Thus, every great man may be regarded as possessing two distinct lines of ancestry, physical and spiritual, each of which separately demands elucidation16. He owes much in one way to his father and his mother, his grandfathers and his grandmothers, and his remoter progenitors17, from some or all of whom he derives19, in varying degrees and combinations, the personal qualities whose special interaction constitutes his greatness and his idiosyncrasy; he owes much in another way to his intellectual and moral ancestors, the thinkers and workers who have preceded him in his own department of thought or action, and have made possible in the course of ages the final development of his special revolution or his particular system. Viewed as an individual, he is what he is, with all his powers and faculties20 and potentialities, in virtue21 of the brain, the frame, the temperament22, the energy he inherits directly from his actual ancestors, paternal23 and maternal24; viewed as a factor or element in a great movement, he is what he is because the movement had succeeded in reaching such and such a point in its progress already without him, and waited only for such and such a grand and commanding personality in order to carry it yet a step further on its course of development.[Pg 3]
No man who ever lived would more cordially have recognised these two alternative aspects of the great worker's predetermining causes than Charles Darwin. He knew well that the individual is the direct cumulative25 product of his physical predecessors27, and that he works and is worked upon in innumerable ways by the particular environment into whose midst he is born. Let us see, then, in his own case what were these two main sets of conditioning circumstances which finally led up to the joint28 production of Charles Darwin, the man and the philosopher, the thinking brain and the moving energy. In other words, what was the state of the science of life at the time when he first began to observe and to speculate; and what was the ancestry which made him be born a person capable of helping29 it forward at a single bound over its great restricting dogmatic barrier of the fixity of species?
Let us begin, in the first place, by clearing the path beforehand of a popular misconception, so extremely general and almost universal that, unless it be got rid of at the very outset of our sketch30, much of the real scope and purport31 of Darwin's life and work must, of necessity, remain entirely32 misunderstood by the vast mass of English readers. In the public mind Darwin is, perhaps, most commonly regarded as the discoverer and founder34 of the evolution hypothesis. Two ideas are usually associated with his name and memory. It is believed that he was the first propounder35 of the theory which supposes all plant and animal forms to be the result, not of special creation, but of slow modification37 in pre-existent organisms. It is further and more particularly believed that he was the first[Pg 4] propounder of the theory which supposes the descent of man to be traceable from a remote and more or less monkey-like ancestor. Now, as a matter of fact, Darwin was not the prime originator of either of these two great cardinal38 ideas. Though he held both as part of his organised theory of things, he was not by any means the first or the earliest thinker to hold them or to propound36 them publicly. Though he gained for them both a far wider and more general acceptance than they had ever before popularly received, he laid no sort of claim himself to originality39 or proprietorship40 in either theory. The grand idea which he did really originate was not the idea of 'descent with modification,' but the idea of 'natural selection,' by which agency, as he was the first to prove, definite kinds of plants and animals have been slowly evolved from simpler forms, with definite adaptations to the special circumstances by which they are surrounded. In a word, it was the peculiar41 glory of Charles Darwin, not to have suggested that all the variety of animal and vegetable life might have been produced by slow modifications42 in one or more original types, but to have shown the nature of the machinery43 by which such a result could be actually attained44 in the practical working out of natural causes. He did not invent the development theory, but he made it believable and comprehensible. He was not, as most people falsely imagine, the Moses of evolutionism, the prime mover in the biological revolution; he was the Joshua who led the world of thinkers and workers into full fruition of that promised land which earlier investigators45 had but dimly descried46 from the Pisgah-top of conjectural47 speculation48.[Pg 5]
How far Darwin's special idea of natural selection supplemented and rendered credible49 the earlier idea of descent with modification we shall see more fully50 when we come to treat of the inception and growth of his great epoch-making work, 'The Origin of Species;' for the present, it must suffice to point out that in the world into which he was born, the theory of evolution already existed in a more or less shadowy and undeveloped shape. And since it was his task in life to raise this theory from the rank of a mere51 plausible52 and happy guess to the rank of a highly elaborate and almost universally accepted biological system, we may pause awhile to consider on the threshold what was the actual state of natural science at the moment when the great directing and organising intelligence of Charles Darwin first appeared.
