可怕的秘密泄漏出来，接着便是某人的声誉扫地。当读者读到小说最后几页了解到书中女主人公，那位一向待大家很好的可爱的老妇人年轻时一连毒死了她的5个丈夫时，不禁会毛骨悚然。

这种事发生在小说中是无可非议的。尽管我们人人都有各种大小秘密，连最亲密的朋友都不愿让他们知道，但我们当中极少有人有柜中骷髅。我所认识的唯一的在柜中藏骷髅的人便是乔治·卡尔顿，他甚至引以为自豪。乔治年轻时学过医，然而，他后来没当上医生，却成了一位成功的侦探小说作家。有一次，我在他家里度周末，过得很不愉快。这事我永远不会忘记。乔治把我领进客房，说这间房间很少使用。他让我打开行装后下楼吃饭。我将衬衫、内衣放进两个空抽屉里，然后我想把随身带来的两套西服中的一套挂到大衣柜里去。我打开柜门，站在柜门前一下子惊呆了。一具骷髅悬挂在眼前，由于柜门突然打开，它也随之轻微摇晃起来，让我觉得它好像马上要跳出柜门朝我扑过来似的。我扔下西服冲下楼去告诉乔治。这是比―骇人听闻的秘密‖更加惊人的东西，这是一具真正的骷髅啊！但乔治却无动于衷。―噢，是它呀！他笑着说道，俨然在谈论一位老朋友。―那是塞巴斯蒂安。你忘了我以前是学医的了。‖

Lesson 27 Nothing to sell and nothing to buy 没有东西可卖也没有东西可买

It has been said that everyone lives by selling something. In the light of this statement, teachers live by selling knowledge, philosophers by selling wisdom and priests by selling spiritual comfort. Though it may be possible to measure the value of material good in terms of money, it is extremely difficult to estimate the true value of the services which people perform for us. There are times when we would willingly give everything we possess to save our lives, yet we might grudge paying a surgeon a high fee for offering us precisely this service. The conditions of society are such that skills have to be paid for in the same way that goods are paid for at a shop. Everyone has something to sell.

Tramps seem to be the only exception to this general rule. Beggars almost sell themselves as human beings to arouse the pity of passers-by. But real tramps are not beggars. They have nothing to sell and require nothing from others. In seeking independence, they do not sacrifice their human dignity. A tramp may ask you for money, but he will never ask you to feel sorry for him. He has deliberately chosen to lead the life he leads and is fully aware of the consequences. He may never be sure where the next meal is coming from, but he is free from the thousands of

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anxieties which afflict other people. His few material possessions make it possible for him to move from place to place with ease. By having to sleep in the open, he gets far closer to the world of nature than most of us ever do. He may hunt, beg, or steal occasionally to keep himself alive; he may even, in times of real need, do a little work; but he will never sacrifice his freedom. We often speak of tramps with contempt and put them in the same class as beggars, but how many of us can honestly say that we have not felt a little envious of their simple way of life and their freedom from care?

据说每个人都靠出售某种东西来维持生活。根据这种说法，教师靠卖知识为生，哲学家靠卖智慧为生，牧师靠卖精神安慰为生。虽然物质产品的价值可以用金钱来衡量，但要估算别人为我们为所提供的服务的价值却是极其困难的。有时，我们为了挽救生命，愿意付出我们所占有的一切。但就在外科大夫给我们提供了这种服务后，我们却可能为所支付的昂贵的费用而抱怨。社会上的情况就是如此，技术是必须付钱去买的，就像在商店里要花钱买商品一样。人人都有东西可以出售。

在这条普遍的规律前面，好像只有流浪汉是个例外，乞丐出售的几乎是他本人，以引起过路人的怜悯。但真正的流浪并不是乞丐。他们既不出售任何东西，也不需要从别人那儿得到任何东西，在追求独立自由的同时，他们并不牺牲为人的尊严。游浪汉可能会向你讨钱，但他从来不要你可怜他。他是故意在选择过那种生活的，并完全清楚以这种方式生活的后果。他可能从不知道下顿饭有无着落，但他不像有人那样被千万桩愁事所折磨。他几乎没有什么财产，这使他能够轻松自如地在各地奔波。由于被迫在露天睡觉，他比我们中许多人都离大自然近得多。为了生存，他可能会去打猎、乞讨，偶尔偷上一两回；确实需要的时候，他甚至可能干一点儿活，但他决不会牺牲自由。说起流浪汉，我们常常带有轻蔑并把他们与乞丐归为一类。但是，我们中有多少人能够坦率地说我们对流浪汉的简朴生活与无忧无虑的境况不感到有些羡慕呢？

Lesson 33 A day to remember 难忘的一天

We have all experienced days when everything goes wrong. A day may begin well enough, but suddenly everything seems to get out of control. What invariably happens is that a great number of things choose to go wrong at precisely the same moment. It is as if a single unimportant event set up a chain of reactions. Let us suppose that you are preparing a meal and keeping an eye on the baby at the same time. The telephone rings and this marks the prelude to an unforeseen series of catastrophes. While you are on the phone, the baby pulls the table-cloth off the table, smashing half your best crockery and cutting himself in the process. You hang up hurriedly and attend to baby, crockery, etc. Meanwhile, the meal gets burnt. As if this were not enough to reduce you to tears, your husband arrives, unexpectedly bringing three guests to dinner.

Things can go wrong on a big scale, as a number of people recently discovered in Parramatta, a suburb of Sydney. During the rush hour one evening two cars collided and both drivers began to argue. The woman immediately behind the two cars happened to be a learner. She suddenly got into a panic and stopped her car. This made the driver following her brake hard. His wife was sitting beside him holding a large cake. As she was thrown forward, the cake went right through the windscreen and landed on the road. Seeing a cake flying through the air, a lorry–driver who was drawing up alongside the car, pulled up all of a sudden. The lorry was loaded with empty beer bottles and hundreds of them slid off the back of the vehicle and on to the road. This led to yet another angry argument. Meanwhile, the traffic piled up behind. It took the police nearly an hour to get the traffic on the move again. In the meantime, the lorry driver had to sweep up hundreds of broken bottles. Only two stray dogs benefited from all this confusion, for they greedily devoured what was left of the cake. It was just one of those days!

我们大家都有过事事不顺心的日子。一天开始时，可能还不错，但突然间似乎一切都失去了控制。情况经常是这样的，许许多多的事情都偏偏赶在同一时刻出问题，好像是一件无关紧要的小事引起了一连串的连锁反应。假设你在做饭，同时又在照看孩子。这时电话铃响了，它预示着一连串意想不到的灾难的来临。就在你接电话时，孩子把桌布从桌子上扯了下来，将家中最好的陶瓷餐具半数摔碎，同时也弄伤了他

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自己。你急急忙忙挂上电话，赶去照看孩子和餐具。这时，饭又烧糊了。好像这一切还不足以使你急得掉泪，你的丈夫接着回来了，事先没打招呼就带来3个客人吃饭。

就像许多人最近在悉尼郊区帕拉马塔所发现的那样，有时乱子会闹得很大。一天傍晚交通最拥挤时，一辆汽车撞上前面一辆汽车，两个司机争吵起来。紧跟其后的一辆车上的司机碰巧是个初学者，她一惊之下突然把车停了下来。她这一停使得跟在后头的司机也来了个急刹车。司机的妻子正坐在他身边，手里托着块大蛋糕。她往前一冲，蛋糕从挡风玻璃飞了出去掉在马路上。此时，一辆卡车正好从后边开到那辆汽车边上，司机看见一块蛋糕从天而降，紧急刹车。卡车上装着空啤酒瓶，成百只瓶子顺势从卡车后面滑出车外落在马路上。这又引起了一场唇枪舌剑的争吵。与此同时，后面的车辆排成了长龙，警察花了将近一个小时才使车辆又开起来。在这段时间里，卡车司机不得不清扫那几百只破瓶子。只有两只野狗从这一片混乱中得到了好处，它们贪婪地吃掉了剩下的蛋糕。这就是事事不顺心的那么一天！

Lesson 34 A happy discovery 幸运的发现

Antique shops exert a peculiar fascination on a great many people. The more expensive kind of antique shop where rare objects are beautifully displayed in glass cases to keep them free from dust is usually a forbidding place. But no one has to muster up courage to enter a less pretentious antique shop. There is always hope that in its labyrinth of musty, dark, disordered rooms a real rarity will be found amongst the piles of assorted junk that litter the floors.

No one discovers a rarity by chance. A truly dedicated bargain hunter must have patience, and above all, the ability to recognize the worth of something when he sees it. To do this, he must be at least as knowledgeable as the dealer. Like a scientist bent on making a discovery, he must cherish the hope that one day he will be amply rewarded.

My old friend, Frank Halliday, is just such a person. He has often described to me how he picked up a masterpiece for a mere￡50. One Saturday morning, Frank visited an antique shop in my neighbourhood. As he had never been there before, he found a great deal to interest him. The morning passed rapidly and Frank was about to leave when he noticed a large packing-case lying on the floor. The dealer told him that it had just come in, but that he could not be bothered to open it. Frank begged him to do so and the dealer reluctantly prised it open. The contents were disappointing. Apart from an interesting-looking carved dagger, the box was full of crockery, much of it broken. Frank gently lifted the crockery out of the box and suddenly noticed a miniature painting at the bottom of the packing-case. As its Composition and line reminded him of an Italian painting he knew well, he decided to buy it. Glancing at it briefly, the dealer told him that it was worth￡50. Frank could hardly conceal his excitement, for he knew that he had made a real discovery. The tiny painting proved to be an unknown masterpiece by Correggio and was worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

古玩店对许多人来说有一种特殊的魅力。高档一点的古玩店为了防尘，把文物漂亮地陈列在玻璃柜子里，那里往往令人望而却步。而对不太装腔作势的古玩店，无论是谁都不用壮着胆子才敢往里进。人们还常常有希望在发霉、阴暗、杂乱无章、迷宫般的店堂里，从杂乱地摆放在地面上的、一堆堆各式各样的破烂货里找到一件稀世珍品。

无论是谁都不会一下子就发现一件珍品。一个到处找便宜货买的人必须具有耐心，而且最重要的是看到珍品时要有鉴别珍品的能力。要做到这一点，他至少要像古董商一样在行。他必须像一个专心致志进行探索的科学家那样抱有这样的希望，即终有一天，他的努力会取得丰硕的成果。

我的老朋友弗兰克·哈利戴正是这样一个人。他多次向我详细讲他如何只花50英镑便买到一位名家的杰作。一个星期六的上午，弗兰克去了我家附近的一家古玩店。由于他从未去过那儿，结果他发现了许多有趣的东西。上午很快过去了，弗兰克正准备离去，突然看见地板上放着一只体积很大的货箱。古董商告诉他那只货箱刚到不久，但他嫌麻烦不想把它打开。经弗兰克恳求，古董商才勉强把货箱撬开了。箱内东西令人失望。除了一柄式样别致、雕有花纹的匕首外，货箱内装满了陶器，而且大部分都已破碎。弗兰克轻轻地把陶器拿出箱子，突然发现在箱底有一幅微型画，画面构图与线条使他想起了一幅他所熟悉的意大利画，于是他决定将画买下来。古董商漫不经心看了一眼那幅画，告诉弗兰克那画值50英镑。弗兰克几

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乎无法掩饰自己兴奋的心情，因为他明白自己发现了一件珍品。那幅不大的画原来是柯勒乔的一幅未被发现的杰作，价值几十万英镑。

Lesson 38 The first calender 最早的日历

Future historians will be in a unique position when they come to record the history of our own times. They will hardly know which facts to select from the great mass of evidence that steadily accumulates. What is more, they will not have to rely solely on the written word. Films, videos, CDs and CD-ROMS are just some of the bewildering amount of information they will have. They will be able, as it were, to see and hear us in action. But the historian attempting to reconstruct the distant past is always faced with a difficult task. He has to deduce what he can from the few scanty clues available. Even seemingly insignificant remains can shed interesting light on the history of early man.

Up to now, historians have assumed that calendars came into being with the advent of agriculture, for then man was faced with a real need to understand something about the seasons. Recent scientific evidence seems to indicate that this assumption is incorrect.

Historians have long been puzzled by dots, lines and symbols which have been engraved on walls, bones, and the ivory tusks of mammoths. The nomads who made these markings lived by hunting and fishing during the last Ice Age which began about 35,000 B.C. and ended about 10,000 B.C. By correlating markings made in various parts of the world, historians have been able to read this difficult code. They have found that it is connected with the passage of days and the phases of the moon. It is, in fact, a primitive type of calendar. It has long been known that the hunting scenes depicted on walls were not simply a form of artistic expression. They had a definite meaning, for they were as near as early man could get to writing. It is possible that there is a definite relation between these paintings and the markings that sometimes accompany them. It seems that man was making a real effort to understand the seasons 20,000 years earlier than has been supposed.

未来的历史学家在写我们这一段历史的时候会别具一格。对于逐渐积累起来的庞大材料，他们几乎不知道选取哪些好，而且，也不必完全依赖文字材料。电影、录像、光盘和光盘驱动器只是能为他们提供令人眼花缭乱的大量信息的几种手段。他们能够身临其境般地观看我们做事，倾听我们讲话。但是，历史学家企图重现遥远的过去可是一项艰巨的任务，他们必须根据现有的不充分的线索进行推理。即使看起来微不足道的遗物，也可能揭示人类早期历史的一些有趣的内容。

历史学家迄今认为日历是随农业的问世而出现的，因为当时人们面临着了解四季的实际需要，但近期科学研究发现，好像这种假设是不正确的。

长期以来，历史学家一直对雕刻在墙壁上、骨头上、古代长毛象的象牙上的点、线和形形色色的符号感到困惑不解。这些痕迹是游牧人留下的，他们生活在从公元前约35，000年到公元前10，000年的冰川期的末期，以狩猎、捕鱼为生。历史学家通过把世界各地留下的这种痕迹放在一起研究，终于弄懂了这种费解的代码。他们发现代码与昼夜更迭和月亮圆缺有关，事实上是一种最原始的日历。大家早就知道，画在墙上的狩猎图景并不是单纯的艺术表现形式，它们有着一定的含义，因为它们已接近古代人的文字形式。有时，这种图画与墙壁上的刻痕共存，它们之间可能有一定的联系。看来人类早就致力于探索四季变迁了，比人们想像的要早20,000年。

Lesson 40 Who's who 真假难辨

It has never been explained why university students seem to enjoy practical jokes more than anyone else. Students specialize in a particular type of practical joke: the hoax. Inviting the fire-brigade to put out a non-existent fire is a crude form of deception which no self-respecting student would ever indulge in. Students often create amusing situations which are funny to everyone except the victims.

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When a student recently saw two workmen using a pneumatic drill outside his university, he immediately telephoned the police and informed them that two students dressed up as workmen were tearing up the road with a pneumatic drill. As soon as he had hung up, he went over to the workmen and told them that if a policeman ordered them to go away, they were not to take him seriously. He added that a student had dressed up as a policeman and was playing all sorts of silly jokes on people. Both the police and the workmen were grateful to the student for this piece of advance information.

The student hid in an archway nearby where he could watch and hear everything that went on. Sure enough, a policeman arrived on the scene and politely asked the workmen to go away. When he received a very rude reply from one of the workmen, he threatened to remove them by force. The workmen told him to do as he pleased and the policeman telephoned for help. Shortly afterwards, four more policemen arrived and remonstrated with the workmen. As the men refused to stop working, the police attempted to seize the pneumatic drill. The workmen struggled fiercely and one of them lost his temper. He threatened to call the police. At this, the police pointed out ironically that this would hardly be necessary as the men were already under arrest. Pretending to speak seriously, one of the workmen asked if he might make a telephone call before being taken to the station. Permission was granted and a policeman accompanied him to a pay phone. Only when he saw that the man was actually telephoning the police did he realize that they had all been the victims of a hoax.

谁也弄不清为什么大学生好像比任何人都更喜欢恶作剧。大学生擅长一种特殊的恶作剧——戏弄人。请消防队来扑灭一场根本没有的大火是一种低级骗局，有自尊心的大学生决不会去做。大学生们常常做的是制造一种可笑的局面，除了受害者大家都觉得非常滑稽。

最近有个学生看见两个工人在大学校门外用风钻干活，马上打电话报告警察，说有两个学生装扮成工人，正在用风钻破坏路面。挂上电话后，他又马上来到工人那儿，告诉他们若有个警察来让他们走开，不要把他当回事；还对工人说，有个学生常装扮成警察无聊地同别人开玩笑。警察与工人都对那个学生事先通报情况表示感谢。

那学生躲在附近一拱形门廊里，在那儿可以看见、听到现场发生的一切。果然，警察来了，有礼貌地请工人离开此地；但其中一个工人粗鲁地回了几句。于是警察威胁要强行使他们离开。工人说，悉听尊便。警察去打电话叫人。一会儿工夫，又来了4个警察，规劝工人离开。由于工人拒绝停下手中的活，警察想夺风钻。两个工人奋力抗争，其中一个发了火，威胁说要去叫警察。警察听后讥讽地说，这大可不必，因为他俩已被逮捕了。其中一个工人装模作样地问道，在被带往警察局之前，是否可以打一个电话。警察同意了，陪他来到一个投币电话前。当他看到那个工人真的是给警察挂电话，才恍然大悟，原来他们都成了一场骗局的受害者。

Lesson 41 Illusions of Pastoral Peace 宁静田园生活的遐想

The quiet life of the country has never appealed to me. City born and city bred, I have always regarded the country as something you look at through a train window, or something you occasionally visit during the weekend. Most of my friends live in the city, yet they always go into raptures at the mere mention of the country. Though they extol the virtues of the peaceful life, only one of them has ever gone to live in the country and he was back in town within six months. Even he still lives under the illusion that country life is somehow superior to town life. He is forever talking about the friendly people, the clean atmosphere, the closeness to nature and the gentle pace of living. Nothing can be compared, he maintains, with the first cock crow, the twittering of birds at dawn, the sight of the rising sun glinting on the trees and pastures. This idyllic pastoral scene is only part of the picture. My friend fails to mention the long and friendless winter evenings in front of the TV ---- virtually the only form of entertainment. He says nothing about the poor selection of goods in the shops, or about those unfortunate people who have to travel from the country to the city every day to get to work. Why people are prepared to tolerate a four-hour journey each day for the dubious privilege of living in the country is beyond me. They could be saved so much misery and expense if they chose to live in the city where they rightly belong.

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If you can do without the few pastoral pleasures of the country, you will find the city can provide you with the best that life can offer. You never have to travel miles to see your friends. They invariably live nearby and are always available for an informal chat or an evening's entertainment. Some of my acquaintances in the country come up to town once or twice a year to visit the theatre as a special treat. For them this is a major operation which involves considerable planning. As the play draws to its close, they wonder whether they will ever catch that last train home. The city dweller never experiences anxieties of this sort. The latest exhibitions, films, or plays are only a short bus ride away. Shopping, too, is always a pleasure. There is so much variety that you never have to make do with second best. Country people run wild when they go shopping in the city and stagger home loaded with as many of the exotic items as they can carry. Nor is the city without its moments of beauty. There is something comforting about the warm glow shed by advertisements on cold wet winter nights. Few things could be more impressive than the peace that descends on deserted city streets at weekends when the thousands that travel to work every day are tucked away in their homes in the country. It has always been a mystery to me why city dwellers, who appreciate all these things, obstinately pretend that they would prefer to live in the country.

宁静的乡村生活从来没有吸引过我。我生在城市，长在城市，总认为乡村是透过火车车窗看到的那个样子，或偶尔周末去游玩一下的景象。我的许多朋友都住在城市，但他们只要一提起乡村，马上就会变得欣喜若狂。尽管他们都交口称赞宁静的乡村生活的种种优点，但其中只有一人真去农村住过，而且不足6个月就回来了。即使他也仍存有幻觉，好像乡村生活就是比城市生活优越。他滔滔不绝地大谈友好的农民，洁净的空气，贴近大自然的环境和悠闲的生活节奏。他坚持认为，凌晨雄鸡第一声啼叫，黎明时分小鸟吱喳欢叫，冉冉升起的朝阳染红树木、牧场，此番美景无与伦比。但这种田园诗般的乡村风光仅仅是一个侧面。我的朋友没有提到在电视机前度过的漫长寂寞的冬夜——电视是唯一的娱乐形式。他也不说商店货物品种单调，以及那些每天不得不从乡下赶到城里工作的不幸的人们。人们为什么情愿每天在路上奔波4个小时去换取值得怀疑的乡间的优点，我是无法理解的。要是他们愿意住在本来属于他们的城市，则可以让他们省去诸多不便与节约大量开支。

如果你愿舍弃乡下生活那一点点乐趣的话，那么你会发现城市可以为你提供生活中最美好的东西。你去看朋友根本不用跋涉好几英里，因为他们都住在附近，你随时可以同他们聊天或在晚上一起娱乐。我在乡村有一些熟人，他们每年进城来看一回或几回戏，并把此看作一种特殊的享受。看戏在他们是件大事，需要精心计划。当戏快演完时，他们又为是否能赶上末班火车回家而犯愁。这种焦虑，城里人是从未体验过的。坐公共汽车几站路，就可看到最新的展览、电影、戏剧。买东西也是一种乐趣。物品品种繁多，从来不必用二等品来凑合。乡里人进城采购欣喜若狂，每次回家时都买足了外来商品，直到拿不动方才罢休，连走路都摇摇晃晃的。城市也并非没有良辰美景。寒冷潮湿的冬夜里，广告灯箱发出的暖光，会给人某种安慰。周末，当成千上万进城上班的人回到了他们的乡间寓所之后，空旷的街市笼罩着一种宁静的气氛，没有什么能比此时的宁静更令人难忘了。城里人对这一切心里很明白，却偏要执拗地装出他们喜欢住在乡村的样子，这对我来说一直是个谜。

Lesson 42 Modern cavemen 现代洞穴人

Cave exploration, or pot-holing, as it has come to be known, is a relatively new sport. Perhaps it is the desire for solitude or the chance of making an unexpected discovery that lures people down to the depths of the earth. It is impossible to give a satisfactory explanation for a pot-holer's motives. For him, caves have the same peculiar fascination which high mountains have for the climber. They arouse instincts which can only be dimly understood. Exploring really deep caves is not a task for the Sunday afternoon rambler. Such undertakings require the precise planning and foresight of military operations. It can take as long as eight days to rig up rope ladders and to establish supply bases before a descent can be made into a very deep cave. Precautions of this sort are necessary, for it is impossible to foretell the exact nature of the difficulties which will confront the pot-holer. The deepest known cave in the world is the Gouffre Berger near Grenoble. It extends to a depth of 3,723 feet. This immense chasm has been formed by an underground stream which has tunneled a course through a flaw in the rocks. The entrance to the

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cave is on a plateau in the Dauphine Alps. As it is only six feet across, it is barely noticeable. The cave might never have been discovered had not the entrance been spotted by the distinguished French pot-holer, Berger. Since its discovery, it has become a sort of pot-holers' Everest(珠峰). Though a number of descents have been made, much of it still remains to be explored.

