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Courage
Some of the world’s oldest and best stories are about courage. They are stories that people always want to hear, and they have been told again and again. Many of these are in this book—stories of Leonidas and Joan of Arc, for example, of Robert Bruce and Grace Darling. Some of these heroes lived hundreds of years ago, but their courage will never be forgotten.
You will also find in this book stories that are not nearly so well known, such as the story of Sir Edmund Verney, Charles I’s Standard Bearer, or of John Stuart Mould, the Australian, who risked his life taking mines to pieces. Some are stories of the past; more than a quarter are about people who lived in this century, such as John Kennedy, Thor Heyerdahl, and the South African Negro leader, Albert Luthuli. You will have read about some of them in the newspapers, or heard people talking of them, but some of them will probably be quite new to you.
We have chosen courageous people from all over the world: Alexander Nevsky was Russian, John Sobieski and Marie Curie were Polish, Madeleine de Vercheres was a French Canadian, and Toussaint l’Ouverture, who lived in the West Indies, was the grandson of an African chief.
The oldest stories here are almost all about courage in 【C1】______, for in the days when battles were the most important【C2】______ , this was the sort of courage people always【C3】______. But later they began to realize that other ways of being brave could be【C4】______ important, and sometimes, perhaps, needed 【C5】______ courage than fighting bravely. Now we admire people【C6】______ the courage to say and teach what they believe in, 【C7】______ we have the stories of Socrates, and of religious martyrs【C8】______St. Peter to Edmund Campion. You need courage to face【C9】______, as Alexander Nevsky and William the Silent both【C10】______ at times. You need courage to fight against illness or 【C11】______, as Franklin Roosevelt, Beethoven, and Helen Keller【C12】______. And you need even more courage to go on and on【C13】______ and trying again, however often you fail. Neither Elizabeth Garrett Anderson nor Marie Curie【C14】______their great and useful work if they【C15】______ this kind of courage.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was a pioneer, a woman who had the courage to do something new. A pioneer is a kind of【C16】______ — just as much an explorer as Shackleton, who faced【C17】______ from the elements, or as Alan Shepard and other pioneers in space, who face the【C18】______.
There is another kind of courage which is less easy to recognize and probably does【C19】______ so much fame, and that is the courage of a person who starts by being a【C20】______. There are some people who, almost without thinking, can show【C21】______courage in the excitement of a moment; there are others who【C22】______ want to ran away. St. Peter wanted to【C23】______, and so in the 16th century did Thomas Cranmer. When people like this 【C24】______ their natural cowardice and force themselves to be 【C25】______ , as both these men did, we respect them very much, 【C26】______ they may have failed before.
You can probably think of people who might be in this book and are not; but we could only choose 43 【C27】______ of courage out of the many thousands that there are. Some heroes have not been 【C28】______ in this book because their stories are told in one of【C29】______ books in this series. The story of Gandhi, the great Indian【C30】______ , comes in the book India and Her Neighbours; in Exploring the world there is the story of the selfless courage of Captain Oates who deliberately walked out into the Antarctic blizzard to die, so as to give his companions a better hope of surviving. In the same book are the stories of many other gallant explorers.
Last of all there are the brave people nobody knows about: the people who were brave even when there was no one there to see, and who said nothing about it; people who let others have the praise for what they did; and people who faced things which their friends never knew needed courage. Nobody writes stories about them, but many of us can recognize people like this among our own friends.
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The EQ Factory
New brain research suggests that emotions, not IQ, may be the true measure of human intelligence — by Nancy Gibbs
It turns out that a scientist can see the future by watching four-year-olds interact with a marshmallow. The researcher invites the children, one by one, into a plain room and begins the gentle torment. You can have this marshmallow right now, he says. But if you wait while I run an errand, you can have two marshmallows when I get back. And then he leaves.
Some children grab for the treat the minute he’s out the door. Some last a few minutes before they give in. But others are determined to wait. They cover their eyes; they put their heads down; they sing to themselves; they try to play games or even fall asleep. When the researcher returns, he gives these children their hard-earned marshmallows. And then science waits for them to grow up.
By the time the children reach high school, something【C1】______ has happened. A survey of the children’s【C2】______ and teachers found that those who as four-year-olds had the【C3】______ to hold out for the second marshmallow【C4】______ grew up to be better adjusted, more popular, adventurous, confident and 【C5】______ teenagers. The children who give in to temptation early on were more【C6】______ to be lonely, easily frustrated and stubborn. They【C7】______ under stress and shied away from challenges. And【C8】______some of the students in the two groups took the Scholastic 【C9】______ Test, which U. S. students take when applying to university, the kids who had【C10】______ out longer scored an average of 210 points higher(possible scores on each part of the SAT range from 200 to 800).
When we think of【C11】______ , many of us see Einstein, a thinking machine with skin and【C12】______ socks. High achievers, we imagine, are wired for【C13】______ from birth. But then you have to wonder why, over time, natural【C14】______ seems to ignite in some people and【C15】______ in others. This is where the marshmallows come in. It seems that the ability to【C16】______ gratification is a master skill, a triumph of the【C17】______brain over the impulsive one. It is a sign, in short, of【C18】______ intelligence. And it doesn’t show up on an IQ test.
For most of this century, scientists have【C19】______ the hardware of the brain and the software of the 【C20】______ ; the messy powers of the heart were left to the poets. But【C21】______ theory could simply not explain the questions we winder about【C22】______: why some people just seem to have a gift for living well; why the【C23】______ kid in the class will probably not end up the【C24】______; why we like some people virtually on sight and【C25】______ others; why some people remain buoyant in the face of【C26】______that would sink a less resilient soul. What qualities of the mind or【C27】______ , in short, determine who succeeds?
The phrase emotional intelligence was【C28】______ by Yale psychologist Peter Salovey and the University of New Hampshire’s John Mayer five years ago to describe【C29】______ like understanding one’s own feelings, empathy for the 【C30】______ of others and “the regulation of emotion in a way that enhances living. “ Their notion is about to bound into American conversation, handily shortened to EQ, thanks to a new book, Emotional Intelligence(Bantam) by Daniel Goleman. Goleman, a New York Times science writer with a Ph. D. in psychology from Harvard and a gift for making even the chewiest scientific theories digestible to lay readers, has brought together a decade’s worth of behavioral research into how the mind processes feelings. His goal, he announces on the cover, is to redefine what it means to be smart.
