Flax-Golden Tales
unit eleven: Critical and
Creative Thinking
The Stub-Book
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
(Spain, 1833-1891)
he action
begins in Rota. Rota is the
smallest of those pretty towns that form the great semicircle of the bay of Cádiz. But
despite its being the smallest, the grand duke of Osuna
preferred it, building there his famous castle, which I could describe stone by stone. But now we are dealing with neither castles nor dukes, but with the fields
surrounding Rota, and with a most humble gardener,
whom we shall call Uncle Buscabeatas
though this was not his true name.
From the fertile fields of Rota, particularly its gardens, come the fruits and vegetables that fill the markets of Huelva and Seville.
The quality of its tomatoes and pumpkins
is such that in Andalusia the people of Rota are always referred to as
pumpkin-
and tomato-growers, titles which they accept with pride.
And, indeed, they have reason to be proud; for the fact is that the soil of Rota, which produces so much, that is
to say, the soil of the gardens, that soil which yields three or four crops a
year, is not soil, but sand, pure and clean, cast up by the ocean, blown by the furious west winds and thus scattered over the entire region of Rota.
But the ingratitude of nature is here more than compensated for by the constant diligence of man. I have
never seen, nor do I believe there is in all the
world, any farmer who works as
hard as the farmer of Rota. Not
even a tiny stream runs
through those melancholy fields. No
matter! The
pumpkin-grower has made
many wells from which he draws the precious liquid that is the lifeblood of his vegetables. The tomato-grower spends half his life seeking substances which may be used as fertilizer. And when he has both elements, water and
fertilizer, the gardener of Rota begins to fertilize his tiny plots of ground, and in each of them
sows a tomato-seed, or a
pumpkin pip which he then waters by hand, like a person who gives a child a drink.
From then until harvest time, he attends daily, one by one, to the plants which grow there, treating them with a love only comparable to that of parents for children.
One day he applies to such a plant a bit of fertilizer; on
another he pours a pitcherful of water; today he kills
the insects which are eating up the leaves; tomorrow he
covers with reeds and dry leaves those plants which cannot
bear the rays of the sun, or those which are
too exposed to the sea winds. One day, he counts the stalks, the flowers, and even the fruits of the earliest ripeners; another day, he talks to
them, pets them, kisses them, blesses them, and even
gives them expressive names in order to
tell them apart and individualize
them in his imagination.
Without exaggerating, it is now a proverb (and I have often heard it repeated in
Rota) that the gardener of that region touches with his own hands at least forty times a day every tomato plant
growing in his garden. And this explains why the gardeners of that locality get to be so bent over
that their knees almost touch their chins.
Well, now, Uncle Buscabeatas was one
of those gardeners. He had begun to stoop at the time of the
event which I am about to
relate. He was already sixty years
old . . . and had spent
forty of them tilling a garden near the shore.
That year he had grown some enormous pumpkins that were already beginning to turn yellow, which meant it was
the month of June.
Uncle Buscabeatas knew them perfectly by
color, shape, and even by name, especially the forty fattest and yellowest, which were already saying cook me.
“Soon we shall have to part,” he said tenderly, with a melancholy look.
Finally, one afternoon he made up his mind to the
sacrifice and pronounced the dreadful sentence.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I shall cut these forty and take
them to the market at Cádiz. Happy is
the man who eats them!” Then he returned home at a leisurely
pace, and spent the night as anxiously as a father whose
daughter is to be married the following
day.
“My poor pumpkins!” he would occasionally sigh, unable to sleep. But
then he reflected and concluded by saying, “What
can I do but sell them? For that I raised them!
They will be worth at least fifteen duros!”
Imagine, then, how great was his astonishment, his fury
and despair, when, as he went to the garden the next
morning, he found that, during the night, he had been robbed of his forty
pumpkins. He began calculating
coldly, and knew that his pumpkins could not be in Rota,
where it would be impossible to sell
them without the risk of his
recognizing them.
“They must be in Cádiz, I can almost see them!” he
suddenly said to himself. “The
thief who stole them from me last night at nine or ten o’clock, escaped
on the freight boat .... I’ll leave for Cádiz this morning on the hour boat, and
there I’ll catch the thief and recover the daughters of my toil!”
So
saying, he lingered for some twenty minutes more at
the scene of the catastrophe, counting the pumpkins that were missing,
until, at about eight o’clock, he left for the
wharf.
Now the hour boat was ready to leave.
It was a small craft which carries passengers to Cádiz every morning at
nine o’clock, just as the freight boat
leaves every night at twelve, laden with fruit
and vegetables.
The former is called the hour boat
because in an hour,
and occasionally in less time, it
cruises the thirty-eight kilometers separating Rota from Cádiz.
It was, then, ten-thirty in the morning when
Uncle Buscabeatas
stopped before a vegetable stand in the Cádiz market, and said to a policeman who accompanied him:
“These are my pumpkins! Arrest that man!” and pointed
to the vendor,
“Arrest
me?” cried, the latter, astonished and
enraged. “These pumpkins are mine; I bought them.”
