Understand these new words before you read this article.
1. enhance[in'hɑ:ns]v. 提高, 增加, 加強
2. fallacy['f?l?si:]n. 謬誤; 謬見; 謬論
3. proverbial[pr?'v?:bi?l]adj. 諺語的, 聞名的, 諺語式的
4. legitimate[li'd?itimit]adj. 合法的, 婚生的, 正當的
5. contemptible[k?n'tempt?b?l]adj.可鄙的
6. prevalence['prev?l?nt]n. 流行, 盛行; 流行程度; 普遍, 廣泛
7.vainglorious[ve?n?gl?:ri:?s]adj. 虛榮的
8. inferior[in'fi?ri?]adj. 下等的; 差的; 下級的
9. disposition[,disp?'zi??n]n. 性情, 處理, 處置
10. hesitation[,hez?'te???n]n. 躊躇, 猶豫; 口吃; 含糊
I. A. Williams was born in England and educated at Cambridge. After World War I he served as a correspondent for the London Times. Williams wrote several books on eighteenth-century poetry and drama, published widely in journals and magazines, and published collections of his own poetry. The following article first appeared in London’s The Outlook in 1923.
Perhaps the greatest threat to productivity in both work and play is the fear of doing things badly or wrong. This article offers some comfort. Williams points out that there are many things worth doing badly, and that our lives are enriched and our personalities enhanced by these activities. Two central examples, sports and music, are valuable to most people in proportion to how enthusiastically they do them, rather than how well.
Charles Lamb wrote a series of essays upon popular fallacies. I do not, at the moment, carry them very clearly in my memory; but, unless that treacherous servant misleads me more even than she usually does, he did not write of one piece of proverbial so-called wisdom that has always seemed to me to be peculiarly pernicious. And this saw, this scrap of specious advice, this untruth masquerading as logic, is one that I remember to have had hurled at my head at frequent intervals from my earliest youth right up to my present advanced age. How many times have I not been told that“If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well”?
Never was there a more untruthful word spoken in earnest. For the world is full of things that are worth doing, but certainly not worth doing well. Was it not so great a sage as Herbert Spencer who said to the young man who had just beaten him at billiards,“Moderate skill, sir, is the sign of a good eye and a steady hand, but skill such as yours argues a youth misspent?”Is any game worth playing supremely well, at the price of constant practice and application?
Against the professional player I say nothing; he is a public entertainer, like any other, and by his skill in his particular sport he at least fulfills the first social duty of man—that of supporting himself and his family by his own legitimate exertions. But what is to be said of the crack amateur? To me he seems one of the most contemptible of mankind. He earns no money, but devotes
himself, for the mere selfish pleasure of the thing, to some game, which he plays day in day out; he breaks down the salutary distinction between the amateur and the professional; eventually his skill deserts him, and he leaves behind him nothing that is of service to his fellow men—not a brick laid, not an acre ploughed, not a line written, not even a family supported and educated by his labor.
It is true that he has provided entertainment for a certain number of persons, but he has never had the pluck to submit himself to the test by which we demand that every entertainer should justify his choice of a calling—the demonstration of the fact that the public is willing to pay him for his entertainment. And, when his day is over, what is left, not even to the world, but to himself? Nothing but a name that is at once forgotten, or is remembered by stout gentlemen in clubs.
The playing of games, certainly, is a thing which is not worth doing well. But that does not prove that it is not worth doing at all, as the proverb would, by implication, persuade us. There is nothing more agreeable and salutary than playing a game which one likes, and the circumstance of doing it badly interferes with the pleasure of no real devotee of any pastime. The man who minds whether or not he wins is no true sportsman—which observation is trite, but the rule it implies is seldom observed, and comparatively few people really play games for the sheer enjoyment of the playing. Is this not proved by the prevalence and popularity of handicaps? Why should we expect to be given points unless it be that we wish to win by means other than our own skill?
“Ah! but,”my reader may say,“the weaker player wants to receive points in order that he may give the stronger one a better game.”Really, I do not believe that that is so. Possible, sometimes, a strong and vainglorious player may wish to give points, in order that his victory may be the more notable. But I do not think that even this is the true explanation. That, I suspect, was given to me the other day by the secretary of a lawn-tennis tournament, in which I played.“Why all this nonsense of handicaps? Why not let us be squarely beaten, and done with it?”I asked him.“Because,”He replied,“if we did not give handicaps, none of the less good players would enter.”Is that not a confession that the majority of us have both realized the true value doing a trivial thing badly, for its own sake, and must needs have our minds buoyed and cheated into a false sense of excellence?
