PROVERBS xxix. 18.
One of the most quoted—and also mis-quoted—proverbs of the wise Solomon says, as translated in the authorized1 version: "Where there is no vision, the people perish." What Solomon actually said was: "Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint." The translator thus confused an effect with a cause. What was the vision to which the Wise Man referred? The rest of the proverb, which is rarely quoted, explains:
"Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."
The vision, then, is the authority of law, and Solomon's warning is that to which the great and noble founder3 of Pennsylvania, William Penn, many centuries later gave utterance4, when he said:
"That government is free to the people under it, where the laws rule and the people are a party to those laws; and all the rest is tyranny, oligarchy5 and confusion."
It is my present purpose to discuss the moral psychology6 of the present revolt against the spirit of authority. Too little consideration has been paid by the legal profession to questions of moral psychology. These have been left to metaphysicians and ecclesiastics7, and yet—to paraphrase8 the saying of the Master—"the laws were made for man and not man for the laws," and if the science of the law ignores the study of human nature and attempts to conform man to the laws, rather than the laws to man, then its development is a very partial and imperfect one.
Let me first be sure of my premises9. Is there in this day and generation a spirit of lawlessness greater or different than that that has always characterized human society? Such spirit of revolt against authority has always existed, even when the penalty of death was visited upon nearly all offences against life and property. Blackstone tells us (Book IV, Chap. I) that in the eighteenth century it was a capital offence to cut down a cherry tree in an orchard—a drastic penalty which should increase our admiration10 for George Washington's courage and veracity11.
We are apt to see the past in a golden haze12, which obscures our vision. Thus, we think of William Penn's "holy experiment" on the banks of the Delaware as the realization13 of Sir Thomas More's dream of Utopia; and yet Pennsylvania was somewhat intemperately14 called in 1698 "the greatest refuge for pirates and rogues15 in America," and Penn himself wrote, about that time, that he had heard of no place which was "more overrun with wickedness" than his City of Brotherly Love, where things were so "openly committed in defiance16 of law and virtue—facts so foul17 that I am forbid by common modesty18 to relate them."
Conceding that lawlessness is not a novel phenomenon, is not the present time characterized by an exceptional revolt against the authority of law? The statistics of our criminal courts show in recent years an unprecedented19 growth in crimes. Thus, in the federal courts, pending20 criminal indictments22 have increased from 9503 in the year 1912 to over 70,000 in the year 1921. While this abnormal increase is, in part, due to sumptuary legislation—for approximately 30,000 cases now pending arise under the prohibition23 statutes24—yet, eliminating these, there yet remains25 an increase in nine years of over 400 per cent, in the comparatively narrow sphere of the federal criminal jurisdiction26. I have been unable to get the data from the State Courts; but the growth of crimes can be measured by a few illustrative statistics. Thus, the losses from burglaries which have been repaid by casualty companies have grown in amount from $886,000 in 1914 to over $10,000,000 in 1920; and, in a like period, embezzlements have increased five-fold. It is notorious that the thefts from the mails and express companies and other carriers have grown to enormous proportions. The hold-up of railroad trains is now of frequent occurrence, and is not confined to the unsettled sections of the country. Not only in the United States, but even in Europe, such crimes of violence are of increasing frequency, and a recent dispatch from Berne, under date of August 7, 1921, stated that the famous International Expresses of Europe were now run under a military guard.
The streets of our cities, once reasonably secure from crimes of violence, have now become the field of operations for the foot-pad and highwayman. The days of Dick Turpin and Jack28 Sheppard have returned, with this serious difference—that the Turpins and Sheppards of our day are not dependent upon the horse, but have the powerful automobile29 to facilitate their crimes and make sure their escape.
Thus in Chicago alone, 5000 automobiles30 were stolen in a single year. Once murder was an infrequent and abnormal crime. To-day in our large cities it is of almost daily occurrence. In New York, in 1917, there were 236 murders and only 67 convictions; in 1918, 221, and 77 convictions. In Chicago, in 1919, there were 336, and 44 convictions.
When the crime wave was at its height a year ago, the police authorities in more than one American city confessed their impotence to impose effective restraints. Life and property had seemingly become almost as insecure as during the Middle Ages.[3]
[Footnote 3: The reader will bear in mind that these words were spoken in August 1921. Unquestionably, the situation has greatly improved during the present year(1922).]
As to the subtler and more insidious31 crimes against the political state, it is enough to say that graft33 has become a science in city, state and nation. Losses by such misapplication of public funds—piled Pelion on Ossa—no longer run in the millions but the hundreds of millions. Our city governments are, in many instances, foul cancers on the body politic32; and for us to boast of having solved the problem of local self-government is as fatuous34 as for a strong man to exult35 in his health when his body is covered with running sores. It has been estimated that the annual profits from violations36 of the prohibition laws have reached $300,000,000. Men who thus violate these laws for sordid38 gain are not likely to obey other laws, and the respect for law among all classes steadily39 diminishes as our people become familiar with, and tolerant to, wholesale40 criminality. Whether the moral and economic results of Prohibition overbalance this rising wave of crime, time will tell.
In limine, let us note the significant fact that this spirit of revolt against authority is not confined to the political state, and therefore its causes lie beyond that sphere of human action.
Human life is governed by all manner of man-made laws—laws of art, of social intercourse41, of literature, music, business—all evolved by custom and imposed by the collective will of society. Here we find the same revolt against tradition and authority.
In music, its fundamental canons have been thrown aside and discord42 has been substituted for harmony as its ideal. Its culmination—jazz—is a musical crime. If the forms of dancing and music are symptomatic of an age, what shall be said of the universal craze to indulge in crude and clumsy dancing to the vile43 discords44 of so-called "jazz" music? The cry of the time is:
"On with the dance, let joy be" unrefined.
In the plastic arts, the laws of form and the criteria45 of beauty have been swept aside by the futurists, cubists, vorticists, tactilists, and other aesthetic46 Bolsheviki.