“You can tell that to the judge,” answered
Uncle Buscabeatas.
“No, I won’t!”
“Yes, you will!”
“You old thief!”
“You old scoundrel!”
“Keep a civil tongue. Men shouldn’t
insult each other like that,” said the policeman very calmly, giving them each a punch in the chest.
By this time several people had gathered, among them the
inspector of public markets. When
the policeman had informed the inspector of
all that was going on, the latter
asked the vendor in accents majestic:
“From whom did you buy these pumpkins?”
“From
Uncle Fulano, near Rota,” answered the
vendor.
“He
would be the one,” cried Uncle Buscabeatas. “When his own garden, which is very
poor, yields next to nothing, he robs
from his neighbors’.”
“But, supposing your forty pumpkins were stolen last
night,” said the inspector, addressing the gardener, “how do you know that
these, and not some others, are yours?”
Well,” replied Uncle Buscabeatas, “because I know them as well as you know your daughters, if you have any. Don’t you see
that I raised them? Look here, this one’s name is Fatty; this one, Plumpy Cheeks; this one, Pot Belly; this
one, Little Blush Bottom; and this one, Manuela,
because it reminds me so much of my youngest daughter.”
And the poor old man started weeping like a child.
“That is all very well,” said the inspector, “but it is not enough for the law that you recognize your pumpkins. You must identify them with
incontrovertible proof. Gentlemen, this is no laughing matter. I am a lawyer!”
“Then you’ll soon see me prove to everyone’s satisfaction,
without stirring from this spot, that these pumpkins were raised in my garden,” said Uncle Buscabeatas.
And throwing on the ground a sack he was holding in
his hand, he kneeled, and quietly began to untie it. The curiosity of those around
him was overwhelming.
“What’s he going to pull out of there?” they all wondered.
At the same time another person came to see what was going on in that group and when the vendor saw him, he
exclaimed:
“I’m glad you have come, Uncle Fulano. This man says that the pumpkins you sold me last night were stolen. Answer ...”
The newcomer turned yellower than wax, and tried to
escape, but the others prevented him, and the inspector himself ordered him to
stay.
As for Uncle Buscabeatas, he had
already faced the supposed thief, saying:
“Now you will see something good!”
Uncle Fulano, recovering his presence of mind, replied:
“You are the one who should be careful about what you
say, because if you don’t prove your accusation, and I know you can’t, you will go to jail. Those pumpkins were mine; I raised them in my garden, like all the others I brought to Cádiz this year, and no one could prove I didn’t.”
“Now you shall see!” repeated Uncle
Buscabeatas, as he finished untying the sack.
A multitude of green stems rolled on the ground, while the old gardener, seated on his heels, addressed the
gathering as follows:
“Gentlemen, have you never paid taxes? And haven’t you seen that green book the tax-collector has, from which he cuts receipts, always leaving a stub
in the book so he can
prove afterwards whether the receipt is counterfeit or not?”
“What you are talking about is called the stub-book,”
said the inspector gravely.
“Well, that’s what I have here: the stub-book of my
garden; that is, the stems to which these pumpkins were
attached before this thief stole them from me.
Look here: this stem belongs to this pumpkin. No one can deny it . . . this
other one . . . now you’re getting the idea . . . belongs to this one . . . this thicker one . . . belongs to
that one . . . exactly! And this one to that one .
. . that one, to that one over there . . .”
And as he spoke, he fitted the stem to the pumpkins, one by one. The spectators were amazed to see that
the stems really fitted the pumpkins exactly, and
delighted by such strange proof, they all began to help Uncle Buscabeatas, exclaiming:
“He’s right! He’s right! No doubt
about it. Look: this one belongs here . . .
That one goes there . . .
That one there belongs to this one . . . This one goes there . . .”
The laughter of the men mingled with the catcalls of
the boys, the insults of the women, the joyous and triumphant tears of the old gardener, and the shoves the
policemen were giving the convicted thief.
Needless to say, besides going to jail, the thief was compelled
to return to the vendor the fifteen duros
he had received, and the latter handed the money to Uncle Buscabeatas, who left for Rota very pleased with himself,
saying, on his way home:
“How beautiful they looked in the market! I should have brought back Manuela to eat tonight and kept the seeds.”
9
Mr. Know-All
W. Somerset Maugham (England,
1874-1965)
was prepared to dislike Max Kelada even before I knew him.
The war had just
finished and the passenger traffic in the ocean going liners was heavy. Accommodation was very hard to get and
you had to put up with whatever the agents chose to offer you. You could not hope for a cabin to
yourself and I was thankful to be given one in which there were only two berths. But when I was told the name of my
companion my heart sank. It
suggested closed portholes and the night air rigidly excluded.
It was bad enough to share a cabin for fourteen days with anyone (I was going
from San Francisco to Yokohama), but I should have looked upon it with less
dismay if my fellow passenger’s name had been Smith or Brown.
