1、Lesson 1 Finding Fossil manWe 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 canpreserve their history is to recount it as sagas-legends handed dow

2、n from one generation of story-tellers toanother. These legends are useful because they can tell us something about migrations of people who livedlong ago, but none could write down what they did. Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestorsof the Polynesian peoples now living in the Pacific

3、Islands came from. The sagas of these people explainthat 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, areforgotten. So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help them to find

4、 out where the first modernmen came from.Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, because this is easier to shape thanother 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

5、even the bones of the men who made them havedisappeared without trace.Lesson 2 Spare that spiderWhy, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends ? Because they destroy so many insects, and insectsinclude some of the greatest enemies of the human race. Insects would make it impossible for us to liv

6、e inthe world; they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection weget from insect-eating animals. We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them puttogether kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders. Moreover, unlike

7、 some of the other insecteaters, spiders never do the least harm to us or our belongings.Spiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them. One can tell the differencealmost at a glance for a spider always has eight legs and an insect never more than six.How many spiders

8、 are engaged in this work on our behalf ? One authority on spiders made a census of thespiders in a grass field in the south of England, and he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in oneacre, that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch. Spiders are busy

9、for atleast half the year in killing insects. It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many theykill, but they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day. It has been estimated that theweight of all the insects destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year would b

10、e greater than the total weight ofall the human beings in the country.T. H. GILLESPIE Spare that Spider from The ListenerLesson 5 YouthPeople are always talking about the problem of youth . If there is onewhich I take leave to doubt-then itis older people who create it, not the young themselves.Let

11、us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings-people just like theirelders. There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a gloriousfuture before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where the r

12、ub is.When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain-that I was a new boy in a huge school, andI would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem. For one thing,being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the youn

13、g are busily engaged inseeking.I find young people exciting. They have an air of freedom, and they have not a dreary commitment to meanambitions or love of comfort. They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to materialthings. All this seems to me to link them with life, and the

14、 origins of things. Its as if they were in somesense cosmic beings in violent and lovely contrast with us suburban creatures.All that is in my mind when I meet a young person. He may be conceited, ill-mannered, presumptuous offatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary clich s about respect

15、for elders-as if mere age were areason for respect. I accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.Lesson 6 The sporting spiritI am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that ifonly the common peoples

16、 of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have noinclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didnt know from concrete examples (the 1936 OlympicGames, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it fromgeneral pr

17、inciples.Nearly all the sports practiced nowadays are competitive. You play to win, and the game has little meaningunless you do your utmost to win. On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of localpatriotism is involved, it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: bu

18、t as soon as the question ofprestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the mostsavage combative instincts are aroused. Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this.At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare. Bu

19、t the significant thing is not the behaviour of theplayers but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations. who work themselvesinto furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe-at any rate for short periods-that running,jumping and kicking a ball are tests

20、of national virtue.Lesson 9 Royal espionageAlfred the Great acted as his own spy, visiting Danish camps disguised as a minstrel. In those dayswandering minstrels were welcome everywhere. They were not fighting men, and their harp was theirpassport. Alfred had learned many of their ballads in his you

21、th, and could vary his programme withacrobatic tricks and simple conjuring.While Alfreds little army slowly began to gather at Athelney, the king himself set out to penetrate the campof Guthrum, the commander of the Danish invaders.These had settled down for the winter at Chippenham: thither Alfred

22、went. He noticed at once that disciplinewas slack: the Danes had the self-confidence of conquerors, and their security precautions were casual. Theylived well, on the proceeds of raids on neighbouring regions. There they collected women as well as foodand drink, and a life of ease had made them soft

23、.Alfred stayed in the camp a week before he returned to Athelney. The force there assembled was trivialcompared with the Danish horde. But Alfred had deduced that the Danes were no longer fit for prolongedbattle : and that their commissariat had no organization, but depended on irregular raids.So, f

24、aced with the Danish advance, Alfred did not risk open battle but harried the enemy. He was constantlyon the move, drawing the Danes after him. His patrols halted the raiding parties: hunger assailed the Danisharmy. Now Alfred began a long series of skirmishes-and within a month the Danes had surren

25、dered.The episode could reasonably serve as a unique epic of royal espionage!Lesson 11 How to grow oldSome old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there is a justification for thisfeeling.Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bi

26、tter in thethought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who hasknown human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death issomewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it-so at least it seems to me

27、-is to make yourinterests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your lifebecomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like ariver-small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionate

28、ly past boulders and overwaterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider ,the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end,without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. Theman who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not su

29、ffer from the fear of death, since the things hecares for will continue. And it, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will be notunwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longerdo, and content in the thought t