Moreover it is not only such intrinsically trivial things as games that are worth doing badly. This is a truth which, oddly enough, we accept freely of some things—but not of others—and as a thing which we are quite content to do will let me instance acting. Acting, at its best, can be a great art, a thing worth doing supremely well, though its worth, like that of all interpretative arts, is lessened by its evanescence. For it works in the impermanent medium of human flesh and blood, and the thing that the actor create—for what we call an interpretative artist is really a creative artist working in a perishable medium—is an impression upon, an emotion or a thought aroused in, the minds of an audience, and is incapable of record.
Acting, then, let me postulate—though I have only sketched ever so briefly the proof of my belief—can be a great art. But is anyone ever deterred from taking part in amateur theatricals by the consideration that he cannot act well? Not a bit of it! And quite rightly not, for acting is one of the things about which I am writing this essay—the things that are worth doing badly.
Another such thing is music; but here the proverbial fallacy again exerts its power, as it does not, for some obscure and unreasoning discrimination, in acting. Most people seem to think that if they cannot sing, or play the piano, fiddle, or sackbut, admirably well, they must not do any of these things at all. That they should not indiscriminately force their inferior performances upon the
public, or even upon their acquaintances, I admit. But that there is no place“in the home”for inferior musical performances, is an untruth that I flatly deny.
How many sons and daughters have not, with a very small talent, given their parents—and even the less fondly prejudiced ears of their friends—great pleasure with the singing of simple songs? Then one day there comes to the singer the serpent of dissatisfaction; singing lessons are taken, and—if the pupil is of moderate talent and modest disposition—limitations are discovered. And then, in nine cases out of ten, the singing is dropped, like a hot penny. How many fathers have not banished music from their homes by encouraging their daughters to take singing lessons? Yet a home may be the fresher for singing that would deserve brickbats at a parish concert.
I may pause here to notice the curious exception that people who cannot on any account be persuaded to sing in the drawing-room, or even in the bath, will without hesitation uplift their tuneless voices at religious meetings or in church. There is a perfectly good and honorable explanation of this, I believe, but it belongs to the realm of metaphysics and is beyond my present scope.
This cursed belief, that if a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing well, is the cause of a great impoverishment in our private life, and also, to some extent, of the lowering of standards in our public life. For this tenet of proverbial faith has two effects on small talents: it leads modest persons not to exercise them at all, and immodest persons to attempt to do so too much and to force themselves upon the public. It leads to the decay of letter-writing and of the keeping of diaries, and, as surely, it leads to the publication of memoirs and diaries that should remain locked in the writers’desks.
It leads Mr. Blank not to write verses at all—which he might very well do, for the sake of his own happiness, and for the amusement of his friends—and it leads Miss Dash to pester the overworked editors of various journals with her unsuccessful imitations of Mr. de la Mare, Mr. Yeats, and Dr. Bridges.The result is that our national artistic life now suffers from two great needs: A wider amateur practice of the arts, and a higher, more exclusive, professional standard. Until these are achieved we shall not get the best out of our souls.
The truth is, I conceive, that there is for most of us only one thing—beyond, of course, our duties of citizenship and our personal duties as sons, or husbands, or fathers, daughters, or wives, or mothers—that is worth doing well—that is to say, with all our energy. That one thing may be writing, or it may be making steam-engines, or laying bricks. But after that there are hundreds of things that are worth doing badly, with only part of our energy, for the sake of the relaxation they bring us, and for the contacts which they give us with our minds. And the sooner England realizes this, as once she did, the happier, the more contented, the more gracious, will our land be.
There are even, I maintain, things that are in themselves better done badly than well. Consider fishing, where one’s whole pleasure is often spoiled by having to kill a fish. Now, if one could contrive always to try to catch a fish, and never to do so, one might—But that is another story.