When I went on board I
found Mr. Kelada’s luggage already below. I did not like the look of it; there
were too many labels on the suitcases, and the wardrobe trunk was too big. He had unpacked his toilet things, and I
observed that he was a patron of the excellent
Monsieur Coty;
for I saw on the
washing-stand his scent, his hairwash and his brilliantine. Mr.
Kelada’s brushes, ebony with his monogram in gold, would have been all
the better for a scrub. I did not
at all like Mr. Kelada. I made my way into the smoking-room. I called for a pack of cards and began
to play patience. I had scarcely started before a man came
up to me and asked me if he was right in thinking my name was so and so.
“I am Mr.
Kelada,” he added, with a smile that showed a row of flashing teeth, and
sat down.
“Oh, yes, we’re sharing
a cabin, I think.”
“Bit of luck, I call it. You never know who you’re going to be
put in with. I was jolly glad when
I heard you were English. I’m all
for us English sticking together when we’re abroad, if you understand what I
mean.”
I blinked.
“Are you English?” I
asked, perhaps tactlessly.
“Rather.
You don’t think I look like an American, do you? British to the backbone,
that’s what I am.”
To prove it, Mr. Kelada took out of his pocket a passport and airily waved it
under my nose.
King George has many
strange subjects. Mr. Kelada was short and of a sturdy build,
clean-shaven and dark skinned, with a fleshy, hooked nose and very large
lustrous and liquid eyes. His long
black hair was sleek and curly. He
spoke with a fluency in which there was nothing English and his gestures were
exuberant. I felt pretty sure that
a closer inspection of that British passport would have betrayed the fact that
Mr. Kelada was born under a bluer
sky than is generally seen in England.
“What will you have?” he
asked me.
I looked at him
doubtfully. Prohibition was in force and to all
appearances the ship was bone dry.
When I am not thirsty I do not know which I dislike more, ginger ale or lemon
squash. But Mr. Kelada flashed an oriental smile at me.
“Whisky and soda or a
dry martini, you have only to say the word.”
From each of his hip
pockets he furnished a flask and laid it on the table before me.
I chose the martini, and calling the steward he ordered a tumbler of ice
and a couple of glasses.
“A very good cocktail,”
I said.
“Well, there are plenty
more where that came from, and if you’ve got any friends on board, you tell them
you’ve got a pal who’s got all the liquor in the world.”
Mr.
Kelada was chatty. He talked
of New York and of San Francisco.
He discussed plays, pictures, and politics.
He was patriotic. The Union
Jack is an impressive piece of drapery, but when it is flourished by a gentleman
from Alexandria or Beirut, I cannot but feel that it loses somewhat in dignity.
Mr. Kelada was familiar.
I do not wish to put on airs, but I cannot help feeling that it is seemly in a
total stranger to put mister before my name when he addresses me. Mr.
Kelada, doubtless to set me at my ease, used no such formality. I did not like Mr. Kelada. I had
put aside the cards when he sat down, but now, thinking that for this first
occasion our conversation had lasted long enough, I went on with my game.
“The three on the four,”
said Mr. Kelada.
There is nothing more
exasperating when you are playing patience than to be told where to put the card
you have turned up before you have a chance to look for yourself.
“It’s coming out, it’s
coming out,” he cried. “The ten on
the knave.”
With rage and hatred in
my heart I finished.
Then he seized the pack.
“Do you like card
tricks?”
“No, I hate card
tricks,” I answered.
“Well, I’ll just show
you this one.”
He showed me three. Then I said I would go down to the
dining-room and get my seat at the table.
“Oh, that’s all right,”
he said, “I’ve already taken a seat for you.
I thought that as we were in the same stateroom we might just as well sit at the
same table.”
I did not like Mr. Kelada.
I not only shared a
cabin with him and ate three meals a day at the same table, but I could not walk
round the deck without his joining me.
It was impossible to snub him. It never occurred to him that he was not
wanted. He was certain that you
were as glad to see him as he was to see you.
In your own house you might have kicked him downstairs and slammed the
door in his face without the suspicion dawning on him that he was not a welcome
visitor. He was a good mixer, and
in three days knew everyone on board.
He ran everything. He managed the
sweeps, conducted the auctions, collected money for prizes at the
sports, got up quoit and golf matches, organized the concert and arranged the
fancy-dress ball. He was everywhere
and always. He was certainly the
best hated man in the ship. We
called him Mr. Know-All, even to his face. He took it as a compliment. But it was at mealtimes that he was most
intolerable. For the better part of
an hour then he had us at his mercy.
He was hearty, jovial, loquacious and argumentative. He knew everything better than anybody else, and it was an
affront to his overweening vanity that
you should disagree with him. He
would not drop a subject, however unimportant, till he had brought you round to
his way of thinking. The
possibility that he could be mistaken never occurred to him.
He was the chap who knew. We
sat at the doctor’s table. Mr. Kelada would certainly have had it all
his own way, for the doctor was lazy and I was frigidly indifferent, except for
a man called Ramsay who sat there also.
