1
Art is selection and so is most autobiography1. But I am concerned with a more tangled2 business than selection, I want to show a contemporary man in relation to the state and social usage, and the social organism in relation to that man. To tell my story at all I have to simplify. I have given now the broad lines of my political development, and how I passed from my initial liberal-socialism to the conception of a constructive3 aristocracy. I have tried to set that out in the form of a man discovering himself. Incidentally that self-development led to a profound breach4 with my wife. One has read stories before of husband and wife speaking severally two different languages and coming to an understanding. But Margaret and I began in her dialect, and, as I came more and more to use my own, diverged6.
I had thought when I married that the matter of womankind had ended for me. I have tried to tell all that sex and women had been to me up to my married life with Margaret and our fatal entanglement7, tried to show the queer, crippled, embarrassed and limited way in which these interests break upon the life of a young man under contemporary conditions. I do not think my lot was a very exceptional one. I missed the chance of sisters and girl playmates, but that is not an uncommon8 misadventure in an age of small families; I never came to know any woman at all intimately until I was married to Margaret. My earlier love affairs were encounters of sex, under conditions of furtiveness9 and adventure that made them things in themselves, restricted and unilluminating. From a boyish disposition10 to be mystical and worshipping towards women I had passed into a disregardful attitude, as though women were things inferior or irrelevant11, disturbers in great affairs. For a time Margaret had blotted12 out all other women; she was so different and so near; she was like a person who stands suddenly in front of a little window through which one has been surveying a crowd. She didn't become womankind for me so much as eliminate womankind from my world.... And then came this secret separation....
Until this estrangement13 and the rapid and uncontrollable development of my relations with Isabel which chanced to follow it, I seemed to have solved the problem of women by marriage and disregard. I thought these things were over. I went about my career with Margaret beside me, her brow slightly knit, her manner faintly strenuous14, helping15, helping; and if we had not altogether abolished sex we had at least so circumscribed16 and isolated17 it that it would not have affected18 the general tenor19 of our lives in the slightest degree if we had.
And then, clothing itself more and more in the form of Isabel and her problems, this old, this fundamental obsession20 of my life returned. The thing stole upon my mind so that I was unaware21 of its invasion and how it was changing our long intimacy22. I have already compared the lot of the modern publicist to Machiavelli writing in his study; in his day women and sex were as disregarded in these high affairs as, let us say, the chemistry of air or the will of the beasts in the fields; in ours the case has altogether changed, and woman has come now to stand beside the tall candles, half in the light, half in the mystery of the shadows, besetting23, interrupting, demanding unrelentingly an altogether unprecedented25 attention. I feel that in these matters my life has been almost typical of my time. Woman insists upon her presence. She is no longer a mere26 physical need, an aesthetic27 bye-play, a sentimental28 background; she is a moral and intellectual necessity in a man's life. She comes to the politician and demands, Is she a child or a citizen? Is she a thing or a soul? She comes to the individual man, as she came to me and asks, Is she a cherished weakling or an equal mate, an unavoidable helper? Is she to be tried and trusted or guarded and controlled, bond or free? For if she is a mate, one must at once trust more and exact more, exacting29 toil30, courage, and the hardest, most necessary thing of all, the clearest, most shameless, explicitness31 of understanding....
2
In all my earlier imaginings of statecraft I had tacitly assumed either that the relations of the sexes were all right or that anyhow they didn't concern the state. It was a matter they, whoever "they" were, had to settle among themselves. That sort of disregard was possible then. But even before 1906 there were endless intimations that the dams holding back great reservoirs of discussion were crumbling32. We political schemers were ploughing wider than any one had ploughed before in the field of social reconstruction33. We had also, we realised, to plough deeper. We had to plough down at last to the passionate34 elements of sexual relationship and examine and decide upon them.
The signs multiplied. In a year or so half the police of the metropolis35 were scarce sufficient to protect the House from one clamorous36 aspect of the new problem. The members went about Westminster with an odd, new sense of being beset24. A good proportion of us kept up the pretence37 that the Vote for Women was an isolated fad38, and the agitation39 an epidemic40 madness that would presently pass. But it was manifest to any one who sought more than comfort in the matter that the streams of women and sympathisers and money forthcoming marked far deeper and wider things than an idle fancy for the franchise41. The existing laws and conventions of relationship between Man and Woman were just as unsatisfactory a disorder42 as anything else in our tumbled confusion of a world, and that also was coming to bear upon statecraft.