30、hat what was possible has been done.Lesson 16 The modern cityIn the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state ofthe workers has been completely neglected. Modern industry is based on the conception of the maximumproduction at lowest cost, in

31、 order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much money aspossible. It has expanded without any idea of the true nature of the human beings who run the machines, andwithout giving any consideration to the effects produced on the individuals and on their descendants by theartificia

32、l 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 maximumincome per square foot of ground, and of offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please

33、them.This caused the construction of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowdedtogether. Civilized men like such a way of living. While they enjoy the comfort and banal luxury of theirdwelling, they do not realize that they are deprived of the necessities of life. The mode

34、rn city consists ofmonstrous edifices and of dark, narrow streets full of petrol fumes, coal dust, and toxic gases, torn by thenoise of the taxi-cabs, lorries and buses, and thronged ceaselessly by great crowds. Obviously, it has no beenplanned for the good of its inhabitants.Lesson 24 BeautyA young

35、 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 a world that lies beyond. It is difficult for any of us in moments ofintense aesthetic experience to resist the suggestion that we are catching a glimpse of a light t

36、hat shinesdown to us from a different realm of existence, different and, because the experience is intensely moving, insome way higher. And, though the gleams blind and dazzle, yet do they convey a hint of beauty and serenitygreater than we have known or imagined. Greater too than we can describe, f

37、or language, which wasinvented to convey the meanings of this world, cannot readily be fitted to the uses of another.That all great art 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,

38、 no sunset so beautiful that it doesnot waken the vision of a greater beauty, a vision which passes before it is fully glimpsed, and in passingleaves an indefinable longing and regret. But, if this world is not merely a bad joke, life a vulgar flare amidthe cool radiance of the stars, and existence

39、an empty laugh braying across the mysteries; if these intimationsof a something behind and beyond are not evil humour born of indigestion, or whimsies sent by the devil tomock and madden us, if, in a word, beauty means something, yet we must not seek to interpret the meaning.If we glimpse the unutte

40、rable, it is unwise to try to utter it, nor should we seek to invest with significancethat which we cannot grasp. Beauty in terms of our human meanings is meaningless.Lesson 31 The sculptor speaksAppreciation of sculpture depends upon the abi8lity to respond to form in three dimensions. That is perh

41、apswhy sculpture has been described as the most difficult of all arts; certainly it is more difficult than the artswhich involve appreciation of flat forms, shape in only two dimensions. Many more people are form-blindthan colour-blind. The child learning to see, first distinguishes only two-dimensi

42、onal shape; it cannot judgedistances,depths. Later, for its personal safety and practical needs, it has to develop(partly by means of touch)the ability to judge roughly three-dimensional distances. But having satisfied the requirements of practicalnecessity, most people go no further. Though they ma

43、y attain considerable accuracy in the perception of flatform, they do not make the further intellectual and emotional effort needed to comprehend form in its fullspatial existence.this is what the sculptor must do. He must strive continually to think of , and use, form in its full spatialcompletenes

44、s. He gets the solid shape, as it were, inside his head-he thinks of it, whatever its size, as if hewere holding it completely enclosed in the hollow of his hand. He mentally visualizes a complex form fromall round itself; he knows while he looks at one side what the other side is like; he identifie

45、s himself with itscentre 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 orreminiscence. He must, for example, perceive an egg as a sim

46、ple single solid shape, quite apart from itssignificance as food, or from the literary idea that it will become a bird. And so with solids such as a shell, anut, a plum, a pear, a tadpole, a mushroom, a mountain peak, a kidney, a carrot, a tree-trunk, a bird, a bud, alark, a ladybird, a bulrush, a b

47、one. From these he can go on to appreciate more complex forms ofcombinations of several forms.Lesson 33 EducationEducation 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-

48、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, punctua

49、ted by text-books-those purchasable wells of wisdom- what would 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 fi

50、gures and more on a good memory, on applied psychology, and on the capacity of a man to get along with his fellowcitizens. If our educational system were fashioned after its bookless past we would have the most democratic form of college imaginable. Among the people whom we like to call savages all

51、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

52、 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-exi

53、stent 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 a

54、n equal start. There isnone 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 parents, therefore the jungles and the savannahsknow of no juvenile delinquency. No necessity of making a living

55、 away from home results in neglect ofchildren, and no father is confronted with his inabilityto buy an education for his child.Lesson 34 AdolescenceParents 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, a

56、nd 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 a loss of dignity and descent into childish behaviour on the part of the adults deeply shocks the adolescents, and makes them resolve that in future they will not talk to their parents about the places 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 brough