He was as dogmatic as Mr.
Kelada and resented bitterly the Levantine’s cocksureness. The discussions they had were acrimonious and interminable.
Ramsay was in the
American Consular Service and was stationed at Kobe.
He was a great heavy fellow from the Middle West, with loose fat under a tight
skin, and he bulged out of his ready-made clothes.
He was on his way back to resume his post, having been on a flying visit
to New York to fetch his wife who had been spending a year at home. Mrs.
Ramsay was a very pretty little thing, with pleasant manners and a sense
of humour. The Consular Service is
ill paid, and she was dressed always very simply; but she knew how to wear her
clothes. She achieved an effect of
quiet distinction. I should not
have paid any particular attention to her but that she possessed a quality that
may be common enough in women, but nowadays is not obvious in their demeanour. It shone in her like a flower on a coat.
One evening at dinner
the conversation by chance drifted to the subject of pearls.
There had been in the papers a good deal of talk about the cultured
pearls which the cunning Japanese were making, and the doctor remarked that they
must inevitably diminish the value of real ones. They were very good already; they would soon be perfect. Mr.
Kelada, as was his habit, rushed the new topic. He told us all that was to be known
about pearls. I do not believe
Ramsay knew anything about them at all, but he could not resist the opportunity
to have a fling at the Levantine, and in five minutes we were in the middle of a
heated argument. I had seen Mr. Kelada vehement and voluble before, but
never so voluble and vehement as now.
At last something that Ramsay said stung him, for he thumped the table
and shouted.
“Well, I ought to know
what I am talking about, I’m going to Japan just to look into this Japanese
pearl business. I’m in the trade and there’s not a man
in it who won’t tell you that what I say about pearls goes. I know all the best pearls in the world, and what I don’t
know about pearls isn’t worth knowing.”
Here was news for us,
for Mr. Kelada, with all his loquacity, had
never told anyone what his business was.
We only knew vaguely that he was going to Japan on some commercial errand. He looked around the table triumphantly.
“They’ll never be able
to get a cultured pearl that an expert like me can’t tell with half an eye.” He
pointed to a chain that Mrs. Ramsay
wore. “You take my word for it, Mrs. Ramsay, that chain you’re wearing will
never be worth a cent less than it is now.”
Mrs.
Ramsay in her modest way flushed a little and slipped the chain inside
her dress. Ramsay leaned forward. He gave us all a look and a smile
flickered in his eyes.
“That’s a pretty chain
of Mrs. Ramsay’s, isn’t it?”
“I noticed it at once,”
answered Mr. Kelada.
“Gee, I said to myself, those are pearls all right.”
“I didn’t buy it myself,
of course. I’d be interested to know how much you
think it cost.”
“Oh, in the trade
somewhere round fifteen thousand dollars.
But if it was bought on Fifth Avenue I shouldn’t be surprised to hear anything
up to thirty thousand was paid for it.”
Ramsay smiled grimly.
“You’ll be surprised to
hear that Mrs. Ramsay bought that string at a
department store the day before we left New York, for eighteen dollars.”
Mr.
Kelada flushed.
“Rot.
It’s not only real, but it’s as fine a string for its size as I’ve ever
seen.”
“Will you bet on it? I’ll bet you a hundred dollars it’s
imitation.”
“Done.”
“Oh, Elmer, you can’t
bet on a certainty,” said Mrs.
Ramsay.
She had a little smile
on her lips and her tone was gently deprecating.
“Can’t I?
If I get a chance of easy money like that I should be all sorts of a fool
not to take it.”
“But how can it be
proved?” she continued. “It’s only
my word against Mr. Kelada’s.”
“Let me look at the
chain, and if it’s imitation I’ll tell you quickly enough.
I can afford to lose a hundred dollars,” said Mr. Kelada.
“Take it off, dear. Let the gentleman look at it as much as
he wants.”
Mrs.
Ramsay hesitated a moment.
She put her hands to the clasp.
“I can’t undo it,” she
said, “Mr. Kelada will just have to take my word
for it.”
I had a sudden suspicion
that something unfortunate was about to occur, but I could think of nothing to
say.
Ramsay jumped up.
“I’ll undo it.”
He handed the chain to
Mr. Kelada.
The Levantine took a magnifying glass from his pocket and closely
examined it. A smile of triumph
spread over his smooth and swarthy face.
He handed back the chain. He was
about to speak. Suddenly he caught
sight of Mrs. Ramsay’s face. It was so white that she looked as though she were about to
faint. She was staring at him with
wide and terrified eyes. They held
a desperate appeal; it was so clear that I wondered why her husband did not see
it.
Mr.
Kelada stopped with his mouth open.
He flushed deeply. You could
almost see the effort he was making over himself.
“I was mistaken,” he
said. “It’s very good imitation, but of course
as soon as I looked through my glass I saw that it wasn’t real. I think eighteen dollars is just about
as much as the damned thing’s worth.”