A team of pot-holers recently went down the Gouffre Berger. After entering the narrow gap on the plateau, they climbed down the steep sides of the cave until they came to narrow corridor. They had to edge their way along this, sometimes wading across shallow streams, or swimming across deep pools. Suddenly they came to a waterfall which dropped into an underground lake at the bottom of the cave. They plunged into the lake, and after loading their gear on an inflatable rubber dinghy, let the current carry them to the other side. To protect themselves from the icy water, they had to wear special rubber suits. At the far end of the lake, they came to huge piles of rubble which had been washed up by the water. In this part of the cave, they could hear an insistent booming sound which they found was caused by a small water-spout shooting down into a pool from the roof of the cave. Squeezing through a cleft in the rocks, the pot-holers arrived at an enormous cavern, the size of a huge concert hall. After switching on powerful arc lights, they saw great stalagmites -- some of them over forty feet high -- rising up like tree-trunks to meet the stalactites suspended from the roof. Round about, piles of limestone glistened in all the colours of the rainbow. In the eerie（可怕的） silence of the cavern, the only sound that could be heard was made by water which dripped continuously from the high dome above them.

洞穴勘查——或洞穴勘探——是一项比较新的体育活动。寻求独处的愿望或寻求意外发现的机会的欲望吸引人们来到地下深处。要想对洞穴探险者的动机作出满意的解释是不可能的。对洞穴探险者来说，洞穴有一种特殊的魅力，就像高山对登山者有特殊魅力一样。为什么洞空能引发人的那种探险本能，人们对此只能有一种模模糊糊的理解。

探测非常深的洞穴不是那些在星期日下午漫步的人所能胜任的。这种活动需要有军事行动般的周密布署和预见能力。有时需要花费整整8天时间来搭起绳梯，建立供应基地，然后才能到一个很深的洞穴里。作出这样的准备是必要的，因为无法预见到洞穴探险者究竟会遇到什么性质的困难。世界上最深的洞穴是格里诺布尔附近的高弗.伯杰洞，深达3,723英尺。这个深邃的洞穴是由一条地下暗泉冲刷岩石中的缝隙并使之慢慢变大而形成的。此洞的洞口在丹芬阿尔卑斯山的高原上，仅6英尺宽，很难被发现。若不是法国著名洞穴探险家伯杰由于偶然的机会发现了这个洞口的话，这个洞也许不会为人所知。自从被发现以后，这个洞成了洞穴探险者的珠穆朗玛峰，人们多次进入洞内探险，但至今尚有不少东西有待勘探。

最近，一队洞穴探险者下到了高弗.伯杰洞里。他们从高原上的窄缝进去，顺着笔直陡峭的洞壁往下爬。来到一条狭窄的走廊上。他们不得不侧着身子往前走，有时过浅溪，有时游过深潭。突然，他们来到一道瀑布前，那瀑布奔泻而下，注入洞底一处地下湖里。他们跳入湖中，把各种器具装上一只充气的橡皮艇，听任水流将他们带往对岸。湖水冰冷刺骨，他们必须穿上一种特制的橡皮服以保护自己。在湖的尽头，他们见到一大堆一大堆由湖水冲刷上岸的碎石。在这儿，他们可以听见一种连续不断的轰鸣声。后来他们发现这是由山洞顶部的一个小孔里喷出的水柱跌落到水潭中发出的声音。洞穴探险者从岩石缝里挤身过去，来到一个巨大的洞里，其大小相当于一个音乐厅。他们打开强力弧光灯，看见一株株巨大的石笋，有的高达40英尺，像树干似地向上长着，与洞顶悬挂下来的钟乳石相接。周围是一堆堆石灰石，像彩虹一样闪闪发光。洞里有一种可怕的寂静，唯一的可以听见的声响是高高的圆顶上不间断地滴水的嘀嗒声。

Lesson 43 Fully insured 全保险

Insurance companies are normally willing to insure anything. Insuring public or private property is a standard practice in most countries in the world. If, however, you were holding an open air garden party or a fete it would be equally possible to insure yourself in the event of bad weather. Needless to say, the bigger the risk an insurance company takes, the higher the premium you will have to pay. It is not uncommon to hear that a shipping company has made a claim for the cost of salvaging a sunken ship. But the claim made by a local authority to recover the cost of salvaging a sunken pie dish must surely be unique.

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Admittedly it was an unusual pie dish, for it was eighteen feet long and six feet wide. It had been purchased by a local authority so that an enormous pie could be baked for an annual fair. The pie committee decided that the best way to transport the dish would be by canal, so they insured it for the trip. Shortly after it was launched, the pie committee went to a local inn to celebrate. At the same time, a number of teenagers climbed on to the dish and held a little party of their own. Dancing proved to be more than the dish could bear, for during the party it capsized and sank in seven feet of water.

The pie committee telephoned a local garage owner who arrived in a recovery truck to salvage the pie dish. Shivering in their wet clothes, the teenagers looked on while three men dived repeatedly into the water to locate the dish. They had little difficulty in finding it, but hauling it out of the water proved to be a serious problem. The sides of the dish were so smooth that it was almost impossible to attach hawsers and chains to the rim without damaging it. Eventually chains were fixed to one end of the dish and a powerful winch was put into operation. The dish rose to the surface and was gently drawn towards the canal bank. For one agonizing moment, the dish was perched precariously on the bank of the canal, but it suddenly overbalanced and slid back into the water. The men were now obliged to try once more. This time they fixed heavy metal clamps to both sides of the dish so that they could fasten the chains. The dish now had to be lifted vertically because one edge was resting against the side of the canal. The winch was again put into operation and one of the men started up the truck. Several minutes later, the dish was successfully hauled above the surface of the water. Water streamed in torrents over its sides with such force that it set up a huge wave in the canal. There was a danger that the wave would rebound off the other side of the bank and send the dish plunging into the water again. By working at tremendous speed, the men managed to get the dish on to dry land before the wave returned.

保险公司一般说来愿意承保一切东西。承办公共财产或私人财产保险是世界上大部分国家的正常业务。如果你要举办一次露天游园会或盛宴，为避免碰上不好的天气而遭受损失也同样可以保险。不用说，保险公司承担风险越大，你付的保险费也就越高。航运公司为打捞沉船而提出索赔，这是常有的事，但某地当局为打捞一只焙制馅饼的盘子提出索赔，倒是件新鲜事儿。

这个馅饼盘子确实少见，有18英尺长，6英尺宽。某地方当局买下它用来焙制一个巨大的馅饼为一年一度交易会助兴。馅饼委员会确认运输这只盘子的最佳方案是通过运河水运。于是，他们对这只盘子的运输安全投了保。盘子下水后不久，馅饼委员会成员们来到当地一家小酒店庆贺。就在这个时候，许多十几岁的孩子爬上盘子举行他们自己的集会。他们跳起了舞，盘子难以承受。舞会进行过程中，盘子倾覆，沉入了7英尺深的水中。

馅饼委员会给当地汽车修理库老板打电话，他闻讯后开着一辆急修车前来打捞盘子。那些孩子们穿着湿衣服哆嗦，看着3个工人轮番潜入水中以确定盘子的位置。他们没费多大事儿就找到了盘子，可是把盘子捞出却是一个很大的难题。盘子四边十分光滑，要在盘边拴上绳索或链条而同时又不损坏它是很难办到的。不过，他们终于将链条固定在盘子的一端，一台大功率的绞车开动起来。盘子慢慢浮出水面，被轻轻地拽向运河岸边。在令人忐忑不安的瞬间，盘子晃晃悠悠地上了岸，但它突然失去了平衡，又跌回水中。工人们只得再来一次。这次，他们用沉重的金属夹子把盘子夹住，以便往盘子上安装铁链。这次，盘子必须垂直吊出水面，因为盘子的一边紧靠着运河河岸。绞盘机再次启动，一位工人发动了急修车的引擎。几分钟后，盘子被成功地拽出了水面。波浪从盘子两侧急涌而出，在运河里掀起一股大浪。但是当波浪从河对岸折回来时，就有再次把盘子拖进水里的危险。工人们动作迅速，终于赶在那股大浪返回之前把盘子拽到了岸上。

Lesson 44 Speed and comfort 又快捷又舒适

People, traveling long distances frequently have to decide whether they would prefer to go by land, sea, or air. Hardly anyone can positively enjoy sitting in a train for more than a few hours. Train compartments soon get cramped and stuffy. It is almost impossible to take your mind off the journey. Reading is only a partial solution, for the monotonous rhythm of the wheels clicking on the rails soon lulls you to sleep. During the day, sleep comes in

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snatches. At night, when you really wish to go to sleep, you rarely manage to do so. If you are lucky enough to get a sleeper, you spend half the night staring at the small blue light in the ceiling, or fumbling to find your ticket for inspection. Inevitably you arrive at your destination almost exhausted. Long car journeys are even less pleasant, for it is quite impossible even to read. On motorways you can, at least, travel fairly safely at high speeds, but more often than not, the greater part of the journey is spent on roads with few service stations and too much traffic. By comparison, ferry trips or cruises offer a great variety of civilized comforts. You can stretch your legs on the spacious decks, play games, meet interesting people and enjoy good food----always assuming, of course, that the sea is calm. If it is not, and you are likely to get sea-sick, no form of transport could be worse. Even if you travel in ideal weather, sea journeys take a long time. Relatively few people are prepared to sacrifice holiday time for the pleasure of travelling by sea.

Aeroplanes have the reputation of being dangerous and even hardened travellers are intimidated by them. They also have the disadvantage of being an expensive form of transport. But nothing can match them for speed and comfort. Travelling at a height of 30, 000 feet, far above the clouds, and at over 500 miles an hour is an exhilarating experience. You do not have to devise ways of taking your mind off the journey, for an aeroplane gets you to your destination rapidly. For a few hours, you settle back in a deep armchair to enjoy the flight. The real escapist can watch a film and sip champagne on some services. But even when such refinements are not available, there is plenty to keep you occupied. An aeroplane offers you an unusual and breathtaking view of the world. You soar effortlessly over high mountains and deep valleys. You really see the shape of the land. If the landscape is hidden from view, you can enjoy the extraordinary sight of unbroken cloud plains that stretch out for miles before you, while the sun shines brilliantly in a clear sky. The journey is so smooth that there is nothing to prevent you from reading or sleeping. However you decide to spend your time, one thing is certain: you will arrive at your destination fresh and uncrumpled. You will not have to spend the next few days recovering from a long and arduous journey.

出远门的人常常需要决定是走旱路、水路，还是坐飞机。很少有人能够真正喜欢坐几个小时以上的火车。车厢很快就变得拥挤、闷热，想摆脱开旅途的困扰是很难的。看书只能解决部分问题。车轮与铁轨间单调的嘎喳声很快就会送你进入梦乡。白天是忽睡忽醒，到了夜晚，你真想睡了，却很难入睡。即使你走运弄到一个卧铺，夜间有一半时间你会盯着车顶那盏小蓝灯而睡不着觉；要不然就为查票摸索你的车票。一旦抵达目的地，你总是疲惫不堪。乘汽车作长途旅行则更加不舒服，因为连看书都几乎不可能。在公路上还好，你至少能以相当快的速度安全地向前行。但旅行的大部分时间都花在路上，而且只有很少的服务设施，交通也很拥挤。相比之下，坐船旅行或环游可以得到文明世界的各种享受。你可以在甲板上伸展四肢、做游戏，还能见到各种有趣的人，能享用各种美味佳肴——当然，这一切只有在大海风平浪静的情况下才有可能。如果大海肆虐起来，你就可能晕船，那种难受劲儿是任何一种别的旅行方式都不会带来的。即便风平浪静，坐船旅行也要占用很长时间。没有多少人会为了享受坐船旅行的乐趣而牺牲假期的时间。

飞机以危险而著称，连老资格的旅行者也怕飞机。飞机的另一个缺点是昂贵。但就速度与舒适而言，飞机是无与伦比的。腾云驾雾，在3万英尺高空以500英里的时速旅行，这种经历令人心旷神怡。你不必想办法去摆脱旅途的困扰，因为飞机会迅速地把你送到目的地。几小时之内，你躺在扶手椅上，享受着旅途的欢乐。真正会享受的人还可以在某些航班上看一场电影和喝香槟。即使没有这些消遣条件，也总是有事可做。飞机上，你可以观察世界上非同寻常的奇妙的美景。你毫不费劲地飞越高山幽谷，你确能饱览大地的风貌。如果这种景色被遮住了，你便可以观赏一下展现在你面前的、一望数英里的、连绵不断的云海，同时阳光灿烂，天空清澈明朗。旅途平稳，丝毫不妨碍你阅读或睡眠。不管你打算如何消磨时间，有件事是可以肯定的，即当你抵达目的地时，你感到精神焕发，毫无倦意，用不着因为漫长旅途的辛苦而花几天时间休息来恢复精神。

Lesson 45 The power of the press 新闻报道的威力

In democratic countries any efforts to restrict the freedom of the Press are rightly condemned. However, this freedom can easily be abused. Stories about people often attract far more public attention than political events. Though we may enjoy reading about the lives of others, it is extremely doubtful whether we would equally enjoy reading about ourselves. Acting on the contention that facts are sacred, reporters can cause untold suffering to 第 11 页 共 50 页

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individuals by publishing details about their private lives. Newspapers exert such tremendous influence that they can not only bring about major changes to the lives of ordinary people but can even overthrow a government.

The story of a poor family that acquired fame and fortune overnight, dramatically illustrates the power of the press. The family lived in Aberdeen, a small town of 23, 000 inhabitants in South Dakota. As the parents had five children, life was a perpetual struggle against poverty. They were expecting their sixth child and were faced with even more pressing economic problems. If they had only had one more child, the fact would have passed unnoticed. They would have continued to struggle against economic odds and would have lived in obscurity. But they suddenly became the parents of quintuplets, four girls and a boy, an event which radically changed their lives. The day after the birth of the five children, an aeroplane arrived in Aberdeen bringing sixty reporters and photographers. The rise to fame was swift. Television cameras and newspapers carried the news to everyone in the country. Newspapers and magazines offered the family huge sums for the exclusive rights to publish stories and photographs. Gifts poured in not only from unknown people, but from baby food and soap manufacturers who wished to advertise their products. The old farmhouse the family lived in was to be replaced by a new ＄500, 000 home. Reporters kept pressing for interviews so lawyers had to be employed to act as spokesmen for the family at press conferences. While the five babies were still quietly sleeping in oxygen tents in a hospital nursery, their parents were paying the price for fame. It would never again be possible for them to lead normal lives. They had become the victims of commercialization, for their names had acquired a market value. Instead of being five new family members, these children had immediately become a commodity.

在民主国家里，任何限制新闻自由的企图都理所当然地受到谴责。然而，这种自由很容易被滥用。常人轶事往往比政治事件更能引起公众注意。我们都喜欢看关于别人生活的报道，但是否同样喜欢看关于自己生活的报道，就很难说了。记者按事实至上的论点行事，发表有关别人私生活的细节，有时会给当事人造成极大的痛苦。新闻具有巨大的威力。它们不仅可以给寻常人家的生活带来重大的变化，甚至还能推翻一个政府。

下面这户穷人一夜之间出名发财的故事戏剧性地说明了新闻报道的威力。这户人家住在南达科他州一个人口为23，000的小镇上，镇名为阿拜丁。家里已有5个孩子，全家人常年在贫困中挣扎。第6个孩子即将问世，他们面临着更为严峻的经济问题。如果他们只是添了1个孩子，这件事本来就不会引起任何人的注意。这家人会继续为克服经济上的拮据而奋斗，并默默无闻地活下去。但是他们出人意料地生了个五胞胎，4女1男。这事使他们的生活发生了根本的变化。五胞胎降生第二天，一架飞机飞抵阿拜丁，随机带来60名记者与摄影师。

这一家迅速出了名。电视摄像机和报纸把消息传送到全国。报纸、杂志出高价向他们购买文字、图片的独家报道权。不但素昧平生的人寄来了大量的礼物，而且婴儿食品、婴儿肥皂制造厂商为了替自己产品做广告也寄来了大量的礼物。这家人住的旧农舍将由一座价值50万美元的新住宅所取代。由于记者纷纷要求会见，他们不得不请了律师充当他们家的发言人举行记者招待会。眼下，五胞胎还静静地躺在医院婴儿室的氧气帐里，他们的父母却为这名声付出了代价，他们再也无法过正常的生活。他们成了商业化的受害者，因为他们的名字具有了市场价值。这些孩子立即成了商品，而不是5个新的家庭成员。

Lesson 47 Too high a price? 代价太高？

Pollution is the price we pay for an overpopulated, over industrialized planet. When you come to think about it, there are only four ways you can deal with rubbish: dump it, burn it, turn it into something you can use again, attempt to produce less of it. We keep trying all four methods, but he sheer volume of rubbish we produce worldwide threatens to overwhelm us. Rubbish, however, is only part of the problem of polluting our planet. The need to produce ever-increasing quantities of cheap food leads to a different kind of pollution. Industrialized farming methods produce cheap meat products: beef, pork and chicken. The use of pesticides and fertilizers produces cheap grain and vegetables. The price we pay for cheap food may be already too high: Mad Cow Disease (BSE) in cattle, salmonella in chicken and eggs, and wisteria in dairy products. And if you think you'll abandon meat and become a vegetarian, you have the choice of very expensive organically-grown vegetables or a steady diet of pesticides every time you think you're

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eating fresh salads and vegetables, or just having an innocent glass of water! However, there is an even more insidious kind of pollution that particularly affects urban areas and invades our daily lives, and that is noise. Burglar alarms going off at any time of the day or night serve only to annoy passers-by and actually assist burglars to burgle. Car alarms constantly scream at us in the street and are a source of profound irritation. A recent survey of the effects of noise revealed (surprisingly?) that dogs barking incessantly in the night rated the highest form of noise pollution on a scale ranging from 1 to 7. The survey revealed a large number of sources of noise that we really dislike. Lawn mowers whining on a summer's day, late-night parties in apartment blocks, noisy neighbors, vehicles of al kinds, especially large container trucks thundering through quiet village, planes and helicopters flying overhead, large radios carried round in public places and played at maximum volume. New technology has also made its own contribution to noise. A lot of people object to mobile phones, especially when they are used in public places like restaurants or on public transport. Loud conversations on mobile phones invade our thoughts or interrupt the pleasure of meeting friends for a quiet chat. The noise pollution survey revealed a rather spurring and possibly amusing old fashioned source of noise. It turned out to be snoring! Men were found to be the worst offenders. It was revealed that 20% of men in their mid-thirties snore. This figure rises to a staggering 60% of men in their sixties. Against these figures, it was found that only 5% of women snore regularly, while the rest are constantly woken or kept awake by their trumpeting partners. Whatever the source of noise, one thing is certain: silence, it seems, has become a golden memory.

污染就是我们为这个人口过密，过度工业化的星球所付出的代价。当我们开始考虑垃圾问题时，我们只有4种对付垃圾的方法：倾倒、焚烧、把垃圾变成再生材料或试图少产生一些垃圾。我们一直在试这4种方式，但是，我们在世界范围内仅产生的垃圾的量就有把我们覆盖的危险。

然而，垃圾只是我们这个星球的污染问题的一个方面。日益增长的对廉价食物的需求导致了另一种形式的污染。工业化的农作方式生产出廉价的肉类制品——牛肉、猪肉和鸡肉。使用杀虫剂和化肥生产出廉价的谷物和蔬菜。为了廉价食物我们付出代价已经太高了：牛肉中的疯牛病，鸡肉和鸡蛋中的沙门氏菌，奶制品中的利斯特杆菌。如果你想放弃肉类而变成一位素食者，那么你可以两者择一：或是选用价格昂贵、有机培植的蔬菜，或是当你认为在享用新鲜色拉和新鲜蔬菜或饮用一杯无害的水的时候，实际上每次都不断吃进杀虫剂。

但是，还有一种更加隐蔽有害的污染，它专门影响城镇地区，侵袭我们的日常生活，那就是噪音。防盗警报器在白天和黑夜的任何时候都会响起来，它的作用只是骚扰过路行人，而实际上却帮助窃贼入室行窃。在街上，汽车的防盗警报不断对我们吼叫，这是人们极度烦燥的一个原因，最近一个有关噪音的作用的调查（令人吃惊地）指出，夜间连续不断的狗叫声，在一个从1级至7级刻度表上应列为最严重的噪间污染。这个调查揭示了我们所不喜欢的大量的噪间的来源：夏天呜呜作响的割草机，公寓楼里深夜聚会的喧哗声，大声吵闹的邻居，各式各样的车辆，特别是穿越寂静的村庄的集装箱卡车，从头顶飞过的飞机和直升机，被带到公共场所、音量开到最大的大功率收音机。新技术也为噪音作了它的贡献。许多人都反对移动式电话，特别是在如饭店，公共交通车等公共场所使用移动电话。用移动电话大声交谈干扰我们的思路，破坏我们和朋友在一起轻声聊天所得到的乐趣。这个有关噪音的污染调查还揭示了一种出人意外而同时可能会引人意外而同时可能会引人发笑的老式噪音源。它竟然是鼾声。人类是这方面的罪魁祸首。调查指出，20%的35岁左右的男人打鼾；而到60岁这个年龄段，这个数字上升到令人惊愕的60%。与这些数字相比，只有5% 的女性经常打鼾；而其余则经常被与她们同睡、像吹号似地打着呼噜的男人吵醒或弄得睡不着。不管噪声来自何方，有一点是肯定的：看来寂静已变成一种珍贵的回忆。

Lesson 50 New Year resolutions 新年的决心

The New Year is a time for resolutions. Mentally, at least, most of us could compile formidable lists of ?dos‘ and ?don'ts‘. The same old favourites recur year in year out with monotonous regularity. We resolve to get up earlier each morning, eat less, find more time to play with the children, do a thousand and one jobs about the house, be nice to people we don't like, drive carefully, and take the dog for a walk every day. Past experience has taught us that certain 第 13 页 共 50 页

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accomplishments are beyond attainment. If we remain inveterate smokers, it is only because we have so often experienced the frustration that results from failure. Most of us fail in our efforts at self-improvement because our schemes are too ambitious and we never have time to carry them out. We also make the fundamental error of announcing our resolutions to everybody so that we look even more foolish when we slip back into our bad old ways. Aware of these pitfalls, this year I attempted to keep my resolutions to myself. I limited myself to two modest ambitions: to do physical exercises every morning and to read more of an evening. An all-night party on New Year's Eve provided me with a good excuse for not carrying on either of these new resolutions on the first day of the year, but on the second, I applied myself assiduously to the task.