I.A.威廉姆斯生於英格蘭，在劍橋受過教育。第一次世界大戰後，他成為倫敦《泰晤士報》的一名記者。威廉姆斯寫了幾本關於18世紀詩歌和戲劇方麵的書，發表在各種期刊和雜誌上，出版了他自己的詩集。以下這篇文章最早出現在1923年倫敦的《展望》一書中。
或許，對工作和創作而言，最大的威脅莫過於唯恐做得不好或者害怕做錯。對於這個問題，這篇文章就是一種安慰了。威廉姆斯認為，很多事情都應該草草行事，這樣，我們的生活才有意義，我們的個性才能得以發展完善。運動和音樂就是兩個很好的例子，大多數人都酷愛運動和音樂，它們的確能給人帶來樂趣，僅是這一點就夠了，人們並不需要有多深的造詣。查爾斯·拉姆寫了一係列有關時下謬誤的文章。可惜我一時記不清了。但如果不是狡猾的仆人突然誤導我，我倒不覺得他寫過什麽公眾交口稱讚而我卻認為有害的文章。下麵這句似是而非的忠告，我從孩提時就印在腦海中：“如果一件事情值得去做，那麽，就應該好好去做。”從沒有哪一個謬論讓人們如此熱衷。因為世界上有很多事情都值得去做，但並不是事事都應該好好去做。偉大的哲人赫伯特·斯賓塞曾對剛在台球桌上戰勝他的年輕人說：“先生，一般球技表現為好的眼力和穩定的手法，但從你的球技上看，你浪費了很多時間。”是否每一種遊戲都值得持之以恒地練習和應用呢？
對職業運動員，我無話可說。他們是公眾表演者，和其他人一樣，他們通過自己在某項特定運動中的技術，至少可以實現人的首要社會責任——通過自己的合法勞動維持自己及家人的生活。但對於高明的業餘愛好者，我們該怎麽說呢？我認為，這些人是最應受到鄙視的。他們沒有賺錢，僅僅為了自私的娛樂，就日複一日地投身於這種遊戲。他們忽視了業餘愛好者和專業人士之間合理的區別。最終他們為自己的技術所累，他們沒做出任何對社會有價值的東西，沒有壘起一塊磚，沒有犁過一畝地，沒有寫過一行文字，甚至沒有通過勞動來養活全家和讓自己受到教育。
不可否定，他們為某些人提供了娛樂，但他們一直沒有勇氣去參加測試。在這種測試中，我們需要每一個表演者證明他的職業選擇是正確的——證明公眾願意為他的表演付費。當他們的輝煌期過去以後，不要說給整個世界留下什麽，他們又給自己留下了什麽呢？什麽也沒有留下，除了很快就會被遺忘的名字。也許他們的名字會被俱樂部裏矮胖的紳士記住。
的確，玩遊戲是一種並不值得好好去做的事情。但這並不是說全然不值得去做，就像前麵的諺語暗示我們的一樣。沒有什麽比玩自己喜歡的遊戲更愜意和更有益的了，哪怕玩不好也不會影響真正喜歡它的人的心情。太在乎輸贏的人並不是真正的運動愛好者——這個觀點很對，但它的含義並沒有被發掘。很少有人僅僅為了娛樂而玩遊戲。為比賽而設的障礙為人們普遍接受，這不正好證明了這一點嗎？為什麽我們總是希望在自己的競技能力之外額外得分呢？
“哦，但是，”我的讀者也許會說，“弱一些的參賽者希望額外得分是為了促使強者有更好的表現。”但我並不這樣認為。也許有時候，一個強壯但虛榮的參賽者希望給弱者額外加分，以使他的勝利更為顯著。但我並不認為這是一個極好的解釋。前些天去參加網球錦標賽時，我就把這種想法告訴了大賽秘書。“為什麽要設置這些無聊的障礙呢？為什麽不讓我們盡情發揮呢？”我問他。“因為，”他回答道，“如果不設置這些障礙，就沒有好一點的玩家參賽了。”這不就是承認了我們大多數人沒有意識到草草行事的真正價值，還要固執己見、自欺欺人嗎？
然而，並不是隻有像遊戲這樣的小事才可以草草了之。雖然很奇怪，但事實是，我們易於接受草草地做某些事情，卻不能接受草草地去做另一些事情。在我們認為可以草草去做的事情中，我舉演戲為例，盡管演戲同其他表演藝術一樣，會因其短暫性而減弱，但如果達到頂峰，也可以認為是一門偉大的藝術，一種值得好好去做的事情。演戲可以影響人類多變的情感，這就是演員所創造的東西——我們所說的表演藝術家是指能影響人類情感的有創造性的藝術家——是觀眾內心深處的一種印象、情感和思想，這是無法記錄的。
所以，我認為，演戲可以稱得上是一種藝術，雖然我隻是簡單地拿出了我的論據。然而，是否有人因為演得不好而不允許進入業餘的戲劇表演呢？從來沒有！因為演戲就像我寫這篇短文一樣，是一種可以草草去做的事情。