He took out his
pocketbook and from it a hundred dollar note.
He handed it to Ramsay without a word.
“Perhaps that’ll teach
you not to be so cocksure another time, my young friend,” said Ramsay as he took
the note.
I noticed that Mr. Kelada’s hands were trembling.
The story spread over
the ship as stories do, and he had to put up with a good deal of chaff that
evening. It was a fine joke that Mr. Know-All had been caught out. But Mrs.
Ramsay retired to her stateroom with a headache.
Next morning I got up
and began to shave. Mr. Kelada lay on his bed smoking a cigarette. Suddenly there was a small scraping
sound and I saw a letter pushed under the door.
I opened the door and looked out.
There was nobody there. I
picked up the letter and saw it was addressed to Max Kelada. The name was written in block letters. I handed it to him.
“Who’s this from?” He
opened it. “Oh!”
He took out of the
envelope, not a letter, but a hundred-dollar note.
He looked at me and again he reddened.
He tore the envelope into little bits and gave them to me.
“Do you mind just
throwing them out of the porthole?”
I did as he asked, and
then I looked at him with a smile.
“No one likes being made
to look a perfect damned fool,” he said.
“Were the pearls real?”
“If I had a pretty
little wife I shouldn’t let her spend a year in New York while I stayed at
Kobe,” said he.
At that moment I did not
entirely dislike Mr. Kelada. He reached out for his pocketbook and carefully put in it the
hundred-dollar note.
9
Keeping Errors at Bay
Bertrand Russell (England, 1872-1970)
o avoid the various foolish opinions to
which mankind are prone, no superhuman genius is required. A few simple rules will keep you, not
from all error, but from silly error.
If
the matter is one that can be settled by observation, make the observation
yourself. Aristotle could have
avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to
keep her mouth open while he counted.
He did not do so because he thought he knew.
Thinking that you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to
which we are all prone. I believe
myself that hedgehogs eat black beetles, because I have been told that they do;
but if I were writing a book on the habits of hedgehogs, I should not commit
myself until I had seen one enjoying this unappetizing diet. Aristotle, however, was less cautious. Ancient and medieval authors knew all
about unicorns and salamanders; not one of them thought it necessary to avoid
dogmatic statements about them because he had never seen one of them.
Many matters, however, are less easily
brought to the test of experience.
If, like most of mankind, you have passionate convictions on many such matters,
there are ways in which you can make yourself aware of your own bias. If an opinion contrary to your own makes
you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good
reason for thinking as you do. If
someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator,
you feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or
geography that his opinion shakes your own contrary conviction. The most savage controversies are those
about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in
arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is
only opinion. So whenever you find
yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will
probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the
evidence warrants.
A good way of ridding yourself of
certain kinds of dogmatism is to become aware of opinions held in social circles
different from your own. When I was
young, I lived much outside my own country—in France, Germany, Italy, and the
United States. I found this very
profitable in diminishing the intensity of insular prejudice. If you cannot travel, seek out people
with whom you disagree, and read a newspaper belonging to a party that is not
yours. If the people and the
newspaper seem mad, perverse, and wicked, remind yourself that you seem so to
them. In this opinion both parties may be
right, but they cannot both be wrong.
This reflection should generate a certain caution.
Becoming aware of foreign customs,
however, does not always have a beneficial effect. In the seventeenth century, when the Manchus conquered China,
it was the custom among the Chinese for the women to have small feet, and among
the Manchus for the men to wear pigtails.
Instead of each dropping their own foolish custom, they each adopted the
foolish custom of the other, and the Chinese continued to wear pigtails until
they shook off the dominion of the Manchus in the revolution of 1911.
For
those who have enough psychological imagination, it is a good plan to imagine an
argument with a person having a different bias. This has one advantage, and only one, as compared with actual
conversation with opponents; this one advantage is that the method is not
subject to the same limitations of time and space. Mahatma Gandhi deplored railways and steamboats and
machinery; he would have liked to undo the whole of the industrial revolution. You may never have an opportunity of
actually meeting anyone who holds this opinion, because in Western countries
most people take the advantage of modern technique for granted. But if you want to make sure that you
are right in agreeing with the prevailing opinion, you will find it a good plan
to test the arguments that occur to you by considering what Gandhi might have
said in refutation of them. I have
sometimes been led actually to change my mind as a result of this kind of
imaginary dialogue, and, short of this, I have frequently found myself growing
less dogmatic and cocksure through realizing the possible reasonableness of a
hypothetical opponent.
Be very wary of opinions that flatter your self‑esteem. Both men and women, nine times out of
ten, are firmly convinced of the superior excellence of their own sex. There is abundant evidence on both
sides. If you are a man, you can point out that
most poets and men of science are male; if you are a woman, you can retort that
so are most criminals. The question
is inherently insoluble, but self‑esteem conceals this from most people.
We are all, whatever part of the world we come from, persuaded that our own
nation is superior to all others.
