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第36章 学习:一生的事业(1)

学习之于心灵,就像食物之于身体一样。摄取了适量的营养,我们的身体得以生长而肌肉得以发达。同样地,我们应该日复一日不断地学习以保持我们敏锐的心智,提高我们的智力。不断的学习提供我们用不尽的燃料,来驱使我们增强我们的推理、分析和判断的能力。持续的学习是在信息时代中与时俱进的最有效的方法,也是在变动的世代中成功的可靠保证。

一旦学习停止,单调贫乏的生活就开始了。视学校为获取知识的唯一场所是种常见的谬误。相反地,学习应该是一种无终止的历程,从生到死。由于世界一直快速地在变动,只要学习停顿数日就将使人落后。更糟的是,蛰伏在我们潜意识深处的兽性本能就会复活,削弱我们追求高贵理想的意志,软化我们扫除成功障碍的决心,而且扼杀我们净化我们人格的欲望。缺少学习将不可避免地导致心灵的停滞,甚而,使其僵化。因此,为了保持心理年轻,我们必须将学习当作一生的事业。

Hens and Women

It seems to me there are two aspects to women. There is the demure and the dauntless.

Men have loved to dwell, in fiction at least, on the demure maiden whose inevitable reply is: Oh, yes, if you please, kind sir! The demure maiden, the demure spouse, the demure mother -this is still the ideal. A few maidens, mistresses and mothers are demure. A few pretend to be. But the vast majority are not. And they don‘t pretend to be. We don’t expect a girl skillfully driving her car to be demure, we expect her to be dauntless. What good would demure and maidenly Members of Parliament be, inevitably responding: Oh, yes, if you please, kind sir! -Though of course there are masculine members of that kidney. -And a demure telephone girl? Or even a demure stenographer? Demureness, to be sure, is outwardly becoming, it is an outward mark of femininity, like bobbed hair. But it goes with inward dauntlessness. The girl who has got to make her way in life has got to be dauntless, and if she has a pretty, demure manner with it, then luck girl. She kills two birds with two stones.

With the two kinds of femininity go two kinds of confidence: There are the women who are cocksure, and the women who are hensure. A really up-to-date woman is a cocksure woman. She doesn‘t have a doubt nor a qualm. She is the modern type. Whereas the old-fashioned demure woman was sure as a hen is sure, that is, without knowing anything about it. She went quietly and busily clucking around, laying the eggs and mothering the chickens in a kind of anxious dream that still was full of sureness. But not mental sureness. Her sureness was a physical condition, very soothing, but a condition out of which she could easily be startled or frightened.

It is quite amusing to see the two kinds of sureness in chickens. The cockerel is, naturally, cocksure. He crows because he is certain it is day. Then the hen peeps out from under her wing. He marches to the door of the henhouse and pokes out his head assertively: Ah ha! daylight, of course, just as I said! -and he majestically steps down the chicken ladder towards terra firma, knowing that the hens will step cautiously after him, drawn by his confidence. So after him, cautiously, step the hens. He crows again: Ha-ha! here we are! -It is indisputable, and the hens accept it entirely. He marches towards the house. From the house a person ought to appear, scattering corn. Why does the person not appear? The cock will see to it. He is cocksure. He gives a loud crow in the doorway, and the person appears. The hens are suitably impressed but immediately devote all their henny consciousness to the scattered corn, pecking absorbedly, while the cock runs and fusses, cocksure that he is responsible for it all.