Kong Zi , also called Confucius (551-479 B.C) , and Socrates(469-399 B. C) lived only a hundred years apart , and during their lifetimesthere was no contact between China and Greece, but it is interesting to look athow the world that each of these great philosophers came from shaped theirideas , and how these ideas in turn ,shaped their societies.

Neither philosopher lived in times of peace, though there weremore wars in Greece than in China. The Chinese states were very large andfeudal, while the Greek city-states were small and urban. The urban environmentin which Socrates lived allowed him to be more radical than Confucius. UnlikeConfucius, Socrates was not asked by rules how to govern effectively. Thus,Socrates was able to be more idealistic, focusing on issues like freedom, andknowledge for its own sake. Confucius, on the other hand, advised those ingovernment service, and many of his students went out to government service.

Confucius suggested the Golden Rule as a principle for theconduct of life:” Do not do to others what you would not want others to do toyou.” He assumed that all men were equal at birth, though some had morepotential than others, and that it was knowledge that set men apart. Socratesfocused on the individual, and thought that the greatest purpose of man was toseek wisdom. He believed that the superior class should rule the inferior(下层的)classes.

For Socrates, the family was of no importance, and the communityof little concern. For Confucius, however, the family was the center of thesociety, with family relations considered much more important than politicalrelations.

Both men are respected much more today than they were in theirlifetimes.

    The Colonel（上校） asked Ashenden a good many questions and then suggested that he had particular qualifications for the Secret Service. Ashenden knew several European languages and the fact that he was a writer provided excellent cover: on the pretext（借口） that he was writing a book he could, without attracting attention, visit any neutral country.

    It was while they were discussing this point that the Colonel said, "You know you might get material that would be very useful to you in your work. I'll tell you an incident that occurred only recently. Very dramatic. A foreign government minister went down to a Mediterranean resort to recover from a cold and he had some very important documents with him that he kept in a dispatch case（公文箱）. A day or two after he arrived, he picked up a beautiful blonde at some restaurant or other, and he got very friendly with her . He took her back to his hotel, and when he came to himself in the morning, the lady and the dispatch-case had disappeared. They had one or two drinks up in his room and his theory is that when his back was turned the woman slipped a drug in his glass.

    "Do you mean to say that happened the other day?" said Ashenden.

    "The week before last ."

    "Impossible," cried Ashenden. "Why! We've been putting that incident on the stage for sixty years, we've written it in a thousand novels. Do you mean to say that life has only just caught up with us?"

    "Well, I can guarantee the truth of the story." said the Colonel, "And believe me, the government has been put to no end of trouble by the loss of the documents."

    "Well sir, if you can't do better than that in the Secret Service," sighed Ashenden, " I'm afraid that as a source of inspiration to the writer of fiction, it's washout（失败）."

    What makes a person a giver or a taker? The idea of “give versus take” takes shape in all relationships of our lives. We're either giving advice, making time for people, or we're on the receiving end. We alternate between the two based on different situations we face on a daily basis, it not an hourly one.

    According to Adam Grant, a professor at Pennsylvania University, most people are matchers. They make careful observations on takers and make it a point for them to pay something back. They hate to see people who act so generously towards others without receiving any reward. Actually, most matchers will try to promote and support givers so that they can get the good they deserve.

    Another professor named Hannah Rile Bowles, from Harvard University, led a study on the idea. She asked 200 senior managers to sit down in pairs where one person would act as the boss and the other as an employee to negotiate salary promotions. Male employees asked for an average salary of $146 k while the females asked for only $141 k. But why did they not bargain as hard as the men? Simply because they were more likely to be givers.

    As a woman, I do enjoy the act of giving up my time, my knowledge and my care and attention to others. I don't expect anything in return, but I do tend to pull myself away when I feel like I'm being taken for granted. I also tend to get upset when I see a loved one's continuous actions of kindness go unnoticed. So it's safe to say I'm 50% giver,35% matcher and 15% taker.

    I do know someone, however, who is 99% giver. They're devoting their time, sharing valuable insights and going out of their way for everyone who crosses their path. Although they've changed the lives of many people, they rarely see any of it returned. But the universe is slowly repaying them; they're now extremely successful, well known for what they do.

    My parents grew up during the Depression(大萧条) attending small country churches. At the close of Christmas Eve services, each child was given a brown paper bag containing an apple, an orange, nuts and several chocolates.

Years later, whenever Dad recalled that tradition, his eyes shone reliving the memory. My mother didn't share his enthusiasm. She always said the chocolates tasted cheap and old.