My first parliament was the parliament of the Suffragettes. I don't propose to tell here of that amazing campaign, with its absurdities44 and follies45, its courage and devotion. There were aspects of that unquenchable agitation that were absolutely heroic and aspects that were absolutely pitiful. It was unreasonable46, unwise, and, except for its one central insistence47, astonishingly incoherent. It was amazingly effective. The very incoherence of the demand witnessed, I think, to the forces that lay behind it. It wasn't a simple argument based on a simple assumption; it was the first crude expression of a great mass and mingling48 of convergent49 feelings, of a widespread, confused persuasion50 among modern educated women that the conditions of their relations with men were oppressive, ugly, dishonouring51, and had to be altered. They had not merely adopted the Vote as a symbol of equality; it was fairly manifest to me that, given it, they meant to use it, and to use it perhaps even vindictively52 and blindly, as a weapon against many things they had every reason to hate....
I remember, with exceptional vividness, that great night early in the session of 1909, when--I think it was--fifty or sixty women went to prison. I had been dining at the Barham's, and Lord Barham and I came down from the direction of St. James's Park into a crowd and a confusion outside the Caxton Hall. We found ourselves drifting with an immense multitude towards Parliament Square and parallel with a silent, close-packed column of girls and women, for the most part white-faced and intent. I still remember the effect of their faces upon me. It was quite different from the general effect of staring about and divided attention one gets in a political procession of men. There was an expression of heroic tension.
There had been a pretty deliberate appeal on the part of the women's organisers to the Unemployed53, who had been demonstrating throughout that winter, to join forces with the movement, and the result was shown in the quality of the crowd upon the pavement. It was an ugly, dangerous-looking crowd, but as yet good-tempered and sympathetic. When at last we got within sight of the House the square was a seething54 seat of excited people, and the array of police on horse and on foot might have been assembled for a revolutionary outbreak. There were dense55 masses of people up Whitehall, and right on to Westminster Bridge. The scuffle that ended in the arrests was the poorest explosion to follow such stupendous preparations....
3
Later on in that year the women began a new attack. Day and night, and all through the long nights of the Budget sittings, at all the piers56 of the gates of New Palace Yard and at St. Stephen's Porch, stood women pickets57, and watched us silently and reproachfully as we went to and fro. They were women of all sorts, though, of course, the independent worker-class predominated. There were grey-headed old ladies standing5 there, sturdily charming in the rain; battered58-looking, ambiguous women, with something of the desperate bitterness of battered women showing in their eyes; north-country factory girls; cheaply-dressed suburban59 women; trim, comfortable mothers of families; valiant-eyed girl graduates and undergraduates; lank60, hungry-looking creatures, who stirred one's imagination; one very dainty little woman in deep mourning, I recall, grave and steadfast61, with eyes fixed62 on distant things. Some of those women looked defiant63, some timidly aggressive, some full of the stir of adventure, some drooping64 with cold and fatigue65. The supply never ceased. I had a mortal fear that somehow the supply might halt or cease. I found that continual siege of the legislature extraordinarily66 impressive--infinitely more impressive than the feeble-forcible "ragging" of the more militant67 section. I thought of the appeal that must be going through the country, summoning the women from countless68 scattered69 homes, rooms, colleges, to Westminster.
I remember too the petty little difficulty I felt whether I should ignore these pickets altogether, or lift a hat as I hurried past with averted70 eyes, or look them in the face as I did so. Towards the end the House evoked71 an etiquette72 of salutation.
4
There was a tendency, even on the part of its sympathisers, to treat the whole suffrage43 agitation as if it were a disconnected issue, irrelevant to all other broad developments of social and political life. We struggled, all of us, to ignore the indicating finger it thrust out before us. "Your schemes, for all their bigness," it insisted to our reluctant, averted minds, "still don't go down to the essential things...."
