Cardinal2 Newman, in his sermon on “The World’s Benefactors3,” asks, “Who was the first cultivator of corn? Who first tamed and domesticated4 the animals whose strength we use, and whom we make our food? Or who first discovered the medicinal herbs, which from the earliest times have been our resource against disease? If it was mortal man who thus looked through the vegetable and animal worlds, and discriminated5 between the useful and the worthless, his name is unknown to the millions whom he has thus benefited.
“It is notorious that those who first suggest the most happy inventions and open a way to the secret stores of nature; those who weary themselves in the search after truth; strike out momentous6 principles of action; painfully force upon their contemporaries the adoption7 of beneficial measures; or, again, are the original cause of the chief events in national history,—are commonly supplanted8, as regards celebrity9 and reward, by inferior men. Their works are not called after them, nor the arts and systems which they have given the world. Their schools are usurped10 by strangers, and their maxims11 of wisdom circulate among the children of their people, forming perhaps a nation’s character, but not embalming12 in their own immortality13 the names of their original authors.”
The reflection is an old one; the son of Sirach said, “And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them. But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten” (Ecclesiasticus xliv. 9, 10). Cardinal Newman has framed his question, so far as the healing art is concerned, in a manner to which it is impossible to make a satisfactory answer. No one man first discovered the medicinal herbs; probably the discovery of all the virtues14 of a single one of them was not the work of any individual. No man8 “looked through the vegetable and animal worlds and discriminated between the useful and the worthless”; all this has been the work of ages, and is the outcome of the experience of thousands of investigators15. The medical arts have played so important a part in the development of our civilization, that they constitute a branch of study second to none in utility and interest to those who would know something of the work of the world’s benefactors. Probably at no period in the world’s history have medical men occupied a more honourable16 or a more prominent position than they do at the present time, and it would almost seem that the rewards which an ignorant or ungrateful civilization denied in the past to medical men are now being bestowed17 on those who in these latter days have been so fortunate as to inherit the traditions and the acquirements of a forgotten ancestry18 of truth-seekers and students of the mysteries of nature. As the earliest races of mankind passed by slow degrees from a state of savagery19 to the primitive21 civilizations, we must seek for the beginnings of the medical arts in the representatives of the ancient barbarisms which are to be found to-day in the aborigines of Central Africa and the islands of Australasian seas. The intimate connection which exists between the magician, the sorcerer, and the “medicine man” of the present day serves to illustrate22 how the priest, the magician, and the physician of the past were so frequently combined in a single individual, and to explain how the mysteries of religion were so generally connected with those of medicine.
Professor Tylor has explained how death and all forms of disease were attributed to magic, the essence of which is the belief in the influence of the spirits of dead men. This belief is termed Animism, and Mr. Tylor says: “Animism characterizes tribes very low in the scale of humanity, and thence ascends23, deeply modified in its transmission, but from first to last preserving an unbroken continuity, into the midst of high culture. Animism is the groundwork of the philosophy of religion, from that of the savages24 up to that of civilized25 men; but although it may at first seem to afford but a meagre and bare definition of a minimum of religion, it will be found practically sufficient; for where the roots are, the branches will generally be produced. The theory of animism divides into two great dogmas, forming parts of one consistent doctrine26: first, concerning souls of individual creatures, capable of continued existence after death; second, concerning other spirits, upward to the rank of powerful deities27. Spiritual beings are held to affect or control the events of the material world, and man’s life here and hereafter; and it being considered that they hold intercourse28 with men and receive pleasure or displeasure from human actions, the belief in their existence leads naturally, sooner or later, to active reverence29 and propitiation.” There is no doubt that the belief in the9 soul and in the existence of the spirits of the departed in another world arose from dreams. When the savage20 in his sleep held converse30, as it seemed to him, with the actual forms of his departed relatives and friends, the most natural thing imaginable would be the belief that these persons actually existed in a spiritual shape in some other world than the material one in which he existed. Those who dreamed most frequently and most vividly31, and were able to describe their visions most clearly, would naturally strive to interpret their meaning, and would become, to their grosser and less poetical32 brethren, more important personages, and be considered as in closer converse with the spiritual world than themselves. Thus, in process of time, the seer, the prophet, and the magician would be evolved.