From time immemorial, in modern Christendom at least, it had been the general opinion of learned and simple alike that every species of plant or animal owed its present form and its original existence to a distinct act of special creation. This na?f belief, unsupported as it was by any sort of internal evidence, was supposed to rest directly upon the express authority of a few obscure statements in the Book of Genesis. The Creator, it was held, had in the beginning formed each kind after a particular pattern, had endowed it with special organs devised with supreme53 wisdom for subserving special functions, and had bestowed54 upon it the mystical power of reproducing its like in its own image to all generations. No variation of importance ever occurred within the types thus constituted; all plants and animals always retained their special forms unaltered in any[Pg 6] way from era to era. This is the doctrine55 of the fixity and immutability56 of species, almost universal in the civilised world up to the end of the last century.
Improbable as such a crude idea now seems to any person even moderately acquainted with the extraordinary variety and variability of living forms, it nevertheless contained nothing at all likely to contradict the ordinary experience of the everyday observer in the last century. The handful of plants and animals with which he was personally acquainted consisted for the most part of a few large, highly advanced, and well-marked forms, not in the least liable to be mistaken for one another even by the most hasty and casual spectator. A horse can immediately be discriminated58 by the naked eye from a donkey, and a cow from a sheep, without risk of error; nobody is likely to confuse wheat with barley59, or to hesitate between classing any given fruit that is laid before him as a pear or an apple, a plum or a nectarine. Variability seldom comes under the notice of the ordinary passing spectator as it does under that of the prying60 and curious scientific observer; and when it comes at all, as in the case of dogs and pigeons, roses and hyacinths, it is no doubt set down carelessly on a superficial view as a mere result of human selection or of deliberate mongrel interbreeding. To the eye of the average man, all the living objects ordinarily perceived in external nature fall at once under certain fixed61 and recognisable kinds, as dogs and horses, elms and ashes, whose limits he is never at all inclined to confound in any way one with the other.
Linn?us, the great father of modern scientific[Pg 7] biology, had frankly62 and perhaps unthinkingly accepted this current and almost universal dogma of the fixity and immutability of species. Indeed, by defining a kind as a group of plants or animals so closely resembling one another as to give rise to the belief that they might all be descended63 from a single ancestor or pair of ancestors, he implicitly64 gave the new sanction of his weighty authority to the creation hypothesis, and to the prevalent doctrine of the unchangeability of organic forms. To Linn?us, the species into which he mapped out all the plants and animals then known, appeared as the descendants each of a solitary65 progenitor18 or of a primitive66 couple, called into existence at the beginning of all things by the direct fiat67 of a designing Creator. He saw the world of organic life as composed of so many well-demarcated types, each separate, distinct, and immutable68, each capable of producing its like ad infinitum, and each unable to vary from its central standard in any of its individuals, except perhaps within very narrow and unimportant limits.
But towards the close of the eighteenth century, side by side with the general awakening69 of the human intellect and the arrival of a new era of free social investigation70, which culminated71 in a fresh order of things, there was developed a more critical and sceptical attitude in the world of science, which soon produced a notable change of front among thinking naturalists73 as to the origin and meaning of specific distinctions.