In poetry, where beauty of rhythm, melody of sound and nobility of thought were once regarded as the true tests, we now have in freak forms of poetry the exaltation of the grotesque47 and brutal48. Hundreds of poets are feebly echoing the "barbaric yawp" of Walt Whitman, without the redeeming49 merit of his occasional sublimity50 of thought.
In commerce, the revolt is against the purity of standards and the integrity of business morals. Who can question that this is pre-eminently the age of the sham51 and the counterfeit52? Science is prostituted to deceive the public by cloaking the increasing deterioration53 in quality of merchandise. The blatant54 medium of advertising55 has become so mendacious56 as to defeat its own purpose.
In the recent deflation in commodity values, there was widespread "welching" among business men who had theretofore been classed as reputable. Of course, I recognize that a far greater number kept their contracts, even when it brought them to the verge57 of ruin. But when in the history of American business was there such a volume of broken faith as in the drastic deflation of 1920?
In the greater sphere of social life, we find the same revolt against the institutions which have the sanction of the past. Social laws, which mark the decent restraints of print, speech and dress, have in recent decades been increasingly disregarded. The very foundations of the great and primitive58 institutions of mankind—like the family, the Church, and the State—have been shaken. Nature itself is defied. Thus, the fundamental difference of sex is disregarded by social and political movements which ignore the permanent differentiation59 of social function ordained60 by Nature.
All these are but illustrations of the general revolt against the authority of the past—a revolt that can be measured by the change in the fundamental presumption61 of men with respect to the value of human experience. In all former ages, all that was in the past was presumptively true, and the burden was upon him who sought to change it. To-day, the human mind apparently62 regards the lessons of the past as presumptively false—and the burden is upon him who seeks to invoke63 them.
Lest I be accused of undue64 pessimism65, let me cite as a witness one who, of all men, is probably best equipped to express an opinion upon the moral state of the world. I refer to the venerable head of that religious organization[4] which, with its trained representatives in every part of the world, is probably better informed as to its spiritual state than any other organization.
[Footnote 4: Reference is to the late Pope Benedict.]
Speaking last Christmas Eve, in an address to the College of Cardinals66, the venerable Pontiff gave expression to an estimate of present conditions which should have attracted far greater attention than it apparently did.
The Pope said that five plagues were now afflicting67 humanity.
The first was the unprecedented challenge to authority.
The second, an equally unprecedented hatred68 between man and man.
The third was the abnormal aversion to work.
The fourth, the excessive thirst for pleasure as the great aim of life.
The fifth, a gross materialism69 which denied the reality of the spiritual in human life.
The accuracy of this indictment21 will commend itself to men who like myself are not of Pope Benedict's communion.
I trust that I have already shown that the challenge to authority is universal and is not confined to that of the political state. Even in the narrower confine of the latter, the fires of revolution are either violently burning, or, at least, smouldering. Two of the oldest empires in the world, which, together, have more than half of its population (China and Russia) are in a welter of anarchy70; while many lesser71 nations are in a stage of submerged revolt. If the revolt were confined to autocratic governments, we might see in it merely a reaction against tyranny; but even in the most stable of democracies and among the most enlightened peoples, the underground rumblings of revolution may be heard.
The Government of Italy has been preserved from overthrow73, not alone by its constituted authorities, but by a band of resolute74 men, called the "fascisti," who have taken the law into their own hands, as did the vigilance committees in western mining camps, to put down worse disorders75.
Even England, the mother of democracies, and the most stable of all Governments in the maintenance of law, has been shaken to its very foundations in the last three years, when powerful groups of men attempted to seize the State by the throat and compel submission76 to their demands by threatening to starve the community. This would be serious enough if it were only the world-old struggle between capital and labour and had only involved the conditions of manual toil77. But the insurrection against the political state in England was more political than it was economic. It marked, on the part of millions of men, a portentous78 decay of belief in representative government and its chosen organ—the ballot79 box. Great and powerful groups had suddenly discovered—and it may be the most portentous political discovery of the twentieth century—that the power involved in their control over the necessaries of life, as compared with the power of the voting franchise80, was as a forty-two centimetre cannon81 to the bow and arrow. The end sought to be attained82, namely the nationalization of the basic industries, and even the control of the foreign policy of Great Britain, vindicated83 the truth of the British Prime Minister's statement that these great strikes involved something more than a mere72 struggle over the conditions of labour, and that they were essentially85 seditious attempts against the life of the State.[5]
[Footnote 5: I am here speaking of the conditions of 1920. I appreciate the great improvement, which seems to me to justify86 the Lincoln-like patience of Lloyd George.]
Nor were they altogether unsuccessful; for, when the armies of Lenin and Trotsky were at the gates of Warsaw, in the summer of 1920, the attempts of the Governments of England and Belgium to afford assistance to the embattled Poles were paralysed by the labour groups of both countries, who threatened a general strike if those two nations joined with France in aiding Poland to resist a possibly greater menace to Western civilization than has occurred since Attila and his Huns stood on the banks of the Marne.
Of greater significance to the welfare of civilization is the complete subversion87 during the world war of nearly all the international laws which had been slowly built up in a thousand years. These principles, as codified88 by the two Hague Conventions, were immediately swept aside in the fierce struggle for existence, and civilized89 man, with his liquid fire and poison gas and his deliberate; attacks upon undefended cities and their women and children, waged war with the unrelenting ferocity of primitive times.
Surely, this fierce war of extermination90, which caused the loss of three hundred billion dollars in property and thirty millions of human lives, did mark for the time being the "twilight91 of civilization." The hands on the dial of time had been put back—temporarily, let us hope and pray—a thousand years.
Nor will many question the accuracy of the second count in Pope Benedict's indictment. The war to end war only ended in unprecedented hatred between nation and nation, class and class, and man and man. Victors and vanquished92 are involved in a common ruin. And if in this deluge93 of blood, which has submerged the world, there is a Mount Ararat, upon which the ark of a truer and better peace can find refuge, it has not yet appeared above the troubled surface of the waters.