The daily exercises lasted only eleven minutes and I proposed to do them early in the morning before anyone had got up. The self-discipline required to drag myself out of bed eleven minutes earlier than usual was considerable. Nevertheless, I managed to creep down into the living-room for two days before anyone found me out. After jumping about on the carpet and twisting the human frame into uncomfortable positions, I sat down at the breakfast table in an exhausted condition. It was this that betrayed me. The next morning the whole family trooped in to watch the performance. That was really unsettling, but I fended off the taunts and jibes of the family good-humouredly and soon everybody got used to the idea. However, my enthusiasm waned. The time I spent at exercise gradually diminished. Little by little the eleven minutes fell to zero. By January 10th, I was back to where I had started from. I argued that if I spent less time exhausting myself at exercises in the morning, I would keep my mind fresh for reading when I got home from work. Resisting the hypnotizing effect of television, I sat in my room for a few evenings with my eyes glued to a book. One night, however, feeling cold and lonely, I went downstairs and sat in front of the television pretending to read. That proved to be my undoing, for I soon got back to my old bad habit of dozing off in front of the screen. I still haven't given up my resolution to do more reading. In fact, I have just bought a book entitled How to Read a Thousand Words a Minute. Perhaps it will solve my problem, but I just haven't had time to read it!

新年是下决心的时候，至少在大多数人的心里会编排出一份―应做什么‖和―不应做什么‖的令人生畏的单子。相同的决心以单调的规律年复一年地出现。我们决心每天早晨起得早些；吃得少些；多花点时间与孩子们一起做游戏；做大量的家务；对不喜欢的人友善一些；小心驾车；每天都要带着狗散步；等等。以往的经验告诉我们有些事是办不到的。如果我们烟瘾大，戒不掉，那是因为屡戒屡败，失去了信心。我们大多数人想自我完善却遭到失败，这是因为我们的规划过于宏大，而又根本没有时间去实施。我们还犯有一个根本性的错误，即把我们的决心向大家宣布。这样一旦滑回到那些环的老习惯上去，我们在别人眼里会显得更加难堪。我深知这些问题，于是，今年我对自己的计划要严加保密，只给自己定下两项适中的任务：每天早上锻炼身体，每天晚上多看点书。新年除夕举办的一次通宵晚会，使我理直气壮地在新年头一天免去了这两项任务。不过，新年第二天，我全力以赴地照着去做了。

早锻炼一共只有11分钟，我打算在别人起床之前进行。这就要求我比平日早11分钟把自己从床上拽起来，这种自我约束是很艰苦的。不过开头两天我还是成功地蹑手蹑脚地来到楼下起居室，被谁也没发现。我在地毯上跳过来蹦过去，扭曲身子，摆出各种姿势，弄得浑身不舒服，然后坐到桌边吃早饭，一副筋疲力尽的样子。正是这副模样泄露了我的秘密。第二天早晨全家人结队来到起居室看我表演。这真叫人不好意思，但我心平气和地顶住了全家人的嘲笑和奚落。不久，大家对我习以为常了，而这时我的热情却减退了。我花在锻炼上的时间逐渐减少，慢慢地从11分钟减到了零。到了1月10日，我恢复了原来的作息时间。我辩解说，早晨少耗费精力锻炼，晚上下班回家看书时头脑更清醒些。有几天晚上，我极力摆脱了电视的诱惑，坐在自己房间里，两眼盯在书上。可是，有一天夜里，我感到又冷又孤单，便来到楼下坐在电视机前假装看书。这下我可完了，因为不一会儿，我就恢复了以前的坏习惯，在屏幕前打起瞌睡来。但我还没有放弃多看些书的决心。事实上，我刚买来一本叫《一分钟读一千字的诀窍》的书。也许这本书能解决我的问题，但我一直还没时间去看这本书！

Lesson 53 In the public interest 为了公众的利益

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has evolved an excellent system for protecting the individual citizen from high-handed or incompetent public officers. The system has worked so well, that it has been adopted in other countries too.

The Swedes were the first to recognize that public officials like civil servants, police officers, health inspectors or tax-collectors can make mistakes or act over-zealously in the belief that they are serving the public. As long ago as 1809, the Swedish Parliament introduced a scheme to safeguard the interest of the individual. A parliamentary committee representing all political parties appoints a person who is suitably qualified to investigate private grievances against the State. The official title of the person is ?Justiteombudsman‘, but the Swedes commonly refer to him as the ?J. O.‘ or ?Ombudsman‘. The Ombudsman is not subject to political pressure. He investigates complaints large and small that come to him from all levels of society. As complaints must be made in writing, the Ombudsman receives an average of 1, 200 letters a year. He has eight lawyer assistants to help him and he examines every single letter in detail. There is nothing secretive about the Ombudsman's work, for his correspondence is open to public inspection. If a citizen's complaint is justified, the Ombudsman will act on his behalf. The action he takes varies according to the nature of the complaint. He may gently reprimand an official or even suggest to parliament that a law be altered. The following case is a typical example of the Ombudsman's work.

A foreigner living in a Swedish village wrote to the Ombudsman complaining that he had been ill-treated by the police, simply because he was a foreigner. The Ombudsman immediately wrote to the Chief of Police in the district asking him to send a record of the case. There was nothing in the record to show that the foreigner's complaint was justified and the Chief of Police strongly denied the accusation. It was impossible for the Ombudsman to take action, but when he received a similar complaint from another foreigner in the same village, he immediately sent one of his lawyers to investigate the matter. The lawyer ascertained that a policeman had indeed dealt roughly with foreigners on several occasions. The fact that the policeman was prejudiced against foreigners could not be recorded in the official files. It was only possible for the Ombudsman to find this out by sending one of his representatives to check the facts. The policeman in question was severely reprimanded and was informed that if any further complaints were lodged against him, he would be prosecuted. The Ombudsman's prompt action at once put an end to an unpleasant practice which might have gone unnoticed.

斯堪的纳维亚半岛各国实行的开明的社会政策，受到全世界的推崇。在瑞典，已逐渐形成了一种完善的制度以保护每个公民不受专横的和不称职的政府官员的欺压。由于这种制度行之有效，已被其他国家采纳。

是瑞典人首先认识到政府工作人员如文职人员、警官、卫生稽查员、税务人员等等也会犯错误或者自以为在为公众服务而把事情做过了头。早在1809年，瑞典议会就建立了一个保护公民利益的制度。议会内有一个代表各政党利益的委员会，由它委派一位称职的人选专门调查个人对国家的意见。此人官衔为―司法特派员‖，但瑞典人一般都管他叫―J．O．‖，即―司法特派员‖。司法特派员不受任何政治压力的制约。他听取社会各阶层的各种大小意见，并进行调查。由于意见均需用书面形式提出，司法特派员每年平均收到1，200封信。他有8位律帅做他的助手协助工作，每封信都详细批阅。司法特派员的工作没有什么秘密可言，他的信件是公开的，供公众监督。如果公民的意见正确，司法特派员便为他伸张正义。司法特派员采取的行动因意见的性质不同而有所不同。他可以善意地批评某位官员，也可以甚至向议会提议修改某项法律。下述事件是司法特派员工作的一个典型例子。

一个住在瑞典乡村的外国人写信给司法特派员，抱怨说他受到警察虐待，原因就是因为他是个外国人。司法特派员立即写信给当地的警察局长，请他寄送与此事有关的材料。材料中没有任何文字记载证明外国人所说的情况符合事实，警察局长矢口否认这一指控。司法特派员难以处理。但是，当他又收到住在同一村庄的另一个外国人写的一封内容类似的投诉信时，他立即派出一位律师前去调查。律师证实有个警察确实多次粗鲁地对待外国人。警察歧视外国人的事在官方档案中不可能加以记载，司法特派员只有派他的代表去核对事实才能了解真相。当事的警察受到严厉斥责，并被告知，如果再有人投诉他，他将受到起诉。司法特派员及时采取的行动，迅速制止了这一起不愉快的事件，不然这件事可能因未得到人们注意而不了了之。

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Lesson 54 Instinct or cleverness? 是本能还是机智

We have been brought up to fear insects. We regard them as unnecessary creatures that do more harm than good. We continually wage war on them, for they contaminate our food, carry diseases, or devour our crops. They sting or bite without provocation; they fly uninvited into our rooms on summer nights, or beat ageist our lighted windows. We live in dread not only of unpleasant insects like spiders or wasps, but of quite harmless one like moths. Reading about them increases our understanding without dispelling our fears. Knowing that the industrious ant lives in a highly organized society does nothing to prevent us from being filled with revulsion when we find hordes of them crawling over a carefully prepared picnic lunch. No matter how much we like honey, or how much we have read about the uncanny sense of direction which bees possess, we have a horror of being stung. Most of our fears are unreasonable, but they are impossible to erase. At the same time, however, insects are strangely fascinating. We enjoy reading about them, especially when we find that, like the praying mantis, they lead perfectly horrible lives. We enjoy staring at them, entranced as they go about their business, unaware (we hope) of our presence. Who has not stood in awe at the sight of a spider pouncing on a fly, or a column of ants triumphantly bearing home an enormous dead beetle? Last summer I spent days in the garden watching thousands of ants crawling up the trunk of my prize peach tree. The tree has grown against a warm wall on a sheltered side of the house. I am especially proud of it, not only because it has survived several severe winters, but because it occasionally produces luscious peaches. During the summer, I noticed that the leaves of the tree were beginning to wither. Clusters of tiny insects called aphides were to be found on the underside of the leaves. They were visited by a large colony of ants which obtained a sort of honey from them. I immediately embarked on an experiment which, even though if failed to get rid of the ants, kept me fascinated for twenty-four hours. I bound the base of the tree with sticky tape, making it impossible for the ants to reach the aphides. The tape was so stick that they did not dare to cross it. For a long time. I watched them scurrying around the base of the tree in bewilderment. I even went out at midnight with a torch and noted with satisfaction (and surprise) that the ants were still swarming around the sticky tape without being able to do anything about it. I got up early next morning hoping to find that the ants had given up in despair. Instead, I saw that they had discovered a new route. They were climbing up the wall of the house and then on to the leaves of the tree. I realized sadly that I had been completely defeated by their ingenuity. The ants had been quick to find an answer to my thoroughly unscientific methods!

我们自幼就在对昆虫的惧怕中长大。我们把昆虫当作害多益少的无用东西。人类不断同昆虫斗争，因为昆虫弄脏我们的食物，传播疾病，吞噬庄稼。它们无缘无故地又叮又咬；夏天的晚上，它们未经邀请便飞到我们房间里，或者对着露出亮光的窗户乱扑乱撞。我们在日常生活中，不但憎恶如蜘蛛、黄蜂之类令人讨厌的昆虫，而且憎恶并无大害的飞蛾等。阅读有关昆虫的书能增加我们对它们的了解，却不能消除我们的恐惧的心理。即使知道勤奋的蚂蚁生活具有高度组织性的社会里，当看到大群蚂蚁在我们精心准备的午间野餐上爬行时，我们也无法抑制对它们的反感。不管我们多么爱吃蜂蜜，或读过多少关于蜜蜂具有神秘的识别方向的灵感的书，我们仍然十分害怕被蜂蜇。我们的恐惧大部分是没有道理的，但去无法消除。同时，不知为什么昆虫又是迷人的。我们喜欢看有关昆虫的书，尤其是当我们了解螳螂等过着一种令人生畏的生活时，就更加爱读有关昆虫的书了。我们喜欢入迷地看它们做事，它们不知道（但愿如此）我们就在它们身边。当看到蜘蛛扑向一只苍蝇时，一队蚂蚁抬着一只巨大的死甲虫凯旋归时，谁能不感到敬畏呢？

去年夏天，我花了好几天时间站在花园里观察成千只蚂蚁爬上我那棵心爱的桃树的树干。那棵树是靠着房子有遮挡的一面暖墙生长的。我为这棵树感到特别自豪，不仅因为它度过了几个寒冬终于活了下来，而且还因为它有时结出些甘甜的桃子来。到了夏天，我发现树叶开始枯萎，结果在树叶背面找到成串的叫作蚜虫小虫子。蚜虫遭到一窝蚂蚁的攻击，蚂蚁从它们身上可以获得一种蜜。我当即动手作了一项试验，这项试验尽管没有使我摆脱这些蚂蚁，却使我着迷了24小时。我用一条胶带把桃树底部包上，不让蚂蚁接近蚜虫。胶带极粘，蚂蚁不敢从上面爬过。在很长一段时间里，我看见蚂蚁围着大树底部来回转悠，不知所措。半夜，我还拿着电筒来到花园里，满意地（同时惊奇地）发现那些蚂蚁还围着胶带团团转。无能为力。第二天早上，我起床后希望看见蚂蚁已因无望而放弃了尝试，结果却发现它们又找到一条新的路径。

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它们正在顺着房子的外墙往上爬，然后爬上树叶。我懊丧地感到败在了足智多谋的蚂蚁的手下。蚂蚁已很快找到了相应的对策，来对付我那套完全不科学的办法！

lesson 59 Collecting 收藏

People tend to amass possessions, sometimes without being aware of doing so. Indeed they can have a delightful surprise when they find something useful which they did not know they owned. Those who never have to move house become indiscriminate collectors of what can only be described as clutter. They leave unwanted objects in drawers, cupboards and attics for years, in the belief that they may one day need just those very things. As they grow old, people also accumulate belongings for two other reasons, lack of physical and mental energy, both of which are essential in turning out and throwing away, and sentiment. Things owned for a long time are full of associations with the past, perhaps with relatives who are dead, and so they gradually acquire a value beyond their true worth. Some things are collected deliberately in the home in an attempt to avoid waste. Among these I would list string and brown paper, kept by thrifty people when a parcel has been opened, to save buying these two requisites. Collecting small items can easily become a mania. I know someone who always cuts sketches out from newspapers of model clothes that she would like to buy, if she had the money. As she is not rich, the chances that she will ever be able to afford such purchases are remote; but she is never sufficiently strongminded to be able to stop the practice. It is a harmless habit, but it litters up her desk to such an extent that every time she opens it; loose bits of paper fall out in every direction.

Collecting as a serious hobby is quite different and has many advantages. It provides relaxation for leisure hours, as just looking at one's treasures is always a joy. One does not have to go outside for amusement, since the collection is housed at home. Whatever it consists of, stamps, records, first editions of books, china, glass, antique furniture, pictures, model cars, stuffed birds, toy animals, there is always something to do in connection with it, from finding the right place for the latest addition, to verifying facts in reference books. This hobby educates one not only in the chosen subject, but also in general matters which have some bearing on it. There are also other benefits. One wants to meet like-minded collectors, to get advice, to compare notes, to exchange articles, to show off the latest find. So one's circle of friends grows. Soon the hobby leads to travel, perhaps to a meeting in another town, possibly a trip abroad in search of a rare specimen, for collectors are not confined to any one country. Over the years, one may well become an authority on one's hobby and will very probably be asked to give informal talks to little gatherings and then, if successful, to larger audiences. In this way self-confidence grows, first from mastering a subject, then from being able to talk about it. Collecting, by occupying spare time so constructively, makes a person contented, with no time for boredom. 人们喜欢收藏东西，有时并没有意识到自己在这样做。确实，一旦无意之中从自己的收藏品中找到某件有用的东西时，可以给人一种惊喜的感觉。那些从来不必搬家的人们成了一种无所不容的收藏家。他们专门收藏那些只能被称作杂货的东西。他们在抽屉里、碗柜中、阁楼上堆放着一些不用的东西，一放就是好几年，相信总有一天需要的正好是那些东西。人们年老之后也喜欢收藏东西，不过是出于两个不同的原因：一是体力、精力均告不佳，这二者是清除无用的东西必不可少的因素；另一个原因是感情因素。东西搁得时间久了，便会充满着与过去岁月的联系，比方说与死去的亲戚有关。因此这些东西慢慢获得了一种超出它本身的价值。

居家度日，有目的地收藏某些东西是为了防止浪费。这些东西中我想举出线绳和包装纸为例。节俭的人们打开包裹后便把这两样必备的东西收藏起来，省得日后去买。收集小玩艺儿很容易着迷。我认识一个人，她总喜欢从报纸上剪下流行服装的图样，等以后有钱时去买服装。由于她并不富裕，她买得起这些服装的可能性十分渺茫。但她又缺乏足够坚强的意志把这一收集活动停下来。这种习惯无害，只是把写字台里堆得满满当当，以致每次打开抽屉总能带出许多纸片四处飞扬。

作为一种严肃的业余爱好的收藏活动完全是另外一回事，它具有许多益处。它可以使人在闲暇中得到休息，因为欣赏自己收藏的珍品总会充满了乐趣。人们不必走到户外去寻求娱乐，因为收藏品都是存放在

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家中。不管收藏品是什么，邮票、唱片、头版书籍、瓷器、玻璃杯、老式家具、绘画、模型汽车、鸟类标本，还是玩具动物，从为新增添的收藏品寻找摆放位置到核对参考书中的事实，总归有事可做。这种爱好不仅能使人从选择的专题中受到教育，而且也能从与之有关的一般事物中获得长进。除此之外，还有其他的益处。收藏者要会见情趣相投的收藏者，以获取教益、交流经验、交换收藏品、炫耀自己的最新收藏。朋友的圈子就这样不断扩太。用不了多久，有这种爱好的人便开始旅行，也许是去另一个城市参加会议，也可能是出国寻找一件珍品，因为收藏家是不分国籍的。一人积了多年经验会成为自己这种爱好的权威，很可能应邀在小型集会上作非正式的讲话。如果讲得好，可能向更多的人发表演说。这样，你自信心不断增强，先是因为掌握了一门学问，接下来是因为能够就此发表见解。收藏活动通过富有建设性地利用业余时间使人感到心满意足，不再有无聊之日。

Lesson 60 Too early and too late 太早和太晚

Punctuality is a necessary habit in all public affairs in civilized society. Without it, nothing could ever be brought to a conclusion; everything would be in a state of chaos. Only in a sparsely-populated rural community is it possible to disregard it. In ordinary living, there can be some tolerance of unpunctuality. The intellectual, who is working on some abstruse problem, has everything coordinated and organized for the matter in hand. He is therefore forgiven, if late for a dinner party. But people are often reproached for unpunctuality when their only fault is cutting things fine. It is hard for energetic, quick-minded people to waste time, so they are often tempted to finish a job before setting out to keep an appointment. If no accidents occur on the way, like punctured tyres, diversions of traffic, sudden descent of fog, they will be on time. They are often more industrious, useful citizens than those who are never late. The over-punctual can be as much a trial to others as the unpunctual. The guest who arrives half an hour too soon is the greatest nuisance. Some friends of my family had this irritating habit. The only thing to do was ask them to come half an hour later than the other guests. Then they arrived just when we wanted them.

If you are catching a train, it is always better to be comfortably early than even a fraction of a minute too late. Although being early may mean wasting a little time, this will be less than if you miss the train and have to wait an hour or more for the next one; and you avoid the frustration of arriving at the very moment when the train is drawing out of the station and being unable to get on it. An even harder situation is to be on the platform in good time for a train and still to see it go off without you. Such an experience befell a certain young girl the first time she was travelling alone.

She entered the station twenty minutes before the train was due, since her parents had impressed upon her that it would be unforgivable to miss it and cause the friends with whom she was going to stay to make two journeys to meet her. She gave her luggage to a porter and showed him her ticket. To her horror he said that she was two hours too soon. She felt in her handbag for the piece of paper on which her father had written down all the details of the journey and gave it to the porter. He agreed that a train did come into the station at the time on the paper and that it did stop, but only to take on mail, not passengers. The girl asked to see a timetable, feeling sure that her father could not have made such a mistake. The porter went to fetch one and arrived back with the station master, who produced it with a flourish and pointed out a microscopic ?o‘ beside the time of the arrival of the train at his station; this little ?o‘ indicated that the train only stopped for mail. Just as that moment the train came into the station. The girl, tears streaming down her face, begged to be allowed to slip into the guard's van. But the station master was adamant: rules could not be broken. And she had to watch that train disappear towards her destination while she was left behind.