We have to go deeper, or our inadequate73 children's insufficient74 children will starve amidst harvests of earless futility75. That conservatism which works in every class to preserve in its essentials the habitual76 daily life is all against a profounder treatment of political issues. The politician, almost as absurdly as the philosopher, tends constantly, in spite of magnificent preludes77, vast intimations, to specialise himself out of the reality he has so stupendously summoned--he bolts back to littleness. The world has to be moulded anew, he continues to admit, but without, he adds, any risk of upsetting his week-end visits, his morning cup of tea....
The discussion of the relations of men and women disturbs every one. It reacts upon the private life of every one who attempts it. And at any particular time only a small minority have a personal interest in changing the established state of affairs. Habit and interest are in a constantly recruited majority against conscious change and adjustment in these matters. Drift rules us. The great mass of people, and an overwhelming proportion of influential78 people, are people who have banished79 their dreams and made their compromise. Wonderful and beautiful possibilities are no longer to be thought about. They have given up any aspirations80 for intense love, their splendid offspring, for keen delights, have accepted a cultivated kindliness81 and an uncritical sense of righteousness as their compensation. It's a settled affair with them, a settled, dangerous affair. Most of them fear, and many hate, the slightest reminder82 of those abandoned dreams. As Dayton once said to the Pentagram Circle, when we were discussing the problem of a universal marriage and divorce law throughout the Empire, "I am for leaving all these things alone." And then, with a groan83 in his voice, "Leave them alone! Leave them all alone!"
That was his whole speech for the evening, in a note of suppressed passion, and presently, against all our etiquette, he got up and went out.
For some years after my marriage, I too was for leaving them alone. I developed a dread84 and dislike for romance, for emotional music, for the human figure in art--turning my heart to landscape. I wanted to sneer85 at lovers and their ecstasies86, and was uncomfortable until I found the effective sneer. In matters of private morals these were my most uncharitable years. I didn't want to think of these things any more for ever. I hated the people whose talk or practice showed they were not of my opinion. I wanted to believe that their views were immoral87 and objectionable and contemptible88, because I had decided89 to treat them as at that level. I was, in fact, falling into the attitude of the normal decent man.
And yet one cannot help thinking! The sensible moralised man finds it hard to escape the stream of suggestion that there are still dreams beyond these commonplace acquiescences,--the appeal of beauty suddenly shining upon one, the mothlike stirrings of serene90 summer nights, the sweetness of distant music....
It is one of the paradoxical factors in our public life at the present time, which penalises abandonment to love so abundantly and so heavily, that power, influence and control fall largely to unencumbered people and sterile91 people and people who have married for passionless purposes, people whose very deficiency in feeling has left them free to follow ambition, people beautyblind, who don't understand what it is to fall in love, what it is to desire children or have them, what it is to feel in their blood and bodies the supreme92 claim of good births and selective births above all other affairs in life, people almost of necessity averse93 from this most fundamental aspect of existence....
5
It wasn't, however, my deepening sympathy with and understanding of the position of women in general, or the change in my ideas about all these intimate things my fast friendship with Isabel was bringing about, that led me to the heretical views I have in the last five years dragged from the region of academic and timid discussion into the field of practical politics. Those influences, no doubt, have converged94 to the same end, and given me a powerful emotional push upon my road, but it was a broader and colder view of things that first determined95 me in my attempt to graft96 the Endowment of Motherhood in some form or other upon British Imperialism97. Now that I am exiled from the political world, it is possible to estimate just how effectually that grafting98 has been done.
I have explained how the ideas of a trained aristocracy and a universal education grew to paramount99 importance in my political scheme. It is but a short step from this to the question of the quantity and quality of births in the community, and from that again to these forbidden and fear-beset topics of marriage, divorce, and the family organisation100. A sporadic101 discussion of these aspects had been going on for years, a Eugenic102 society existed, and articles on the Falling Birth Rate, and the Rapid Multiplication103 of the Unfit were staples104 of the monthly magazines. But beyond an intermittent105 scolding of prosperous childless people in general--one never addressed them in particular--nothing was done towards arresting those adverse106 processes. Almost against my natural inclination107, I found myself forced to go into these things. I came to the conclusion that under modern conditions the isolated private family, based on the existing marriage contract, was failing in its work. It wasn't producing enough children, and children good enough and well trained enough for the demands of the developing civilised state. Our civilisation108 was growing outwardly, and decaying in its intimate substance, and unless it was presently to collapse109, some very extensive and courageous110 reorganisation was needed. The old haphazard111 system of pairing, qualified112 more and more by worldly discretions, no longer secures a young population numerous enough or good enough for the growing needs and possibilities of our Empire. Statecraft sits weaving splendid garments, no doubt, but with a puny113, ugly, insufficient baby in the cradle.