Still less can one question the closely related third and fourth counts in Pope Benedict's indictment, namely the unprecedented aversion to work, when work is most needed to reconstruct the foundations of prosperity, or the excessive thirst for pleasure which preceded, accompanied, and now has followed the most terrible tragedy in the annals of mankind. The true spirit of work seems to have vanished from millions of men; that spirit of which Shakespeare made his Orlando speak when he said of his true servant, Adam:
"O good old man! how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world.
When service sweat for duty, not for meed!"
The moral of our industrial civilization has been shattered. Work for work's sake, as the most glorious privilege of human faculties94, has gone, both as an ideal and as a potent95 spirit. The conception of work as a degrading servitude, to be done with reluctance96 and grudging97 inefficiency98, seems to be the ideal of millions of men of all classes and in all countries.
The spirit of work is of more than sentimental99 importance. It may be said of it, as Hamlet says of death: "The readiness is all." All of us are conscious of the fact that, given a love of work, and the capacity for it seems almost illimitable—as witness Napoleon, with his thousand-man power, or Shakespeare, who in twenty years could write more than twenty masterpieces.
On the other hand, given an aversion to work, and the less a man does the less he wants to do, or is seemingly capable of doing.
The great evil of the world to-day is this aversion to work. As the mechanical era diminished the element of physical exertion100 in work, we would have supposed that man would have sought expression for his physical faculties in other ways. On the contrary, the whole history of the mechanical era is a persistent101 struggle for more pay and less work, and to-day it has culminated102 in world-wide ruin; for there is not a nation in civilization which is not now in the throes of economic distress103, and many of them are on the verge of ruin. In my judgment104, the economic catastrophe105 of 1921 is far greater than the politico-military catastrophe of 1914.
The results of these two tendencies, measured in the statistics of productive industry, are literally106 appalling107.
Thus, in 1920, Italy, according to statistics of her Minister of Labour, lost 55,000,000 days of work because of strikes alone. From July to September, many great factories were in the hands of revolutionary communists. A full third of these strikes had for their end political and not economic purposes.
In Germany, the progressive revolt of labour against work is thus measured by competent authority: There were lost in strikes in 1917, 900,000 working days; in 1918, 4,900,000, and, in 1919, 46,600,000.
Even in our own favoured land, the same phenomena108 are observable. In the State of New York alone for 1920, there was a loss due to strikes of over 10,000,000 working days.
In all countries the losses by such cessations from labour are little as compared with those due to the spirit which in England is called "ca'-canny" or the shirking of performance of work, and of sabotage109, which means the deliberate destruction of machinery110 in operation. Everywhere the phenomenon has been observed that, with the highest wages known in the history of modern times, there has been an unmistakable lessening111 of efficiency, and that with an increase in the number of workers, there has been a decrease in output. Thus, the transportation companies in the United States have seriously made a claim against the United States Government for damages to their roads, amounting to $750,000,000, claimed to be due to the inefficiency of labour during the period of governmental operation.
Accompanying this indisposition to work efficiently112 has been a mad desire for pleasure, such as, if it existed in like measure in preceding ages, has not been seen within the memory of living man. Man has danced upon the verge of a social abyss, and, as previously113 suggested, the dancing has, both in form and in accompanying music, lost its former grace and reverted114 to the primitive forms of crude vulgarity.
which gives the spectators the maximum of emotional expression with the minimum of mental effort, had not been eclipsed by the splendour of a Dempsey or a Carpentier.
Of the last count in Pope Benedict's indictment, I shall say but little. It is more appropriate for the members of that great and noble profession which is more intimately concerned with the spiritual advance of mankind. It is enough to say that, while the Church as an institution continues to exist, the belief in the supernatural and even in the spiritual has been supplanted115 in the souls of millions of men by a gross and debasing materialism.
If my reader agrees with me in my premises then we are not likely to disagree in the conclusion that the causes of these grave symptoms are not ephemeral or superficial; but must have their origin in some deep-seated and world-wide change in human society. If there is to be a remedy, we must first diagnose this malady116 of the human soul.
For example, let us not "lay the flattering unction to our souls" that this spirit is solely117 the reaction of the great war.
The present weariness and lassitude of human spirit and the disappointment and disillusion118 as to the aftermath of the harvest of blood, may have aggravated119, but they could not cause the symptoms of which I speak; for the very obvious reason that all these symptoms were in existence and apparent to a few discerning men for decades before the war. Indeed, it is possible that the world war, far from causing the malaise of the age, was, in itself, but one of its many symptoms.
Undoubtedly120, there are many contributing causes which have swollen121 the turbid122 tide of this world-wide revolution against the spirit of authority.
Thus, the multiplicity of laws does not tend to develop a law-abiding123 spirit. This fact has often been noted124. Thus Napoleon, on the eve of the 18th Brumaire, complained that France, with a thousand folios of law, was a lawless nation. Unquestionably, the political state suffers in authority by the abuse of legislation, and especially by the appeal to law to curb125 evils that are best left to individual conscience.
In this age of democracy, the average individual is too apt to recognize two constitutions—one, the constitution of the State, and the second, an unwritten constitution, to him of higher authority, under which he believes that no law is obligatory126 which he regards as in excess of the true powers of government. Of this latter spirit, the widespread violation37 of the prohibition law is a familiar illustration.
A race of individualists obey reluctantly, when they obey at all, any laws which they regard as unreasonable127 or vexatious. Indeed, they are increasingly opposed to any law, which affects their selfish interests. Thus many good women are involuntary smugglers. They deny the authority of the state to impose a tax upon a Paquin gown. The law's delays and laxity in administration breed a spirit of contempt, and too often invite men to take the law into their own hands. These causes are so familiar that their statement is a commonplace.
Proceeding128 to deeper and less recognized causes, some would attribute this spirit of lawlessness to the rampant129 individualism, which began in the eighteenth century, and which has steadily and naturally grown with the advance of democratic institutions. Undoubtedly, the excessive emphasis upon the rights of man, which marked the political upheaval130 of the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, has contributed to this malady of the age. Men talked, and still talk, loudly of their rights, but too rarely of their duties. And yet if we were to attribute the malady merely to excessive individualism, we would again err2 in mistaking a symptom for a cause.