准时是文明社会中进行一切社交活动时必须养成的习惯。不准时将一事无成，事事都会陷入混乱不堪的境地。只有在人口稀少的农村，才可以忽视准时的习惯。在日常生活中人们可以容忍一定程度的不准时。一个专心钻研某个复杂问题的知识分子，为了搞好手头的研究，要把一切都协调一致、组织周密。因此，他要是赴宴迟到了会得到谅解。但有些人不准时常常是因为掐钟点所致，他们常常会受到责备。精力充沛、头脑敏捷的人极不愿意浪费时间，因此他们常想做完一件事后再去赴约。要是路上没有发生如爆胎、改道、突然起雾等意外事故，他们是决不会迟到的。他们与那些从不迟到的人相比，常常是更勤奋有用的公民。早到的人同迟到的人一样令人讨厌。客人提前半小时到达是最令人讨厌的。我家有几个朋友就有这种令人

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恼火的习惯。唯一的办法就是请他们比别的客人晚来半小时。这样，他们可以恰好在我们要求的时间到达。

如果赶火车，早到总比晚到好，哪怕早到一会儿也好。虽然早到可能意味着浪费一点时间，但这比误了火车、等上一个多小时坐下一班车浪费的时间要少，而且可以避免那种正好在火车驶出站时赶到车站，因上不去车而感到的沮丧。更难堪的情况是虽然及时赶到站台上，却眼睁睁地看着那趟火车启动，把你抛下。一个小姑娘第一次单独出门就碰到了这种情况。

在火车进站20分钟前她就进了车站。因为她的父母再三跟她说，如果误了这趟车，她的东道主朋友就得接她两趟，这是不应该的。她把行李交给搬运工并给他看了车票。搬运工说她早到了两个小时，她听后大吃一惊。她从钱包里摸出一张纸条，那上面有她父亲对这次旅行的详细说明，她把这张纸条交给了搬运工。搬运工说，正如纸条上所说，确有一趟火车在那个时刻到站，但它只停站装邮件，不载旅客。姑娘要求看时刻表，因为她相信父亲不能把这么大的事给弄错。搬运工跑回去取时刻表，同时请来了站长。站长拿着时刻表一挥手，指着那趟列车到站时刻旁边的一个很小的圆圈标记。这个标记表示列车是为装邮件而停车。正在这时，火车进站了。女孩泪流满面，央求让她不声不响地到押车员车厢里去算了。但站长态度坚决，规章制度不能破环，姑娘只得眼看着那趟火车消逝在她要去的方向而撇下了她。

Lesson 1 Finding fossil man 发现化石人

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, because 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.

我们从书籍中可以读到5,000年前近东发生的事情，那里的人最早学 会了写字。但直到现在，世界上仍然有些地方；人们还不会书写。他们保存历史的唯一办法是将历史当作传说讲述，由讲述人一代接一代地将史实描述为传奇故事口 传下来。这些传说是很有用的，因为它们能告诉我们以往人们迁居的情况。但是；没有人能把他们当时做的事情记载下来。人类学家过去不清楚如今生活在太平洋诸 岛上的波利尼西亚人的祖先来自何方，当地人的传说却告诉了人们：其中有一部分是约在2,000年前从印度尼西亚迁来的。

但是，和我们相似的原始人 生活的年代太久远了；因此，有关他们的传说即使有如今也失传了。于是，考古学家们既缺乏历史记载，又无口头传说来帮助他们弄清最早的“现代人”是从哪里来 的。

然而，幸运的是，远古人用石头制作了工具，特别是用燧石，因力燧石较之其他石头更易成形。他们也可能用过木头和兽皮，但这类东西早已腐烂殆 尽。石头是不会腐烂的。因此，尽管制造这些工具的人的骨头早已荡然无存；但远古时代的石头工具却保存了下来

Lesson 48 Planning a share portfolio 规划股份投资

There is no shortage of tipsters around offering 'get-rich-quick' opportunities. But if you are a serious private investor, leave the Las Vegas mentality to those with money to fritter. The serious investor needs a proper 'portfolio' -- a well-planned selection of investments, with a definite structure and a clear aim. But exactly how does a newcomer to the stock market go about achieving that?

Well, if you go to five reputable stock brokers and ask them what you should do with your money, you're likely to

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get five different answers, -- even if you give all the relevant information about your age age, family, finances and what you want from your investments. Moral? There is no one 'right' way to structure a portfolio. However, there are undoubtedly some wrong ways, and you can be sure that none of our five advisers would have suggested sinking all (or perhaps any) of your money into Periwigs*.

So what should you do? We'll assume that you have sorted out the basics -- like mortgages, pensions, insurance and access to sufficient cash reserves. You should then establish your own individual aims. These are partly a matter of personal circumstances, partly a matter of psychology.

For instance, if you are older you have less time to recover from any major losses, and you may well wish to boost your pension income. So preserving your capital and generating extra income are your main priorities. In this case, you'd probably construct a portfolio with some shares (but not high risk ones), along with gilts, cash deposits, and perhaps convertibles or the income shares of split capital investment trusts.

If you are younger, and in a solid financial position, you may decide to take an aggressive approach -- but only if you're blessed with a sanguine disposition and won't suffer sleepless nights over share prices. If portfolio, alongside your more pedestrian in vestments. Once you have decided on your investment aims, you can then decide where to put your money. The golden rule here is spread your risk -- if you put all of your money into Periwigs International, you're setting yourself up as a hostage to fortune. *'Periwigs' is the name of a fictitious company.

我们周围不乏情报贩子，向人们提供迅速发财致富的机遇。但是，如果你是一个认真的私人投资者，就把拉斯韦加斯的心态留给那些有钱可供挥霍的人。认真的投资 者需要一份正规的投资组合表 -- 一种计划很周密的投资选择，包括你的投资结构和明确的目标。但是, 一个股票市场的新手又如何能做到这一点呢？

如果你去向5位有威望的股票经纪人咨询，询问你应该如何使用你的资金，你可能得到5种不同的答复，即便你提供了有关于你的年龄、家庭、财源和你想从投资中 获得好处的信息。这是个道德问题吗？没有一种完全“正确”的方法来排列这种投资组合，然而，却毫无疑问地有几种错误的方法。可以相信5位经纪人中不会有人 建议你把全部（或一部份）资金投入佩里威格斯公司。

那么你该怎么做呢？假定你已把基本情况弄清楚了，如抵押贷款、养老金、保险金和动用现金储备的机会。然后，你一定要建立起自己的目标。这里一方面是个人所处的环境，另一方面是个心理学的问题。 比如说，如果你年纪较大，你从重大投资损失中恢复过来的时间就较少，你就很希望能够提高你的养老金收入。因此，你的首要任务就是保护你的资金和引发额外的收入。在这种情况下，你大概想制定一份包括某些股份（但不是风险很大的股份）的投资组合，同时还有高度可靠的证券、现金储蓄，可能还有可换证券，或分割资 本投资信托公司的所得股。

如果你年轻一些，并且经济状况可靠，你可能会采取一种积极进取的方式 -- 你必须性格开朗，不会因股票价格的浮动而夜不能眠。如果你觉得你的情况是这样的话，你可在投资组合中包括几项有令人陶醉的增值前景的增长股，和其他比较平 淡的投资项目放在一起。一旦你的投资组合中包括几项有令人陶醉的增值前景的增长股，和其他比较平淡的投资项目放在一起。一旦你的投资目标确立以后，你就可 以决定你的钱投向何处。这里的指导原则是：分散你的投资风险。如果你把所有资金投入佩里威格斯国际公司，你就把自己当成了命运的人质。

Lesson 47 The great escape 大逃亡

What is one of the features of modern camping where nationality is concerned?

Economy is one powerful motive for camping, since after the initial outlay upon equipment, or through hiring it, the total expense can be far less than the cost of hotels. But, contrary to a popular assumption, it is far from being the only one, or even the greatest. The man who manoeuvres carelessly into his twenty pounds' worth of space at one of Europe's myriad permanent sites may find himself bumping a Bentley. More likely, Ford Escort will be hub to hub with Renault or Mercedes, but rarely with bicycles made for two.

That the equipment of modern camping becomes yearly more sophisticated is an entertaining paradox for the cynic,

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a brighter promise for the hopeful traveler who has sworn to get away from it all. It also provides-and some student sociologist might care to base his thesis upon the phenomenon -- an escape of another kind. The modern traveller is often a man who dislikes the Splendide and the Bellavista, not because he cannot afford, or shuns their material comforts. but because he is afford of them. Affluent he may be, but he is by no means sure what to tip the doorman or the chambermaid. Master in his own house, he has little idea of when to say boo to a maitre d'hotel.

From all such fears camping releases him. Granted, a snobbery of camping itself, based upon equipment and techniques, already exists; but it is of a kind that, if he meets it, he can readily understand and deal with. There is no superior 'they' in the shape of managements and hotel hierarchies to darken his holiday days.

To such motives, yet another must be added. The contemporary phenomenon of car worship is to be explained not least by the sense of independence and freedom that ownership entails. To this pleasure camping gives an exquisite refinement.

From one's own front door to home or foreign hills or sands and back again, everything is to hand. Not only are the means of arriving at the holiday paradise entirely within one's own command and keeping, but the means of escape from holiday hel (if the beach proves too crowded, the local weather too inclement) are there, outside -- or, as likely, part of -- the tent.

Idealists have objected to the package tour, that the traveller abroad thereby denies himself the opportunity of getting to know the people of the country visited. Insularity and self-containment, it is argued, go hand in hand. The opinion does not survive experience of a popular Continental camping place. Holiday hotels tend to cater for one nationality of visitors especially, sometimes exclusively. Camping sites, by contrast, are highly cosmopolitan. Granted, a preponderance of Germans is a characteristic that seems common to most Mediterranean sites; but as yet there is no overwhelmingly specialized patronage. Notices forbidding the open-air drying of clothes, or the use of water points for car washing, or those inviting 'our camping friends' to a dance or a boat trip are printed not only in French or Italian or Spanish, but also in English, German and Dutch. At meal times the odour of sauerkraut vies with that of garlic. The Frenchman's breakfast coffee competes with the Englishman's bacon and eggs.

Whether the remarkable growth of organized camping means the eventual death of the more independent kind is hard to say. Municipalities naturally want to secure the campers' site fees and other custom. Police are wary of itinerants who cannot be traced to a recognized camp boundary or to four walls. But most probably it will all depend upon campers themselves: how many heath fires they cause; how much litter they leave; in short, whether or not they wholly alienate landowners and those who live in the countryside. Only good scouting is likely to preserve the freedoms so dear to the heart of the eternal Boy Scout.

图省钱是露营的一个主要动机，因为除了开始时购置或是租借一套露营装备外，总费用算起来要比住旅馆开支少得多。但是，和一般的看法相反，这决非是仅有的， 甚至不是最主要的动机。如果一位游客漫不经心地驾车驶入欧洲无数常年营地之一，花20镑租用一个空位，那么他可能会碰见一辆本特利汽车，更可能会望见一辆 福特.康索尔或一辆雷诺或一辆梅塞迪斯并排停放着，不过双人自行车则不容易看到。

现代露营装备一年比一年讲究，这对那些厌世嫉俗者来说是一件有趣的自相矛盾的事情。而对于发誓用露营来摆脱烦恼的人来说，却带来了更光明的前景。学社会学 的大学生来露营是另一种形式的摆脱现实，他们的目的很可能是根据观察到的露营现象去写论文。现代露营旅游的人往往讨厌在“斯普兰迪德”和“贝拉维斯塔”这 样的大酒店，这并不是因为他们付不起钱，也不是为了躲避物质享受，而是因为他们害怕酒店。他们可能很富有，但给看门人和房间女服务叫多少小费，心中却根本 没有数；他们在家可能是主人，但不知道什么时候才能对酒店的经理表示不满。

露营便人们免除了这些忧虑。诚然，露营地本身也存在以露营装备和方式取人的势利现象，但如果有这种情况，露营者也容易理解，知道如何对付，但在露营地里根 本不会有管人的“人上人”和酒店里的等级制度来种露营者的假日过得阴郁低沉。

除上以动机外，还应加上一个。当前崇拜汽车现象可以用与所有权相伴的独立和自由意识来解释。因此开车去露营会给这种快乐意识增加一种优雅意境。

从自己的家门出发到国内国外的山区或沙滩上露营然后返回，一切都很便利。完全在自己掌握之中的

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私人汽车不仅是到达假日天堂的工具，而且也是逃离假日地狱 （如海滩太挤，当地天气恶劣）方便工具，因为汽车就停在帐篷外面，或者汽车本身可能就是露营帐篷的一个组成部分。

理想主义者像反对旅行社安排一切的一揽子旅游一样反对露营的作法，说这种封闭的作法使到国外旅游者失去了了解所去国家人民的机会。他们争论说，心胸狭窄和 自我封闭是并存的。但这种说法在受人欢迎的欧洲露营地是站不住脚的。假日旅馆有只接待来自一个国家的旅游者的倾向，有时会达到排他的程度。而露营驻地则相 反，是高度世界性的。在大多数地中海露营地里，德国人占优势似乎是个普遍现象，确实如此，但并没有特别的优待。禁止露天晒衣服、禁止用水龙头冲洗汽车的布 告和邀请露营朋友参加舞会、乘船观光的招贴不仅印志法语、意大利语、西班牙语，而且也印成英语、德语、荷兰语。用饭的时候，德国泡菜味和大蒜味争相散发， 法国人的早点咖啡和英国人的咸肉煎蛋竞相比美。

有组织的露营活动的明显发展是否意味着较独立的自我封闭式露营的最终消失，还很难说。市政当局当然希望获得露营者的场地费和其他光临的好处，警察则对那些 查不出有固定营地或住处的游荡者保持警惕。但最重要的或许是露营者自己，即他们引起了多少场野火，留下了多少垃圾。总之，他们是否弄得土地的主人和乡间的 居民同他们反目。只有优良的童子军活动才能保持不朽的童子军所衷心热爱的各项自由。

Lesson 46 Hobbies 业余爱好

a gifted American psychologist has said, 'Worry is a spasm of the emotion; the mind catches hold of something and will not let it go.' It is useless to argue with the mind in this condition. The stronger the will, the more futile the task. One can only gently insinuate something else into its convulsive grasp. And if this something else is rightly chosen, if it really attended by the illumination of another field of interest, gradually, and often quite swiftly, the old undue grip relaxes and the process of recuperation and repair begins.

The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of the first importance to a public man. But this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a mere command of the will. The growth of alternative mental interests is a long process. The seeds must by carefully chosen; they must fall on good ground; they must be sedulously tended, if the vivifying fruits are to be at hand when needed.

To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real. It is no use starting late in life to say: 'I will take an interest in this or that.' Such an attempt only aggravates the strain of mental effort. A man may acquire great knowledge of topics unconnected with his daily work, and yet get hardly any benefit or relief. It is no use doing what you like; you have got to like what you do. Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to hard week's sweat and effort, the chance of playing a game of football or baseball or Saturday afternoon. It is no use inviting the politician or the professional or business man, who has beer working or worrying about serious things for six days, to work or worry about trifling things at the weekend.

As for the unfortunate people who can command everything they want, who can gratify every caprice and lay their hands on almost every object of desire -- for them a new pleasure, a new excitement if only an additional satiation. In vain they rush frantically round from place to place, trying to escape from avenging boredom by mere clatter and motion. For them discipline in one form or another is the most hopeful path.

It may also be said that rational, industrious, useful human being are divided into two classes: first, one. Of these the former are the majority. They have their compensations. The long hours in the office or the factory bring with them as their reward, not only the means of sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and most modest forms. But Fortune's of sustenance, but a keen appetite for pleasure even in its simplest and modest forms. But Fortune's favoured children belong to the second class. Their life is a natural harmony. For them the working hours are never long enough. Each day is a holiday, and ordinary holidays, when they come, are grudged as enforced as enforced interruptions in an absorbing vocation. Yet to both classes, the need of an alternative outlook, of a change of atmosphere, of a diversion of effort, is essential. Indeed, it may well be that those work is their pleasure are those who and most need the means of banishing it at intervals from their minds.

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一位天才的美国心理学家曾经说过：“烦恼是感情的发作，此时脑子纠缠住了某种东西又不肯松手。”在这种情况下，你又和头脑争吵让它松手是无济于事的。这种 意志越是强烈，这种尝试越是徒劳。你只能缓和而巧纱地让另一种东西进入痉挛僵持的头脑中。如果选得合适，而且的确受到别的领域的情趣的启迪，那么渐渐地， 往往也是很顺利地，原先不适当的紧张就会松弛下来，恢复和修整的过程就会开始。 因此，对一个从事社会活动的人来说，培养一种业余爱好和各种新的兴趣是关等重要的作法。但这并非一日之功，也不是单凭一蹴而就的事。精神上多种情趣的培养 是一个长期的过程。要想在需要的时候可随手摘取充满生机的果实，那就必然从选良种做起，然后将其植入肥沃的土地，还需要勤勉地护理。 一个人要想真正感到幸福和平安，至少应有两三种爱好，而且都比较实际。到了晚年才开始说：“我会对这些人或那个人发生兴趣”，已没有用了。这种愿望只能加 剧精神紧张。一个人可能会获得与其日常工作无关的某些课题的渊博知识，而没有从中得到什么实益或宽慰。干你所喜欢的事是没有用的，你喜欢你所干的事。泛泛 地说，人可以分为3类：劳累至死的人、忧虑至死的人、无聊至死的人。对于流汗出力干了一周苦活的体力劳动者来说，让他们在星期六下午再踢足球或打垒球是不 合适的；同样，对于为严肃的公务操劳或烦恼了6天的政界人士、专业人员、商人来说，在周未再让他们为琐事而动脑子和忧虑也是无益的。

至于那些能任意支配一切的“可怜的人”，他们能够恣意妄为，能染指一切追求的目标。对这种人来说，多一种新的乐趣、多一种新的刺激只是增加一分厌腻而已。 他们到处奔乱跑，企图以闲聊和乱窜来摆脱无聊对他们的报复，但这是徒劳的。对他们来说，用某种形式的纪律约束他们一下才能有希望使他们走上正道。

也可以这样说，理智的，勤劳的、有用的人可以分为两类：第一类是他分清工作是工作，娱乐是娱乐的人；第二类人的工作和娱乐是一回事。这两类人当中，第一类 人是大多数，他们能够得到补偿。在办公室或工厂里长时间工作给他们带来了酬劳，这不仅是谋生的手段，而且还带来了寻找乐趣的强烈欲望，那怕是最简单的、最 低等的乐趣。但是，命运之神的宠儿是第二类人，他们的生活是一种自然的和谐，对他们来说，工作时间总不会太长，每天都是假日，而通常的假期来到，他们却惋 惜这假期强制打断了他们埋头从事的工作。然而对这两种人来说，都需要换一换脑子，改变一下气氛，转移一下注意力，这是不可缺少的。说实在的，把工作当作享 受的那些人最需要每隔一段时间把工作从头脑中撇开。

Lesson 45 Of men and galaxies 人和星系

In man's early days. competition with other creatures must have been critical. But this phase of our development is now finished. Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions. I am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone. The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito. But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays.

Competition between our selves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.

But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology. It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical. Our environment is chiefly conditoned by the things we believe. Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources. Yet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people wish to emphasize. The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds.

It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas. Ideas are dangerous. The Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by. Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society because when you are inside a community, you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive. It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts. I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would

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utterly destroy us. I would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so. Perhaps it will suffice to mention the unclear bomb. Of making the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed. Twenty or thirty pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925 would have been sufficient to change the course of world history. It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it. I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, but of course outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate, we can think only a very little way outside, and then only if we are very original.

在人类早期，人类与其他生物的竞争一定是必不可少的。但这个发展阶段已经结束。确实，我们今天缺乏对付原始环境的实践和经验。我断定，如果没有现代化的武 器，要我和一只熊去争洞穴，我会出洋相的；我也相信，出洋相者并非我一人。能与竞争的生物最后只有蚊子，然而即使蚊子，也由于我们注意清理污水和喷洒化学 药品就被制服了。

然而人类之间的战争，人与人，团体与团体，依然在进行着，而且和以前一样激烈。

但是，人与人的竞争并不像生物生物学中想像的那样是一个简单过程。它已不是为争得物质环境所决定的东西所决定。摩洛哥和加利福尼亚是地球上纬度极其相似的 两个地方，都在各自大陆的西海岸，气候相似，自然资源也可能相似。但是，这两个地方目前的发展程度完全不一样。这倒不是因为人民不同，而是由于居民头脑中 的思想不同。 这是我要强调的论点。我们环境中最重要的因素就是我们的思想状况。 众所周知，凡是白人侵入原始文化的地方，破坏作用最大的不是杀人的武器，而是思想。思想是危险的。宗教法庭对此是非常清楚的，因此从前它总是把异教徒烧 死。的确，言论自由的概念只存在于我们现代社会中，因为当你生活在一个社团中时，社团的风俗习惯会严格地制约你，使你很难有破坏性的想法。只有外部的旁观 者才能灌输危险的思想。向现代世界灌输一种思想以便摧毁我们人类是可能的事，对此我并不怀疑。我愿为你举个例子，但幸亏我举不出。也许提一下核弹就足以证 明了。对一个沿未拥有核弹、但科技相当发达的社会，如果告诉它制造核弹的可能性，而且向它提供制造核弹的细节，那么可以设想，这将对这个社会产生何等的影 响。如果把二三十页的情报交给1952年前后的任何一个世界强国，就足以改变世界历史的进程。二三十页材料中的思想和情报会便当今的世界翻天覆地，甚至毁 灭这个世界。这是个离奇的想法。不过我认为这个想法是正确的。我常常试图想像这些纸上所写的东西，不过我是做不到的，因为我和你们大家一样，是当今世界上 的凡人。我闪不能脱离我们大脑所限定的模式去问题，我们只能稍微离开一点儿，就这也需要我们独创的思想。

Lesson 44 Patterns of culture 文化的模式

Custom has not commonly been regarded as a subject of great moment. The inner workings of our won brains we feel to be uniquely worthy of investigation, but custom, we have a way of thinking, is behaviour at its most commonplace. As a matter of fact, it is the other way around. Traditional custom, taken the world over, is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any one person can ever evolve in individual actions, no matter how aberrant. Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of the matter. The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that custom plays in experience and in belief, and the very great varieties it may manifest.

