俱乐部英文i pencil(里德”铅笔的故事“英文版)

2021年1月20日发(作者：c大调)
I, Pencil

My Family Tree as told to Leonard E. Read


I am a
lead pencil
—
the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and
adults who can read and write.*


Writing is both my
vocation
and my
avocation
; that’s all I do.


You may wonder why I should write a
genealogy
. Well, to begin with, my story
is interesting. And, next, I am a
mystery
—
more so than a tree or a sunset or even a
flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were
a mere
incident
and without background. This
supercilious
attitude
relegates
me to the
level of the
commonplace
. This is a species of the
grievous
error in which mankind
cannot too long persist without
peril
. For, the wise G
. K. Chesterton
observed
, “We
are
perishing
for want of
wonder
, not for want of
wonders
.”


I, Pencil, simple though
I
appear to
be,
merit

your
wonder

and
awe
,
a
claim
I
shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me
—no, that’s too much to ask
of anyone
—
if you can become aware of the
miraculousness
which I symbolize, you
can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to
teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an
automobile
or an airplane or a
mechanical dishwasher because
—
well, because I am seemingly so simple.


Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me.
This
sounds
fantastic
, doesn’t
it? Especially when it is
realized that there are about
one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.


Pick
me
up
and
look
me
over.
What
do
you
see?
Not
much
meets
the
eye
—there’s some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal,
and an
eraser
.


Innumerable Antecedents


Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me
to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them
to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.


My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that
grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks
and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to
the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into
their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws,
axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and

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strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the
raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of
coffee the loggers drink!


The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the
individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and
install
the
communication
systems
incidental
thereto?
These
legions
are
among
my
antecedents.


Consider
the
millwork
in
San
Leandro.
The
cedar
logs
are
cut
into
small,
pencil- length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried
and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that
I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many
skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light
and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the
mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for
the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies
the mill’s
power!


Don’t overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting
sixty carloads of slats across the nation.


Once
in
the
pencil
factory
—
$$4,000,000
in
machinery
and
building,
all
capital
accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine
—
each slat is given eight grooves
by
a
complex
machine,
after
which
another
machine
lays
leads
in
every
other
slat,
applies
glue,
and
places
another
slat
atop
—
a
lead
sandwich,
so
to
speak.
Seven
brothers and I are mechanically carved from
this “wood
-
clinched” sandwich.


My “lead” itself—
it contains no lead at all
—
is complex. The graphite is mined in
Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers
of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that
ties the sacks and those
who put
them aboard ships
and those who make the ships.
Even
the
lighthouse
keepers
along
the
way
assisted
in
my
birth
—
and
the
harbor
pilots.


The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide
is
used
in
the
refining
process.
Then
wetting
agents
are
added
such
as
sulfonated
tallow
—
animal
fats
chemically
reacted
with
sulfuric
acid.
After
passing
through
numerous
machines,
the
mixture
finally
appears
as
endless
extrusions
—
as
from
a
sausage
grinder-cut
to
size,
dried,
and
baked
for
several
hours
at
1,850
degrees
Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a
hot
mixture
which
includes
candelilla
wax
from
Mexico,
paraffin
wax,
and
hydrogenated natural fats.



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My
cedar
receives
six
coats
of
lacquer.
Do
you
know
all
the
ingredients
of
lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor
oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a
beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!


Observe
the
labeling.
That’s
a
film
formed
by
applying
heat
to
carbon
black
mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?


My bit of metal
—
the ferrule
—
is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc
and
copper
and
those
who
have
the
skills
to
make
shiny
sheet
brass
from
these
products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black
nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has
no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.


Then
there’s
my
crowning
glory,
inelegantly
referred
to
in
the
trade
as
“the
plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient
called
“factice”
is
what
does
the
erasing.
It
is
a
rubber
-like
product
made
by
reacting
rape-seed oil from the Dutch East Indies with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the
common
notion,
is
only
for
binding
purposes.
Then,
too,
there
are
numerous
vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment
which gives “the plug” its color is cadmium sulfide.


No One Knows


Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the
face of this earth knows how to make me?


Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of
whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say that I go too
far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far off Brazil and food growers elsewhere
to my creation; that this is an extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn’t
a single person in
all these millions, including the president of the pencil company,
who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of
know-how
. From the standpoint
of
know-how
the
only
difference
between
the
miner
of
graphite

in
Ceylon

and
the
logger
in
Oregon
is in the type of know-how. Neither the
miner
nor the
logger
can be
dispensed with
, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil
field
—
paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.


Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor
the
digger
of
graphite
or clay nor any who
mans
or makes the ships or trains or trucks
nor the one who runs the machine that does the
knurling
on my bit of metal nor the
president of the company performs his
singular
task because he wants me. Each one
wants
me less, perhaps,
than does
a
child in
the first
grade.
Indeed, there are some
among this vast
multitude
who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use

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one. Their motivation is
other than
me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these
millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services
he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items.


No Master Mind


There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone
dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No
trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This
is the mystery to which I earlier referred.


It has been said that “only God can make a tree.” Why do we agree with this?
Isn’t it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed, can we even
describe a tree? We cannot, except in
superficial
terms. We can say, for instance, that a
certain
molecular

configuration

manifests

itself
as
a
tree.
But
what
mind
is
there
among men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in molecules
that
transpire
in the life span of a tree? Such a
feat
is utterly unthinkable!


I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite,
and so on. But to these
miracles
which
manifest
themselves in Nature an even more
extraordinary
miracle
has
been
added:
the
configuration

of
creative
human
energies
—
millions
of
tiny
know-hows
configurating

naturally
and
spontaneously

in
response
to
human
necessity
and
desire
and
in
the
absence
of
any
human
master- minding! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make
me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than
he can put
molecules
together to create a tree.


The
above
is
what
I
meant
when
writing,
“If
you
can
become
aware
of
the
miraculousness

which
I
symbolize
,
you
can
help
save
the
freedom
mankind
is
so
unhappily
losing.”
For,
if
one
is
aware
that
these
know
-hows
will
naturally,
yes,
automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to
human necessity and demand
—
that is, in the absence of governmental or any other
coercive masterminding
—
then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for
freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.


Once government has had a
monopoly
of a creative activity such, for instance, as
the
delivery
of
the
mails,
most
individuals
will
believe
that
the
mails
could
not
be
efficiently
delivered
by
men
acting
freely.
And
here
is
the
reason:
Each
one
acknowledges that he himself doesn’t know how to do all
the things incident to mail
delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions
are
correct.
No
individual
possesses
enough
know-
how
to
perform
a
nation’s
mail
delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil.
Now, in the absence of faith in free people
—
in the unawareness that millions of tiny
know-hows
would
naturally
and
miraculously

form
and
cooperate
to
satisfy
this

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