To diagnose truly this malady we must look to some cause that is coterminous131 in time with the disease itself and which has been operative throughout civilization. We must seek some widespread change in social conditions, for man's essential nature has changed but little, and the change must, therefore, be of environment.
I know of but one such change that is sufficiently132 widespread and deep-seated to account adequately for this malady of our time.
Beginning with the close of the eighteenth century, and continuing throughout the nineteenth, a prodigious133 transformation134 has taken place in the environment of man, which has done more to revolutionize the conditions of human life than all the changes that had taken place in the 500,000 preceding years which science has attributed to man's life on the planet. Up to the period of Watt135's discovery of steam vapour as a motive136 power, these conditions, so far as the principal facilities of life, were substantially those of the civilization which developed eighty centuries ago on the banks of the Nile and later on the Euphrates. Man had indeed increased his conquest over Nature in later centuries by a few mechanical inventions, such as gunpowder137, telescope, magnetic needle, printing-press, spinning jenny, and hand-loom, but the characteristic of all those inventions, with the exception of gunpowder, was that they still remained a subordinate auxiliary138 to the physical strength and mental skill of man. In other words, man still dominated the machine, and there was still full play for his physical and mental faculties. Moreover, all the inventions of preceding ages, from the first fashioning of the flint to the spinning-wheel and the hand-lever press, were all conquests of the tangible139 and visible forces of Nature.
With Watt's utilization140 of steam vapour as a motive power, man suddenly passed into a new and portentous chapter of his varied141 history. Thenceforth, he was to multiply his powers a thousandfold by the utilization of the invisible powers of Nature—such as vapour and electricity. This prodigious change in his powers, and therefore his environment, has proceeded with ever-accelerating speed.
Man has suddenly become the superman. Like the giants of the ancient fable142, he has stormed the very ramparts of Divine power, or, like Prometheus, he has stolen fire of omnipotent143 forces from Heaven itself for his use. His voice can now reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and, taking wing in his aeroplane, he can fly in one swift flight from Nova Scotia to England, or he can leave Lausanne and, resting upon the icy summit of Mont Blanc—thus, like "the herald144, Mercury, new-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill"—he can again plunge145 into the void, and thus outfly the eagles themselves.
In thus acquiring from the forces of Nature almost illimitable power, he has minimized the necessity for his own physical exertion or even mental skill. The machine now not only acts for him, but too often thinks for him.
Is it surprising that so portentous a change should have fevered his brain and disturbed his mental equilibrium146? A new ideal, which he proudly called "progress," obsessed147 him, the ideal of quantity and not quality. His practical religion became that of acceleration148 and facilitation—to do things more quickly and easily—and thus to minimize exertion became his great objective. Less and less he relied upon the initiative of his own brain and muscle, and more and more he put his faith in the power of machinery to relieve him of labour. The evil of our age is that its values are all false. It overrates speed, it underrates sureness; it overrates the new, it underrates the old; it overrates automatic efficiency, it underrates individual craftsmanship149; it overrates rights, it underrates duties; it overrates political institutions, it underrates individual responsibility. We glory in the fact that we can talk a thousand miles, but we ignore the greater question, whether when we thus out-do Stentor, we have anything worth saying. We have now made the serene150 spaces of the upper Heavens our media to transmit market reports and sporting news, second-rate music and worse oratory151 and in the meantime the great masters of thought, Homer and Shakespeare, Bach and Beethoven remain unbidden on our library shelves. What a sordid Vanity Fair is our modern Civilization!
This incalculable multiplication152 of power has intoxicated153 man. The lust27 has obsessed him, without regard to whether it be constructive154 or destructive. Quantity, not quality, becomes the great objective. Man consumes the treasures of the earth faster than he produces them, deforesting its surface and disembowelling its hidden wealth. As he feverishly155 multiplied the things he desired, even more feverishly he multiplied his wants.
To gain these, man sought the congested centres of human life. While the world, as a whole, is not over-populated, the leading countries of civilization were subjected to this tremendous pressure. Europe, which, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, barely numbered 100,000,000 people, suddenly grew nearly five-fold. Millions left the farms to gather into the cities to exploit their new and seemingly easy conquest over Nature.
In the United States, as recently as 1880, only 15 per cent. of the people were crowded in the cities, 85 per cent. remained upon the farms and still followed that occupation, which, of all occupations, still preserves, in its integrity, the dominance of human labour over the machine. To-day, 52 per cent. of the population is in the cities, and with many of them existence is both feverish156 and artificial. While they have employment, many of them do not themselves work, but spend their lives in watching machines work.
The result has been a minute subdivision of labour that has denied to many workers the true significance and physical benefit of labour.
The direct results of this excessive tendency to specialization, whereby not only the work but the worker becomes divided into mere fragments, are threefold. Hobson, in his work on John Ruskin, thus classifies them. In the first place, narrowness, due to the confinement157 to a single action in which the elements of human skill or strength are largely eliminated; secondly158, monotony, in the assimilation of man to a machine, whereby seemingly the machine dominates man and not man the machine, and, thirdly, irrationality159, in that work became dissociated in the mind of the worker with any complete or satisfying achievement. The worker does not see the fruit of his travail160, and cannot therefore be truly satisfied. To spend one's life in opening a valve to make a part of a pin is, as Ruskin pointed161 out, demoralizing in its tendencies. The clerk who only operates an adding machine has little opportunity for self-expression.
Thus, millions of men have lost both the opportunity for real physical exertion, the incentive162 to work in the joyous163 competition of skill, and finally the reward of work in the sense of achievement.
More serious than this, however, has been the destructive effort of quantity, the great object of the mechanical age, at the expense of quality.
Take, for example, the printing-press: No one can question the immense advantages which have flowed from the increased facility for transmitting ideas. But may it not be true that the thousandfold increase in such transmission by the rotary164 press has also tended to muddy the current thought of the time? True it is that the printing-press has piled up great treasures of human knowledge which make this age the richest in accessible information. I am not speaking of knowledge, but rather of the current thought of the living generation.