No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutions and ways of thinking. Even in his philosophical probing he cannot go behind these stereotypes; his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs. John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the part played by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual, as against any way in which he can affect traditional custom, is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue against those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacular of his family. When one seriously studies the social orders that have had the opportunity to develop autonomously, the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-of-fact observation. The life history handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth, the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behaviour. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of

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his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities. Every child that is born into his group will share them with him, and no child born into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandth part. There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand than this of the role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible.

The study of custom can be profitable only after certain preliminary propositions have been accepted, and some of these propositions have been violently opposed. In the first place, any scientific study requires that there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items in the series it selects for its consideration. In all the less controversial fields, like the study of cacti or termites or the mature of nebulae, the necessary method of study is to group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant forms and conditions. In this way, we have learned all that we know of the laws of astronomy, or of the habits of the social insects, let us say. It is only in the study of man himself that the major social sciences have substituted the study of one local variation, that of Western civilization.

Anthropology was by definition impossible, as long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive, ourselves and the barbarian, ourselves and the pagan, held sway over people's minds. It was necessary first to arrive at that degree of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief against our neighbour's superstition. It was necessary to recognize that these institutions which are based on the same premises, let us say the supernatural, must be considered together, our own among the rest.

风俗一般未被认为是什么重要的课题。我们觉得，只有我们大脑内部的活动情况才值得研究，至于风俗呢，只是些司空见惯的行为而已。事实小，情况正好相反。从 世界范围来看，传统风俗是由许多细节性的习惯行为组成，它比任何一个养成的行为都更加引人注目，不管个人行为多么异常。这只是问题的一个次要的侧面。最重 要的是，风俗在实践中和信仰上所起的举足轻重的作用，以及它所表现出来的极其丰富多采的形式。

没有一个人是用纯洁而无偏见的眼光看待世界。人们所看到的是一个受特定风俗习惯、制度和思想方式剪辑过的世界。甚至在哲学领域的探索中，人们也无法超越这 此定型的框框。人们关于真与伪的概念依然和特定的传统风俗有关。约翰.杜威曾经非常严肃地指出：风俗在形成个人行为方面所起的作用和一个对风俗的任何影响 相比，就好像他本国语言的总词汇量和自己咿呀学语时他家庭所接纳的他的词汇量之比。当一个人认真地研究自发形成的社会秩序时，杜威的比喻就是他实事求是观 察得来的形象化的说法。个人的生活史首先是适应他的社团世代相传形成的生活方式和准则。从他呱呱坠地的时刻起，他所生于其中的风俗就开始塑造他的经历和行 为规范。到会说话时，他就是传统文化塑造的一个小孩子；等他长大了，能做各种事了，他的社团的习惯就是他的习惯，他的社团的信仰就是他的信仰，他的社团不 能做的事就是他不能做的事。每一个和他诞生在同一个社团中的孩子和他一样具有相同的风俗；而在地球的另一边。诞生在另一个社团的孩子与他就是少有相同的风 俗。没有任何一个社会问题比得上风俗的作用问题更要求我们对它理解。直到我们理解了风俗的规律性和多样性，我们才能明白人为生活中主要的复杂现象。

只有在某些基本的主张被接受下来、同时有些主张被激烈反对时，对风俗的研究才是全面的，才会有收获。首先，任何科学研究都要求人们对可供考虑的诸多因素不 能厚此薄彼，偏向某一方面。在一切争议较小的领域里，如对仙人掌、白议或星云性质的研究，应采取的研究方法是。把有关各方面的材料汇集起来，同时注意任何 可能出现的异常情况和条件。例如，用这种方法，我们完全掌握了天文学的规律和昆虫群居的习性。只是在对人类自身的研究。只要我们同原始人，我们同野蛮人， 我们同异教徒之间存有的区别在人的思想中占主工导地位，那么人类学按其定义来说就无法存在。我们首先需要达到这样一种成熟的程度：不用自己的信仰去反对我 们邻居的迷信。必须认识到，这些建立在相同前提基础上的风俗，暂且可以说是超自然的东西，必须放在一起加以考虑，我们自己的风俗和其他民族的风俗都在其中。

Lesson 43 Are there strangers in space? 宇宙中有外星人吗？

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We must conclude from the work of those who have studied the origin of life, that given a planet only approximately like our own, life is almost certain to start. Of all the planets in our solar system, we ware now pretty certain the Earth is the only one on which life can survive. Mars is too dry and poor in oxygen, Venus far too hot, and so is Mercury, and the outer planets have temperatures near absolute zero and hydrogen-dominated atmospheres. But other suns, start as the astronomers call them, are bound to have planets like our own, and as is the number of stars in the universe is so vast, this possibility becomes virtual certainty. There are one hundred thousand million starts in our own Milky Way alone, and then there are exist is now estimated at about 300 million million.

Although perhaps only 1 per cent of the life that has started somewhere will develop into highly complex and intelligent patterns, so vast is the number of planets, that intelligent life is bound to be a natural part of the universe. If then we are so certain that other intelligent life exists in the universe, why have we had no visitors from outer space yet? First of all, they may have come to this planet of ours thousands or millions of years ago, and found our then prevailing primitive state completely uninteresting to their own advanced knowledge. Professor Ronald Bracewell, a leading American radio astronomer, argued in Nature that such a superior civilization, on a visit to our own solar system, may have left an automatic messenger behind to await the possible awakening of an advanced civilization. Such a messenger, receiving our radio and television signals, might well re-transmit them back to its home-planet, although what impression any other civilization would thus get from us is best left unsaid.

But here we come up against the most difficult of all obstacles to contact with people on other planets -- the astronomical distances which separate us. As a reasonable guess, they might, on an average, be 100 light years away. (A light year is the distance which light travels at 186,000 miles per second in one year, namely 6 million million miles.) Radio waves also travel at the speed of light, and assuming such an automatic messenger picked up our first broadcasts of the 1920's, the message to its home planet is barely halfway there. Similarly, our own present primitive chemical rockets, though good enough to orbit men, have no chance of transporting us to the nearest other star, four light years away, let alone distances of tens or hundreds of light years.

Fortunately, there is a 'uniquely rational way' for us to communicate with other intelligent beings, as Walter Sullivan has put it in his excellent book, We Are not Alone. This depends on the precise radio frequency of the 21-cm wavelength, or 1420 megacycles per second. It is the natural frequency of emission of the hydrogen atoms in space and was discovered by us in 1951; it must be known to any kind of radio astronomer in the universe.

Once the existence of this wave-length had been discovered, it was not long before its use as the uniquely recognizable broadcasting frequency for interstellar communication was suggested. Without something of this kind, searching for intelligences on other planets would be like trying to meet a friend in London without a pre-arranged rendezvous and absurdly wandering the streets in the hope of a chance encounter.

根据研究生命起源的人们所作的工作，我们必然会得出这样的结论：如果设想有一颗行星和我们地球的情况基本相似，那几乎肯定会产生生命。我们目前可以肯定的 是，在我们太阳系的所有行星中，地球是生命能存在的唯一行星。火星太干燥又缺氧，金星太热，水星也一样。除此之外，太阳系的其他行星的温度都接近绝对零 度，并围绕着以氢气为主的大气层。但是，其他的太阳，既天文学家所说的恒星，肯定会有像我们地球一样的行星。因为宇宙中恒星的数目极其庞大，所以存在着产 生生命星球的这种可能性是肯定无疑的。仅我们的银河系就有1000亿颗星，况且在宇宙中还有30亿个天河，即银河系。因此，我们所知道的现有恒星数目估计 约有30亿X1000亿颗。

虽然在已经产生生命的某个地方，可能只有1%会发展成高度复杂有智力的生命形态，但是行星的数目是那么庞大，有智力的生命必然是宇宙的自然组成道听部分。

既然我们如此坚信宇宙中存在着其他有智力的生命，那么我们为什么还未见到外层空间来访的客人呢？首先，他们可能在几千年前或几百年前已来过我们地球，并且 发现我们地球汉时普遍存在着的原始状态同他们的先进的知识相比是索然无味的。美国一位重要的射电天文学家罗纳德.布雷斯韦尔教授在《自然》杂志上提出了这 样的观点：假如有如此高级文明生命访问了我们的太阳系，很可能会在离开太阳系时留下自动化信号装置，等待先进文明的觉醒。这种自动化信息装置，在接收到我 们的无线电和电视信号后，完全有可能把这些信号发回到原来的行星。至于其他文明行星对我们地球会有什么印象，还是不说为好。

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然而，在和外星人联系中我们遇到的最大困难是分隔我们的天文距离。据合理推算，外星人离我们平均距离也有100光年之远（1光年是光以每秒186，000 英里的速度在一年内走的距离即6万亿英里）。无线电波也是以光速传播的。假定外星人的这种自动化信息装置接收了我们二十世纪二十年代的第一次广播信号，那 么这个信号在发回到原来的行星途中刚刚走了一半路程。同样，我们目前使用的原始化学火箭，虽然把人送入轨道，但尚不能把我们送到离我们最近、相距4光年的 其他星球上去，更不用说几十光年或几百光年远的地方了。

幸运的是，有一种我们可以和其他智力生命通迅联系的“唯一合理的方法”，正如活尔特.沙利方在其杰作《我们并不孤独》中阐述的。这种通迅联系要靠21厘料 波段，即每秒1420兆周的精确无线电频率。这个频率是空间氢原子释放的自然频率，是在1951年被人类发现的。这个频率是宇宙中任何射电天文学家都应该 熟悉的。

一旦这种波长的实际存在被发现，提出把它作为星际间唯一可辨认的广播频率就为期不远了。没有这手段，要想寻觅其他星球上的智力生命，就如同去伦敦见一位朋 友，事先未约定地点，而荒唐地在街上游逛，以期待碰巧遇上一样。

Lesson 42 Recording an earthquake 记录地震

An earthquake comes like a thief in the night, without warning. It was necessary, therefore, to invent instruments that neither slumbered nor slept. Some devices were quite simple. One, for instance, consisted of rods of various lengths and thicknesses with would stand up end like ninepins. When a shock came, it shook the rigid table upon which these stood. If it were gentle, only the more unstable rods fell. If it were severe, they all fell. Thus the rods, by falling, and by the direction in which they fell, recorded for the severe, they all fell. Thus the rods, by falling, and by the direction in which they fell, recorded for the slumbering scientist the strength of a shock that was too weak to waken him, and the direction from which it came.

But instruments far more deliecate than that were needed if any really serious advance was to be made. The ideal to be aimed at was to devise an instrument that could record with a pen on paper, the movements of the ground or of the table as the quake passed by. While I write my pen moves, but the paper keeps still. With practice, no doubt, I could in time learn to write by holding the pen still while the paper moved. That sounds a silly suggestion, but that was precisely the idea adopted in some of the early instruments (seismometers) for recording earthquake waves. But when table, penholder and paper are all moving, how is it possible to write legibly? The key to a solution of that problem lay in an everyday observation. Why does a person standing in a bus or train tend to fall when a sudden start is made? It is because his feet move on , but his head stays still. A simple experiment will help us a little further. Tie a heavy weight at the end of a long piece of string. With the hand to and fro and around but not up and string so that the weight nearly touches the ground. Now move the hand to and fro and around but not up and down. It will be found that the weight a piece of string. With the hand held high in the air, hold the string so that the weight nearly touches the ground. Now move the hand to and fro and around but not up and down. It will be found that ten weight moves but slightly or not at all. Imagine an earthquake shock shaking the floor, the paper, you and your hand. In the midst of all this movement, the weight and the pen would be still. But as the paper moved from side to side under the pen point, its movement would be recorded in ink upon its surface. It was upon this principle that the first instruments were made, but while the drum was being shaken, the line that the pen was drawing wriggled from side to side. The apparatus thus described, however, records only the horizontal component of the wave movement, which is, in fact, much more complicated. If we could actually see the path described by a particle, such as a sand grain in the rock, it would be more like that of a bluebottle path described by a particle, such as a sand grain in the rock, it would be more like that of a bluebottle buzzing round the room; it would be up and down, to and fro and from side to side. Instruments have been devised and can be so placed that all three elements can be recorded in different graphs.

When the instrument is situated at more than 700 miles from the earthquake centre, the graphic record shows three waves arriving one after at short intervals. The first records the arrival of longitudinal vibrations. The second marks the arrival of transverse vibrations which travel more slowly and arrive several minutes after the first. These

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two have travelled through the earth. It was from the study of these that so much was learnt about the interior of the earth. The third, or main. The third, or main wave, is the slowest and has travelled round the earth through the surface rocks.

地震就像夜间的小偷，不打招呼就来了。因此，有必要发明一种仪器，既不打盹儿，也不睡觉。有些装置非常简单。例如，有一种装置是由一些长短、粗细不同的木 棒组成，就像九柱戏的木棒一样坚立着，一旦有地震，就会震动竖立在坚硬的桌上的木棒。如果地震轻微，只有不稳定的木棒倒下；如果地震剧烈，所有的木棒都会 例下。由于地震太弱而未惊醒科学家时，木棒倒下的多少和倒下的方向就为科学家记录下了地震的强度和地震方向。

但是，如果要取得真正重大的进展，需要有比这种装置精细得多的仪器。理想的目标是设计出这样一种仪器：当地震发生时，它能用笔在纸上记录下大地和桌子运动 情况。我写字时，笔是移动的，纸是静止的。毫无疑问，经过练习，我最终能够学会笔不动而纸动来写字。这听起来似乎是一种愚蠢的想法，但是早期记录地震波的 仪器（地震仪）正是采用了这中思路。可是，当桌子、夹笔装置、纸都在移动时，怎么能书写得清楚呢？可以从我们的日常生活观察中找到这个问题的答案。一个站 在公共汽车或火车上，当车突然开动时，他为什么会倾倒呢？这是因为他的脚动了，而他的头保持着静止。再做一个简单的实验可以帮助我们进一步理解这个问题。 把一个生物拴在一根长绳子的一端，把手高高举在空中握住绳子，让重物几乎接触地面。然后把手前后左右以及旋转摆动，但不要上下摆动。结果会发现，重物是动 了，但动得很小，甚至没动。假定把一支笔拴在重物上，笔尖落在地板上的一张纸上，假定地震发生了，地板、纸、你和你的手都会动，重物和笔却不动。由于纸在 笔下来回运动，纸的表面就会用墨水记录下地板运动的情况。根据这一原理，制造出了最初的地震仪器，但是纸是卷在慢慢放置的圆筒上的。只要一切都是静止的， 笔就会划出一条直线；但是，圆筒受到震动，笔所画出的线就会就会左右摆动。然而，这里所说的仪器记录下来的只是地震波运动中的水平部份，地震波的运动实际 比这要复杂得多。假如我们真能看到诸如岩石中一个沙粒子的运动轨迹，那就像一只嗡嗡叫的绿头苍蝇在屋内飞行的轨迹，呈现出上上下下、来来回回、左左右右3 种性质的运动。已经设计出了一些仪器，它按照一定的安放方式就可测绘出这三种运动的曲线图。

如果把这种仪器安装在距震源700多英里远的地方，曲线记录就能显示出前后相同的这3种地震波。首先记录下的是纵向波的到达；然后记录下的是横向波的到 达，横向波比纵向波传播得慢，在纵向波到过几分钟后能到达。这珍两种波都是穿过地球而来的。正是从这两种波中的研究中，我们可以了解到地球内部的许多情 况。第三种波，即主波，是最慢的，是围绕地球通过表面岩石传来的。

Lesson 41 Training elephants 训练大象

Two main techniques have been used for training elephants, which we may respectively the tough and the gentle. The former method simply consists of setting an elephant to work and beating him until he does what is expected of him. Apart from moral considerations this is a stupid method of training, for it produces a resentful animal who at a later stage may well turn man-killer. The gentle method requires more patience in the early stages, but produces a cheerful, good-tempered elephant who will give many years of loyal service.

The first essential in elephant training is to assign to the animal a single mahout who will be entirely responsible for the job. Elephants like to have one master just as dogs do, and are capable of a considerable degree of personal affection. There are even stories of half-trained elephant calves who have refused to feed and pined to death when by some unavoidable circumstance they have been deprived of their own trainer. Such extreme cases must probably be taken with a grain of salt, but they do underline the general principle that the relationship between elephant and mahout is the key to successful training.

The most economical age to capture an elephant for training is between fifteen and twenty years, for it is then almost ready to undertake heavy work and can begin to earn its keep straight away. But animals of this age do not easily become subservient to man, and a very time man, and a very firm hand must be employed in the early stages. The captive elephant, still roped to a tree, plunges and screams every time a man approaches, and for several days will probably refuse all food through anger and fear. Sometimes a tame elephant is tethered nearby to give the wild

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one confidence, and in most cases the captive gradually quietens down and begins to accept its food. The next stage is to get the elephant to the training establishment, a ticklish business which is achieved with the aid of two tame elephants roped to the captive on either side.

When several elephants are being trained at one time, it is customary for the new arrival to be placed between the stalls of two captives whose training is already well advanced. It is then left completely undisturbed with plenty of food and water so that it can absorb the atmosphere of its new home and see that nothing particularly alarming is happening to its companions. When it is eating normally, its own training begins. The trainer stands in front of the elephant holding a long stick with a sharp metal point. Two assistants, mounted on tame elephants, control the captive from either side, while others rub their hands over his skin to the accompaniment of a monotonous and soothing chant. This is supposed to induce pleasurable sensations in the elephant, and its effects are reinforced by the use of endearing epithets. The elephant is not son', or 'ho! my father', or 'my mother', according to the age and sex of the captive. The elephant is not immediately susceptible to such blandishments, however, and usually lashes fiercely with its trunk in all directions. These movements are controlled by the trainer with the metal-pointed stick, and the trunk eventually becomes so sore that the elephant curls it up and seldom afterwards uses it for offensive purposes.

驯象有两种主要的方法，我们分别称之为强硬法和温柔法。强硬法就是驱象去干活，把它打顺从为止。且不说道义问题，这本身就是一种愚蠢的训练方法，因为这种 方法训练会使动物反感，在以后某个时期可能会变成伤人的动物。温柔法要求在最初阶段保持较大的耐心，但这种方法可以训练出性情愉快、脾气温顺，能忠实为人 服务多年的大象。

驯象中至关生要的是指派一名专门的驯象员，全面负责这项工作。大象和狗一样，喜欢有一个专一的主人，而且会对主人产生相当深厚的私人感情。甚至有这样的故 事：训练了一半的小象，由于不可避免的情况与他们的主人分离后，竟拒绝吃食，消瘦至死。这种极端的事例虽不可全信，但强调了一项基本原则，象和驯象员之间 的关系是驯象成功与否的关健。

捕捉15至20岁之间年龄的大象进行驯象最为经济。 这个年龄的象差不多已能干重活，可以很快挣回饲养它的开支。但这个年龄的象不易驯服，因此开始阶段需要有一位强有力的老手。捕来拴在树上的大象，每当有人 走近它时，就会向前猛冲并发出尖叫，甚至一连几于都由于愤怒和恐惧而拒绝进食。有时，把一头已驯服的象拴在旁边能给野象以信心。在大多数情况下，刚博来的 象会慢慢静下来，接着开始吃食。下一步就是把象带到训练场所，这是一件棘手的事，需要在它两侧拴上两头驯服的大象才能完成。

几只象同时训练时，通常是把新到的安置在两头训练得很好的大象的象厩中间，然后给它以充足的食物和水，一定不要惊扰它，以便让他能适应新居的气氛，并且看 到自己的同伴身上没有发生让自己担惊受怕的事。当它进食正常了，训练就开始。驯练员手持一根有锋利金属尖头的长棒，站在象前。两位助手骑在驯服的象的背 上，从两侧控制新捕的象，其他人唱着单调的歌声用手抚摸象的皮肤。据说这是为了使象产生愉快的感觉，为了加强这种效果，人闪还按象的年龄性别，给以亲切的 外号，如“嗬！我的孩子”、“嗬！我的爸爸”、“嗬！我的妈妈”。然而大象不会立刻被这些讨好的括感动，而往往是用鼻子朝各个方向猛烈地甩动。训练员要用 有锋利金属尖的长棒控制它的这种举动，象鼻子最后疼得卷了起来，以后它就很少用鼻子去进攻了。

Lesson 39 Waves 海浪

Waves are the children of the struggle between ocean and atmosphere, the ongoing signatures of infinity. Rays from the sun excite and energize the atmosphere of the earth, awakening it to flow, to movement, to rhythm, to life. The wind then speaks the message of the sun to the sea and the sea transmits it on through waves -- an ancient, exquisite, powerful message.

These ocean waves are among the earth's most complicated natural phenomena. The basic features include a crest (the highest point of the wave), a trough (the lowest point), a height (the vertical distance from the trough to the crest), a wave length (the horizontal distance between two wave crests), and a period (which is the time it takes a wave crest to travel one wave length).

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Although an ocean wave gives the impression of a wall of water moving in your direction, in actuality waves move through the water leaving the water about where it was. If the water was moving with the wave, the ocean and everything on it would be racing in to the shore with obviously catastrophic results.

An ocean wave passing through deep water causes a particle on the surface to move in a roughly circular orbit, drawing the particle first towards the advancing wave, then up into the wave, then forward with it and then -- as the wave leaves the particles behind -- back to its starting point again.

From both maturity to death, a wave is subject to the same laws as any other 'living' thing. For a time it assumes a miraculous individuality that, in the end, is reabsorbed into the great ocean of life.

The undulating waves of the open sea are generated by three natural causes: wind, earth movements or tremors, and the gravitational pull of the moon and the sun. Once waves have been generated, gravity is the force that drives them in a continual attempt to restore the ocean surface to a flat plain.

