新世纪大学英语第四册课文和翻译

Unit One Text A Man in the Realm of Nature

Alexander Spirkin

Human beings live in the realm of nature. They are constantly surrounded by it and interact with it. Man is constantly aware of the influence of nature in the form of the air he breathes, the water he drinks, and the food he eats. We are connected with nature by "blood" ties and we cannot live outside nature.

Man is not only a dweller in nature, he also transforms it. Humanity converts nature's wealth into the means of the cultural, historical life of society. Man has subdued and disciplined electricity and compelled it to serve the interests of society. Not only has man transferred various species of plants and animals to different climatic conditions, he has also changed the shape and climate of his environment and transformed plants and animals.

As society develops, man tends to become less dependent on nature directly, while indirectly his dependence grows. Our distant ancestors lived in fear of nature's destructive forces. Very often they were unable to obtain the merest daily necessities. However, despite their imperfect tools, they worked together stubbornly, collectively, and were able to attain results. Nature was also changed through interaction with man. Forests were destroyed and the area of farmland increased. Nature with its elemental forces was regarded as

something hostile to man. The forest, for example, was something wild and frightening and people tried to force it to retreat. This was all done in the name of civilisation, which meant the places where man had made his home, where the earth was cultivated, where the forest had been cut down.

But as time goes on mankind becomes increasingly concerned with the question of where and how to obtain irreplaceable natural resources for the needs of production. Science and man's practical transforming activities have made humanity aware of the enormous geological role played by the industrial transformation of the earth.

At present the previous dynamic balance between man and nature and between nature and society as a whole, has shown ominous signs of breaking down. The problem of the so-called replaceable resources of the biosphere has become particularly acute. It is getting more and more difficult to satisfy the needs of human beings and society even for such a substance, for example, as fresh water. The problem of eliminating industrial waste is also becoming increasingly complex.

Modern technology is distinguished by an ever increasing abundance of produced and used synthetic goods. Hundreds of thousands of synthetic materials are being made. People increasingly cover their bodies from head to foot in nylon and other synthetic, glittering fabrics that are obviously not good for them. Young people may hardly feel this, and they pay more attention to

appearance than to health. But they become more aware of this harmful influence as they grow older.

As time goes on the synthetic output of production turns into waste, and then substances that in their original form were not very toxic are transformed in the cycle of natural processes into aggressive agents. Today both natural scientists and philosophers are asking themselves the question: Is man's destruction of the biosphere inevitable?

The man-nature relation – the crisis of the ecological situation – is a global problem. Its solution lies in rational and wise organization of both production itself and care for Mother Nature, not just by individuals, enterprises or countries, but by all humanity. One of the ways to deal with the crisis situation in the "man-nature" system is to use such resources as solar energy, the power of winds, the riches of the seas and oceans and other, as yet unknown natural forces of the universe.

But to return to our theme, the bitter truth is that those human actions which violate the laws of nature, the harmony of the biosphere, threaten to bring disaster and this disaster may turn out to be universal. How apt then are the words of ancient Oriental wisdom: live closer to nature, my friends, and its eternal laws will protect you!

人在自然界| 亚历山大·斯伯金

人类生活在大自然的王国里。他们时刻被大自然所包围并与之相互影响。人类呼吸的空气、喝下的水和摄入的食物，无一不令人类时刻感知到大自然的影响。我们与大自然血肉相连，离开大自然，我们将无法生存。

2人类不仅生活在大自然之中，同时也在改变着大自然。人类把自然资源转变为各种文化，社会历史的财富。人类降服并控制了电，迫使它为人类社会的利益服务。人类不仅把各种各样的动植物转移到不同的气候环境，也改变了他生活环境的地貌和气候并使动植物因之而发生转变。

3随着社会的发展，人类对大自然的直接依赖越来越少，而间接的依赖却越来越多。我们远古的祖先生活在大自然的威胁及破坏力的恐惧之中，他们常常连基本的生活物资都无法获取。然而，尽管工具不甚完备，他们却能同心协力，顽强工作，并总是有所收获。在与人类的相互作用中，大自然也发生了改变。森林被破坏了，耕地面积增加了。大自然及其威力被看成是和人类敌对的东西。譬如，森林被认为是野性的和令人恐惧的，因此人类便想方设法使其面积缩小。这一切都是打着“文明”的旗号进行的，所谓“文明”，就是人类在哪里建立家园，耕耘土地，哪里的森林就被砍伐。

