Text 4. What every freshman should know
by E. S. Morgan
The world does not much like curiosity. The world says that curiosity killed the cat. The world dismisses curiosity by calling it idle, or
mere idle, curiosity — even though curious persons are seldom idle. Parents do their best to extinguish curiosity in their children, because it makes life difficult to be faced every day with a string of unanswerable questions about what makes fire hot or why grass grows, or to have to halt junior's investigations before they end in explosion and sudden death. Children whose curiosity survives parental discipline and who manage to grow up before they blow up are invited to join the Yale faculty. Within the university they go on asking questions and trying to find the answers. In the eyes of a scholar, that is mainly what a university is for. It is a place where the world's hostility to curiosity can be defied.
Some of the questions that scholars ask seem to the world to be scarcely worth asking, let alone answering. They ask about the behavior of protons, the dating of a Roman coin, the structure of a poem. They ask questions too minute and specialized for you and me to understand without years of explanation.
If the world inquires of one of them why he wants to know the answer to a particular question, he may say, especially if he is a scientist, that the answer will in some obscure way make possible a new machine or weapon or gadget. He talks that way because he knows that the world understands and respects utility and that it does not understand much else. But to his colleagues and to you he will probably not speak this language. You are now part of the University, and he will expect you to understand that he wants to know the answer simply because he does not know it, the way a mountain climber wants to climb a mountain simply because it is there.
Similarly a historian, when asked by outsiders why he studies history, may come out with a line of talk that he has learned to repeat on such occasions, something about knowledge of the past making it possible to understand the present and mould the future. I am sure you have all heard it at one time or another. But if you really want to know why a historian studies the past, the answer is much simpler: he wants to know about it because it is there. Something happened, and he would like to know that.
All this does not mean that the answers which scholars find $> their questions have no consequences. They may have enormous consequences; they may completely alter the character of human life. But the consequences seldom form the reason for asking the questions or pursuing the answers. It is true that scholars can be put to work answering questions for the sake of the consequences, as thousands are working now, for example, in search of a cure for cancer. But this is not the primary function of the scholar... Even for the medical scholar, the desire to stamp out a dreaded desease may be a less powerful motive than the desire to find out about the nature of living matter. Similarly Einstein did not wish to create an atomic bomb or to harness atomic energy. He simply wanted to find out about energy and matter.
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I said that curiosity was a dangerous quality. It is dangerous not only because of incidental effects like an atomic bomb but also because it is really nothing more nor less than a desire for truth. For some reason this phrase sounds less dangerous than curiosity. In fact, the desire for truth sounds rather respectable. Since so many respectable people assure us that they have found the truth, it does not sound like a dangerous thing to look for. But it is. The search for it has again and again overturned institutions and beliefs of long standing, in science, in religion, and in politics. It is easy enough to see today that these past revolutions brought great benefits to mankind. It was less easy to see the benefits while the revolutions were taking place, especially if you happened to be quite satisfied with the way things were before.... The search for truth is, and always has been, a subversive activity. And scholars have learned that they cannot engage in it without an occasional fight.
For (preposition)
Translate into Russian paying attention to the Russian equivalents of for.
1. And yet, for reasons unknown to us, the land was named after them (Peel).
2. For all his charm, he was not easy to deal with.
3. Michael touched the button and in a moment his secretary came in.
"Here are the letters, Margery. What appointments have I got for this afternoon?" (Maugham).
4. It's hard to say what nature has done to us and what it has done for us.
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5. Harris was for explaining things, but George cut him short. "You get on that", said George, handing him his bicycle, "and go"
(Jerome).
6. For all his talents he could not have written the book alone.
7. Caractacus made a brave stand on the banks of the River Medway, but the opposition was too strong. At the day's end, he was fleeing for his life (Garrett).
8. But for my interference, everything would have ended in disaster.
9. "When did you see him last?" "Oh, he was over in London six months ago for a medical congress" (Greene).
10. "I thought perhaps you might be Mr Dexter. We had a room reserved for a week for Mr Dexter" (Greene).
11. She said, "When I got your card, I couldn't say no. But there's nothing really for us to talk about, is there?" (Greene).
12. "It's a strange crucifix", he said. "Why are the arms above the head?"
"It is Jansenist, and in their view He died only for the few" (Greene).
Experience (noun)
Translate into Russian paying special attention to the Russian equivalents of experience.
1. Our'first garden was quite literally a postage stamp garden....Not a big project, but we almost never weeded it, and we had enough produce for some enjoyable summer meals.... As we have gained experience, we have expanded to suit what we know we can handle (Eames-Sheavly).
2. Watching the proud expression on my son's face when he handed me a perfect little zinnia is an experience I won't forget for a long time! (Eames-Sheavly).
3. Levkin opened the door and Otto fell in. He smelt like an old bar-parlour of stale drink and tobacco. I did not care to go on seeing my brother in this condition and it seemed kinder to him too to curtail the experience. "Take him away" (Murdoch).
4. If gardening is so terrific, why does the experience turn sour for some families? In most cases, it is because the parents, not the children, have expectations that far exceed what is practical or enjoyable (Eames-Sheavly).
5. Had he been trying to attract my attention, haunting me in a desperate effort to seek my help? And what did he want? Peace? Succour? Or vengeance? All things seemed possible... My recent experiences had begun to open my mind, but it had not been until I had come here to Alton, read what I had read yesterday afternoon, and begun to uncover the truth about Conrad Vane that I had been fully convinced of things that lay out of sight, below the surface of the ordinary world (Hill).
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6. I now do three or four hours of aerobics each week, and I swim at the RAC club two or three evenings a week, too. I certainly feel better. I thought I was fit before, but this is quite a different experience [RAC —Royal Automobile Club].
7. The next night, and nearly every night after that, the nightingale was there again. Beatrice Harrison could hardly believe what was happening: she was playing duets with a wild bird! It was an astonishing experience and she wished that she could share her pleasure with other people (Alexander).
Loornouth and Market Basing.... It used to be a very pretty old-world village but of course like everything else, it is becoming what they call developed nowadays (Christie).
7. And he had a villa at Richmond, overlooking the river, with trellises of red roses; and Mademoiselle used to pick one every morning and stick it in his button-hole (Woolf).
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