I gravely question whether it has the same clarity as the brain of the generation which fashioned the Constitution of the United States. Our fathers could not talk over the telephone for three thousand miles, but have we surpassed them in thoughts of enduring value? Washington and Franklin could not travel sixty miles an hour in a railroad train, or twice that speed in an aeroplane, but does it follow that they did not travel to as good purpose as we, who scurry165 to and fro like the ants in a disordered ant-heap?
Unquestionably, man of to-day has a thousand ideas suggested to him by the newspaper and the library where our ancestors had one; but have we the same spirit of calm inquiry166 and do we co-ordinate the facts we know as wisely as our ancestors did?
Athens in the days of Pericles had but thirty thousand people and few mechanical inventions; but she produced philosophers, poets and artists, whose work after more than twenty centuries still remain the despair of the would-be imitators.
Shakespeare had a theatre with the ground as its floor and the sky as its ceiling; but New York, which has fifty theatres and annually167 spends $100,000,000 in the box offices of its varied amusement resorts, has rarely in two centuries produced a play that has lived.
To-day, man has a cinematographic brain. A thousand images are impressed daily upon the screen of his consciousness, but they are as fleeting168 as moving pictures in a cinema theatre. The American Press prints every year over 29,000,000,000 issues. No one can question its educational possibilities, for the best of all colleges is potentially the University of Gutenberg. If it printed only the truth, its value would be infinite; but who can say in what proportions of this vast volume of printed matter is the true and the false? The framers of the Constitution had few books and fewer newspapers. Their thoughts were few and simple, but what they lacked in quantity they made up in unsurpassed quality.
Before the beginning of the present mechanical age, the current of living thought could be likened to a mountain stream, which though confined within narrow banks yet had waters of transparent169 clearness. May not the current thought of our time be compared with the mighty170 Mississippi in the period of a spring freshet? Its banks are wide and its current is swift, but the turbid stream that flows onward171 is one of muddy swirls172 and eddies173 and overflows174 its banks to their destruction.
The great indictment, however, of the present age of mechanical power is that it has largely destroyed the spirit of work. The great enigma175 which it propounds176 to us, and which, like the riddle177 of the Sphinx, we will solve or be destroyed, is this:
Has the increase in the potential of human power, through thermodynamics, been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the potential of human character?
To this life and death question, a great French philosopher, Le Bon, writing in 1910, replied that the one unmistakable symptom of human life was "the increasing deterioration in human character," and a great physicist178 has described the symptom as "the progressive enfeeblement of the human will."
In a famous book, Degeneration, written at the close of the nineteenth century, Max Nordau, as a pathologist, explains this tendency by arguing that our complex civilization has placed too great a strain upon the limited nervous organization of man.
A great financier, the elder J.P. Morgan, once said of an existing financial condition that it was suffering from "undigested securities," and, paraphrasing179 him, is it not possible that man is suffering from undigested achievements and that his salvation180 must lie in adaptation to a new environment, which, measured by any standard known to science, is a thousandfold greater in this year of grace than it was at the beginning of the nineteenth century?
No one would be mad enough to urge such a retrogression as the abandonment of labour-saving machinery would involve. Indeed, it would be impossible; for, in speaking of its evils, I freely recognize that not only would civilization perish without its beneficent aid, but that every step forward in the history of man has been coincident with, and in large part attributable to, a new mechanical invention.
But suppose the development of labour-saving machinery should reach a stage where all human labour was eliminated, what would be the effect on man? The answer is contained in an experiment which Sir John Lubbock made with a tribe of ants. Originally the most voracious181 and militant182 of their species, yet when denied the opportunity for exercise and freed from the necessity of foraging183 for their food, in three generations they became anaemic and perished.
Take from man the opportunity of work and the sense of pride in achievement and you have taken from him the very life of his existence. Robert Burns could sing as he drove his ploughshare through the fields of Ayr. To-day millions who simply watch an automatic infallible machine, which requires neither strength nor skill, do not sing at their work but too many curse the fate, which has chained them, like Ixion, to a soulless machine.
The evil is even greater.
The specialization of our modern mechanical civilization has caused a submergence of the individual into the group or class. Man is fast ceasing to be the unit of human society. Self-governing groups are becoming the new units. This is true of all classes of men, the employer as well as the employee. The true justification184 for the American anti-monopoly statutes, including the Sherman anti-trust law, lies not so much in the realm of economics as in that of morals. With the submergence of the individual, whether he be capitalist or wage-earner, into a group, there has followed the dissipation of moral responsibility. A mass morality has been substituted for individual morality, and unfortunately, group morality generally intensifies185 the vices186 more than the virtues187 of man.
Possibly, the greatest result of the mechanical age is this spirit of organization.
Its merits are manifold and do not require statement; but they have blinded us to the demerits of excessive organization.
We are now beginning to see—slowly, but surely—that a faculty188 of organization which, as such, submerged the spirit of individualism, is not an unmixed good.
Indeed, the moral lesson of the tragedy of Germany is the demoralizing influence of organization carried to the _n_th power. No nation was ever more highly organized than this modern State. Physically189, intellectually and spiritually it had become a highly developed machine. Its dominating mechanical spirit so submerged the individual that, in 1914, the paradox190 was observed of an enlightened nation that was seemingly destitute191 of a conscience.
What was true of Germany, however, was true—although in lesser degree—of all civilized nations. In all of them, the individual had been submerged in group formations, and the effect upon the character of man has been destructive of his nobler self.
This may explain the paradox of so-called "progress." It may be likened to a great wheel, which, from the increasing domination of mechanical forces, developed an ever-accelerating speed, until, by centrifugal action, it went off its bearings in 1914 and caused an unprecedented catastrophe. As man slowly pulls himself out of that gigantic wreck192 and recovers consciousness, he begins to realize that speed is not necessarily progress.