Seeing that each nation has its characteristic merits and demerits, we adjust
our standard of values so as to make out that the merits possessed by our nation
are the really important ones, while its demerits are comparatively trivial.
Here, again, the rational man will admit that the question is one to
which there is no demonstrably right answer.
It is more difficult to deal with the self‑esteem of man as man, because
we cannot argue out the matter with some non‑human mind. The only way I know of dealing with this
general human conceit is to remind ourselves that man is a brief episode in the
life of a small planet in a little corner of the universe, and that, for aught
we know, other parts of the cosmos may contain beings as superior to ourselves
as we are to jelly‑fish.
Other passions besides self‑esteem are common sources of error; of these perhaps
the most important is fear.
Fear sometimes operates directly, by inventing rumours of disaster in
war‑time, or by imagining objects of terror, such as ghosts; sometimes it
operates indirectly, by creating belief in something comforting, such as the
elixir of life, or heaven for ourselves and hell for our enemies. Fear has many forms—fear of death, fear
of the dark, fear of the unknown, fear of the herd, and that vague generalized
fear that comes to those who conceal from themselves their more specific
terrors. Until you have admitted
your own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of
will against their myth‑making power, you cannot hope to think truly about many
matters of great importance, especially those with which religious beliefs are
concerned. Fear is the main source
of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of
wisdom, in the pursuit of truth as in the endeavour after a worthy manner of
life.
9
Nine Puzzles
A jeweler has 3
diamonds. They all look exactly
alike, but one diamond is heavier than the others. How can she identify the heavier diamond by using a balance
scale just once? Please outline
your argument as carefully as you can.
2. Same as above, but
now the jeweler doesn’t know whether the odd diamond is lighter or heavier than
the other two. By using the scale
twice, how can she tell (i) which is the odd one, and (ii) whether it is lighter
or heavier?
3. What do you see in
the following two sketches?
4. One morning, exactly at sunrise, a Buddhist monk began to
climb a tall mountain. The narrow
path, no more than a foot or two wide, spiraled around the mountain to a
glittering temple at the summit.
The monk ascended the path at varying rates of speed, stopping many times along
the way to rest and to eat the dried fruit he carried with him.
He reached the temple shortly before sunset. After several days of fasting and meditation he began his
journey back along the same path, starting at sunrise and again walking at
variable speeds with many pauses along the way.
His average speed descending was, of course, greater than his average
climbing speed. Prove that there is
a spot along the path that the monk will occupy on both trips at precisely the
same time of day.
5. Three glasses
contain liquid, and three are empty.
Rearrange the glasses so that they alternate—one with liquid, one
without, one with liquid, one without, etc.
You are allowed to touch or move only one glass.
6. In her drawer, Cathy has six pairs of black gloves and six pairs of brown
gloves . In complete darkness, how many gloves must she take from the drawer in
order to be sure to get a matching pair?
Think carefully!!
7. Cigars cannot be smoked all the way to the end, so most cigar smokers
generate and discard butts. A poor
man can make one cigar from every 5 discarded cigar butts he collects. Today, he
collected 25 butts. How many cigars will he be able to smoke?
8. To tackle this
problem, imagine yourself a raven.
You can still reason as well (or as badly?J)
as you always do, but you have the body of a raven. You are starving, and ravens do love meat. There is a fine chunk of salami about 3
feet below you, tied to a string.
The other side of the string is securely tied to your perch. By now, you have unsuccessfully tried the following:
q Bending down as
far as you can, grabbing the string with your bill and lifting it up--but it was
too long and it still dangled down below you.
q Grabbing the
salami chunk while flying, jumping upwards from the ground, or falling down from
the perch.
q Tearing or
untying the string.
q Breaking the
perch.
q Climbing down
the string (ravens, you found out, can’t do that sort of thing).
q Swinging the
string upwards towards you.
q Coiling the
string repeatedly around your perch.
And yet, that salami
down there smells so very good!
What are you going to do??? (For an online hint, and to see how elephants solved
this program, go to:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=rplLLmx5xtY)
9. Tower of Hanoi Puzzle
9. Imagine that you are faced with a board that has 3 pegs, I, II, and III (see
the figure above). Peg I has 3
disks of different sizes, with the largest disk, G(reen), at the bottom, the
middle one, R(ed), in the middle, and the smallest one, B(lue), on top. You need to transfer all 3 disks to peg
III, as shown in the figure below—this is you goal state. In doing so, you must follow five rules:
1.
You can only move one disk at a time.
2. A disk must be moved from one peg to
another.
3.
You can only move the top disk of a peg (e.g., in the first figure above, you
can only move Disk B of Peg I to either Peg II or Peg III).
4. A disk cannot be placed on a disk
smaller than itself (e.g., Disk R can never be placed on top of Disk B).
5. Number of allowed steps: 7 or less.
Write a
step-by-step
solution to this problem, so that a dumb robot might be able to follow your
instructions.
Step 1.
Step 2.
Step 3.
Step 4.
Step 5.