4然而，随着岁月的流逝，人类越来越关注的是在何处得到和如何得到生产所需的不可替代的自然资源的问题。科学与人类改变大自然的实践活动已经使人类意识到了工业在改变地球的进程中对地质产生的重大影响。

5目前，人与自然以及自然与社会整体之间过去存在的动态平衡，已呈现崩溃的迹象。生物圈中所谓可替代资源的问题变得极为尖锐。人类和社会的需求，即便是简单得像淡水一样的物质，也变得越来越难以满足。清除工业废物的问题也变得日益复杂。

6现代技术的特征是生产和使用日益丰富的人工合成产品。人们生产成千上万的人工合成材料。人们越来越多地用尼龙和其他人造纤维把自己从头到脚地包裹起来，这些绚丽的织物显然对他们无益。年轻人或许很少注意到这一点，他们更关注的是外表，而不是健康。但是上了年岁之后，他们就会感受到这种有害的影响。

7久而久之，这些合成物质转变成废弃物，那些原本毒性不大的物质在自然循环中变为极其有害的物质。自然科学家和哲学家如今都在问自己这样一个问题：人类对生物圈的破坏难道是无法避免的吗？

8人与大自然的关系——生态环境的危机——已经成为一个全球性问题。这一问题的解决之道在于理性而明智地协调生产和对大自然的关爱之间的关系，这不仅要依靠个人、企业或者某些国家的力量，而且要依靠全人类的力量。解决人与大自然关系危机的方法之一，就是使用太阳能、风能、海洋能等资源，以及其他尚不为人所知的宇宙中的自然能。

9但是，回到我们原先的主题上，令人难以接受的事实是那些违背了自然规律、破坏了生物圈和谐的人类行为将会带来灾难，而这种灾难也许是全球性的。古代东方智者的话讲得真是恰如其分：朋友们，你要是亲近大自然，大自然就会用那永恒不变的规律永远呵护你！

Unit Two Text A Technology and Happiness

James Surowiecki

In the 20th century, Americans, Europeans, and East Asians enjoyed material and technological advances that were unimaginable in previous eras. In the United States, for instance, gross domestic product per capita tripled from 1950 to 2000. Life expectancy soared. The boom in productivity after World War II made goods better and cheaper at the same time. Things that were once luxuries, such as jet travel and long-distance phone calls, became necessities. And even though Americans seemed to work extraordinarily hard, their pursuit of entertainment turned media and leisure into multibillion-dollar industries.

By most standards, then, you would have to say that Americans are better off now than they were in the middle of the last century. Oddly, though, if you ask Americans how happy they are, you find that they are no happier than they were in 1946 (which is when formal surveys of happiness started). In fact, the percentage of people who say they are "very happy" has fallen slightly since the early 1970s – even though the income of people born in 1940 has, on average, increased by 116 percent over the course of their working lives. You can find similar data for most developed countries.

The relationship between happiness and technology has been an eternal subject for social critics and philosophers since the advent of the Industrial

Revolution. But it's been left largely unexamined by economists and social scientists. The truly groundbreaking work on the relationship between prosperity and well-being was done by the economist Richard Easterlin, who in 1974 wrote a famous paper entitled "Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?" Easterlin showed that when it came to developed countries, there was no real correlation between a nation's income level and its citizens' happiness. Money, Easterlin argued, could not buy happiness –at least not after a certain point. Easterlin showed that though poverty was strongly correlated with misery, once a country was solidly middle-class, getting wealthier did not seem to make its citizens any happier.

This seems to be close to a universal phenomenon. In fact, one of happiness scholars' most important insights is that people adapt very quickly to good news. Take lottery winners for example. One famous study showed that although winners were very, very happy when they won, their extreme excitement quickly evaporated, and after a while their moods and sense of well-being were indistinguishable from what they had been before the victory.

So, too, with technology: no matter how dramatic a new innovation is, no matter how much easier it makes our lives, it is very easy to take it for granted. You can see this principle at work in the world of technology every day, as things that once seemed miraculous soon become common and, worse, frustrating when they don't work perfectly. It's hard, it turns out, to keep in mind

what things were like before the new technology came along.