另一種就是音樂。那句諺語的謬誤在音樂上得到了驗證。然而，不知為何，它在演戲上並沒有得到驗證。很多人認為如果他們不能唱出很動聽的歌，不能很嫻熟地彈奏鋼琴或者小提琴、豎琴，那麽，他們最好不要去做這些事情。我承認，他們不應該不加選擇地把低劣的表演給公眾或者他們的熟人看。但如果在家裏也不能容忍這種低劣的音樂表演，這是我不讚成的。沒什麽天賦的兒女，通過簡單的歌聲給她們的父母或不存在偏見的朋友帶來快樂——這樣的例子還少嗎？然而有一天，這些小歌唱家開始因為不滿足而苦惱。他們開始去學習音樂——如果他們資質平庸，性情溫和——他們的局限就會暴露出來。十有八九，歌聲就像一枚不值錢的硬幣被拋在一邊。有多少父親為了鼓勵女兒學歌而緊抓音樂不放？然而在教區音樂會上，她們可能會遭到打擊。
在這裏，我應該駐足觀察一些奇怪的現象，有些人在畫室或自家浴室從不唱歌，但在宗教集會或教堂裏，他們會毫不猶豫地用那五音不全的嗓子放聲高歌。我相信，要想回答這個問題，就得有一個完好的解釋，但這屬於神學的範疇，已經超出了我的研究範圍。
“如果一件事值得去做，就應該好好去做”，這該死的說法就是導致個人生活極其匱乏的原因，從某種意義上講，它也是公眾生活水平降低的原因。這條諺語對資質平庸的人有兩方麵影響：它讓資質平庸之輩不屑練習，而令資質超凡者為此付出很多，同時也將自己的思想強加給他人；它使人們疏於寫作和寫日記，同時也導致了本該鎖在作者抽屜裏的文集和日記的發表。
它導致了布蘭克先生不去寫詩——出於自娛自樂或與朋友的消遣，他可以寫得很好的。同時，它也致使德茜小姐為了她那些並不成功的模仿之作（模仿德拉梅爾先生、葉芝先生和布裏奇斯博士）而去糾纏各個雜誌社疲憊的編輯們。結果是，現在，我們整個國家的藝術生活存在著兩方麵的迫切需求：更多的業餘愛好者從事藝術實踐，以及更高水平、更專業的藝術。隻有達到這兩個目標，我們才能獲取心靈深處最美好的東西。
我認為，對我們來說，除去公民的職責，除去我們作為兒子、丈夫、父親或者女兒、妻子、母親的責任外，隻有一件事情值得我們好好去做，值得我們全力以赴。這件事可以是寫作、製造蒸汽機，也可以是砌磚塊。除此之外，很多事我們都可以草草地去做，僅用我們一部分的精力，目的是為了放鬆自己或者觸動自己的心靈。隻有意識到這一點，人們才會幸福，才會滿意，我們的家園才會更加美好。
我認為，有些事情草草去做可能比認真去做要好一些。比如釣魚，其結果就是魚兒被宰殺，一想到這些，釣魚的樂趣就會**然無存。當然，如果你既能釣到魚又不去宰殺它，那就另當別論了。
Seize Your Time
Please fill in the blanks with the proper words according to the given sentences.
1.After a moment’s ______ she lipped her request.
她猶豫了一會兒,然後輕聲提出請求。
2. These clothes do nothing to ____ her appearance.
她穿那些衣服也沒有顯得更漂亮。
3. He had no difficulty in disposing of the ____.
他毫無困難地駁倒了這個謬論。
4. The manager is friendly with his_____.
經理對他的部屬很友好。
5. These diseases are more _____ among young children.
這些疾病在小孩之間很盛。
Chunks in Practice
Do the following statements agree with the information in the reading text?
Write
TRUEif the statement agrees with the information
FALSEif the statement contradicts the information
_____ (1) The author thought it was necessary for an amateur to play tennis well.
_____ (2) If a little girl who doesn’t have the talent in singing, it is cruel for her to perform in public.
_____ (3) Not all the things should be done well.
Now a Try
Please list something unnecessary to be done well, and talk about your own reason.