Step 6.
Step 7.
Photo: The real tower of Hanoi
9
WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE, ANYWAY?
Isaac Asimov (USA, 1920-1992)
hat is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the
army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a
normal of 100, scored 160. No one
at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big
fuss over me. (It didn’t mean
anything. The next day I was still
a buck private with KP—kitchen police—as my highest duty.)
All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the
complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to
think so, too. Actually, though,
don’t such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of
academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up
the intelligence tests—people with intellectual bents similar to mine?
For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests,
could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was
far more intelligent than he was.
Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him
anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as
though they were divine oracles—and he always fixed my car.
Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence
test. Or suppose a carpenter did,
or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I’d prove myself a moron. And, I’d be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my
academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or
hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly.
My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I
live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to
foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.
Consider my auto-repair man, again.
He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.
One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: “Doc,
a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the
counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer.
He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and
left. Well, Doc, the next guy who
came in was a blind man. He wanted
scissors.
How do you suppose he asked for them?”
Indulgently, I lifted my right hand and made scissoring motions with my first
two fingers. Whereupon my
auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, “Why, you dumb jerk, he used his
voice and asked for them.” Then he
said smugly, “I’ve been trying that on all my customers today.”
“Did you catch many? I asked.
“Quite a few,” he said, “but I knew for sure I’d catch you.” “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’re so goddamned educated,
Doc, I knew you couldn’t be very smart.”
And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.
9
Lesson 28
1. Read pp. **
("The Stub Book").
2. Pedro Antonio
de Alarcón (1833-1891) was a Spanish writer and diplomat.
3. Please re-tell
“The Stub Book” in one short paragraph.
4. Is it possible
for a man to love his pumpkins, view them as “the daughters of his toil,” and
grieve when he has to bid them adios?
5. When did the idea of cutting the stems occur to Uncle Buscabeatas? What decisive step did he take before
leaving for the market town of
Cádiz? Why are we only told that he “lingered
for some twenty minutes at the scene of the catastrophe” but are only told later
what actually transpired in those twenty minutes?
6. What was the
source of Uncle Buscabeatas’s
brilliant idea of cutting the stems of the stolen pumpkins and bringing them to
Cádiz? Could we say that sometimes great
discoveries are based on the same principle, e.g., making a great discovery in
the discipline of astronomy by relying on ideas from the discipline of
mathematics?
7. The story ends with a much-deserved victory for Uncle Buscabeatas. But wait: Couldn’t Uncle Fulano claim
that Buscabeatas stole the stems
from Fulano’s field?
8. Are there similarities in the way Uncle Buscabeatas solved the
mystery of the missing pumpkins and the way Dr. Semmelweis (pp. *) solved the mystery of the
dying mothers? Did one of these
solutions require greater imagination and creativity than the other? If not, could we say that most of us,
given the right circumstances, have the potential of making great cultural
contributions?
Follow-up Reading and Viewing for Pleasure
Pedro Antonio de Alarcón
. 1974.
The Three-Cornered Hat (a touching comedy based in Alarcón native
Andalusia).
Lesson 29
1. Read pp.
225‑32 ("Mr. Know‑All").
2. Listen to a short story on Tape or
CD: "Mr. Know‑All."
3.
A Rashomon Effect Exercise: Briefly retell the story, not from Mr. Maugham's
viewpoint, but from Mr. Kelada's.
In retelling this story, assume that, although he was perfectly aware of his
fellow passengers' prejudices, Mr. Kelada chose to ignore them.
4. Read the Spotlight below
("Conversations with a Critical Thinker") and answer questions a‑e.
|
Conversations
with a
Critical
Thinker
(OR: Black on
White = Right)
The first draft of
Adventures in English placed Maugham's "Mr.
Know‑All" in the "Crosscultural
Bridges" unit.
After all, the story involved Americans, Englishmen, and a Middle
Easterner who is, according to the narrator of the story, trying to pass as
an Englishman.
But just then,
an Egyptian scholar visited the Central Department of English.
Now "Mustafa" liked our book and was contemplating its adoption in his
native land, until he noticed "Mr. Know‑All." At that moment, all hell broke loose.
"What's the
matter, Mustafa?" one of us asked.
"My dear Nepali
colleagues," he began. "I am
truly astonished that you chose to include this piece of 'literature' in
your collection."
"Why?" we asked,
taken aback by astonishment.
"Well," Mustafa
said, "I feel that you have unknowingly succumbed to Mr. Maugham's superb
storytelling gift, and that you have ignored a most disturbing aspect of his
story."
)
We were still
puzzled, and said so. So Mustafa continued.
"My esteemed
friends, Mr. Maugham is an out‑and‑out racist.
Read the story with this new allegation in mind, and judge for
yourselves."
We did, and
found Mustafa's charge of racism not as absurd as it first appeared.