海浪是大海和空气相斗的产物，无限的一种不间断的标志。太阳光刺激了地球的大气层，并给予它能量；阳光使空气开始流动，产生节奏，获得生命。然后，风把太 阳的住处带给了大海，海洋用波浪的形式传递这个信息 -- 一个源过流长、高雅而有力的信息。

这些海浪属于地球上最复杂的自然现象。它们的基本特征包括浪峰（波浪的最高点）、波谷（最低点）、浪高（从波谷到浪峰的垂直距离）、波长（两个浪峰间的水 平距离）和周期（海峰走过一个波长所需的时间）。虽然，海浪给人的印象是一堵由水组成的墙向你压过来，而实际上，浪从水中移过，而水则留在原处。如果水和 浪一起移动的话，那么大海和海里所有的东西就会向岸边疾涌过来，带来明显的灾难性后果。

穿过深水的海浪使水面上的一个微粒按照一种近乎圆形的轨道移动，先把微粒拉向前移动的海浪，然后推上波浪，随着波浪移动，然后 -- 当波浪把微粒留在身后时 -- 又回到出发点。

从成熟到消亡，波浪和其他任何“活动中”的东西一样，都受制于共同的法则。一度它获得非凡的个性，但最终又被重新融进生命的大洋。

公海上起伏的波浪是由3个自然因素构成的：风、地球的运动或震颤和月亮、太阳的引力。一旦波浪形成，地球引力是持续不断企图使海面复原为平面的力量。

Lesson 39 What every writer wants 作家之所需

I have known very few writers, but those I have known, and whom I respect, confess at once that they have little idea where they the are going when they first set pen to paper. They have a character, perhaps two; they are in that condition of eager discomfort which passes for inspiration; all admit radical changes of destination once the journey has begun; one, to my certain knowledge, spent nine months on a novel about Kashmir, then reset the whole thing in the Scottish Highlands. I never heard of anyone making a 'skeleton', as we were taught at school. In the breaking and remaking, in the timing, interweaving, beginning afresh, the writer comes to discern things in his material which were not consciously in his mind when he began. This organic process, often leading to moments of extraordinary self-discovery, is of an indescribable fascination. A blurred image appears; he adds a brushstroke and another, and it is gone; but something was there, and he will not rest till he has captured it. Sometimes the yeast within a writer outlives a book he has written. I have heard of writers who read nothing but their own books; like adolescents they stand before the mirror, and still cannot fathom the exact outline of the vision before them. For the same reason, writers talk interminably about their own books, winkling out hidden meanings, super-imposing new ones, begging response from those around them. Of course a writer doing this is misunderstood: he might as well try to explain a crime or a love affair. He is also, incidentally, an unforgivable bore.

This temptation to cover the distance between himself and the reader, to study his image in the sight of those who do not know him, can be his undoing: he has begun to write to please.

A young English writer made the pertinent observation a year or two back that the talent goes into the first draft, and the art into the drafts that follow. For this reason also the writer, like any other artist, has no resting place, no crowd or movement in which he may take comfort, no judgment from outside which can replace the judgment from

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within. A writer makes order out of the anarchy of his heart; he submits himself to a more ruthless discipline than any critic dreamed of, and when he flirts with fame, he is taking time off from living with himself, from the search for what his world contains at its inmost point.

我的认识的作家寥寥无几，然而凡是我所认识和尊敬的作家，都立即承认在他们动笔时，不清楚要写什么，怎么写。他们心中只在一个或两个角色。他们处于急切不 安的状态，而被当作是灵感。他们无不承认，一旦“旅程”开始，“目的地”常有急剧的变化。据我所知，有位作家花了9个月的时间写了一部关克什米尔的小说， 后来却把整个故事背景换成了苏格兰高地。我从未听说过任何一位作家像我们在学校那样，动笔前先列什么提纲。作家在剪裁修改、构思时间、穿插情节、以至从头 重写的过程中，会领悟到素材中很多东西是他刚动笔时所未意识到的。这种有机的加工过程往往达到不寻常自我发现的境界，具有难以言表的构思魅力。一个朦胧的 形象出现在作家的脑海里，他左添一笔，右添一笔，形象反而消逝了；可是，好像还有什么东西存在着，不把它捕捉到，作家是不会罢休的。有时，一个作家一本书 写完了，但兴奋仍不消散。我听说一些作家，除了自己的书外，别的书一概不读，犹如希腊神话中那位漂亮的少年，站在镜前，不能辨认自身的真面目。由于这个原 因，作家喋喋不休地谈论自己的书，挖掘其隐晦的含义，询问周围人的反应。作家如此行事当然被人误解。他还不如给人讲一个犯罪案件或一个恋爱故事。顺便说一 句，他也是个不可饶恕的令人厌烦的人。

这种企图消除自己和读者之间距离的作法，企图用不了解自己的人的观点来研究自己塑造的形象的作法，会导致作家的毁灭，因为他已经开始为取悦他人而写作了。

一两年前，一位年轻的英国作家发表了中肯的看法。他说，初稿是才华，以后各稿是艺术。也是由于这个原因，作家同任何艺术家一样，找不到可休息的场所，找不 到伙伴和活动使自己得到安逸。任何局外人的判断也比不上他内心的正确判断。一旦作家从内心的紊乱中理出头绪，就应该按任何评论家想像不到的无情规范约束自 己写作；当他沽名钓誉时，他就脱离了自我生活，脱离了对自己灵魂最深处世界的探索。

Lesson 38 Water and the traveller 水和旅行者

Contamination of water supplies is usually due to poor sanitation close to water sources, sewage disposal into the sources themselves, leakage of sewage into distribution systems or contamination with industrial or farm waste. Even if a piped water supply is safe at its source, it is not always safe by the time it reaches the tap. Intermittent tap-water supplies should be regarded as particularly suspect.

Travellers on short trips to areas with water supplies of uncertain quality should avoid drinking tap-water, or untreated water from any other source. It is best to hot drinks, bottled or canned drinks of well-known brand names -- international standards of water treatment are usually followed at bottling plants. Carbonated drinks are acidic, and slightly safer. Make sure that all bottles are opened in your presence, and that their rims are clean and dry.

Boiling is always a good way of treating water. Some hotels supply boiled water on request and this can be used for drinking, or for brushing teeth. Portable boiling elements that can boil small quantities of water are useful when the right voltage of electricity is available. Refuse politely any cold drink from an unknown source.

Ice is only as safe as the water from which it is made, and should not be put in drinks unless it is known to be safe. Drink can be cooled by placing them on ice tather than adding ice to them.

Alcohol may be a medical disinfectant, but should not be relied upon to sterilize water. Ethanol is more effective at a concentration of 50-70 per cent; below 20 per cent, its bactericidal action is negligible. Spirits labelled 95 proof contain only about 47 per cent alcohol. Beware of methylated alcohol, which is very poisonous, and should never be added to drinking water.

If no other safe supply can be obtained, tap water that is too hot to touch can be left to cool and is generally safe to drink. Those planning a trip to remote areas, or intending to live in countries where drinking water is not readily available, should know about the various possible methods for making water safe.

水源的污染通常是由于接近水源的地方卫条件太差而造成的：污水排入水源，污水渗入给水系统或工

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农业污水造成污染。即使管道供水系统在水源处安全的，等水到 达龙头时就不一定总是安全的了。断断续续的水管应该被视为是非常可疑的。

短途旅行到水质不保险的地区时，应避免饮用水龙头的水或未经处理任何其他来源的水。最好仅饮用开水，名牌瓶装或罐装水 -- 装瓶厂通常遵循国际水处理的标准。碳酸饮料是酸性的，就更安全一些。确保瓶子是当你面开启的，瓶口清洁干燥。

烧开一直是水处理的一种好办法。有的酒店根据要求可提供开水，这些开水可用于饮用和刷牙。如果有相配的电压，可以煮少量水的便携式热水装置是有用的。应谢 绝任何不明来源的冷饮。

冰块只有当制造冰块的水安全时才是保险的，只有知道冰块安全时才能加入饮料。可以把饮料置于冰块之上来冷却，而不是把冰块加进饮料之中。

酒精可能是医学上的消毒剂，但决不可用来消毒饮用水。乙醇的浓度为50%至70%时比较有效，浓度低于20%时，杀菌能力基本上就不存在了。强度标为95 的酒中含有47%的酒精。要提防甲基化酒精，那是剧毒的，永远不能掺入饮用水。

如果没有其他安全的饮用水，水管中流出的烫手的水可以留下来冷却。这种水一般是安全的。那些计划去偏远地区旅行，或在饮用水不现成的国家居住的人，应该知 道如何使水适于饮用的各种办法。

Lesson 37 The process of ageing 衰老过程

At the age of twelve years, the human body is at its most vigorous. It has yet to reach its full size and strength, and its owner his or her full intelligence; but at this age the likelihood of death is least. Earlier, we were infants and young children, and consequently more vulnerable; later, we shall undergo a progressive loss of our vigour and resistance which, though imperceptible at first, will finally become so steep that we can live no longer, however well we look after ourselves, and however well society, and our doctors, look after us. This decline in vigour with the passing of time is called ageing. It is one of the most unpleasant discoveries which we all make that we must decline in this way, that if we escape wars, accidents and disease we shall eventually 'die of old age', and that this happens at a rate which differs little from person to person, so that there are heavy odds in favour of our dying between the ages of sixty-five and eighty. Some of us will die sooner, a few will live longer -- on into a ninth or tenth decade. But the chances are against it, and there is a virtual limit on how long we can hope to remain alive, however lucky and robust we are.

Normal people tend to forget this process unless and until they are reminded of it. We are so familiar with the fact that man ages, that people have for years assumed that the process of losing vigour with time, of becoming more likely to die the older we get, was something self-evident, like the cooling of a hot kettle or the wearing-out of a pair of shoes. They have also assumed that all animals, and probably other organisms such as trees, or even the universe itself, must in the nature of things 'wear out'. Most animals we commonly observe do in fact age as we do, if given the chance to live long enough; and mechanical systems like a wound watch, or the sun, do in fact run out of energy in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (whether the whole universe does so is a moot point at present). But these are not analogous to what happens when man ages. A run-down watch is still a watch and can be rewound. An old watch, by contrast, becomes so worn and unreliable that it eventually is not worth mending. But a watch could never repair itself -- it does not consist of living parts, only of metal, which wears away by friction. We could, at one time, repair ourselves --well enough, at least, to overcome all but the most instantly fatal illnesses and accidents. Between twelve and eighty years we gradually lose this power; an illness which at twelve would knock us over, at eighty can knock us out, and another 700 for the survivors to be reduced by half again.

人体在12岁时是生命力最旺盛的时期。虽然这个时期人的身材、体力和智力还有待发展和完善，但在这个年龄死亡的可能性最小。再早一些，我们是幼儿和小孩 子，身体较脆弱；再迟一些，我们就要经历生命力和抵抗力逐步衰退的过程。虽然这个过程起初难以觉察，但最终会急转直下，不管我们怎样精心照料我们自己，不 管社会和医生怎样对我们进行精心照顾，我们也无法再活下去了。生命力随着时间的流失而衰退叫做衰老。人类发现的最不愉快的一个事实是：人必然会衰老。既使 我们能避开战争、意外的事故和各种疾病，我们最终也会“老死”；衰老的速度在人与人之间相差甚微，我们最可能死亡的年龄在65

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至80岁之间，有些人会死得 早一些，少数人寿命会长一些 -- 活到八十几岁或九十几岁，但这种可能性很小。不管我们多么幸运，多么健壮，我们所希望的长寿实际上是有限度的。

衰老的过程，不经提起，正常人容易忘记；一经提醒，才会记起。我们对人总是要衰老的现象并不陌生，多年来就已认识到。生命随着时间流失而丧失活力，人随着 年龄的增长而接近死亡，这是不言而喻的，就像一壶热水迟早会凉不来，一双鞋渐渐会磨破一样。人们不但认识到所有的动物，大概也认识到所有的有机物。如树 木，甚至宇宙本身，从事物的本质上来说都会“磨损掉”。我们通常看到的大多数动物，即使能让它们活得足够长久的话，也会像我们一样衰老的。像上紧发条的手 表那样的机械装置，或太阳，也都会消耗完其能量（整个宇宙否如此，目前沿有争论）。不过，这些衰老的情况同人并不相似。手表停了依然是只手表，还可以重上 好发条。然而一只老掉牙的手表，磨损太厉害，老得一点儿不准了，最终不值得修理了。但是，手表决不会自行修理，它不是由有生命的部件组成，而是由金属组 成，而金属可以随着磨擦而磨损殆尽。而我们人，在一定时间内是可以自行修复的，除了暴病死或意外事故外，至少足以克服一切疾病和事故。在12岁至80岁之 间，我们逐渐丧失这种能力。能使我们在12岁时病倒的疾病，到了80岁可能会使我们一厥不振而进入坟墓。假如我们能保持12岁时的旺盛生命力，那么我们当 中的一半人过700年才会死去，剩下的一半人再过700年，才会又减少一半。

Lesson 36 The cost of government 政府的开支

If a nation is essentially disunited, it is left to the government to hold it together. This increases the expense of government, and reduces correspondingly the amount of economic resources that could be used for developing the country. And it should not be forgotten how small those resources are in a poor and backward country. Where the cost of government is high, resources for development are correspondingly low.

This may be illustrated by comparing the position of a nation with that of a private business enterprise. An enterprise has to incur certain costs and expenses in order to stay in business. For our purposes, we are concerned only with one kind of cost -- the cost of managing and administering the business. Such administrative overheads in a business are analogous to the cost of government in a nation. The administrative overheads of a business are low to the extent that everyone working in the business can be trusted to behave in a way that best promotes the interests of the firm. If they can each be trusted to take such responsibilities. and to exercise such initiative as falls within their sphere, then administrative overheads will be low. It will be low because it will be necessary to have only one man looking after each job, then the business will require armies of administrators, checkers, and foremen and administrative overheads will rise correspondingly. As administrative overheads rise, so the earnings of the business after meeting he expense of administration, will fall; and the business will have less money to distribute as dividends or invest directly in its future progress and development.

It is precisely the same with a nation. To the extent that the people can be relied upon to behave in a loyal and responsible manner, the government does not require armies of police and civil servants to keep them in order. But if a nation is disunited, the government cannot be sure that the actions of the people will be in the interests of the nation; and it will have to watch, check, and control the people accordingly. A disunited nation therefore has to incur unduly high costs of government.

如果一个国家实际上处于分裂状态，使之联合起来就是政府的事了。这样的一来就增加了政府的开支，从而相应地减少了可以用来了展国家的那部分经济资源。不应 忘记，在一个贫穷落后的国家里，那部分财力是很有限的。凡是政府管理费用高的地方，用于发展国家经济的资金就会相应地减少。

把国家的状况同私人企业的状况加以比较，就可以看清这个问题。一个企业为了继续经营，不得不支出一定的费用和开销。就我们的目的而言，我们只关心一种费用 -- 企业行政管理费。一家企业的行政管理开支类似于一个国家的政府管理所用的开支。如果企业中的每个人都在真诚地为提高企业利润而工作，那么企业的管理费用就 会降低到相应的程度。如果企业的每个人都信得过，人人都认真负责，在各自的工作范围内发挥主动性，行政管理费用就会降低。行政管理费用的降低的原因是：每 项工作只需要一个人去完成，用不着另外再有一个人检查工作。督促他遵守章程，或向有关人士汇报他的工作。但是，如果企业中谁也不可信赖会对工作尽忠守职， 那公企业就会需大批的管理人员、检查人员和带班人员，管理

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费用就会相应在增加。管理费用增加了，那么在扣除管理费用后，企业的收入就降低了。因此用于分红 的金额就用于将来开拓和发展的投资就相应地减少了。

一个国家的情况也完全相同。如果人民忠于职守，举止规矩，能受到政府的信赖，那么政府就不需要大批的警察和文职人员运去促使人民遵纪守法。但是，如果一个 国家处于分裂状态，政府不能相信人民的行动有利于国家，那么政府就不得不对人民进行监督、检查和控制。因此，一个处于分裂的国家必须要支付过高的行政管理 费用。

Lesson 35 Space odyssey 太空探索

The Moon is likely to become the industrial hub of the Solar System, supplying the rocket fuels fro its ships, easily obtainable from the lunar rocks in the from of liquid oxygen. The reason lies in its gravity. Because the Moon has only an eightieth of the Earth's mass, it requires 97 per cent less energy to travel the quarter of a million miles from the Moon to Earth-orbit than the 200 mile-journey from Earth's surface into orbit!

This may sound fantastic, but it is easily calculated. To escape from the Earth in a rocket, one must travel at seven miles per second. The comparable speed from the Moon is only 1.5 miles per second. Because the gravity on the Moon's surface is only a sixth of Earth's (remember how easily the Apollo astronauts bounded along), it takes much less energy to accelerate to that 1.5 miles per second than it does on Earth. Moon-dwellers will be able to fly in space at only three per cent of the cost of similar journeys by their terrestrial dwellers will be able to fly in space at only three per cent of the cost of similar journeys by their terrestrial cousins.

Arthur C. Clark once suggested a revolutionary idea passes through three phases: 1 'It's impossible -- don't waste my time.' 2 'It's possible, but not worth doing.' 3 'I said it was a good idea all along.'

The idea of colonising Mars -- a world 160 times more distant time the Moon -- will move decisively from the second phase to the third, when a significant number of people are living permanently in space. Mars has an extraordinary fascination for would-be voyagers. America, Russia and Europe are filled with enthusiasts -- many of them serious and senior scientists -- who dream of sending people to it. Their aim is understandable. It is the one world in the Solar System that is most like the Earth. It is a world of red sandy deserts (hence its name -- the Red Planet), cloudless skies, savage sandstorms, chasms wider than the Grand Canyon and at least one mountain more than twice as tall as Everest. It seems ideal for settlement.

月球很可能成为太阳系的工业中心。从月球上的岩石中很容易提炼出液态氧，作为航天飞船的燃料。其原因在于月球的重力。因为月球的重只有地球的1/8，因 此，从月球到地球的25万英里所消耗的能量要比从地球表面进入地球轨道的200英里所耗能量少97%。

这点听起来令人难以置信，但却很容易计算出来。要乘坐一枚火箭飞离地球，火箭的速度要达到每秒7英里，而从月球出发的相应速度史是每秒1.5英里。由于月 球表面的重力仅是地球表面的1/6 -- 还记得阿波罗飞船中的宇航员累松地跳跃 -- 在月球上加速到每秒1.5英里比在地球上所用能源要少得多。月球居民在太空遨游的费用仅是地球上朋友飞越同样路所需费用的3%。 亚瑟.C.克拉克曾提议，一种创新的想法要经过以下3个阶段： 1 “根本不可能，不要浪费我的时间。” 2 “可能，但不值得做。” 3 “我一直说这是个好想法。”

如果有相当数量的人永久性地住在太空，征服火星的计划 -- 一个比月球远160倍的星球 -- 就可以明确地从第2阶段进入第3阶段。火星对未来的星际旅客说有着特殊的魅力。美国、俄罗斯和欧洲都有许多热心此项事业的人 -- 其中的不少是认真和资深的科学家，他们一直梦想着把人送上火星。他们的目标是可以理解的。火星是太阳系里与地球最接近的一颗行星。这是一个红色沙漠的世界 （因而得名：红色行星），无云的天空，凶猛的沙暴，比大峡谷还宽的裂缝，起码有一座山有珠穆朗玛峰的近两倍高。看起来，它很合适居住。

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Lesson 34 Adolescence 青春期

Parents are often upset when their children praise the homes of their friends and regard it as a slur on their own cooking, or cleaning, or furniture, and often are foolish enough to let the adolescents see that they are annoyed. They may even accuse them of disloyalty, or make some spiteful remark about the friends' parents. Such loss of dignity and descent into childish behaviour on the part to their parents about the place or people they visit. Before very long the parents will be complaining that the child is so secretive and never tells them anything, but they seldom realize that they have brought this on themselves.

Disillusionment with the parents, however good and adequate they may be both as parents and as individuals, is to some degree inevitable. Most children have such a high ideal of their parents, unless the parents themselves have been unsatisfactory, that it can hardly hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation. Parents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they hope to stand up to a realistic evaluation. Parents would be greatly surprised and deeply touched if they realized how much belief their children usually have in their character and infallibility, and how much this faith means to a child. If parents were prepared for this adolescent reaction, and realized that it was a sign that the child was growing up and developing valuable powers of observation and independent judgment, they would not be so hurt, and therefore would not drive the child into opposition by resenting and resisting it.

The adolescent, with his passion for sincerity, always respects a parent who admits that he is wrong, or ignorant, or even that he has been unfair or unjust. What the child cannot forgive is the parent's refusal to admit these charges if the child knows them to be true.

Victorian parents believed that they kept their dignity by retreating behind an unreasoning authoritarian attitude; in fact they did nothing of the kind, but children were then too cowed to let them know how they really felt. Today we tend to go to the other extreme, but on the whole this is a healthier attitude both for the child and the parent. It is always wiser and safer to face up to reality, however painful it may be at the moment.

当家长听到孩子赞扬自己朋友的家时，总感到不安，认为孩子在嫌弃自家的饭菜、卫生、或家具，而且愚蠢地让孩子看出自己的烦恼。他们甚至责备孩子不忠，或者 讲些小朋友家长的坏话。家长这种有失身份和孩子气的作法使青春期的孩子大为震惊，决心以后不再向父母讲述去过的地方和见过的人。不要很久,家长就会抱怨孩 子守口如瓶，什么事也不告诉他们，殊不知这是他们自找的。

不管家长的人品有多么好，作为父母有多么合格，孩子们对家长幻想的破灭在某种程度上是不可避免的。除非父母自身不能令人满意，大多数孩子对父母估价过高， 以致这种估价很难指望经受住现实的考验。如果家长意识到孩子们通常是多么相信家长的品行和绝对正确，意识到孩子们的这种信念会对孩子产生多么大的影响，那 么家长会大为吃惊和深受感动的。如果家长对青少年的这种反应有思想准备，并且意识到这象征着孩子们正在成熟和正在发展宝贵的观察力、独立判断力，那么他们 就不会那样伤心，也就不会由于怨恨和抵触这种反应，而把孩子推到自己的对立面去。

青少年酷爱真诚，对于能够承认错误或无知、甚至承认自己做得不分平或不公正的父母，他们总是尊敬的，孩子们所不能原谅的是：父母错了，孩子们也看出来了， 可是做父母的还不肯承认。

维多利亚时代的父母认为，他们可靠无理的权威气派来维护自己的尊严，实际上那是根本不行的。孩子们只不过被吓得不敢让父母知道自己的想法罢了。虽然现在我 们倾向于走向另一个极端，但总地来看，孩子和家长双方态度都比较端正。遇事采取面对现实的态度总是比较明智和稳妥的，尽管会有暂时的痛苦。

Lesson 33 Education 教育

Education is one of the key words of our time. A man without an education, many of us believe, is an unfortunate victim of adverse circumstances, deprived of one of the greatest twentieth-century opportunities. Convinced of the importance of education, modern states 'invest' in institutions of learning to get back 'interest' in the form of a large group of enlightened young men and women who are potential leaders. Education, with its cycles of instruction so carefully worked out, punctuated by textbooks -- those purchasable wells of wisdom-what would

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civilization be like without its benefits?