    Cheap chocolates or not, the paper bags with goodies were an event. Gifts of any sort during the Depression were rare, especially in large farm families with seven children.

    When our children were young and we were home for Christmas one year, Mom and Dad gave each of the grandkids a brown paper bag holding an apple, an orange, nuts and several chocolates. When we finished the 8-hour drive home after the holiday, there was a message waiting on the phone when we walked in the door. “Your ungrateful kids left their apples and oranges in the back of our refrigerator. No more fruit for them!” Grandpa and Grandma were joking, of course, but still there was a degree of disrespect in the kids leaving behind thoughtfully chosen gifts.

    But the paper bag didn't have a context for our children. They had never known fruit to be a scarcity(缺乏). They didn't appreciate the gift because they had never experienced the need the gift was meant to fill.

    The same is true of Christmas today. We don't appreciate the true gift of the season because we don't understand the need the gift was given to fill.

It's not like we don't know we have needs. We know them, all right—patience, love, self-control, strength, courage, faithfulness, forgiveness—it's just that we have become experts at numbing(使麻木) ourselves to our needs.

    The true gift of the season is a perfect fit for our every need. When a gift like apples and oranges fits a need, there is a cheerful satisfaction. When the gift of a Christmas tree fits a need, there is the joy of Christmas.

    Last year, I worked in a middle school near my mother's house, and I stayed with her for a month. During that time, I helped her do some housework and buy some food.

    After the first week, I noticed that the food was eaten up very quickly. Then I began keeping an eye on my mum. To my surprise, I found that she would put some of the food into a paper bag and go out with it at about nine every morning. And finally, I decided to follow her. I saw her taking the food to the street children. She would also spend a lot of time talking and playing with them.

One day, I talked to a neighbor and found out that my mum was well-known in the area. The children were very friendly with her and even thought of her as their own mother. Then it hit me —why wouldn't she want to tell me about it? Was she worried that I would stop buying food if I found out?

    When my mum got home, I gave her a big hug. I told her she didn't need to keep it a secret from me. She told me something about the children. Some of them lived with an old lady in a small house. Others slept on the street. For years, she was helping the poor street children by giving them food. After she told me everything, I was so moved by how selfless she was. She helped others in need. As her son, I was so proud of my mum.

    I continued to buy food for my mum after that. But I always added one more bag for her other children.

"Universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here," wrote the Victorian sage Thomas Carlyle. Well, not any more it is not.

Suddenly, Britain looks to have fallen out with its favourite historical form. This could be no more than a passing literary craze, but it also points to a broader truth about how we now approach the past: less concerned with learning from forefathers and more interested in feeling their pain. Today, we want empathy, not inspiration.

From the earliest days of the Renaissance, the writing of history meant recounting the exemplary lives of great men. In 1337, Petrarch began work on his rambling writing De Viris Illustribus (On Famous Men), highlighting the virtus (or virtue) of classical heroes. Petrarch celebrated their greatness in conquering fortune and rising to the top. This was the biographical tradition which Niccolo Machiavelli turned on its head. In The Prince, he championed cunning, ruthlessness, and boldness, rather than virtue, mercy and justice, as the skills of successful leaders.

Over time, the attributes of greatness shifted. The Romantics commemorated the leading painters and authors of their day, stressing the uniqueness of the artist's personal experience rather than public glory. By contrast, the Victorian author Samual Smiles wrote Self-Help as a catalogue of the worthy lives of engineers, industrialists and explores. "The valuable examples which they furnish of the power of self-help, if patient purpose, resolute working and steadfast integrity, issuing in the formulation of truly noble and many character, exhibit," wrote Smiles. "what it is in the power of each to accomplish for himself." His biographies of James Walt, Richard Arkwright and Josiah Wedgwood were held up as beacons to guide the working man through his difficult life.

This was all a bit bourgeois (庸俗的) for Thomas Carlyle, who focused his biographies on the truly heroic lives of Martin Luther, Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte. These epochal figures represented lives hard to imitate, but to be acknowledged as possessing higher authority than mere mortals.

Not everyone was convinced by such bombast (浮夸的描写): "The history of all existing society is the history of class struggle" wrote Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto. "It is man, real living man, who does all that." And history should be the story of the masses and their record of struggle.

This was the tradition which revolutionized our appreciation of the past. It transformed the public history: downstairs became just as fascinating as upstairs. In place of Thomas Carlyle, Britain nurtured Christopher Hill, EP Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm. Whole new realms of understanding—from gender to race to cultural studies—were opened up as scholars unpicked the diversity of lost societies.