Buffon was the first great biological innovator74 who ventured, in very doubtful and tentative language, to suggest the possibility of the rise of species from one[Pg 8] another by slow modification of ancestral forms. Essentially75 a popular essayist, writing in the volcanic76 priest-suppressed France of the ancien régime, during the inconsistent days of Louis XV. and Louis XVI., when it was uncertain whether novel and heterodox opinions would bring down upon their author fame and reputation or the Sorbonne and the Bastille, Buffon was careful to put his conjectural conclusions in a studiously guarded and often even ironical77 form. But time after time, in his great discursive78 work, the 'Histoire Naturelle' (published in successive volumes between 1749 and 1788), he recurs79 anew to the pregnant suggestion that plants and animals may not be bound by fixed and immovable limits of species, but may freely vary in every direction from a common centre, so that one kind may gradually and slowly be evolved by natural causes from the type of another. He points out that, underlying80 all external diversities of character and shape, fundamental likenesses of type occur in many animals, which irresistibly81 suggest the novel notion of common descent from a single ancestor. Thus regarded, he says, not only the ass33 and the horse (to take a particular passage) but even man himself, the monkeys, the quadrupeds, and all vertebrate animals, might be viewed as merely forming divergent branches of one and the same great family tree. Every such family, he believed, whether animal or vegetable, might have sprung originally from a single stock, which after many generations had here developed into a higher form, and there degenerated82 into a lower and less perfect type of organisation83. Granting this—granting that nature could by slow variation produce one species in the[Pg 9] course of direct descent from another unlike it (for example, the ass from the horse), then, Buffon observed, there was no further limit to be set to her powers in this respect, and we might reasonably conclude that from a single primordial84 being she has gradually been able in the course of time to develop the whole continuous gamut85 of existing animal and vegetable life. To be sure, Buffon always saves himself from censure86 by an obvious afterthought—'But no; it is certain from revelation that every species was directly created by a separate fiat.' This half-hearted and somewhat subrisive denial, however, must be taken merely as a concession87 to the Sorbonne and to the fashionable exegesis88 of his own day; and, even so, the Sorbonne was too much in the end for the philosophic89 thinker. He had once in his life at least to make his submission90 and demand pardon from the offended orthodoxy of the Paris faculty91.
The wave of thought and feeling, thus apologetically and tentatively stirred on the unruffled pond of eighteenth century opinion by the startling plop of Buffon's little smooth-cut pebble92, soon widened out on every side in concentric circles, and affected93 with its wash the entire world of biological science in every country. Before the close of the eighteenth century speculation as to the origin of species was rife94 in all quarters of Europe. In France itself, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, constitutionally cautious and undecided, but wide of view and free from prejudice, came slowly to the conclusion, in 1795, that all species are really derived95 by modification from one or more primitive types. In Germany, in the very same year, Goethe,[Pg 10] with the keen vision of the poet and the calm eye of the philosopher uniquely combined, discerned independently as by a lightning flash the identical idea of the origin of kinds by modification of pre-existent organisms. 'We may assert without hesitation,' says that great nebulous thinker and observer, 'that all the more perfect organic natures, such as fishes, amphibians96, birds and mammals, with man at their head, were formed at first on one original type, which still daily changes and modifies its form by propagation.' In England, twelve months earlier, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather (of whom more anon), published his 'Zoonomia,' a treatise97 on the laws of animal life, in which he not only adopted Buffon's theory of the origin of species by evolution, but also laid down as the chief cause of such development the actions and needs of the animals themselves. According to Dr. Erasmus Darwin, animals came to vary from one another chiefly because they were always altering their habits and voluntarily accommodating themselves to new actions and positions in life. His work produced comparatively little effect upon the world at large in his own time, but it had immense influence upon the next great prophet of evolution, Lamarck, and through Lamarck on Lyell, Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and the modern school of evolutionists generally. We shall consider his views in greater detail when we pass from the spiritual to the physical antecedents of Charles Darwin.