Does our fast assimilation of technological progress mean, then, that technology makes no difference? No. It just makes the question of technology's impact, for good or ill, more complicated. Let's start with the downside. There are certain ways in which technology makes life obviously worse. Telemarketing, traffic jams, and identity theft all come to mind. These are all phenomena that make people consciously unhappy. But for the most part, modern critiques of technology have focused not so much on specific, bad technologies as the impact of technology on our human relationships.

Privacy has become increasingly fragile in a world of linked databases. In many workplaces, technologies like keystroke monitoring and full recordings of phone calls make it easier to watch workers. The notion that technology disrupts relationships and fractures community gained mainstream prominence as an attack on television. Some even say that TV is chiefly responsible for the gradual isolation of Americans from each other. Similarly, the harmful effects of the Internet, which supposedly further isolates people from what is often called "the real world".

This broad criticism of technology's impact on relationships is an interesting one and is especially relevant to the question of happiness, because one of the few things we can say for certain is that the more friends and the closer relationships people have, the happier they tend to be.

Today, technological change is so rapid that when you buy something, you do so knowing that in a few months there's going to be a better, faster version of the product, and that you're going to be stuck with the old one. Someone else, in other words, has it better. It's as if disappointment were built into acquisition from the very beginning.

Daily stress, an annoying sense of disappointment, fear that the government knows a lot more about you than you would like it to – these are obviously some of the ways in which technology reduces people's sense of well-being. But the most important impact of technology on people's sense of well-being is in the field of health care. Before the Industrial Revolution, two out of every three Europeans died before the age of 30. Today, life expectancy for women in Western Europe is almost 80 years, and it continues to increase. The point is obvious: the vast majority of people are happy to be alive, and the more time they get on earth, the better off they feel they'll be. But until very recently, life for the vast majority of people was nasty, rough, and short. Technology has changed that, at least for people in the rich world. As much as we should worry about the rising cost of health care and the problem of the uninsured, it's also worth remembering how valuable for our spirits as well as our bodies are the benefits that medical technology has brought us.

On a deeper level, what the technological improvement of our health and our longevity emphasizes is a paradox of any discussion of happiness on a national or a global level: even though people may not be happier, even

though they are wealthier and possess more technology, they're still as hungry as ever for more time. It's like that old joke: the food may not be so great, but we want the portions to be as big as possible.

技术与幸福| 詹姆斯·萨洛维奇

20世纪的美国人、欧洲人和东亚人都享受到了过去历代人都无法想象的物质和技术进步带来的乐趣。譬如，在美国，从1950年到2000年国民生产总值翻了3倍。人们的寿命大幅度提高。二战后生产力的迅速发展使商品变得价廉物美。诸如乘飞机旅游和打长途电话等曾经是奢侈的事情成了生活不可或缺的一部分。2那么，根据大多数标准衡量，你会说，现在的美国人比上个世纪中叶富裕多了。不过，奇怪的是，如果你问美国人有多幸福，你会发现，他们并不比1946年时幸福（1946年正式开始对幸福状况进行调查）。事实上，那些说自己“非常幸福”的人所占的比例自20世纪70年代以来一直稳中有降——尽管20世纪40年代出生的人的收入在他们的工作生涯中平均增长了116％。你可以在大多数发达国家找到相似的数据。

3自工业革命开始以来，幸福与技术之间的关系一直是社会批评家和哲学家们长期研究的课题，然而，基本上还没有受到经济学家和社会学家们的关注。经济学家理查德·伊斯特林在经济繁荣和幸福的关系方面进行了具有开拓性的研究，并于1974年发表了一篇题为“经济增长改变人类命运吗？”的著名论文。伊斯特林表明，就发达国家而言，一个国家的收入和国民的幸福之间没有真正的相互关

系。伊斯特林认为，金钱买不到幸福，至少在（金钱）达到了一定程度以后是如此。伊斯特林认为，尽管贫穷与苦难密不可分，但是，一个国家一旦达到稳定的中产阶级水平，富有似乎并没有让其国民感到更多的幸福。

4这好像几乎是一种普遍现象。实际上，研究幸福的学者们最重要的观点之一是：人们对好消息很快便习以为常。拿彩票中奖者为例。一项重要的研究表明，尽管买彩票中奖的人中奖时会感到非常非常幸福，可这种兴奋很快就消逝了。一段时间之后，他们的心情和幸福感与中奖之前没有什么两样。

5人们对待技术的态度也是一样的：无论一种新事物多么引人注目，也无论它使我们的生活变得多么舒适，人们都认为这是理所当然的事情。在技术世界，你每天都会看到这一原则起作用。曾经一度被视为非常神奇的东西很快就变得习以为常，更糟的是，当这些东西运转不正常时，还会令人沮丧。要把新技术问世之前的情形牢记在心原来是如此困难！

6那么，我们对技术进步的快速吸收是否意味着技术没有发挥什么作用呢？不，决非如此。不论好歹，这只是把技术影响的问题变得更加复杂。我们先从负面影响谈起。在某些方面，技术显然使得生活更加糟糕了。譬如，我们马上会想到电话推销、交通阻塞以及身份资料失窃等情况。这些都是让人们明显意识到不幸福的现象。可是，现代的技术评论文章多半都没有把焦点集中在具体的、有害的技术上，而是集中在了技术对人际关系的影响上。

7在联了网的数据库世界里，隐私变得越来越脆弱。在许多工作场所，诸如按键监控和电话全程录音之类的技术使得对员工的监视变得更加容易。人们对电视的攻击主要集中在以下方面：技术扰乱了人际关系、破坏了社区交往。一些人甚至说，电视是美国人逐渐相互疏远的罪魁祸首。同样也有人认为，互联网的负面

影响进一步使人远离了我们常说的“真实世界”。

8这种广义上关于技术影响人际关系的批评颇有趣味，尤与幸福的问题相关，因为我们真正有把握说清楚的事情没有几件，但其中之一是：人们的朋友越多，关系越密切，就越幸福。

9今天的技术变化异常神速，购买某种产品时你就知道，再过几个月，比这个产品性能更好、运作更快的款式就会问世，而你却还得使用旧款式的产品。换句话说，别人买到的产品要比你的好。这种失望感仿佛从开始购买这件产品时就已经存在了。

10日常生活的压力，一种令人烦恼的失望感、对政府知道你的情况超出你所希望程度的恐惧感——这些显然都是技术降低了人们幸福感的几个方面。然而，技术对人们的幸福感最重要的影响是在医疗保健方面。工业革命以前，每三个欧洲人就有两个的寿命不足30岁。今天，西欧妇女的寿命差不多是80岁，而且还会继续提高。道理很清楚：绝大多数人很乐意活下去，他们在地球上生活的时间越长，感觉就越好。可是，不久前，绝大多数人还过着龌龊不堪、畜生般的生活，而且生命非常短暂。技术改变了这种状况，至少对于富裕国家的人们来说是如此。我们在该为医疗保健费用的提高和没有参加保险的人们的问题而担忧的同时，也应该记住，医疗技术带给我们身体上和精神上的好处是多么有价值。

11从更深的层次上说，我们在健康和长寿方面所取得的进步却强调了在国家和全球层面讨论幸福问题的一个自相矛盾的说法。即使人们不会更幸福，即使他们更加富裕并拥有更多技术，他们还会像以前那样渴望长寿。这就像那个古老的笑话一样：食品也许并不好，可我们都想让自己得到的那一份尽量大。

Unit Three Text A The Rainbow of Knowledge

Craig Russell

For more than 3/4 of my life – 39 of my 50 years – I've either studied or taught in a school or a college in New York.

You might think, then, that after all this time I'd have some grasp of the situation, that I'd actually know things – that I'd have some positive sense of assurance, of certainty, about knowledge and about life. But I don't. In fact, the more I know, the more I know I don't know.

To say that the more I know, the more I know I don't know is, of course, contradictory. But then, modern physics tells us that reality itself is contradictory. The more scientists look into our physical reality, the more it slips away from them. In a way, the more they learn, the less they know.

Knowledge itself is contradictory. For example, picture your knowledge as a dot, as perhaps the period at the end of this sentence. Notice the tiny circumference of that period, and let that represent the interface of the known

with the unknown – in other words, your awareness of what you don't know.

But now imagine that little period growing, its blackness consuming more and more of the page. As it grows, so does its circumference. And if that growing blackness represents knowledge, then as it grows, so does the awareness of what remains unknown. In other words, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.

