Chapter 51

Man of all ages is a selfish animal, and unreasonable¹ in his selfishness. It takes every one of us in turn many a shrewd fall, in our wrestlings with the world to convince us that we are not to have everything our own[81] way. We are conscious in our inmost souls that man is the rightful lord of creation; and, starting from this eternal principle, and ignoring, each man-child of us in turn, the qualifying truth that it is to man in general, including women, and not to one man in particular, that the earth has been given, we set about asserting our kingships each in his own way, and proclaiming ourselves kings from our own little ant-hills of thrones. And then come the struggles and the down-fallings, and some of us learn our lesson, and some learn it not. But what lesson? That we have been dreaming in the golden hours when the vision of a kingdom rose before us? That there is in short, no kingdom at all, or that, if there be, we are no heirs of it?

No—I take it that, while we make nothing better than that out of our lesson, we shall go on spelling at it and stumbling over it, through all the days of our life, till we make our last stumble, and take our final header out of this riddle² of a world, which we once dreamed we were to rule over, exclaiming “vanitas vanitatum” to the end. But man’s spirit will never be satisfied without a kingdom, and was never intended to be satisfied so; and a wiser than Solomon tells us, day by day, that our kingdom is about us here, and that we may rise up and pass in when we will at the shining gates which he holds open, for that it is His, and we are joint³ heirs of it with Him.

1 unreasonable   

adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的

参考例句：

• I know that they made the most unreasonable demands on you.我知道他们对你提出了最不合理的要求。
• They spend an unreasonable amount of money on clothes.他们花在衣服上的钱太多了。

2 riddle   

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

参考例句：

• The riddle couldn't be solved by the child.这个谜语孩子猜不出来。
• Her disappearance is a complete riddle.她的失踪完全是一个谜。

3 joint   

adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合

参考例句：

• I had a bad fall,which put my shoulder out of joint.我重重地摔了一跤，肩膀脫臼了。
• We wrote a letter in joint names.我们联名写了封信。