It was in 1801 that Lamarck first gave to the world his epoch-making speculations98 and suggestions on the origin of species; and from that date to the day of his[Pg 11] death, in 1831, the unwearied old philosopher continued to devote his whole time and energy, in blindness and poverty, to the elucidation of this interesting and important subject. A bold, acute, and vigorous thinker, trained in the great school of Diderot and D'Alembert, with something of the vivid Celtic poetic99 imagination, and a fearless habit of forming his own conclusions irrespective of common or preconceived ideas, Lamarck went to the very root of the matter in the most determined100 fashion, and openly proclaimed in the face of frowning officialism under the Napoleonic reaction his profound conviction that all species, including man, were descended by modification from one or more primordial forms. In Charles Darwin's own words, 'He first did the eminent101 service of arousing attention to the probability of all change, in the organic as well as in the inorganic102 world, being the result of law and not of miraculous103 interposition. Lamarck seems to have been chiefly led to his conclusion on the gradual change of species by the difficulty of distinguishing species and varieties, by the almost perfect gradation of forms in certain groups, and by the analogy of domestic productions. With respect to the means of modification, he attributed something to the direct action of the physical conditions of life, something to the crossing of already existing forms, and much to use and disuse, that is, to the effects of habit. To this latter agency he seems to attribute all the beautiful adaptations in nature—such as the long neck of the giraffe for browsing104 on the branches of trees,' He believed, in short, that animals had largely developed themselves, by functional105 effort followed by increased powers and abilities.[Pg 12]
Lamarck's great work, the 'Philosophie Zoologique,' though opposed by the austere106 and formal genius of the immortal107 Cuvier—a reactionary108 biological conservative and obscurantist, equal to the enormous task of mapping out piecemeal109 with infinite skill and power the separate provinces of his chosen science, but incapable110 of taking in all the bearings of the whole field at a single vivid and comprehensive sweep—Lamarck's great work produced a deep and lasting111 impression upon the entire subsequent course of evolutionary112 thought in scientific Europe. True, owing to the retrograde tendencies of the First Empire, it caused but little immediate57 stir at the precise moment of its first publication; but the seed it sowed sank deep, and, lying fallow long in men's minds, bore fruit at last in the next generation with the marvellous fecundity113 of the germs of genius. Indeed, from the very beginning of the present century, a ferment114 of inquiry115 on the subject of creation and evolution was everywhere obvious among speculative116 thinkers. The profound interest which Goethe took in the dispute on this very subject in the French Académie des Sciences between Cuvier and Geoffroy St. Hilaire, amid the thundering guns of a threatened European convulsion, was but a solitary symptom of the general stir which preceded the gestation117 and birth of the Darwinian hypothesis. It is impossible to take up any scientific memoirs118 or treatises119 of the first half of our own century without seeing at a glance how every mind of high original scientific importance was permeated120 and disturbed by the fundamental questions aroused, but not fully answered, by Buffon, Lamarck, and Erasmus Darwin. In Lyell's letters and in Agassiz's lectures, in[Pg 13] the 'Botanic Journal' and the 'Philosophical121 Transactions,' in treatises on Madeira beetles122 and the Australian flora123, we find everywhere the thoughts of men profoundly influenced in a thousand directions by this universal evolutionary solvent124 and leaven125.
And while the world of thought was thus seething126 and moving restlessly before the wave of ideas set in motion by these various independent philosophers, another group of causes in another field was rendering127 smooth the path beforehand for the future champion of the amended128 evolutionism. Geology on the one hand and astronomy on the other were making men's minds gradually familiar with the conception of slow natural development, as opposed to immediate and miraculous creation.