No doubt you have experienced this yourself in your own personal quests for knowledge. At first, you don't even know a field of learning exists. It's been there all along, of course; you just haven't noticed it before. When I got my first computer in 1988, I walked down to the magazine store, hoping to find something about computing and was amazed at the number of choices. Likewise, when I lucked into an opportunity to teach film analysis, I found myself dazzled at the sheer number of books devoted to the subject.

Let's say you decide to learn about this topic. You buy one of these books, the best and most complete one you can find (or so you think), or perhaps you borrow it from the library. But you quickly find that your reading, rather than answering questions, only creates more of them.

Earlier this year, for example, I not only had no idea that I had any interest at all in the relationship of technology to freedom; I didn't even realize that a connection between them might exist. So I started reading books and became more and more aware of the relationship between technology and freedom.

Then, on the one hand, I now know much more about this topic than I did a few short months ago. But on the other hand, all this reading has made me see how little I really know and how much more I need to read and think and write. Once I've finished reading a book, I always feel that I need to read three more to gain a better grasp of the topic. And I think and write at the same time. In fact, it is my writing that has led me into it. We think often that only people who know and who are sure of themselves write. For me, however, it's just the opposite. Writing doesn't close things off – it opens things up.

For a long time, I, as a writer, was paralyzed by this paradox – the more I know, the more I know I don't know. I was very aware of the teaching from Taoism that said "those who know don't speak; those who speak don't know." I wasn't sure I should write at all, and, even if I did, I didn't believe that I was qualified to do it. I always felt I had to know more first. It took me a long time not to let this paradox freeze me and to believe that it was my writing that would qualify my knowledge, and not the other way around. I think of my work not as articles or as columns but as essays – a word from French, meaning "to try". I do not know truth. I only try to find it.

I don't mean, of course, to suggest that we should not learn, or that we should not read and write and think and talk. I do not mean to suggest that we should not try. An infinite quest is not a hopeless one. I only suggest that an understanding will inevitably and doubtlessly lead us away from the force and rigidity of dogmatism and toward the flexibility and freedom of the individual.

As Taoism teaches, "the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life."

We must temper our pride in knowing with the humility of not knowing. The truth, as they say, is out there, but, maybe, like the rainbow, we can never really grasp it, never hold it in our hands and truly know it. We can only, as William James said, "live today by what truth we can get today and be ready to call it falsehood tomorrow."

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知识彩虹| 克雷格·拉塞尔

我这辈子四分之三以上的时间（50年中有39年）是在纽约的中小学或大学里度过的，不是在上学，就是在教学。

2于是，你或许会认为，经过这么长一段时间，我应该了解一些情况，确实知道一些东西，对知识和对生活该会积极地予以把握和肯定了。可是，我却没有做到这一点。事实上，我知道的东西越多，反倒越觉得自己无知。

3当然，说自己知道的东西越多，反倒越觉得自己无知，这种说法是矛盾的。然而，现代物理学告诉我们，现实世界本身就是矛盾的。科学家们对物质现实世界研究得越多，就越无法对它进行把握。在某种意义上，他们了解的越多，知道的就越少。

4知识本身就是矛盾的。打个比方，假设你的知识是一个点，就像这个句子末尾的句号一样。请注意这个句号微小的圆周，假设它代表我们已知和未知的分界——换句话说，就是你对自己不知道的东西的认知。

5但现在想象一下那个小小的句号在渐渐扩大，它的黑色部分占据页面越来越多

的地方。随着它的扩大，它的周缘也跟着扩大。如果那个正在增大的黑色部分代表你的知识的话，在知识增长的同时，你会意识到自己有许多不知道的东西。也就是说，你知道的越多，就越觉得自己无知。

6你在求知过程中肯定有过类似的经历。起初，你甚至并不知道还有某个学科的存在。当然，这个学科是早就存在的，只是你以前没有注意到而已。1988年有了第一台电脑以后，我去杂志店，想找一些关于电脑操作方面的书，结果发现这类书琳琅满目，让我吃惊。同样，当我有幸获得讲授电影分析这门课的机会时，我发现有关这个领域的专著也多得令我眼花缭乱。

7假设你决定研究这一课题。你买了一本有关这一课题的书，一本你能找到的最好也是最全面的（或是你认为是这样的）书，或许你是从图书馆借来了这本书。但你很快就会发现，阅读这本书只会给你带来更多的问题，而不是要解答你的疑问。

