Passage 1
The instinctive foundation of the intellectual life is
curiosity, which is found among animals in its elementary form. Intelligence
demands an alert curiosity, but it must be of a certain kind. The sort that
leads village neighbors to try to peer through curtains after dark has not very
high value. The widespread interest in gossip is inspired, not by love of
knowledge, but by malice; no one gossips about other people’s secret virtues,
but only about their secret vices. Accordingly, most gossip is untrue, but care
is taken not to verify it. (66) You may see this impulse, in
a moderately pure form, at work in a cat that has been brought to a strange room
and proceeds to smell every corner and every piece of furniture. You will see it
also in children, who are passionately interested when a drawer or cupboard,
usually closed, is open for their inspection. Animals, machines, thunderstorms,
and all forms of manual work arouse the curiosity of children, whose thirst for
knowledge puts the most intelligent adult to shame. (67) This
is the stage at which people announce that "things are not what they were in my
young days." The thing that is not the same as it was in that far-off time is
the speaker’s curiosity. (68) If curiosity
is to be fruitful, it must be associated with a certain technique for the
acquisition of knowledge; there must be habits of observation, belief in the
possibility of knowledge, patience, and industry. (69) But
since our intellectual life is only a part of our activity, and since curiosity
is perpetually coming into conflict with other passions, there is need of
certain intellectual virtues, such as open-mindedness. We become unreceptive to
new truth both from habit and from desire; we find it hard to disbelieve what we
have emphatically believed for a number of years and also what ministers to
self-esteem or any other fundamental passion. (70)
A. And with the death of curiosity, we may reckon that active
intelligence, also, has died. B. This impulse grows weaker with
advancing years until at last what is unfamiliar inspires only disgust, with no
desire for a closer acquaintance. C. Broadly speaking, the
higher the order of generality, the greater is the intelligence
involved. D. Curiosity properly so-called, on the other hand, is
inspired by a genuine love of knowledge. E. Open-mindedness
should, therefore, be one of the qualities that education aims at
producing. F. These things will develop of themselves, given the
original fund of curiosity and the proper intellectual education.