Yes, it ought to have been a jolly party, but it came about twenty years too late, and the children, I had almost added, were about twenty years too old. Instead of forgetting everything else in the whirl and clamour of play and dancing, they were, it seemed to me, too busy registering the impressions to enjoy themselves. One of them, a child of eleven, was already smitten6 with a passion for the mot juste. “My tongue,” she told me gravely, “is like a cloud”; and, later, “a marigold is like a circus.” She had a crushing word for a comrade who was looking at herself in a mirror. “But you don’t really look as nice as you do in the looking-glass!” The other children did not seem much better, and I stood forlornly in their midst, as a child stands among the creased7 trouser-legs of its elders, until I saw a scared little face in a corner apart from the rest. “Why aren’t you playing?” I asked. The p. 241child looked me straight in the face, and burst into a thousand tears. At least here was something young, something not wholly wise. We sat together, exchanging grave confidences all the evening.
Possibly this is a queer way in which to start an article on common sense, but there is more than madness in my method, for I feel assured that the children have derived8 their new wisdom—a senseless wisdom, a wisdom of facts—from their absurd parents. The latest creed9, the belief that comfort for the masses prevents remorse10 in the individual, may be well enough in its way, but it creates a very bad atmosphere in which to bring up children. They are taught that life is an agglomeration11 of facts, and no sort of miracle, and by learning these facts like little parrots they lose the whole thrill and adventure of life. They do not go out to kill dragons, because they know that there are no dragons there. Chivalry12 survived with children long after common sense had killed it as dead as mutton in the adult mind. But now they, too, have found it out, and there are only a few silly poets and mad p. 242lovers to keep the memory of Quixote green.
What are these facts by which we are to guide our lives, of which, indeed, our lives are to consist? One of the simplest, one that has come to have the force of a proverbial expression, is the fact that two and two make four, and this is one of the first things we teach our children.
I have a friend who suspects that in moments of intense consciousness two and two, weary of making four, would make five for a change. I have heard it argued against him by mathematicians13 that the fourness of four—four’s very existence, as it were—depends on its being related to two in the subtle fashion suggested by the well-known dogma, but I can discern no grounds for this assertion. Consider the fate that would befall a man who went for a ride on an omnibus for the purpose of making use of this one fact. He might be aware that the fare to Putney was fourpence, and, proud of his mathematical knowledge, might pay his fare in two instalments of twopence. What would be his consternation14 to find that, as p. 243he reached his journey’s end, he would have to pay another penny because he had not paid his fourpence in one lump sum? In terms of ’bus fares, two and two do not make four, and I would multiply examples of such exceptions to the accepted rule.
But even if two and two really did make four, the fact would remain supremely15 useless. However cunningly it was conveyed, the statement would not abate16 one tear from the sorrows of a child, nor would it brighten, even for an instant, the eyes of a dying man. You could not win a girl with it, because the man who counts his kisses is damned from the start. A poet could not turn it into song; it would draw no briefest flame from the ashes of a storyteller’s fire. The thing is cold, inhuman17; it is made for lawyers and politicians, and the persons who argue their lives away on matters of no importance. We who are simpler never put two and two together for the purpose of making four, for four is of no more use to us than a nice brace18 of twos. The infinite is the answer of all our mathematical problems, and if we cannot find it we are p. 244quick to sponge the sum off our slates19. The belief that two and two make four leads most people to think four a better fellow than two; to hold, for instance, that a man with four millions must be richer than a man with two, though the groans20 of our pauper21 millionaires never cease to admonish22 our national cupidity23. Two and two make just what your heart can compass, neither more nor less, and, if your unit is worthless, they make nothing at all.
Facts are worse than useless, for they limit the journeys of the human mind; but there is a common sense not founded on facts that represents the extreme limits of our intellectual pilgrimages. It is common only in this: it is true for all humanity when humanity is wise enough to accept it. Shakespeare had it deliciously, and even now we are only beginning to learn the things he knew. For instance—
“We are such stuff as dreams are made of,
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
This seems more wisely true to us to-day than it did to the men and women of his p. 245age, but it was as true when he wrote it as it is now. Or again—
“Men must abide24
Their going hence even as their coming hither,
Ripeness is all.”
This is the true common sense—all that we know, all that we shall know; but this is not the thing that we teach the children in our schools, nor is it the light by which most of us guide our lives. We invent trivial rules and conventions to belittle25 the life we have to lead, and make marks in the dust with our fingers to cheat an uncheatable fate. We add illusion to illusion in coward hopes of outliving the greatest illusion of all. We add folly26 to folly, and lie to lie, and are content that the results of our labours should be unwisdom and untruth. We add two to two and worship the mournful constancy of four.
I began my article on common sense with a children’s party; I must end it, I suppose, somewhere within the limits of our unhoping lives. When the night of a hundred kisses draws to a close, and Dawn, with her painted p. 246smile, creeps like a spy into the room, men and women believe that they can see things as they really are. The earth is grey to their eyes, though not more grey than their own tired flesh, and their little hearts are quick to believe that grey is the normal colour of life. The sun comes up and tints27 the world with rose, and they forget their sorrow, as they have so often forgotten it before, and go their boasting way through the world they believe their own. Around them, in the light that is not the sun’s, the shadows tremble—shadows of the dead, shadows of the yet unborn. The wise cannot tell them apart.
THE END
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
appreciative
|
|
| adj.有鉴赏力的，有眼力的；感激的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
epithet
|
|
| n.（用于褒贬人物等的）表述形容词，修饰语 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
riddles
|
|
| n.谜（语）( riddle的名词复数 )；猜不透的难题，难解之谜 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
smelt
|
|
| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
tangerine
|
|
| n.橘子，橘子树 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
smitten
|
|
| 猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
creased
|
|
| （使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的过去式和过去分词 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹； 皱皱巴巴 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
derived
|
|
| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
creed
|
|
| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
remorse
|
|
| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
agglomeration
|
|
| n.结聚，一堆 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
chivalry
|
|
| n.骑士气概，侠义；（男人）对女人彬彬有礼，献殷勤 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
mathematicians
|
|
| 数学家( mathematician的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
consternation
|
|
| n.大为吃惊，惊骇 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
supremely
|
|
| adv.无上地，崇高地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
abate
|
|
| vi.(风势，疼痛等)减弱，减轻，减退 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
inhuman
|
|
| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
brace
|
|
| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
slates
|
|
| （旧时学生用以写字的）石板( slate的名词复数 )； 板岩； 石板瓦； 石板色 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
groans
|
|
| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
pauper
|
|
| n.贫民，被救济者，穷人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
admonish
|
|
| v.训戒；警告；劝告 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
cupidity
|
|
| n.贪心，贪财 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
abide
|
|
| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
belittle
|
|
| v.轻视，小看，贬低 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
folly
|
|
| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
tints
|
|
| 色彩( tint的名词复数 )； 带白的颜色； （淡色）染发剂； 痕迹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |