UNIT 2 LISTENING
In the past three weeks I have introduced you to the ideas and methods of economics. In the next week,we will start learning more,in more detail ,the principles of economic behavior and economic policy.
As you proceed through the whole semester,you will be asked to draw on many of your intellectual skills. You might find it helpful to keep in mind some advice from the great economist John Maynard Keynes:
The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not...a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy or pure science?An easy subject, at which very few excel ! The paradox finds its explanation,perhaps,in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher-in some degree, He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate(思考、忖度) the particular in terms of the general,and touch abstract（抽象的东西） and concrete（具体的东西） in the same flight of thought. He must study the
present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future.No part of man’s nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist ,yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician.（在同一时刻他必须既目的明确又淡然无私，如艺术家一般超然物外，又如政客一样接近世俗。）
IT is a tall order （很高的要求）.But with practice ,you will become more and more accustomed to thinking like an economist.