The rise of geology had been rapid and brilliant. In the last century it had been almost universally believed that fossil organisms were the relics129 of submerged and destroyed worlds, strange remnants of successive terrible mundane130 catastrophes131. Cuvier himself, who had rendered immense services to geological science by his almost unerring reconstructions133 of extinct animals, remained a partisan135 of the old theory of constant cataclysms136 and fresh creations throughout his whole life; but Lamarck, here as elsewhere the prophet of the modern uniformitarian concept of nature, had already announced his grand idea that the ordinary process of natural laws sufficed to account for all the phenomena137 of the earth's crust. In England, William Smith, the ingenious land surveyor, riding up and down on his daily task over the face of the country, became convinced by his observations in[Pg 14] the first years of the present century that a fixed order of sequence could everywhere be traced among the various superincumbent geological strata138. Modern scientific geology takes its rise from the moment of this luminous139 and luminiferous discovery. With astonishing rapidity the sequence of strata was everywhere noted140, and the succession of characteristic fossils mapped out, with the result of showing, however imperfectly at first, that the history of organic life upon the globe had followed a slow and regular course of constant development. Immediately whole schools of eager workers employed themselves in investigating in separate detail the phenomena of these successive stages of unfolding life. Murchison, fresh from the Peninsular campaign, began to study the dawn of organic history in the gloom of the Silurian and Cambrian epochs. A group of less articulate but not less active workers like Buckland and Mantell performed similar services for the carboniferous, the wealden, and the tertiary deposits. Sedgwick endeavoured to co-ordinate the whole range of then known facts into a single wide and comprehensive survey. De La Beche, Phillips, and Agassiz added their share to the great work of reconstruction134. Last of all, among those who were contemporary and all but coeval141 with Charles Darwin himself, Lyell boldly fought out the battle of 'uniformitarianism,' proving, with all the accumulated weight of his encyclop?dic and world-wide knowledge, that every known feature of geological development could be traced to the agency of causes now in action, and illustrated142 by means of slow secular143 changes still actually taking place on earth before our very eyes.[Pg 15]
The influence of these novel conceptions upon the growth and spread of evolutionary ideas was far-reaching and twofold. In the first place, the discovery of a definite succession of nearly related organic forms, following one another with evident closeness through the various ages, inevitably144 suggested to every inquiring observer the possibility of their direct descent one from the other. In the second place, the discovery that geological formations were not really separated each from its predecessor26 by violent revolutions, but were the result of gradual and ordinary changes, discredited145 the old idea of frequent fresh creations after each catastrophe132, and familiarised the minds of men of science with the alternative notion of slow and natural evolutionary processes. The past was seen to be in effect the parent of the present; the present was recognised as the child of the past.
Current astronomical146 theories also pointed147 inevitably in the same direction. Kant, whose supereminent fame as a philosopher has almost overshadowed his just claims as a profound thinker in physical science, had already in the third quarter of the eighteenth century arrived at his sublime148 nebular hypothesis, in which he suggested the possible development of stars, suns, planets, and satellites by the slow contraction149 of very diffuse150 and incandescent151 haze-clouds. This magnificent cosmical conception was seized and adapted by the genius of Laplace in his celestial152 system, and made familiar through his great work to thinking minds throughout the whole of Europe. In England it was further modified and remodelled153 by Sir William Herschel, whose period of active investigation coincided in part with Charles[Pg 16] Darwin's early boyhood. The bearings of the nebular hypothesis upon the rise of Darwinian evolutionism are by no means remote: the entire modern scientific movement forms, in fact, a single great organic whole, of which the special doctrine of biological development is but a small separate integral part. All the theories and doctrines154 which go to make it up display the one common trait that they reject the idea of direct creative interposition from without, and attribute the entire existing order of nature to the regular unfolding of one undeviating continuous law.
Yet another factor in the intellectual stir and bustle155 of the time must needs be mentioned even in so short and cursory156 a sketch as this of the causes which led to the Darwinian crisis. In 1798, Thomas Malthus, a clergyman of the Church of England, published the first edition of his famous and much-debated 'Essay on the Principle of Population.' Malthus was the first person who ever called public attention to the tendency of population to increase up to the utmost limit of subsistence, as well as to the necessary influence of starvation in checking its further development beyond that point. Though his essay dealt only with the question of reproduction in human societies, it was clear that it possessed157 innumerable analogies in every domain158 of animal and vegetable life. The book ran through many successive editions with extraordinary rapidity for a work of its class, it was fiercely attacked and bravely defended, it caused an immense amount of discussion and debate, and besides its marvellous direct influence as a germinal power upon the whole subsequent course of politico-economical and sociological thought, it produced also a[Pg 17] remarkable159 indirect influence on the side current of biological and speculative opinion. In particular, as we shall more fully see hereafter, it had an immediate effect in suggesting to the mind of the great naturalist72 who forms our present subject the embryo160 idea of 'natural selection.'