Of all this, the nineteenth century, in its exultant193 pride in its conquest of the invisible forces, was almost blind. It not only accepted progress as an unmistakable fact—mistaking, however, acceleration and facilitation for progress—but in its mad folly194 believed in an immutable195 law of progress which, working with the blind forces of machinery, would propel man forward.
A few men, however, standing196 on the mountain ranges of human observation, saw the future more clearly than did the mass. Emerson, Carlyle, Ruskin, Samuel Butler, and Max Nordau, in the nineteenth century, and, in our time, Ferrero, all pointed out the inevitable197 dangers of the excessive mechanization of human society. The prophecies were unhappily as little heeded198 as those of Cassandra.
One can see the tragedy of the time, as a few saw it, in comparing the first Locksley Hall of Alfred Tennyson, written in 1827, with its abiding faith in the "increasing purpose of the ages" and its roseate prophecies of the golden age, when the "war-drum would throb199 no longer and the battle flags be furled in the Parliament of Man and the Federation200 of the World," and the later Locksley Hall, written sixty years later, when the great spiritual poet of our time gave utterance to the dark pessimism which flooded his soul:
"Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom;
Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.
Half the marvels201 of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage, into commonest commonplace!
Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?"
Am I unduly202 pessimistic? I fear that this is the case with most men who, like Dante, have crossed their fiftieth year and find themselves in a "dark and sombre wood."
My reader will probably subject me to the additional reproach that I suggest no remedy.
There are many palliatives for the evils which I have discussed. To rekindle203 in men the love of work for work's sake and the spirit of discipline, which the lost sense of human solidarity204 once inspired, would do much to solve the problem, for work is the greatest moral force in the world. But I must frankly205 add that I have neither the time nor the qualifications to discuss the solution of this grave problem.
If we of this generation can only recognize that the evil exists, then the situation is not past remedy; for man has never yet found himself in a blind alley206 of negation207. He is still "master of his soul and captain of his fate," and, to me, the most encouraging sign of the times is the persistent evidence of contemporary literature that thoughtful men now recognize that much of our boasted progress was as unreal as a rainbow. While the temper of the times seems for the moment pessimistic, it merely marks the recognition of man of an abyss whose existence he barely suspected but over which his indomitable courage will yet carry him.
I have faith in the inextinguishable spark of the Divine, which is in the human soul and which our complex mechanical civilization has not extinguished. Of this, the world war was in itself a proof. All the horrible resources of mechanics and chemistry were utilized208 to coerce209 the human soul, and all proved ineffectual. Never did men rise to greater heights of self-sacrifice or show a greater fidelity210 "even unto death." Millions went to their graves, as to their beds, for an ideal; and when that is possible, this Pandora's box of modern civilization, which contained all imaginable evils, as well as benefits, also leaves hope behind.
I am reminded of a remark that the great Roumanian statesman, Taku Jonescu, made during the Peace Conference at Paris. When asked his views as to the future of civilization, he replied: "Judged by the light of reason there is but little hope, but I have faith in man's inextinguishable impulse to live."
Happily, that cannot be affected211 by any change in man's environment! For even when the cave-man retreated from the advance of the polar cap, which once covered Europe with Arctic desolation, he not only defied the elements but showed even then the love of the sublime212 by beautifying the walls of his icy prison with those mural decorations which were the beginning of art.
Assuredly, the man of to-day, with the rich heritage of countless213 ages, can do no less. He has but to diagnose the evil and he will then, in some way, meet it.
But what can man-made law do in this warfare214 against the blind forces of
Nature?
It is easy to exaggerate the value of all political institutions; for they are generally on the surface of human life and do not reach down to the deep under-currents of human nature. But the law can do something to protect the soul of man from destruction by the soulless machine.
It can defend the spirit of individualism. It must champion the human soul in its God-given right to exercise freely the faculties of mind and body. We must defend the right to work against those who would either destroy or degrade it. We must defend the right of every man, not only to join with others in protecting his interests, whether he is a brain worker or a hand worker—for without the right of combination the individual would often be the victim of giant forces—but we must vindicate84 the equal right of an individual, if he so wills, to depend upon his own strength.
The tendency of group morality to standardize215 man—and thus reduce all men to the dead level of an average mediocrity—is one that the law should combat. Its protection should be given to those of superior skill and diligence, who ask the due rewards of such superiority. Any other course, to use the fine phrase of Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural216, is to "take from the mouth of labour the bread it has earned."
Of this spirit one of the noblest expressions is the Constitution of the United States. That Magna Charta has not wholly escaped the destructive tendencies of a mechanical age. It was framed at the very end of the pastoral-agricultural age and at a time when the spirit of individualism was in full flower. The hardy217 pioneers who, with their axes, made straight the pathway of an advancing civilization, were sturdy men who need not be undervalued to us of the mechanical age. The "prairie schooner," which met the elemental forces of Nature with the proud challenge: "Pike's Peak or bust," produced as fine a type of manhood as the age which travels either in Mr. Ford's "fliver" or the more luxurious218 Rolls-Royce.
The Constitution was framed in the period that marked the passing of the primitive age and the dawn of the day of the machine. Watt had recently discovered the potency219 of steam vapour as a motive power; but its only use at first was for pumping water out of the mines.
When the framers of the Constitution met in high convention in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, a Connecticut Yankee, John Fitch, was then also working in Philadelphia upon his steamboat; but twenty years were to pass before the prow220 of the Clermont was to part the waters of the Hudson, and nearly a half century before transportation was to be revolutionized by the utilization of Watt's invention in the locomotive. Of the wonders of the steamship221, the railroad, the telegraphic cable, the wireless222, the gasoline engine, and a thousand other mechanical miracles, the framers of the American Constitution did not even dream.
The greatest and noblest purpose of the Constitution was not alone to hold in nicest equipose the relative powers of the nation and the States, but also to maintain in the scales of justice a true equilibrium between the rights of government and the rights of an individual. It did not believe that the State was omnipotent or infallible, and yet it proclaimed its authority within wise and just limits. It defended the integrity of the human soul.
In other governments, these fundamental decencies of liberty rest upon the conscience of the legislature. Under the American Constitution, they are part of the fundamental law, and, as such, enforceable by judges sworn to defend the integrity of the individual as fully223 as the integrity of the State.