No one so far has dared to take up this problem as a present question for statecraft, but it comes unheralded, unadvocated, and sits at every legislative114 board. Every improvement is provisional except the improvement of the race, and it became more and more doubtful to me if we were improving the race at all! Splendid and beautiful and courageous people must come together and have children, women with their fine senses and glorious devotion must be freed from the net that compels them to be celibate115, compels them to be childless and useless, or to bear children ignobly116 to men whom need and ignorance and the treacherous117 pressure of circumstances have forced upon them. We all know that, and so few dare even to whisper it for fear that they should seem, in seeking to save the family, to threaten its existence. It is as if a party of pigmies in a not too capacious room had been joined by a carnivorous giant--and decided to go on living happily by cutting him dead....
The problem the developing civilised state has to solve is how it can get the best possible increase under the best possible conditions. I became more and more convinced that the independent family unit of to-day, in which the man is master of the wife and owner of the children, in which all are dependent upon him, subordinated to his enterprises and liable to follow his fortunes up or down, does not supply anything like the best conceivable conditions. We want to modernise118 the family footing altogether. An enormous premium119 both in pleasure and competitive efficiency is put upon voluntary childlessness, and enormous inducements are held out to women to subordinate instinctive120 and selective preferences to social and material considerations.
The practical reaction of modern conditions upon the old tradition of the family is this: that beneath the pretence that nothing is changing, secretly and with all the unwholesomeness of secrecy121 everything is changed. Offspring fall away, the birth rate falls and falls most among just the most efficient and active and best adapted classes in the community. The species is recruited from among its failures and from among less civilised aliens. Contemporary civilisations are in effect burning the best of their possible babies in the furnaces that run the machinery122. In the United States the native Anglo-American strain has scarcely increased at all since 1830, and in most Western European countries the same is probably true of the ablest and most energetic elements in the community. The women of these classes still remain legally and practically dependent and protected, with the only natural excuse for their dependence123 gone....
The modern world becomes an immense spectacle of unsatisfactory groupings; here childless couples bored to death in the hopeless effort to sustain an incessant124 honeymoon125, here homes in which a solitary126 child grows unsocially, here small two or three-child homes that do no more than continue the culture of the parents at a great social cost, here numbers of unhappy educated but childless married women, here careless, decivilised fecund127 homes, here orphanages128 and asylums129 for the heedlessly begotten130. It is just the disorderly proliferation of Bromstead over again, in lives instead of in houses.
What is the good, what is the common sense, of rectifying131 boundaries, pushing research and discovery, building cities, improving all the facilities of life, making great fleets, waging wars, while this aimless decadence132 remains133 the quality of the biological outlook?...
It is difficult now to trace how I changed from my early aversion until I faced this mass of problems. But so far back as 1910 I had it clear in my mind that I would rather fail utterly134 than participate in all the surrenders of mind and body that are implied in Dayton's snarl135 of "Leave it alone; leave it all alone!" Marriage and the begetting136 and care of children, is the very ground substance in the life of the community. In a world in which everything changes, in which fresh methods, fresh adjustments and fresh ideas perpetually renew the circumstances of life, it is preposterous137 that we should not even examine into these matters, should rest content to be ruled by the uncriticised traditions of a barbaric age.
Now, it seems to me that the solution of this problem is also the solution of the woman's individual problem. The two go together, are right and left of one question. The only conceivable way out from our IMPASSE138 lies in the recognition of parentage, that is to say of adequate mothering, as no longer a chance product of individual passions but a service rendered to the State. Women must become less and less subordinated to individual men, since this works out in a more or less complete limitation, waste, and sterilisation of their essentially139 social function; they must become more and more subordinated as individually independent citizens to the collective purpose. Or, to express the thing by a familiar phrase, the highly organised, scientific state we desire must, if it is to exist at all, base itself not upon the irresponsible man-ruled family, but upon the matriarchal family, the citizen-ship and freedom of women and the public endowment of motherhood.