How did primitive man come by his ideas? When he saw the effects of a power, he could only make guesses at the cause; he could only speak of it by some such terms as he would use concerning a human agent. He saw the effects of fire, and personified the cause. With the Hindus Agni was the giver of light and warmth, and so of the life of plants, of animals, and of men; and so with thunder, lightning, and storm, primitive man looked upon these phenomena33 as the conflicts of beings higher and more powerful than himself. Thus it was that the ancient people of India formed their conceptions of the storm-gods, the Maruts, i.e. the Smashers. Amongst the Esthonians, as Max Müller tells us,15 prayers were addressed to thunder and rain as late as the seventeenth century. “Dear Thunder, push elsewhere all the thick black clouds. Holy Thunder, guard our seed-field.” (This same thunder-god, Perkuna, says Max Müller, was the god Parganya, who was invoked34 in India a thousand years before Alexander’s expedition.) We say it rains, it thunders. Primitive folk said the rain-god poured out his buckets, the thunder-god was angry.
What did primitive man think when he observed the germination35 of seeds; the chick coming out of the egg; the butterfly bursting from the chrysalis; the shadow which everywhere accompanies the man; the shadows of the tree; the leaves which vibrate in the breeze; when he heard the roaring of the wind; the moaning of the storm, and the strange, mysterious echo which, plainly as he heard it, ceased as he approached the mountain-side which he conceived to be its home? He could but believe that all nature was living, like himself; and that, as he could not understand what he saw in the seed, the egg, the chrysalis, or the shadow, so all nature was full of mystery, of a life that he in vain would try to comprehend. Many savages regard their own shadows as one of their two souls,—a soul which is always watching10 their actions, and ready to bear witness against them. How should it be otherwise with them? The shadow is a reality to the savage, and so is the echo. The ship which visits his shores, the watch and the compass, which he sees for the first time, are alive; they move, they must be living!
Mr. Tylor, in his chapter on Animism, in his Primitive Culture, says (vol. ii. pp. 124, 125):—
“As in normal conditions the man’s soul, inhabiting his body, is held to give it life, to think, speak, and act through it, so an adaptation of the self-same principle explains abnormal conditions of body or mind, by considering the new symptoms as due to the operation of a second soul-like being, a strange spirit. The possessed36 man, tossed and shaken in fever, pained and wrenched37 as though some live creature were tearing or twisting him within, pining as though it were devouring38 his vitals day by day, rationally finds a personal spiritual cause for his sufferings. In hideous39 dreams he may even sometimes see the very ghost or nightmare-fiend that plagues him. Especially when the mysterious, unseen power throws him helpless to the ground, jerks and writhes40 him in convulsions, makes him leap upon the bystanders with a giant’s strength and a wild beast’s ferocity, impels41 him, with distorted face and frantic42 gesture, and voice not his own, nor seemingly even human, to pour forth43 wild incoherent raving44, or with thought and eloquence45 beyond his sober faculties46, to command, to counsel, to foretell—such a one seems to those who watch him, and even to himself, to have become the mere47 instrument of a spirit which has seized him or entered into him—a possessing demon1 in whose personality the patient believes so implicitly48 that he often imagines a personal name for it, which it can declare when it speaks in its own voice and character through his organs of speech; at last, quitting the medium’s spent and jaded49 body, the intruding50 spirit departs as it came. This is the savage theory of demoniacal possession and obsession51, which has been for ages, and still remains52, the dominant53 theory of disease and inspiration among the lower races. It is obviously based on an animistic interpretation54, most genuine and rational in its proper place in man’s intellectual history, of the natural symptoms of the cases. The general doctrine of disease-spirits and oracle-spirits appears to have its earliest, broadest, and most consistent position within the limits of savagery. When we have gained a clear idea of it in this its original home, we shall be able to trace it along from grade to grade of civilization, breaking away piecemeal55 under the influence of new medical theories, yet sometimes expanding in revival56, and, at least, in lingering survival holding its place into the midst of our modern life. The possession-theory is not merely11 known to us by the statements of those who describe diseases in accordance with it. Disease being accounted for by attacks of spirits, it naturally follows that to get rid of these spirits is the proper means of cure. Thus the practices of the exorcist appear side by side with the doctrine of possession, from its first appearance in savagery to its survival in modern civilization; and nothing could display more vividly the conception of a disease or a mental affliction as caused by a personal spiritual being than the proceedings57 of the exorcist who talks to it, coaxes58 or threatens it, makes offerings to it, entices59 or drives it out of the patient’s body, and induces it to take up its abode60 in some other.”