When did a nobler "vision" inspire men in the political annals of mankind? Without that vision to restrain each succeeding generation of Americans from the tempting224 excesses of political power, the American Commonwealth225, with its great heterogeneous226 democracy, would probably perish.
That vision still remains as an ideal with the American people and still leads them to ever-higher achievements, for in all the mad changes of a frenzied227 hour, they have not yet lost faith in or love for the Constitution of the Fathers! That vision will remain with them as long, and no longer, as there is in their hearts a conscious and willing acquiescence228 in its wisdom and justice. Obviously, it can have no inherent vigour229 to perpetuate230 itself. If it ceases to be of the spirit of the people, then the yellow parchment whereon it is inscribed231 can avail nothing. When that parchment was last taken from the safe in the State Department, the ink in which it had been engrossed232 nearly 134 years ago was found to have faded. All who believe in constitutional government must hope that this is not a portentous symbol. The American people must write the compact, not with ink upon parchment, but with "letters of living light"—to use Webster's phrase—upon their hearts.
Again the solemn warning of the wise man of old recurs233 to us:
"Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."
The End
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1
authorized
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| a.委任的，许可的 | |
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err
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| vi.犯错误，出差错 | |
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Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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oligarchy
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| n.寡头政治 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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ecclesiastics
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| n.神职者，教会，牧师( ecclesiastic的名词复数 ) | |
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paraphrase
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| vt.将…释义，改写；n.释义，意义 | |
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premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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veracity
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| n.诚实 | |
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haze
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| n.霾，烟雾；懵懂，迷糊；vi.(over)变模糊 | |
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realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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intemperately
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| adv.过度地，无节制地，放纵地 | |
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rogues
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| n.流氓( rogue的名词复数 )；无赖；调皮捣蛋的人；离群的野兽 | |
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defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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foul
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| adj.污秽的；邪恶的；v.弄脏；妨害；犯规；n.犯规 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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unprecedented
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| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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pending
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| prep.直到，等待…期间；adj.待定的；迫近的 | |
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indictment
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| n.起诉；诉状 | |
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indictments
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| n.（制度、社会等的）衰败迹象( indictment的名词复数 )；刑事起诉书；公诉书；控告 | |
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prohibition
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| n.禁止；禁令，禁律 | |
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statutes
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| 成文法( statute的名词复数 )； 法令； 法规； 章程 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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jurisdiction
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| n.司法权，审判权，管辖权，控制权 | |
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lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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automobiles
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| n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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politic
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| adj.有智虑的；精明的；v.从政 | |
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graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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fatuous
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| adj.愚昧的；昏庸的 | |
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exult
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| v.狂喜，欢腾；欢欣鼓舞 | |
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violations
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| 违反( violation的名词复数 )； 冒犯； 违反（行为、事例）； 强奸 | |
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violation
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| n.违反(行为)，违背(行为)，侵犯 | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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discords
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| 不和（discord的复数形式） | |
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criteria
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| n.标准 | |
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aesthetic
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| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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redeeming
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| 补偿的，弥补的 | |
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sublimity
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| 崇高，庄严，气质高尚 | |
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sham
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| n./adj.假冒(的)，虚伪(的) | |
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counterfeit
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| vt.伪造，仿造；adj.伪造的，假冒的 | |
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53
deterioration
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| n.退化；恶化；变坏 | |
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54
blatant
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| adj.厚颜无耻的；显眼的；炫耀的 | |
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advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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mendacious
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| adj.不真的，撒谎的 | |
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verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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58
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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differentiation
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| n.区别，区分 | |
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60
ordained
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| v.任命（某人）为牧师( ordain的过去式和过去分词 )；授予（某人）圣职；（上帝、法律等）命令；判定 | |
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presumption
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| n.推测，可能性，冒昧，放肆，[法律]推定 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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63
invoke
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| v.求助于(神、法律)；恳求，乞求 | |
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undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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pessimism
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| n.悲观者，悲观主义者，厌世者 | |
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66
cardinals
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| 红衣主教( cardinal的名词复数 )； 红衣凤头鸟（见于北美，雄鸟为鲜红色）； 基数 | |
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afflicting
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| 痛苦的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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70
anarchy
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| n.无政府状态；社会秩序混乱，无秩序 | |
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71
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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disorders
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| n.混乱( disorder的名词复数 )；凌乱；骚乱；（身心、机能）失调 | |
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76
submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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portentous
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| adj.不祥的，可怕的，装腔作势的 | |
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ballot
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| n.（不记名）投票，投票总数，投票权；vi.投票 | |
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franchise
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| n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权 | |
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cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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82
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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83
vindicated
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| v.澄清（某人/某事物）受到的责难或嫌疑( vindicate的过去式和过去分词 )；表明或证明（所争辩的事物）属实、正当、有效等；维护 | |
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84
vindicate
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| v.为…辩护或辩解，辩明；证明…正确 | |
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85
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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86
justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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87
subversion
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| n.颠覆，破坏 | |
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88
codified
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| v.把（法律）编成法典( codify的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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89
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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90
extermination
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| n.消灭，根绝 | |
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91
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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92
vanquished
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| v.征服( vanquish的过去式和过去分词 )；战胜；克服；抑制 | |
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93
deluge
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| n./vt.洪水，暴雨，使泛滥 | |
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94
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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95
potent
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| adj.强有力的，有权势的；有效力的 | |
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96
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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97
grudging
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| adj.勉强的，吝啬的 | |
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98
inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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99
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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100
exertion
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| n.尽力，努力 | |
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101
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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102
culminated
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| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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103
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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104
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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105
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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106
literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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107
appalling
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| adj.骇人听闻的，令人震惊的，可怕的 | |
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108
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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109
sabotage
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| n.怠工，破坏活动，破坏；v.从事破坏活动，妨害，破坏 | |
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110
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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111
lessening
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| 减轻，减少，变小 | |
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112
efficiently
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| adv.高效率地，有能力地 | |
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113
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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114
reverted
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| 恢复( revert的过去式和过去分词 )； 重提； 回到…上； 归还 | |
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115
supplanted
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| 把…排挤掉，取代( supplant的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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116
malady
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| n.病，疾病(通常做比喻) | |
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117
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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118
disillusion
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| vt.使不再抱幻想，使理想破灭 | |
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119
aggravated
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| 使恶化( aggravate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使更严重； 激怒； 使恼火 | |
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120
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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121
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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122
turbid
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| adj.混浊的，泥水的，浓的 | |
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123
abiding
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| adj.永久的，持久的，不变的 | |
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124
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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125
curb
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| n.场外证券市场，场外交易；vt.制止，抑制 | |