8譬如，今年早些时候，我非但不知道自己对技术和自由之间的关系有兴趣，甚至没有意识到这两者之间有可能存在着某种联系。于是，我开始阅读这方面的书籍，越读越意识到技术与自由之间的关系。一方面，比起短短的几个月之前，现在我对这个课题的了解是多了。但另一方面，所有这些阅读让我看到了自己真正懂得的东西是多么的少，而需要阅读、思考和写作的东西又是多么的多。每读完一本书，我总是觉得需要再读三本书，才能更好地把握这个课题。我的思考和写作也在同时进行。事实上，正是写作让我接触了这一课题。我们通常认为只有那些知识渊博、充满自信的人才会从事写作。然而，在我看来却恰恰相反。写作并不是总结，而是拓展。

9身为作家，很长一段时间我都被这个矛盾所困惑——知道的越多，越感到自

己无知。我深深领悟了道家的教诲：“知者不言，言者不知。”我对自己该不该写作毫无把握，即使写了，也觉得自己没有资格写。我总觉得自己应该先获得更多的知识。我花了很长一段时间，才解除了这种矛盾对我的禁锢，最终才确信正是写作让我增长了知识，而不是知识让我有资格从事写作。我觉得自己的作品不是文章或者专栏，而是essays，即“随笔”，essays是一个法语词，意思是“尝试”。我不懂得真理，只是努力要找到它。

10当然，我不是说我们不应该学习，或者不应该阅读、写作、思考和交谈。我也不是说我们不应该去尝试。永无止境的探索并非毫无希望。我只是认为，对知识中矛盾的理解，必然会把我们从教条主义的压迫和僵化中引导出来，迈向个人的灵活和自由。这正如道家所说：“坚强者死之徒，柔弱者生之徒。”

11我们必须将因知识而生出的自豪感和因无知而生出的谦卑感加以揉和。他们说得好，真理就在那里，但或许就像彩虹一样，我们却永远不能真正地抓住它，也不能把它握在手里并真正地掌握它。正如威廉·詹姆斯所说的那样，我们只能“按照今天得到的真理而生活，并准备明天把它叫做谬论。”

Unit Four Text A Work, Labor, and Play

Wystan H. Auden

So far as I know, Miss Hannah Arendt was the first person to define the essential difference between work and labor. To be happy, a man must feel, firstly, free and, secondly, important. He cannot be really happy if he is compelled by society to do what he does not enjoy doing, or if what he enjoys doing is ignored by society as of no value or importance. In a society where slavery in the strict sense has been abolished, whether what a man does has social value depends on whether he is paid money to do it, but a laborer today can rightly be called a wage slave. A man is a laborer if the job society offers him is of no interest to himself but he is compelled to take it by the necessity of earning a living and supporting his family.

The opposite to labor is play. When we play a game, we enjoy what we are doing, otherwise we should not play it, but it is a purely private activity; society could not care less whether we play it or not.

Between labor and play stands work. A man is a worker if he is personally interested in the job which society pays him to do; what from the point of view of society is necessary labor is from his own point of view voluntary play. Whether a job is to be classified as labor or work depends, not on the job itself, but on the tastes of the individual who undertakes it. The difference does not, for example, coincide with the difference between a manual and a mental job;

a gardener or a cobbler may be a worker, a bank clerk a laborer. Which a man is can be seen from his attitude toward leisure. To a worker, leisure means

simply the hours he needs to relax and rest in order to work efficiently. He is therefore more likely to take too little leisure than too much; workers die of heart attacks and forget their wives' birthdays. To the laborer, on the other hand, leisure means freedom from compulsion, so that it is natural for him to imagine that the fewer hours he has to spend laboring, and the more hours he is free to play, the better.

What percentage of the population in a modern technological society are, like myself, in the fortunate position of being workers? At a guess I would say sixteen per cent, and I do not think that figure is likely to get bigger in the future.

Technology and the division of labor have done two things: by eliminating in many fields the need for special strength or skill, they have made a very large number of paid occupations which formerly were enjoyable work into boring labor, and by increasing productivity they have reduced the number of necessary laboring hours. It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful. Indeed, the problem of dealing with boredom may be even more difficult for such a future mass society than it was for aristocracies. The latter, for example, ritualized their time; there was a season to shoot grouse, a