点击
收听单词发音
收听单词发音 |
1
demon
|
|
| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
2
cardinal
|
|
| n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
3
benefactors
|
|
| n.捐助者，施主( benefactor的名词复数 )；恩人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
4
domesticated
|
|
| adj.喜欢家庭生活的；（指动物）被驯养了的v.驯化( domesticate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
5
discriminated
|
|
| 分别，辨别，区分( discriminate的过去式和过去分词 )； 歧视，有差别地对待 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
6
momentous
|
|
| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
7
adoption
|
|
| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
8
supplanted
|
|
| 把…排挤掉，取代( supplant的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
9
celebrity
|
|
| n.名人，名流；著名，名声，名望 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
10
usurped
|
|
| 篡夺，霸占( usurp的过去式和过去分词 )； 盗用； 篡夺，篡权 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
11
maxims
|
|
| n.格言，座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
12
embalming
|
|
| v.保存（尸体）不腐( embalm的现在分词 )；使不被遗忘；使充满香气 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
13
immortality
|
|
| n.不死，不朽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
14
virtues
|
|
| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
15
investigators
|
|
| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
16
honourable
|
|
| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
17
bestowed
|
|
| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
18
ancestry
|
|
| n.祖先，家世 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
19
savagery
|
|
| n.野性 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
20
savage
|
|
| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
21
primitive
|
|
| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
22
illustrate
|
|
| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
23
ascends
|
|
| v.上升，攀登( ascend的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
24
savages
|
|
| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
25
civilized
|
|
| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
26
doctrine
|
|
| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
27
deities
|
|
| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
28
intercourse
|
|
| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
29
reverence
|
|
| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
30
converse
|
|
| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
31
vividly
|
|
| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
32
poetical
|
|
| adj.似诗人的；诗一般的；韵文的；富有诗意的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
33
phenomena
|
|
| n.现象 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
34
invoked
|
|
| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
35
germination
|
|
| n.萌芽，发生；萌发；生芽；催芽 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
36
possessed
|
|
| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
37
wrenched
|
|
| v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
38
devouring
|
|
| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
39
hideous
|
|
| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
40
writhes
|
|
| （因极度痛苦而）扭动或翻滚( writhe的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
41
impels
|
|
| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
42
frantic
|
|
| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
43
forth
|
|
| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
44
raving
|
|
| adj.说胡话的；疯狂的，怒吼的；非常漂亮的；令人醉心[痴心]的v.胡言乱语(rave的现在分词)n.胡话；疯话adv.胡言乱语地；疯狂地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
45
eloquence
|
|
| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
46
faculties
|
|
| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
47
mere
|
|
| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
48
implicitly
|
|
| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
49
jaded
|
|
| adj.精疲力竭的；厌倦的；（因过饱或过多而）腻烦的；迟钝的 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
50
intruding
|
|
| v.侵入，侵扰，打扰( intrude的现在分词)；把…强加于 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
51
obsession
|
|
| n.困扰，无法摆脱的思想(或情感) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
52
remains
|
|
| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
53
dominant
|
|
| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
54
interpretation
|
|
| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
55
piecemeal
|
|
| adj.零碎的；n.片，块；adv.逐渐地；v.弄成碎块 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
56
revival
|
|
| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
57
proceedings
|
|
| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
58
coaxes
|
|
| v.哄，用好话劝说( coax的第三人称单数 )；巧言骗取；哄劝，劝诱 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
59
entices
|
|
| 诱惑，怂恿( entice的第三人称单数 ) | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
|
60
abode
|
|
| n.住处，住所 | |
参考例句： |
|
|
|
| 欢迎访问英文小说网 |