Such then was the intellectual and social world into which, early in the present century, Charles Darwin found himself born. Everywhere around him in his childhood and youth these great but formless evolutionary ideas were brewing161 and fermenting162. The scientific society of his elders and of the contemporaries among whom he grew up was permeated with the leaven of Laplace and of Lamarck, of Hutton and of Herschel. Inquiry was especially everywhere rife as to the origin and nature of specific distinctions among plants and animals. Those who believed in the doctrine of Buffon and of the 'Zoonomia' and those who disbelieved in it, alike, were profoundly interested and agitated163 in soul by the far-reaching implications of that fundamental problem. On every side evolutionism, in its crude form, was already in the air. Long before Charles Darwin himself published his conclusive164 'Origin of Species,' every thinking mind in the world of science, elder and younger, was deeply engaged upon the self-same problem. Lyell and Horner in alternate fits were doubting and debating. Herbert Spencer had already frankly accepted the new idea with the profound conviction of a priori reasoning. Agassiz was hesitating and raising difficulties. Treviranus was ardently165 proclaiming his unflinching adhesion. Oken was spinning in metaphysical Germany his fanciful parodies166 of the Lamarckian[Pg 18] hypothesis. Among the depths of Brazilian forests Bates was reading the story of evolution on the gauze-like wings of tropical butterflies. Under the scanty167 shade of Malayan palm-trees Wallace was independently spelling out in rude outline the very theory of survival of the fittest, which Charles Darwin himself was simultaneously168 perfecting and polishing among the memoirs and pamphlets of his English study. Wollaston in Madeira was pointing out the strange adaptations of the curious local snails169 and beetles. Von Buch in the Canaries was coming to the conclusion that varieties may be slowly changed into permanent species. Lecoq and Von Baer were gradually arriving, one by the botanical route, the other by the embryological, at the same opinion. Before Charles Darwin was twenty, Dean Herbert had declared from the profound depth of his horticultural knowledge that kinds were only mere fixed sports; and Patrick Matthew, in the appendix to a work on 'Naval170 Timber,' had casually171 developed, without perceiving its importance, the actual distinctive172 Darwinian doctrine of natural selection. Robert Chambers173 published in 1844 his 'Vestiges174 of Creation,' in which Lamarck's theory was impressed and popularised under a somewhat spoilt and mistaken form: it was not till 1859 that the first edition of the 'Origin of Species' burst like a thunderbolt upon the astonished world of unprepared and unscientific thinkers.
This general attitude of interest and inquiry is of deep importance to the proper comprehension of Charles Darwin's life and work, and that for two distinct reasons. In the first place, the universal stir and deep prying into evolutionary questions which everywhere existed[Pg 19] among scientific men in his early days was naturally communicated to a lad born of a scientific family, and inheriting directly in blood and bone the biological tastes and tendencies of Erasmus Darwin. In the second place, the existence of such a deep and wide-spread curiosity as to ultimate origins, and the common prevalence of profound uniformitarian and evolutionary views among philosophers and thinkers, made the acceptance of Charles Darwin's particular theory, when it at last arrived, a comparatively easy and certain matter, because by it the course of organic development was assimilated, on credible grounds, to the course of all other development in general, as then already widely recognised. The first consideration helps us to account in part for the man himself; the second consideration helps us even more to account for the great work which he was enabled in the end so successfully to accomplish.