So much is certain: that we would have doctors and preachers, lawyers and defendants, marriages and births -- but our spiritual outlook would be different. We would lay less stress on 'facts and figures' and more on a good memory, on applied psychology, and on the capacity of a man to get along with his fellow-citizens. If our educational system were fashioned after its bookless past we would have the most democratic form of 'college' imaginable. Among tribal people all knowledge inherited by tradition is shared by all; it is taught to every member of the tribe so that in this respect everybody is equally equipped for life.

It is the ideal condition of the 'equal start' which only our most progressive forms of modern education try to regain. In primitive cultures the obligation to seek and to receive the traditional instruction is binding to all. There are no 'illiterates' -- if the term can be applied to peoples without a script -- while our own compulsory school attendance became law in Germany in 1642, in France in 1806, and in England in 1876, and is still non-existent in a number of 'civilized' nations. This shows how long it was before we deemed it necessary to make sure that all our children could share in the knowledge accumulated by the 'happy few' during the past centuries.

Education in the wilderness is not a matter of monetary means. All are entitled to an equal start. There is none of the hurry which, in our society, often hampers the full development of a growing personality. There, a child grows up under the ever-present attention of his parent; therefore the jungles and the savannahs know of no 'juvenile delinquency'. No necessity of making a living away from home results in neglect of children, and no father is confronted with his inability to 'buy' an education for his child.

教育是我们这个时代的关键词之一。我们许多人都相信，一个没有受过教育的人，是逆境的牺牲品，被剥夺了20世纪的最优越的机会之一。现代国家深深懂得教育 的重要性，对教育机构投资，收回的?利息?便是培养出大批有知识的男女青年，这些人可能成为未来的栋梁。教育，以其教学周期如此精心地安排，并以教科书 -- 那些可以买到的智慧源泉 -- 予以强化，如果不受其惠，文明将会是个什么样子呢？

至少，这些是可以肯定的：虽然我们还会有医生和牧师、律师和被告、婚姻和生育，但人们的精神面貌将是另一个样子。人们不会重视?资料和数据?，而靠好记 性、实用心理学与同伴相处的能力。如果我们的教育制度仿效没有书籍的古代教育，我们的学院将具有可以想象得出的最民主的形式了。在部落中，通过传统继承的 知识为所有人共享，并传授给部落中的每一个成员。从这个意义上讲，人人受到的有关生活本领的教育是相等的。

这就是我们最进步的现代教育试图恢复的“平等起步”的理想状况。在原始文化中，寻求和接受传统教育的义务对全民都有约束力。因而没有“文盲”（如果这个字 眼儿可以用于没有文字的民族的话）。而我们的义务教育成为法律在德国是在1642年，在法国是在1806年，在英国是在1876年。今天，在许多“文明” 国家里，义务教育迄今尚未实行。这说明，经过了多么漫长的时间之后，我们才认识到，有必要确保我们的孩子享有多少个世纪以来由?少数幸运者?所积累起来的 知识。

荒凉地区的教育不是钱的问题，所有的人都享有平等起步的权利。那里没有我们今天社会中的匆忙生活，而匆忙的生活常常妨碍个性的全面发展。荒凉地区的孩子无 时无刻不在父母关怀下成长。因此，丛林和荒凉地区不知道什么叫“青少年犯罪”。人们没有必要离家谋生，所以不会产生孩子无人管的问题，也不存在父亲无力为 孩子支付教育费用而犯难的问题。

Lesson 32 Galileo reborn 伽利略的复生

In his own lifetime Galileo was the centre of violent controversy; but the scientific dust has long since settled, and today we can see even his famous clash with the Inquisition in something like its proper perspective. But, in contrast, it is only in modern times that Galileo has become a problem child for historians of science.

The old view of Galileo was delightfully uncomplicated. He was, above all, a man who experimented: who despised the prejudices and book learning of the Aristotelians, who put his questions to nature instead of to the ancients, and who drew his conclusions fearlessly. He had been the first to turn a telescope to the sky, and he had seen there evidence enough to overthrow Aristotle and Ptolemy together. He was the man who climbed the Leaning Tower of Pisa and dropped various weights from the top, who rolled balls down inclined planes, and then generalized

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the results of his many experiments into the famous law of free fall.

But a closer study of the evidence, supported by a deeper sense of the period, and particularly by a new consciousness of the philosophical undercurrents in the scientific revolution, has profoundly modified this view of Galileo. Today, although the old Galileo lives on in many popular writings, among historians of science a new and more sophisticated picture has emerged. At the same time our sympathy fro Galileo's opponents ahs grown somewhat. His telescopic observations are justly immortal; they aroused great interest at the time, they had important theoretical consequences, and they provided a striking demonstration of the potentialities hidden in instruments and apparatus. But can we blame those who looked and failed to see what Galileo saw, if we remember that to use a telescope at the limit of its powers calls for long experience and intimate familiarity with one's instrument? Was the philosopher who refused to look through Galileo's telescope more culpable than those who alleged that the spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosse's great telescope in the eighteen-forties were scratches left by the grinder? We can perhaps forgive those who said the moons of Jupiter were produced by Galileo's spyglass if we recall that in his day, as for centuries before, curved glass was the popular contrivance for producing not truth but illusion, untruth; and if a single curved glass would distort nature, how much more would a pair of them?

伽利略在世时是激烈论战的中心。但是，自他逝世以来，那场科学上的纷争早已平息了下来，甚至他和宗教法庭的著名冲突，我们今天也能正确如实地看待。但是相 比之下，对于科学史家来说，伽利略只是在现代才变成了一个新的难题。

令人高兴的是，过去对伽利略的看法并不复杂。他首先是个实验工作者，他蔑视亚里士多德学派的偏见和空洞的书本知识。他向自然界而不是向古人提出问题，并大 胆地得出结论。他是第一个把望远镜对准天空的人，观察到的论据足以把亚里士多德和托勒密一起推翻。他就是那个曾经爬上比萨斜塔，从塔顶向下抛掷积各种重物 的人；他是那个使地球体沿斜面向下滚动，然后将多次实验结果概括成著名的自由落体定律的人。

但是，对那个时代的深化了解，尤其是以科学家革命中哲学潜流的新意识为依据，进一步仔细研究，就会极大地改变对伽利略的看法。今天，虽然已故的伽利略继续 活在许多通俗读物中，但在科学史家中间，一个新的更加复杂的伽利略形象出现了。与此同时，我们对伽利略的反对派的同情也有所增加。伽利略用望远镜所作的观 察确实是不朽的，这些观察当时引起人们极大的兴趣，具有重要的理论意义，并充分显示出了仪表和仪器的潜在力量。但是，如果我们想到，便用一架倍数有限的望 远镜需要长期的经验和对自己仪器的熟悉程度，那么我们怎么能去责备观察了天空但没有看到伽利略所看到的东西的那些人呢？某位哲学家曾拒绝使用伽利略的望远 镜去观察天空；到了19世纪40年代，有人硬把罗斯勋爵高倍望远镜观测到的螺旋状星云说成是磨镜工留下的磨痕。难道反对伽利略的哲学家比诋毁罗斯勋爵造谣 者应受到更大的谴责吗？如果我们回想一下伽利略之前几个世纪期间，曲面镜一直是一种用于产生幻影而不是产生真象的把戏装置，那么我们就会原谅那些当时把伽利略观察到的木星卫生说成是伽利略用他的小望远镜变出来的人们，何况一片曲面镜就可歪曲自然，那么伽利略的两片曲面镜对自然的歪曲又该多大呢？

Lesson 31 The sculptor speaks 雕塑家的语言

Appreciation of sculpture depends upon the ability to respond to form in there dimension. That is perhaps why sculpture has been described as the most difficult of all arts; certainly it is more difficult than the arts which involve appreciation of flat forms, shape in only two dimensions. Many more people are 'form-blind' than colour-blind. The child learning to see, first distinguishes only two-dimensional shape; it cannot judge distances, depths. Later, for its personal safety and practical needs, it has to develop (partly by means of touch) the ability to judge roughly three-dimensonal distances. But having satisfied the requirements of practical necessity, most people go no further. Though they may attain considerable accuracy in the perception of flat from, they do no make the further. Though they may attain considerable accuracy in the perception of flat form, they do not make the further intellectual and emotional effort needed to comprehend form in its full spatial existence.

This is what the sculptor must do. He must strive continually to think of, and use, form in its full spatial completeness. He gets the solid shape, as it were, inside his head-he thinks of it, whatever its size, as if he were

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holding it completely enclosed in the hollow of his hand. He mentally visualizes a complex form from all round itself; he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like, he identifies himself with its centre of gravity, its mass, its weight; he realizes its volume, as the space that the shape displaces in the air.

And the sensitive observer of sculpture must also learn to feel shape simply as shape, not as description or reminiscence. He must, for example, perceive an egg as a simple single solid shape, quite apart from its significance as food, or from the literary idea that it will become a bird. And so with solids such as a shell, a nut, a plum, a pear, a tadpole, a mushroom, a mountain peak, a kidney, a carrot, a tree-trunk, a bird, a bud, a lark, a ladybird, a bulrush, a bone. From these he can go on to appreciate more complex forms of combinations of several forms.

对雕塑的鉴赏力取决于对立体的反应能力。雕塑被说成是所有艺术中最难的艺术，可能就是这个道理。欣赏雕塑品当然比欣赏平面的艺术品要难。“形盲”的人数比 “色盲”的人数要多得多。正在学看东西的儿童起初只会分辨二维形态，不会判断距离和深度。慢慢地，由于自身安全和实际需要，儿童必须发展（部分通过触觉） 粗略判断三维空间距离的能力。但是。大部分人在满足了实际需要后，就不再继续发展这种能力了。虽然他们对平面形的感觉能达到相当准确的程度，但他们没有在 智力和感情上进一步努力去理解存在于空间的整个形态。

而雕塑家就必须做到这一点。他必须勤于想像并且利用形体在空间中的完整性。可以说，当他想像一个物体时，不管其大小如何，他脑子里得到的是一个立体的概 念，就好像完全握在自己手心里一样。他的大脑能从物体周围的各个角度勾画出其复杂的形象，他看物体的一边时，便知道另一边是个什么样子。他把自身和物体重 心、质量、重量融为一体。他能意识到物体的体积，那就是它的形状有空气中所占的空间。

因此，敏锐的雕塑观赏者也必须学会把形体作为形体来感觉，不要靠描述和印象去想象。以鸟蛋为例。观赏者必须感觉到它是一个单一的实体形态，而完全不靠它的 食用意义或它会变成鸟这样的文字概念来感觉。对于其他实体，如，贝壳、核桃、李子、梨子、蝌蚪、蘑菇、山峰、肾脏、胡萝卜、树干、鸟儿、花蕾、云雀、瓢 虫、芦苇以及骨头也应这样来感觉。从这些形体出发，观赏者可进一步观察更为复杂的形体或若干形体的组合。

Lesson 30 Exploring the sea-floor 海底勘探

Our knowledge of the oceans a hundred years ago was confined to the two-dimensional 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 bad was flat. Sir James Clark Ross had obtained a sounding of over 2,400 fathoms in 1839, but it was not until 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 there 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 topography. 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 miles above the floor of the open ocean. From the shore line, out 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 a steeper slope.

This continental slope usually starts at a place somewhere near the 100-fatheom mark and in the course of a few hundred miles reaches the true ocean floor at 2,500-3,500 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

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continental masses.

100年前，我们只知道海洋是二维平面形的，以及靠近陆地浅水区的深浅不一能给航行带来危险。无边无际的海洋深邃而又神秘，凡是稍稍想过大海海底的人大概 都会认为海底是平坦的。1839年，詹姆斯.克拉克.罗斯爵士曾测得海水深度超过2，400英寻；但直到1869年，皇家学会用英国“豪猪”号舰艇进行了 几次巡航后，才在大西洋测得一个海水深度，同时能过挖掘海底，取得了研究海底的首批样品。此后不久，英国著名的“挑战者”号舰艇对海底的那次考察，把对海 床的研究确立为一个值得一流物理学家和地质学家从事的研究课题，铺设海底电缆的热潮很快证实了“挑战者”号的观察结果：海洋中很多地方可深达两三英里，水 下特征差异极大。

现在已有足够的水深测量数据来绘制一张大西洋洋底地形图，而且我对海底地形的千变万化也有了一定的了解。既然海洋覆盖着地球的大部分表面，因此完全有理由 把海床看作地壳的基本模壳，上面附加着大陆以及岛屿和海洋的其他形态。大陆是崎岖不平的高地，高出辽阔的海洋海底近三英里。从海岸线向大海延伸几英里到几 百英里的区域是大陆架慢坡，从地质学上来说，它是大陆的一部分。大陆和海洋的真正分界线是在陡破脚下。

大陆架慢坡一般是从差不多100英寻水深的地方开始的，一直延伸到几百英里远深达2，500至3，500的地方，那里才是真正的海底。坡度平均约为 1/30，但其中包括陡峭的、乃至垂直的峭壁和沉积物覆盖的缓和的阶梯地带，在这个地带的低处是很长的一段尾沙地段，基本上可以断定这个地段是大陆块体上 侵蚀下来的物质被水冲到深水处形成的。

Lesson 29 The hovercraft 气垫船

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 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 curtain 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 a great number of ring-shaped air jets on the bottom of the craft. It 'flies', therefore, but it cannot fly higher -- its action depends 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. The hovercraft is particularly useful 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.

本世纪已研制出许多新奇的交通工具，其中最新奇的要数气垫船了。1953年，有一位50多岁名叫克里斯托弗.科克雷的原电子工程师，改行在诺福克郡的湖泊 地区从事造船业，他向英国政府和工业界提出了他研究多年的一项计划。他的设想是：用一个低压空气或软垫来支撑船体，软垫周围用高压空气环绕。自那以后，人 们很难决定是否应该将这种运载工具列为轮船、飞机，或是陆上交通工具，因为它是介于船和飞机之间。作为一个船舶技师，科克雷尔在寻找解决波浪阻力的方法， 因为波浪阻力浪费掉了船在水面行驶的大量动力，从而限制了船的速度。他的解决办法是把船体提离水面，让船在一个气垫上行驶，气垫只有一两英尺厚。船底装上 大量环状喷气嘴以实现这一目的。这样，船就能飞了，但飞不高。它的飞行限决于它所悬浮的水面或地面。

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1959年，在苏伦特海峡进行的首次试航引起了轰动，气垫船先是在水面上行驶，后又登上海岸，爬上沙丘，最后停在路上。后来气垫船跨越英吉利海峡，平衡地 在波浪上方行驶，波浪不再产生阻力。 从那以后，各种各样的气垫船出现了，并开始了定期航行服务。气垫船在非洲、澳大利亚等交通不发达地区特别有用。它能成为“飞行水果盘子”，把香蕉从种植园 动到港口。大型的气垫班轮或许能跨越大西洋。未来的火车或许能成为“气垫火车”，靠气垫在单轨上行驶而不接触轨道，时速可达每小时300英里。气垫船的前 途是不可限量的。

Lesson 28 Patients and doctors 病人与医生

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 a theirs. This modern faith in medicines is proved 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 requirements. There is no quicker method of disposing of patients then 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-appreciated 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 was such faith in the bottle of medicine. It is recounted of Thomas Carlyle that when 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 previously 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.

这是一个怀疑一切的时代，可是虽然我们对我们祖先笃信的许多事物已不太相信，我们对瓶装药品疗效的信心仍与祖辈一样坚定。卫生部门的处度药费上升到了天文 数字，并且目前尚无停止上升的迹象，这个事实证实了现代人对药物的依赖。在医院门诊部看病的大多数人觉得，如果不能带回一些看得见、摸得着的药物，如一瓶 药水，一盒药丸、一小瓶药膏回家的话，就没算得到了充分的治疗。负责门诊的医生也非常乐意为前来看病的人提供他们想要得到的药物，病人要什么就给什么，没 有比这样处理病人更快的方法了。因为卫生部门的大多数医生超负荷工作，所以没有多少时间提出一些既费时而又不受人欢迎的忠告，如注意饮食、生活有规律，需 要克服坏习惯等等，结果就是把瓶药、盒药、罐药开给看病的人而完事大吉。

并不只是那些无知和没受过良好教育的人才迷信药瓶子。据说托马斯.卡莱尔有过这么一件事：他听说朋友亨利.泰勒病了，就立刻跑去看他，衣袋里装上了他妻子 不舒服时吃剩下的一瓶药。卡莱尔不知道药瓶子里装的是什么药，不知道他的朋友得的是什么病，也不知道妻子以前得的是什么病，只知道一种药对一种病有好处， 肯定对另一种病也会有好处。想到能对朋友有所帮助，他感到很欣慰，于是急急忙忙来到了亨利.泰勒的家里，他的朋友是否接受了他的药物治疗，历史没有记载， 但很可能接受了。服药的最大优点是：除了暂时忍受一下令人作呕的味道外，对服药人别无其他要求。这也正是病人对医生的要求 -- 病要治好，但不要太麻烦。

Lesson 27 The 'Vasa' “瓦萨”号

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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 Stockholm 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 of 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 rea 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 the emerged from her drifting cloud of gun smoke with the water churned to foam beneath her bow, her flags 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.

1628年，一艘大帆船在处女航时就沉没了，这个从容不迫7世纪瑞典帝国流传至今的故事无疑是航海史上最离奇的事件之一。这艘大船在斯德哥尔摩港口的海底 躺了将近几年来个世纪之后，直到1956年才被发现。这就是“瓦萨”号，帝国大舰的皇家旗舰。

当时号称“北方飓风”的国王古斯夫斯.阿道尔弗正处在“三十年战争”的军事鼎盛阶段，他亲自规定了这艘船的规模和武器配备。3层的火炮甲板上装着眼点4门 青铜加农炮，目的就是要在不断增长的瑞典势力中起主导作用。

1628年8月10日，“瓦萨”号准备首航时，斯德哥尔摩一片欢腾。人们从斯开波斯布朗和周围的岛屿前来观着这艘美丽的战船扬帆起航，乘风前进。瑞典人辛 辛苦苦干了3年才建成这件水上艺术品，它比以往任何船只雕刻得都更加精美，装饰得都更加华丽。高耸的船楼上雕刻了令人眼花缭乱的神仙、妖魔、骑士、国王、 武士、美人鱼和小天使，还有用红色、金黄色、蓝色绘制的光彩夺目的兽形图案，象征着勇敢、力量和残暴，以激起汉时崇尚迷信的水手们的想像。

这时，停泊在港口的其他战船向“瓦萨”号鸣炮致礼，“瓦萨”号也鸣炮回礼。当“瓦萨”号从弥漫的礼炮烟云中出现时，船头下浪花加溅，舰旗迎风招展，三角旗 随风飘动，微风鼓起风帆，金碧辉煌的船楼闪耀着灿烂的色彩。“瓦萨”号展现的壮观景象是斯德哥尔摩人从未见过的。船上的炮眼开着，炮口虎视眈眈地向外窥视 着。

当风力增强时，突然刮来一阵大风，“瓦萨”号奇怪地摇晃了一下，便向左舷倾斜。炮长命令把左舷上所有大炮搬到右舷上来以抵消船的倾斜，但甲板的倾斜度仍在 增加。当物口、压舱物、****和400个人轰地一声滑向陡斜的左舷时，岸上的观众听到了雷鸣般的轰响。下层炮眼已淹没在水里，涌进船舱的水给“瓦萨”号 带来了难以逃脱的厄运。就这样，想要统治波罗的海的大型战舰“瓦萨”号，在它壮丽的起航时刻，带着全身飘扬的彩旗，沉没在了它诞生的港口。

Lesson 26 The past life of the earth 地球上的昔日生命

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,

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where mud and sit have been continuously deposited, that bodies and the 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 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 bout, 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 just a suburb of Los Angeles. Apparently what happened was that water collected on these tar pits, and the bigger animals like the elephants ventured 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.

只有生活在水中或水边的动植物尸体最有可能被保存下来，因为保存的必要条件之一是迅速掩埋，所以只有在泥沙不停淤积的海洋和江河里，有时在湖泊里，尸体之 类的东西才能被迅速地覆盖而保存下来。 即使是在最有利的环境中，死去的生物中也只有一小部分能在开始腐烂前，或更可能在被食腐动物吃掉之前，被这样保存下来。因为一切生物都是靠吃别的东西来活 命的，不管这种东西是植物还是动物，死的还是活的，因此，生物偶尔才能避免被吃掉的命运。曾在陆地上生活过的动植物的遗体被保存下来的更为罕见，因为陆地 上几乎没有什么东西覆盖它们。你可以想象出天上有看得见的飞来飞去、数不清的鸟，地上有不显眼的无数的老鼠和田鼠之类的小动物，但是，除非在路上，很少有 人遇到这些动物的尸体，因为它们腐败之后很快就被风化掉，或被别的动物吃掉了。

几乎总是由于某些特殊的条件，陆地动物的遗体才被存下来，如掉进难以到达的洞穴，或掉进冰河裂缝里，或者像西伯利亚长毛象那样掉进冰窟中，有时整个动物像 被放在冰箱里一样被保存下来，著名的那林索夫卡长毛象就是这样被保存下来的，而且保存得很好。它嘴里还留着冷杉 -- 它掉进冰河裂隙折断脊椎柱之前的最后一顿饭。这头长毛象已被修复，现存于圣彼得堡古生物学博物馆。有的动物掉进天然沥清坑里被保存下来，如在兰桥.拉.布 里 -- 现在是洛杉矶的郊区发现的大象、剑齿虎和许多其他动物。显然，事情的经过是这样：沥青坑里积存了水，大象那样的大动物冒险到似乎坚固的水面上去饮水，立即 掉进了沥青坑。大象死后，一些食肉动物，如剑齿虎和大灰狼就来吃大象，结果遭到了同样的命运。沥青坑里还有无数只鸟的尸体。

Lesson 25 Non-auditory effects of noise 噪音的非听觉效应

May 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 had 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 merely a symptom? Another patient

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might equally well complain that her neighbours were combining to slander her and persecute her, and yet one might be cautious about believing this statement.

