Hobby and on Various Kinds

¶ … hobby and on various Kinds of thinking Compare / Contrast

Differing thoughts on the subject of thinking -- William Golding vs. Robinson

James Harvey Robinson's essay entitled "On various kinds of thinking" begins with the author expressing his mistrust of the history of abstract philosophy: "The truest and most profound observations on Intelligence have in the past been made by the poets and, in recent times, by story-writers," he writes, not by philosophers. However, he does not introduce personal experience or anecdotes into his argument that thinking cannot be detached from human experience. His main problem with philosophy is not that it is abstract, but that it is located in bad science and bad psychology. Philosophy has emphasized a mind/body distinction that does not acknowledge "bodily processes, animal impulses, savage traditions, infantile impressions, conventional reactions, and traditional knowledge," and subconscious as well as conscious thought. Robinson's essay seems heavily influenced by Freud's theory of the subconscious, and the degree to which personal experience influences thinking: "All thought that is not more or less laboriously controlled and directed will inevitably circle about the beloved Ego."

In contrast, to Robinson's abstractions William Golding opens up his essay "Thinking as a hobby" with a humorous example of his first encounter of a representation of Venus of Milo, which he first thought was a woman in a towel. While Robinson makes a general comment like: "the first thing that we notice is that our thought moves with such incredible rapidity that it is almost impossible to arrest any specimen of it long enough to have a look at it…On inspection we shall find that even if we are not downright ashamed of a great part of our spontaneous thinking it is far too intimate, personal, ignoble or trivial to permit us to reveal more than a small part of it," Golding offers a specific example this quality of thinking. For example, he cites the thought processes evidenced by his supposedly thoughtful teacher: "Mr. Houghton was given to high-minded monologues about the good life, sexless and full of duty. Yet in the middle of one of these monologues, if a girl passed the window, tapping along on her neat little feet, he would interrupt his discourse, his neck would turn of itself and he would watch her out of sight. In this instance, he seemed to me ruled not by thought but by an invisible and irresistible spring in his nape." The overcoming of rational thought with the emotional, primal, and unconscious emotions described by Robinson is literally depicted in this scene of Golding's -- no matter how strong Mr. Houghton's articulated philosophy, his neck betrays him and he turns to look at a pretty girl.

Golding and Robinson thus both emphasize the power of the unconscious mind, and stress that the mind is not separate from the impulses of the body. Yet Golding is less interested on taking on a philosophical debate of the mind/body question, and tends to deploy a more colloquial definition of thinking, and uses more haphazard, humorous, and self-depreciating examples to make his argument. When Golding deals with questions such as: "What were you thinking?" which people cried quite frequently when he was growing up, he fluidly switches from one definition of the word 'thinking' in English to another, without concern for scrupulously using the same definition of thought. As a child, Golding's habit of 'thinking' is really a habit of questioning assumptions, while his teachers, friends, and parents do not. His is a broad and humorous use of the word thinking stands in contrast to the notion of thought or philosophical introspection in the Robinson piece. Robinson offers a very specific definition of thinking: "we shall consider mind chiefly as conscious knowledge and intelligence, as what we know and our attitude toward it -- our disposition to increase our information, classify it, criticize it and apply it."

In Golding's essay, 'thinking' can mean everything from learning, to listening, to showing consideration before acting. "I know what I think!" cries his bully of a schoolteacher, while Golding's implication is that the man has not 'thought' -- that is, deeply reflected -- upon anything in his life, he merely transmits received truths. But Golding is less interested in showing the fallacies of the Western tradition of mind/body dualism than he is humorously depicting the lack of intelligence of those who presumably 'know better' within society. Robinson denies both the mind/body distinction and the notion that we can 'know' our consciousness very well at all, given how much is relegated to subconscious thought. Robinson notes that mind is after all the product of one's brain, which is an organ of the body. But for Golding, the mind/body distinction is shown as false through more instinctual than theoretical approaches. Golding's interest in the mind/body link dates from childhood -- beginning with his fascination with half-nude Venus, and the twitching, angry bulge of a neck of his teacher, his curiosity in thought leads him to try to seduce a schoolgirl, attempting to dissuade her from her Methodist convictions. Golding calls this 'second grade' thinking -- the beliefs that rationality alone can convince someone to change his or her mind or that ideas are advanced without emotional, subjective motivations.