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126
obligatory
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| adj.强制性的，义务的，必须的 | |
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127
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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128
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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129
rampant
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| adj.(植物)蔓生的；狂暴的，无约束的 | |
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130
upheaval
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| n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱 | |
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131
coterminous
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| adj.毗连的，有共同边界的 | |
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132
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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133
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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134
transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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135
watt
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| n.瓦，瓦特 | |
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136
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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137
gunpowder
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| n.火药 | |
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138
auxiliary
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| adj.辅助的，备用的 | |
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139
tangible
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|
| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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140
utilization
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| n.利用，效用 | |
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141
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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142
fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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143
omnipotent
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| adj.全能的，万能的 | |
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144
herald
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| vt.预示...的来临，预告，宣布，欢迎 | |
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145
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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146
equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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147
obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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148
acceleration
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| n.加速，加速度 | |
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149
craftsmanship
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| n.手艺 | |
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150
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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151
oratory
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| n.演讲术；词藻华丽的言辞 | |
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152
multiplication
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| n.增加，增多，倍增；增殖，繁殖；乘法 | |
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153
intoxicated
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| 喝醉的，极其兴奋的 | |
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154
constructive
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|
| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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155
feverishly
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|
| adv. 兴奋地 | |
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156
feverish
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|
| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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157
confinement
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| n.幽禁，拘留，监禁；分娩；限制，局限 | |
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158
secondly
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|
| adv.第二，其次 | |
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159
irrationality
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|
| n. 不合理，无理性 | |
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160
travail
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| n.阵痛；努力 | |
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161
pointed
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|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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162
incentive
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|
| n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机 | |
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163
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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164
rotary
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| adj.(运动等)旋转的；轮转的；转动的 | |
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165
scurry
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| vi.急匆匆地走；使急赶；催促；n.快步急跑，疾走；仓皇奔跑声；骤雨，骤雪；短距离赛马 | |
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166
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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167
annually
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|
| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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168
fleeting
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|
| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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169
transparent
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|
| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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170
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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171
onward
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|
| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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172
swirls
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|
| n.旋转( swirl的名词复数 )；卷状物；漩涡；尘旋v.旋转，打旋( swirl的第三人称单数 ) | |
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173
eddies
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| （水、烟等的）漩涡，涡流( eddy的名词复数 ) | |
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174
overflows
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|
| v.溢出，淹没( overflow的第三人称单数 )；充满；挤满了人；扩展出界，过度延伸 | |
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175
enigma
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|
| n.谜，谜一样的人或事 | |
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176
propounds
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|
| v.提出（问题、计划等）供考虑[讨论]，提议( propound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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177
riddle
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|
| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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178
physicist
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|
| n.物理学家，研究物理学的人 | |
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179
paraphrasing
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|
| v.释义，意译( paraphrase的现在分词 ) | |
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180
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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181
voracious
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|
| adj.狼吞虎咽的，贪婪的 | |
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182
militant
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|
| adj.激进的，好斗的；n.激进分子，斗士 | |
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183
foraging
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|
| v.搜寻（食物），尤指动物觅（食）( forage的现在分词 )；（尤指用手）搜寻（东西） | |
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184
justification
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|
| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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185
intensifies
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|
| n.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的名词复数 )v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的第三人称单数 ) | |
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186
vices
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|
| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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187
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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188
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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189
physically
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| adj.物质上，体格上，身体上，按自然规律 | |
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190
paradox
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|
| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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191
destitute
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|
| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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192
wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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193
exultant
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|
| adj.欢腾的，狂欢的，大喜的 | |
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194
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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195
immutable
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| adj.不可改变的，永恒的 | |
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196
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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197
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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198
heeded
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的过去式和过去分词 )；变平，使（某物）变平( flatten的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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199
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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200
federation
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| n.同盟，联邦，联合，联盟，联合会 | |
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201
marvels
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|
| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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202
unduly
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|
| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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203
rekindle
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| v.使再振作；再点火 | |
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204
solidarity
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|
| n.团结；休戚相关 | |
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205
frankly
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|
| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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206
alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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207
negation
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| n.否定；否认 | |
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208
utilized
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| v.利用，使用( utilize的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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209
coerce
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| v.强迫，压制 | |
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210
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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211
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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212
sublime
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| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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213
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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214
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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215
standardize
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| v.使符合标准，使标准化 | |
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216
inaugural
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| adj.就职的；n.就职典礼 | |
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217
hardy
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| adj.勇敢的，果断的，吃苦的；耐寒的 | |
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218
luxurious
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|
| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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219
potency
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| n. 效力，潜能 | |
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220
prow
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| n.(飞机)机头，船头 | |
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221
steamship
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| n.汽船，轮船 | |
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222
wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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223
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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224
tempting
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| a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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225
commonwealth
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| n.共和国，联邦，共同体 | |
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226
heterogeneous
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| adj.庞杂的；异类的 | |
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227
frenzied
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| a.激怒的；疯狂的 | |
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228
acquiescence
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| n.默许；顺从 | |
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vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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perpetuate
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| v.使永存，使永记不忘 | |
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231
inscribed
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| v.写，刻( inscribe的过去式和过去分词 )；内接 | |
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232
engrossed
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| adj.全神贯注的 | |
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recurs
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| 再发生，复发( recur的第三人称单数 ) | |
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