What is needed in 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. Some time ago the United States Navy, for instance, 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 squadrons 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 exist: but it does mean that noise is less dangerous than, say, being brought up in an orphanage -- which really is mental health hazard.

在工业部门工作和在军队中服役的许多人对噪声音有切身的体会，他们认为对这个问题进行调查中浪费时间，甚至不愿承认噪音可能对人有影响。另一方面，那些讨 厌噪音的人有时会用不充分的证据来支持他们希望有一个较为安静的社会环境的要求。要求减少噪音是件好事，但是如果与拙劣的科学掺杂在一起的话，就不会被人 们所信任，这是很遗憾的。

常见的一种指责是，噪音能引起精神病。例如，最近一家周报刊登了一篇文章，文章上方有一幅引人注目的插图，是一位表情沮丧的女子。图的文字说明：“她是又 一个受害者，成了只会尖叫的可怜虫。”当人们急切地看完正文后，便知道这女子是个打字员，办公室打字机的声音使她越来越烦，最终住进了精神病医院。这类奇 闻的疑难之处是无法区别因果关系。是噪音引起了（精神）病呢，还是（精神）病的症状之一是对噪音的抱怨？另有一位病人可能同样有理由抱怨说，她的邻居们正 在联合起来对她进行诽谤和迫害，不过，人们不会轻信她的抱怨。

对于噪音问题，需要对大量生活在噪音中的人进行研究，看一看他们是否比其他人更易患精神病。例如，美国海军前些时候调查了许多在航空母航上工作的人，这次 调查被称之为：“安内英工程”。即使住在离机场几英里以外的地方，机场的噪音也会使人难受。因此，如果你能想像出和几个中队的喷气机同在一个甲板上是什么 滋味儿的话，你就会认识到现代海军是研究噪音的好地方。但是，不管进行精神病学的调查访问，还是进行客观的测试，都不能显示噪音对这些美国水兵有任何影 响。这个结果只不过证实了美国和英国早些时候的研究结论：如果噪音对精神健康有影响的话，那也一定是微乎其微，以致现代的精神病诊断方法还发现不了。这并 不是证实不存在噪音对健康的影响。但它确实说明，噪音的危险性 -- 比如说 -- 比在孤儿院长大所受的危害要小一些，孤儿院才是真正危害精神健康的地方。

Lesson 24 Beatuy 美

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 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 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 and 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 unwise to try to

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utter it, nor should we seek to invest with significance that which we cannot grasp. Beauty in terms of our human meanings is meaningless.

一个年轻人看到日落，由于无法理解和表达日落在他心中唤起的激情，便得出结论：日落处想必是通往遥远世界的大门。无论是谁，在强烈感受到美的时刻，心中都 不禁油生一种遐想：我们似乎瞥见从另一个世界射向我们的一线光芒，那个世界不仅不同于我们这个世界，而且由于美感的强烈感染，在某些方面比我们这个世界更 美好。虽然这光芒令人眼花缭乱，但它确实给予我们一种不曾经历和无法想象的美感和静谧的启示。这种美感和静谧是我们无法描述的，因为我们发明的语言是用来 描述这个世界的含义，不能随便拿来去描述另一个世界。

不可否认，一切伟大的艺术都具有使人遐想到进入天外世界的魅力。在某种状态下，大自然也有这种魅力。六月蔚蓝的天空总使人遥想一个更加蔚蓝的苍穹；美丽的 落日总会引起一个更加绚丽的景象未及饱览便一闪即逝，并在消逝中给人留下不可名状的渴望和惆怅。如果这个世界不只是一个拙劣的恶作剧，如果人生不只是群星 寒光中平凡的一闪，如果存在不只是对神秘事物的一种空虚的笑声，如果某种玄妙事物的暗示不是消化不良引起的邪恶情绪，也不是魔鬼为了捉弄我们，使我们发狂 而送给我们的邪念，一句话，如果美有某种意义的话，我闪千万不要去阐明它的意义。如果我瞥见了只可意会不可言传的事物，企图把它说出来，那上不明智的；对 于我们不理解的事物，我们也不应该去赋予它某种意义。用对我们人类有意义的词解释美是没有意义的。

Lesson 23 Bird flight 鸟的飞行方法

No two sorts of birds practise quite the same sort of flight; the varieties are infinite; but two classes may be roughly seen. Any shi 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 opposition. 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 such-like muscles, that are a good part of the weight of the bird, and these will ply the short wings with such irresistible power that they can bore for long distances through an opposing gale before exhaustion follows. Their humbler followers, such as partridges, have a like power of strong propulsion, but soon tire. You may pick them up in utter exhaustion, if wind over the 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 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.

没有任何两种鸟的飞行方式是相同的。鸟的飞行方式千差万别，但大体上可分为两类。任何一艘横度太平洋的轮船都会有一种小信天翁伴随飞行许多天。它们随船飞 行一小时也难得见其扇动一下翅膀。沿船体的上升的气流和沿航线向前的气流给这种巨翼大鸟以足够的浮力和推力。信天翁是滑翔飞行的鸟类之王，它能自如地驾驭 空气，但必须顺气流飞行。与滑翔鸟相对的另一类鸟中，数野鸭本领最高。它更近乎于人类自夸的“征服”了空气的发动机。野鸭及它们相似的鸽子有天赋的钢铁般 的肌肉，占了体重的很大一部分。这些肌肉以巨大的力量扇动短小的翅膀，使这类鸟能顶着大风飞行很远的路才会疲劳。次于野鸭和鸽子的鸟，如鹧鸪，有相似的巨 大推动力，但很快会疲劳。如果海风驱使它们飞行很长距离，你可以捡到一些因筋疲力尽而摔下来的鹧鸪。燕子充分兼有这两类鸟的长处，它既不疲劳，也不炫耀自 己的飞翔力；在空中十分自如，可以飞行6，000英里，可以飞往北方做窝的老家，再从老家飞回；一边飞一边喂养会飞的雏燕，甚至在顶风时也能在气流中滑 翔，似乎气流在帮它前进。这些鸟对我们是有益的，虽然我们不再从它们的飞翔姿态来占卜吉凶，连最迷信的村民也不再对喜鹊脱帽行礼，祝它早安了。

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Lesson 22 Knowledge and progress 知识和进步

Why does the idea of progress loom so large in the modern world? Surely 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 in 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 of science, the tempo was suddenly raised. Then knowledge began to be accumulated 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 ourselves very seriously what will happen if this twofold use of knowledge, with its ever-increasing power, continues.

为什么进步这个概念在现代世界显得如此突出？无疑是因为有一种特殊的进步实际上正在我们周围发生，而且变得越来越明显。虽然人类有智力和道德上没有得到普 遍提高，但在知识积累方面却取得了巨大的进步。人一旦能用语言同别人交流思想，知识的积累便开始了。随着书写的发明，又迈进了一大步，因为这样一来，知识 不仅能交流，而且能储存了。藏书使教育成为可能，而教育反过来又丰富了藏书，因为知识的增长遵循着一种“滚雪球”的规律。印刷术的发明又大大提高了知识增 长的速度。所有这些发展都比较缓慢，而随着科学的到来，增长的速度才突然加快。于是，知识便开始有系统有计划地积累起来。涓涓细流汇成小溪，小溪现已变成 了奔腾的江河。而且，新知识一旦获得，便得到实际应用。所谓“现代文明”并不是人的天性平衡发展的结果，而是积累起来的知识应用到实际生活中的结果。现在 人类面临的问题是：用这些知识去做什么？正像人们常常指出的，知识是一把双刃刀，可以用于造福，也可以用来为害。人们现在正漫不经心地把知识用于这两个方 面，例如：炮兵利用科学毁坏人的身体、而外科医生就在附近用科学抢救被炮兵毁坏的人体，还有什么情景比这更可怕、更怪诞的吗？我们不得不严肃地问问我们自 己：随着日益增长的知识的力量，如果我们继续利用知识的这种双重性，将会发生什么样的情况呢？

Lesson 21 William S. Hart and the early 'Western' film威廉.S. 哈特和早期限的?西部?影片

William S. hart was, perhaps, the greatest of all Western stars, fro 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-had man, the accidental-noble outlaw, or the honest-but-framed cowboy, or the sheriff made suspect by vicious gossip; in short, the individual in conflict with himself and his frontier environment.

Unlike most of his contemporaries in Hollywood, Hart actually knew something of the old West. He had lived in it as a child when it was already disappearing, 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 Indians were bewildered by politicians, bankers and businessmen, 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

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the attacking 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.

威廉.S.哈特大概是美国西部电影明星中的佼佼者。他和加里.古柏、约翰.韦恩不同，他只在西部电影中扮演角色。在1914年至1924年期间，他首屈一 指，独霸影坛。正是他创造了西部电影的基调，即在他自己的拍摄的影片中他所塑造的主人公形象：被认为是坏人的好人，出人意料的高尚的逃犯，诚实却遭陷害的 牛仔或因流言蜚语蒙受嫌疑的司法官。总之，主人公是一个自相矛盾，又与他的拓荒环境相矛盾的人物。

哈特与大部分同时代在好莱坞的演员不同，他确实了解西部早期拓荒生活的一些情况。作为一个孩子他曾在西部生活过，当时西部拓荒生活正在消失。他塑造的英雄 人物深深地扎根于他本人的记忆和经历之中，也扎根于有关已经消失的拓荒生活的历史和神话之中。虽然在美国历史上没有任何时期或地区像西部拓荒时期那样被荒 谬地浪漫主义化了，但神话和事实至少在某一个舞台上共存，也就是存在于个人与渐渐闯入的文明这两者的冲突之中。

习惯与大自然和印第安人作斗争以求生存的拓荒者被政客、银行家和商人搞得晕头转向，最后被圈地、尖律我外来的清规戒律所击败。哈特扮演的被误为坏人的好人 总是一个局外人，总是一个被剥夺继承权的人。如果他认为在进行过程中有必要枪击一个司法官或抢劫一个银行，他的早期观众很容易接受，觉得应该原谅他，特别 是当哈特最后战胜了前来进攻的印第安人时，观众更能原谅他。 生活在20世纪20年代的观众认为，逃到一个即使艰苦但比较简朴的时代中去是件愉快的事，我们今天仍有这种感觉。如今，不宣而战的侵略、战争、虚伪、诈 骗、无政府状态以及即将临头的毁灭成了我们日常生活的一部分，我们都希望有一个赖以生存的行为准则。

Lesson 20 Snake poison 蛇毒

How it came about that snakes manufactured poison is a mystery. Over the 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 survival 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 fights 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 carnivores 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 saliva into why Nature, with respect from that of others, as other on the blood.

In the conversion of saliva into poison, one might suppose that a fixed process took place. It did not; some snakes manufacture a poison different in every respect 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.

蛇是怎样产生毒液的，这是一个谜。蛇的唾液本来和我们人的消化液一样柔和，但经过漫长的时间，演变成了今天仍无法分析清楚的毒液。毒液不是生存竞争强加给 它们的，它们也可以不用毒液捕捉动物而生存，就像今天成千上万的无毒蛇那样。毒液对毒蛇来说只不过是一种舒适生存的优越手段，它使蛇不用费多大力气就能捕 获到食物，轻咬一口即可。为什么只有蛇才有毒液呢？譬如说，如果猫有毒液，那

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对猫会大有帮助，它就不必再和又大又凶的老鼠边跑边博斗了，也不必再和大兔子 扭斗了，只要咬一口，就不必再费大力气。因此，任何食肉动物有了毒液，都能从中获益。不过，当它们相互撕打时，毒液就成了利弊参半的武，可以杀死对方，也 可以被对方的毒液杀死。然而，在脊椎动物中，大自然神秘模测地只选择了蛇（还有一种蜥蜴），人们弄不清楚大自然为什么在某些蛇的身上调制出如此高效的毒液 来。 人们可能认为，唾液转变成毒液，其中有固定的程序。其实没有。有些蛇产生的毒液也在各方面与另外一些毒蛇产生的毒液不同，就像砒霜不同于马钱子碱一样。不 同毒蛇产生的毒液产生的效果不同，一种毒液作用于神经，另一种毒液作用于血液。

产生神经毒液的蛇有一种非洲树眼镜蛇和眼镜蛇，它们的毒液称为神经毒素。蝰蛇（蝮蛇）和响尾蛇产生血液毒素，称为溶血性毒液。这两种毒液都很可怕，但溶血 性毒液尤其厉害。据说，神经毒液在两种毒液中是较为原始的一种，而溶血性毒液，打个比方说，是根据改良配方生产的一种较新的产品。不过，神经毒辣液比溶血 性毒液在人身上起作用快得多。但是，这没有什么关系，因为蛇有毒液不是用来对付人的，而是对付它的猎物，诸如鼠类，毒液对这些猎物会立刻起作用。

Lesson 19 The stuff of dreams 话说梦的本质

It is fairly clear that sleeping period must have some function, and because there is so much of it the function would seem to e important. Speculations about is 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 relaxation 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 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. Some years ago 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 no 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.

很清楚，睡眠必然具有某种作用。睡眠占去那么多时间，所以其作用似乎还是很重要。人们对睡眠作用的种种猜测，确实有数千年之久。一项使人对这个问题感到困 惑的奇怪的发现是，睡眠在很大程度似乎并不仅仅是为了使身体得到休息。“休息”，从使肌肉得到放松等方面来看，只要稍微躺一躺，甚至坐一坐就能达到。人体 组织在一定程度上有自我修补和自我恢复的能力，有张有弛地连续活动时，其功能最佳。事实上，睡眠状态下仍有着基本的活动量，以防止肌肉活动停止。

如果睡眠的功能不是在于使身体得到休息，那么也许是让大脑得以休息？若不是下面两点，这种假使似乎是有道理的。第一点，脑电图记录仪（不过是一种把电极接 到头皮上记录脑电活动的仪器）显示，人在睡眠时大脑活动的方式有变化，但没有迹象表明，其活动总量有任何减少。第二点更有意思，也更重要。前些年，美国一 位精神病学者发表了一篇报告，报告中记录了眼球在睡眠时的活动情况。他指出，平常人的睡眠周期中不时伴有一阵阵奇怪的眼球队活动，这些活动有的飘忽而缓 慢，有的急剧而快速。在眼球活动期间被叫醒的人都说自己在做梦；在其他期间叫醒他们，则说没有做梦。如果有两组人，一组人连续几夜在眼球队活动时被叫醒； 另一组人也是连续几夜被叫醒，但是在眼球队没活动时被叫醒的。

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结果，第一组人开始出现性格失常，而第二组人似乎没受什么影响。这一切暗示我们：睡眠受到干 忧没关系，而做梦受到干忧是有问题的。

Lesson 18 Porpoises 海豚

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 dolphins with any motive of lifesaving. 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 photographer 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, 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 satisfied 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.

长期以来，海员中流传着一种迷信的说法，认为海豚会把快要淹死的人托到水面，救人性命；或在人们周围列队保护，使他们免遭鲨鱼伤害。海洋摄影室的生物学家 指出，无论海豚多么聪明，认为它们有救人的动机可能是错误的。当它们偶尔把一个失去知觉的人推到岸边时，更大的可能是出于好奇或游戏，就像它们追逐被船首 犁开的浪花一样。1928年，有人拍摄到了海豚像海狸一样把浸透水的床垫推上岸的情景。正如报道中所说，如果海豚保护人不受鲨鱼侵害，那么它们可能是出于 好奇；而鲨鱼可能是闻到了可以美食一顿的香味。海豚和鲨鱼是天然仇敌，双方可能随之发生搏斗，搏斗结果是海豚赶走或咬死鲨鱼。

海豚对凡是活的东西都感兴趣，不管是鸟、是鱼，还是野兽。它们经常追逐海龟，海龟则温顺地忍受着各种侮辱。一只小海豚特别喜欢用鼻子把海龟推到水面，然后 像滑水板一样把海龟从水池的这一边推到那一边。几乎每天都可以看到一只小海豚把鼻子顶入一只300磅重的海龟的硬壳下面，拼命地把它翻过来。这并非易事， 可能需要两只海豚合伙干才行。在另一场游戏中，当海龟游过水族馆时，第一只海豚从上方猛扑下去，用腹部撞击龟壳。这一下子把海龟撞下去好几英尺。海龟刚恢 复平衡，第二只海豚又冲过来猛击一下。这只海龟最终被撞到池底。此时的海龟，只要能站起来就满足了，但它刚站起来，就被一只海豚击倒。海龟终于屈服了，将 4条腿缩进壳内。游戏到此结束。

Lesson 17 A man-made disease 人为的疾病

In the early days of the settlement of Australia, enterprising settlers unwisely introduced the European rabbit. This rabbit had no natural enemies in the Antipodes, 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 infecting 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

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over the continent and drastically reduced the rabbit population. It later became apparent that rabbits were developing a degree of resistance to this disease, so that the rabbit population was unlikely to be completely exterminated. There were hopes, however, that the 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 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 control the disease he had invented.

在澳大利亚移民初期，一些有创业精神的移民不明智地把欧洲兔子引进了澳大利亚。这种兔子在澳大利亚及新西兰没有天敌，因此便以兔子所特有的杂乱交配迅猛繁 殖起来。整个澳洲兔子成灾。它们在地下打洞，吃掉本可以饲养数百万头牛羊的牧草，给澳洲大陆造成了毁灭性的破坏。科学家们发现，这种特殊品种的兔子（显然 不包括别的动物）易患一种叫“多发性粘液瘤”的致命毒性疾病。通过让染上此病的动物在洞内乱跑，就可以使这种疾病在一个地区蔓延起来。后来又发现，有一种 蚊子是传播这种疾病的媒介，能把此病传染给兔子。因此，世界上其他地方在设法消灭蚊子的时候，澳大利亚却在促使这种蚊子大量繁殖。蚊子把这种疾病扩散到整 个澳洲大陆，效果甚佳，结果兔子的数目在为减少。后来，明显看出，兔子对这种疾病已产生了一定程度的免疫力，所以兔子不可能被完全消灭。但是，已有希望解 决兔子所带来的问题。

具有讽刺意味的是，欧洲把这种兔子作为有害动物传给澳洲，而欧洲自己却染上了这种人为的瘟疫般的疾病。一位法国内科医生决定除掉自己庄园内的野兔子，于是 引进了这种多发性粘液瘤疾病。然而，这种疾病并未被局限在他的庄园内，结果在整个法国蔓延开来。野兔在法国一般不被当作有害动物，而被视为打猎取乐的玩物 和有用的食物来源。这种疾病又蔓延到了英国。在英国，野兔被当作有害的动物，可是家兔是赚钱的毛皮工业的基础，然而家兔同样易感染这种疾病。现在的问题 是，人类能否控制住这种人为的疾病。

Lesson 16 The modern city 现代城市

In the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological 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 produced on the individuals and on their descendants by the artificial mode of existence 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 necessity 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 construction 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 and toxic gases, torn by the noise of the taxicabs, lorries and buses, and thronged ceaselessly by great crowds. Obviously, it has not been planned for the good of its inhabitants.

在工业生活的组织中，工厂对工人的生理和精神状态的影响完全被忽视了。现代工业的基本概念是：以最低成本获取最多产品，为的是让某个个人或某一部分人尽可 能多地赚钱。现代工业发展起来了，却根本没想到操作机器的人的本质。工厂把一种人为的生存方式强加给工人，却不顾及这种生存方式给工人及其后代带来的影 响。大城市的建设毫不关心我们。摩天大楼完全是按这样的需要修建的：每平方英尺地皮取得最大收入和向租房人提供使他满意的办公室和住房。这样就导致了许多 摩天大厦拔地而起，大厦内众多的人挤地一起。文明人喜欢这样一种生活方式。在享受自己住宅的舒适和庸俗的豪华时，却没有

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意识到被剥夺了生活所必需的东西。 大得吓人的高楼和阴暗狭窄的街道组成了今日现代化的城市。街道上充斥着汽油味和有毒气体，出租汽车、卡车、公共汽车的噪音刺耳难忍，络绎不绝的人群挤来挤 去。显然，现代化的城市不是这居民的利益而规划的。

Lesson 15 Secrecy in industry 工业中的秘密

Two factors weigh heavily against the effectiveness of scientific research in industry. 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 engaged 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 because they are unwilling to have 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.

有两个因素严重地妨碍工业中科学研究的效率：一是科研工作中普遍存在的保密气氛；二是研究人员缺乏个人自由。任何一项研究都涉及到保密，那些从事科研的人 员自然受到了限制。他们不能和其他国家、其他大学、甚至往往不能与本公司的其他部门的同行们进行有效的接触。保密程度自然差别很大。某些大公司进行的研究 属于一般和基础的研究，因此不保密对他们才有利。然而，依赖这种研究的很多工艺程序是在完全保密的情况下进行的，直到可以取得专利权的阶段为止。更多的工 艺过程根本就不会取得专利权，而是作为秘方保存着。在这化学工业方面尤为突出。同物理和机械工业相比，化学工业中偶然发现的机会要多得多。有时，保密竟达 到了这样的程度，即连研究工作的整个性质都不准提及。比如，很多公司向图书馆借阅科技书籍时感到困难，因为它们不愿让人家记下它们公司的名字和借阅的某一 本书。他们生怕别的公司的情报人员据此摸到他们可能要从事的某项科研项目。

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