So we hastily transferred the story from the "Crosscultural
Bridges" to the "Critical and Creative Thinking" unit of Adventures in English. And, before we continue, we would like
you to convince yourself that Mustafa's accusation is sensible:
a. Please re‑read the story (pp. 225‑32) and cite at least three instances which
seem to document Mustafa's claim of racism (the answer to this question
appears in Appendix XIII, p. 386).
b. State whether, in your opinion, Somerset
Maugham shares the view that "there is only one caste, the caste of
humanity?"
At this point, however, one of us interrupted Mustafa and argued that his
accusation rested on a misconception.
That is, Mustafa seemed to have confused the person who tells the story
with Mr. Maugham. The narrator,
perhaps, looks down on Egyptians and Nepalis, but he should not be confused
with Mr. Maugham.
Mustafa was
equal to this task. He reminded us that we had never been
under direct English occupation, while Egyptians had experienced British
condescension first hand. He
argued that Maugham never took the trouble to distance himself from the
narrator. Finally, he marshaled a few other
illustrations of Maugham's parochialism.
For instance, he reminded us of Maugham's "Alien Corn," which again
capitalizes, patronizingly, on ethnic differences. And this leads us to the next
assignment:
c. In a single paragraph, please comment on
Mustafa's argument: Is he right
in insisting that Maugham himself is a racist?
You would think
by now that old Mustafa had made his point, and that he would join us for
some long‑overdue tiffin at the
Kathmandu Coffee House. But our hopes were quickly dashed, for
at this point Mustafa turned his critical gaze on another aspect of "Mr.
Know‑All."
"My esteemed
Nepali colleagues," Mustafa proceeded, "I can understand how Maugham's
ethnocentricity escaped you, but what really baffles me is that you failed,
as well, to notice his shoddy math.
In fact, even if Maugham was a honest man (which I doubt), I wouldn't
trust him with giving me correct change for a fifty‑rupee note. I sense, however, that you are all
anxious to savor some Masala Dosa and coconut chutney, and I must confess that I myself would love to
sample a few South Indian dishes.
So let us drop this subject for the moment.
When you go home tonight, I urge you to re‑read Maugham's captivating
story once more and convince yourselves that I am right."
So we did go to
lunch. And then, at Mustafa's insistence, we
went to Thamel Market, and saw Mustafa in action (in addition to being a
critical thinking ace, he is, no doubt, the best bargainer this side of the
Indian Ocean). We then went
home, re‑read the story, and saw that indeed Mr. Maugham committed an
embarrassing mathematical error.
d. Explain Maugham's error? (the answer to this question appears in Appendix XIII, p. 386).
When we got
together again, one of us said:
"Sure, the
mathematical error is there, but this does not mean that Mr. Maugham is a
careless mathematician. The
error, rather, is committed by one character of the story, not by Mr.
Maugham. "Mr. Know‑All," for all we know, might
be nothing more than a faithful rendition of an actual event in Mr.
Maugham's life."
e. We
shall not reproduce Mustafa's reply to this question. Instead, we shall ask you to provide
your own answer. So, what do
you think, is Mr. Maugham guilty of bad math, or did he deliberately include
this error in the story? Please
explain your answer.
|
Reading for Pleasure
Other celebrated Somerset Maugham's stories include "Rain," "The Kite," and "The
Verger."
His best novel is perhaps The
Razor's Edge.
Lesson 30
1. Read pp. *
("What is Intelligence, Anyway?").
2. Try to solve the creative thinking
puzzles on pp. 237‑40 (answers to these puzzles
appear in Appendix XII, pp.
3. Please prepare a brief class
presentation (less than five minutes long) on the topic: "For me, the most
interesting point in Asimov's essay (pp. 233‑6)
is [describe, explain, and illustrate this point] because [explain your reasons
for thinking it most interesting]."
4. Do you agree with Asimov that human beings cannot be placed on a
one-dimensional intelligence scale, that they are all made up of a unique
mixture of intelligence and stupidity?
5. Try telling
Asimov’s joke to a couple of friends.
Did they fall into the same trap that Asimov fell into, or were they more
“intelligent” than he was.
6. The
so-called “intelligence test” has often been used to label and exclude people.
For instance, in the USA in the 1920s, the test was used to justify
discrimination against Italians Russians, Jews, Poles . . .
Asimov’s parents were almost certainly excluded from polite society because of
their poverty, foreign accents, and Eastern-European origins.
Do you think such personal experiences might have contributed to Asimov’s
skeptical views of official I.Q. tests—despite the fact that he himself scored
very high in these very tests?
4. In small groups, please edit Sentences 60‑79 of Appendix III (pp. **). When done, compare your answers to those
given in Appendix IV (pp. **).
Reading for Pleasure
Asimov, Isaac. 1972.
The Gods Themselves (a great science fiction novel).
POSTSCRIPT
You can have all the virtues—that's to say, all except the two that really
matter, understanding and compassion—you can have all the others, I say, and be
a thoroughly bad man.
Aldous Huxley
Ekta Books
/
Flax-Golden
Tales-Sounds of English
/ Moti Nissani’s Homepage