1. The Influence of Literature
I will tell you what literature is! No, I only wish I could. But I can’t. No one can. Gleams can be thrown on the secret, inklings given, but no more. I will try to give you an inkling. And, to do so, I will take you back into your own history, or forward into it. That evening when you went for a walk with your faithful friend, the friend from whom you hid nothing, or almost nothing! You were, in truth, somewhat inclined to hide from him the particular matter which monopolized your mind that evening, but somehow you contrived to get onto to it,drawn by an overpowering fascination. And as your faithful friend was sympathetic and discreet, and flattered you by a respectful curiosity, you proceeded further and further into the said matter, growing more and more confidential, until at last you cried out, in a terrific whisper: “My boy, she is simply miraculous!”偏旁部首查字典 At that moment you were in the domain of literature.
Let me explain. Of course, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, she was not miraculous. Your faithful friend had never noticed that she was miraculous, nor had about
forty thousand other fairly keen observers. She was just a girl. Troy had not been burnt for her. A girl cannot be called a miracle. If a girl is to be called a miracle then you might call pretty nearly anything a miracle. That is just it: you might.You can. You ought. Amid all the miracles of the universe you had just wakened up to one. You were full of your discovery. You were under a divine impulsion to impart that discovery. You had a strong sense of the marvelous beauty of something, and you had to share it. You were in a passion about something, and you had to vent yourself on somebody. You were drawn towards the whole of the rest of the human race. Mark the effect of your mood and utterance on your faithful friend. He knew that she was not a miracle. No other person could have made him believe that she was a miracle. But you, by the force and sincerity of your own vision of her, and by the fervor of your desire to make him participate in your vision, did for quite a long time cause him to feel that he had been blind to the miracle of that girl.
黑酸枝木家具
土鳝鱼You were producing literature. You were alive. Your eyes were unlidded, your ears were unstopped, to some part of the beauty and the strangeness of the world; and a strong instinct within you forced you to tell someone It was not enough for you that you saw and
heard.Others had to see and hear. Others had to be wakened up And they were! It is quite possible. I am not quite sure--that your faithful friend the very next day, or the next month, looked at some other girl, and suddenly saw that she, too, was miraculous! The influence of literature! [By Arnold Bennett]
2. A True Instinct for the Beautiful
A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision,that true instinct of what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed or even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.
If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies,
time is moneyhe needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement of mystery of the world we live in. Parents often have a sense of inadequacy when confronted on the hand with eager sensitive child mind of a child and on the other with a world of complex physical nature, inhabited by a life so various and unfamiliar that it seems hopeless to reduce it to order and knowledge. In a mood of self-defeat they exclaim, "How can I possibly teach my child about nature. why, I don't even know one bird from another!"
一战死亡人数I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide them, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused - a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and the unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love, then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response. Once found, it has lasting meaning. It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate. [By Rachel Carson]
3. Work
It is physically impossible for a well-educated intellectual, or a brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts; as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy people like their dinner, but their dinner is not the main object of their lives. So all healthy, minded people like making money, ought to like it and to enjoy the satisfaction of winning it ;but the main object of their lives is not money; it is something better than money.
悬空寺导游词A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad of his pay, very properly so, and just complains when you keep him ten months without it; still, his main opinion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for winning them.
So of doctors. They like fees no doubt, ought to like them; yet if they are brave and well educated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. They would rather cure their patient and lose their fees than kill him and get it And so with all other brave and rightly trained men;their work is first, their fees second, very important always but still second.
But in every nation, there is a vast class of people who are cowardly, and more or less stupid. And with these people, just as certainly the fee is first and the work second, as with brave people the work is first and the fee second.
And this is no small distinction. It is the whole distinction in a man. You cannot serve two masters; you must serve one or the other. If your work is first with you, and your fee is second, work is your master.
Observe, then, all wise work is mainly threefold in character. It is honest, useful, and cheerful. I hardly know anything stranger than that you recognize honesty in play, and do not in work. In your lightest games you have always someone to see what you call "fair play". In boxing you must hit fair; in racing, start fair. Your watchword is fair play; your hatred, foul play. Did it ever strike you that you wanted another watchword also, fair work, and another hatred also, foul work? [By anonymity]