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accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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ancestry
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converging
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| adj.收敛[缩]的，会聚的，趋同的v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的现在分词 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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hereditary
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| adj.遗传的，遗传性的，可继承的，世袭的 | |
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culminate
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| v.到绝顶，达于极点，达到高潮 | |
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inception
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conspiring
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| 密谋( conspire的现在分词 )； 搞阴谋； （事件等）巧合； 共同导致 | |
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definitive
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| adj.确切的，权威性的；最后的，决定性的 | |
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destined
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upheaval
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| n.胀起，(地壳)的隆起；剧变，动乱 | |
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renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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manifestation
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agitating
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| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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elucidation
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progenitors
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| n.祖先( progenitor的名词复数 )；先驱；前辈；原本 | |
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progenitor
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derives
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faculties
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virtue
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temperament
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paternal
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maternal
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cumulative
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predecessor
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predecessors
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joint
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helping
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sketch
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purport
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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33
ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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34
Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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35
propounder
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| n.提议者，建议者，[法] 提出遗嘱者 | |
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36
propound
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| v.提出 | |
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37
modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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38
cardinal
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| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
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39
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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40
proprietorship
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| n.所有（权）；所有权 | |
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41
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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42
modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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43
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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44
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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45
investigators
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| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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46
descried
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| adj.被注意到的，被发现的，被看到的 | |
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47
conjectural
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| adj.推测的 | |
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48
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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49
credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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50
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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51
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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52
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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53
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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54
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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56
immutability
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| n.不变(性) | |
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57
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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58
discriminated
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| 分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待 | |
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59
barley
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| n.大麦，大麦粒 | |
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60
prying
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| adj.爱打听的v.打听，刺探（他人的私事）( pry的现在分词 )；撬开 | |
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61
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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62
frankly
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|
| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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63
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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64
implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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65
solitary
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|
| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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66
primitive
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|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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67
fiat
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|
| n.命令，法令，批准；vt.批准，颁布 | |
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68
immutable
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| adj.不可改变的，永恒的 | |
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69
awakening
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|
| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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70
investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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71
culminated
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|
| v.达到极点( culminate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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72
naturalist
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| n.博物学家(尤指直接观察动植物者) | |
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73
naturalists
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|
| n.博物学家( naturalist的名词复数 )；（文学艺术的）自然主义者 | |
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74
innovator
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|
| n.改革者；创新者 | |
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75
essentially
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|
| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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76
volcanic
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|
| adj.火山的；象火山的；由火山引起的 | |
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77
ironical
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|
| adj.讽刺的，冷嘲的 | |
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78
discursive
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| adj.离题的，无层次的 | |
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79
recurs
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| 再发生，复发( recur的第三人称单数 ) | |
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80
underlying
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|
| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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81
irresistibly
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| adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地 | |
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82
degenerated
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| 衰退，堕落，退化( degenerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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83
organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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84
primordial
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|
| adj.原始的；最初的 | |
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85
gamut
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| n.全音阶，(一领域的)全部知识 | |
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86
censure
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|
| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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87
concession
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|
| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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88
exegesis
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|
| n.注释，解释 | |
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89
philosophic
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|
| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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90
submission
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|
| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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91
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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92
pebble
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|
| n.卵石，小圆石 | |
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93
affected
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|
| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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94
rife
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|
| adj.(指坏事情)充斥的，流行的，普遍的 | |
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95
derived
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|
| vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取 | |
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96
amphibians
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|
| 两栖动物( amphibian的名词复数 )； 水陆两用车； 水旱两生植物； 水陆两用飞行器 | |
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97
treatise
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|
| n.专著；(专题)论文 | |
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98
speculations
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|
| n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断 | |
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99
poetic
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|
| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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100
determined
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|
| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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101
eminent
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|
| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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102
inorganic
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|
| adj.无生物的；无机的 | |
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103
miraculous
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|
| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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104
browsing
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|
| v.吃草( browse的现在分词 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息 | |
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105
functional
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|
| adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的 | |
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106
austere
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|
| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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107
immortal
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|
| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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108
reactionary
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|
| n.反动者，反动主义者；adj.反动的，反动主义的，反对改革的 | |
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109
piecemeal
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|
| adj.零碎的；n.片，块；adv.逐渐地；v.弄成碎块 | |
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110
incapable
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|
| adj.无能力的，不能做某事的 | |
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111
lasting
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|
| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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112
evolutionary
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|
| adj.进化的；演化的，演变的；[生]进化论的 | |
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113
fecundity
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| n.生产力；丰富 | |
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114
ferment
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| vt.使发酵；n./vt.（使）激动，（使）动乱 | |
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115
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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116
speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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117
gestation
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| n.怀孕；酝酿 | |
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118
memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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119
treatises
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| n.专题著作，专题论文，专著( treatise的名词复数 ) | |
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120
permeated
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|
| 弥漫( permeate的过去式和过去分词 )； 遍布； 渗入； 渗透 | |
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121
philosophical
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|
| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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122
beetles
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| n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
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123
flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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124
solvent
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| n.溶剂；adj.有偿付能力的 | |
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125
leaven
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| v.使发酵；n.酵母；影响 | |
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126
seething
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| 沸腾的，火热的 | |
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127
rendering
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| n.表现，描写 | |
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128
Amended
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| adj. 修正的 动词amend的过去式和过去分词 | |
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129
relics
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| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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130
mundane
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| adj.平凡的；尘世的；宇宙的 | |
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131
catastrophes
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| n.灾祸( catastrophe的名词复数 )；灾难；不幸事件；困难 | |
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132
catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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133
reconstructions
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| 重建( reconstruction的名词复数 )； 再现； 重建物； 复原物 | |
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134
reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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135
partisan
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| adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒 | |
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136
cataclysms
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| n.（突然降临的）大灾难( cataclysm的名词复数 ) | |
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137
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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138
strata
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| n.地层（复数）；社会阶层 | |
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139
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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140
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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141
coeval
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| adj.同时代的；n.同时代的人或事物 | |
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142
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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143
secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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144
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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145
discredited
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| 不足信的，不名誉的 | |
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146
astronomical
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| adj.天文学的，（数字）极大的 | |
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147
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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148
sublime
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|
| adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的 | |
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149
contraction
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| n.缩略词，缩写式，害病 | |
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150
diffuse
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| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
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151
incandescent
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|
| adj.遇热发光的， 白炽的，感情强烈的 | |
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152
celestial
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| adj.天体的；天上的 | |
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153
remodelled
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| v.改变…的结构[形状]( remodel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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154
doctrines
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|
| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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155
bustle
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|
| v.喧扰地忙乱，匆忙，奔忙；n.忙碌；喧闹 | |
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156
cursory
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|
| adj.粗略的；草率的；匆促的 | |
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157
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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158
domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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159
remarkable
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|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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160
embryo
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| n.胚胎，萌芽的事物 | |
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161
brewing
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| n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式 | |
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162
fermenting
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|
| v.（使）发酵( ferment的现在分词 )；（使）激动；骚动；骚扰 | |
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163
agitated
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|
| adj.被鼓动的，不安的 | |
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164
conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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165
ardently
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| adv.热心地，热烈地 | |
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166
parodies
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| n.拙劣的模仿( parody的名词复数 )；恶搞；滑稽的模仿诗文；表面上模仿得笨拙但充满了机智用来嘲弄别人作品的作品v.滑稽地模仿，拙劣地模仿( parody的第三人称单数 ) | |
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167
scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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168
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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169
snails
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| n.蜗牛；迟钝的人；蜗牛( snail的名词复数 ) | |
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170
naval
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| adj.海军的，军舰的，船的 | |
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171
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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172
distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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173
chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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174
vestiges
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| 残余部分( vestige的名词复数 )； 遗迹； 痕迹； 毫不 | |
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