After two generations of confused and experimental revolt it grows clear to modern women that a conscious, deliberate motherhood and mothering is their special function in the State, and that a personal subordination to an individual man with an unlimited140 power of control over this intimate and supreme duty is a degradation141. No contemporary woman of education put to the test is willing to recognise any claim a man can make upon her but the claim of her freely-given devotion to him. She wants the reality of her choice and she means "family" while a man too often means only possession. This alters the spirit of the family relationships fundamentally. Their form remains just what it was when woman was esteemed142 a pretty, desirable, and incidentally a child-producing, chattel143. Against these time-honoured ideas the new spirit of womanhood struggles in shame, astonishment144, bitterness, and tears....
I confess myself altogether feminist145. I have no doubts in the matter. I want this coddling and browbeating146 of women to cease. I want to see women come in, free and fearless, to a full participation147 in the collective purpose of mankind. Women, I am convinced, are as fine as men; they can be as wise as men; they are capable of far greater devotion than men. I want to see them citizens, with a marriage law framed primarily for them and for their protection and the good of the race, and not for men's satisfactions. I want to see them bearing and rearing good children in the State as a generously rewarded public duty and service, choosing their husbands freely and discerningly, and in no way enslaved by or subordinated to the men they have chosen. The social consciousness of women seems to me an unworked, an almost untouched mine of wealth for the constructive purpose of the world. I want to change the respective values of the family group altogether, and make the home indeed the women's kingdom and the mother the owner and responsible guardian148 of her children.
It is no use pretending that this is not novel and revolutionary; it is. The Endowment of Motherhood implies a new method of social organization, a rearrangement of the social unit, untried in human experience--as untried as electric traction149 was or flying in 1800. Of course, it may work out to modify men's ideas of marriage profoundly. To me that is a secondary consideration. I do not believe that particular assertion myself, because I am convinced that a practical monogamy is a psychological necessity to the mass of civilised people. But even if I did believe it I should still keep to my present line, because it is the only line that will prevent a highly organised civilisation from ending in biological decay. The public Endowment of Motherhood is the only possible way which will ensure the permanently150 developing civilised state at which all constructive minds are aiming. A point is reached in the life-history of a civilisation when either this reconstruction must be effected or the quality and MORALE151 of the population prove insufficient for the needs of the developing organisation. It is not so much moral decadence that will destroy us as moral inadaptability. The old code fails under the new needs. The only alternative to this profound reconstruction is a decay in human quality and social collapse. Either this unprecedented rearrangement must be achieved by our civilisation, or it must presently come upon a phase of disorder and crumble152 and perish, as Rome perished, as France declines, as the strain of the Pilgrim Fathers dwindles153 out of America. Whatever hope there may be in the attempt therefore, there is no alternative to the attempt.
6
I wanted political success now dearly enough, but not at the price of constructive realities. These questions were no doubt monstrously155 dangerous in the political world; there wasn't a politician alive who didn't look scared at the mention of "The Family," but if raising these issues were essential to the social reconstructions156 on which my life was set, that did not matter. It only implied that I should take them up with deliberate caution. There was no release because of risk or difficulty.
The question of whether I should commit myself to some open project in this direction was going on in my mind concurrently157 with my speculations158 about a change of party, like bass159 and treble in a complex piece of music. The two drew to a conclusion together. I would not only go over to Imperialism, but I would attempt to biologise Imperialism.
I thought at first that I was undertaking160 a monstrous154 uphill task. But as I came to look into the possibilities of the matter, a strong persuasion grew up in my mind that this panic fear of legislative proposals affecting the family basis was excessive, that things were much riper for development in this direction than old-experienced people out of touch with the younger generation imagined, that to phrase the thing in a parliamentary fashion, "something might be done in the constituencies" with the Endowment of Motherhood forthwith, provided only that it was made perfectly161 clear that anything a sane162 person could possibly intend by "morality" was left untouched by these proposals.
I went to work very carefully. I got Roper of the DAILY TELEPHONE and Burkett of the DIAL to try over a silly-season discussion of State Help for Mothers, and I put a series of articles on eugenics, upon the fall in the birth-rate, and similar topics in the BLUE WEEKLY, leading up to a tentative and generalised advocacy of the public endowment of the nation's children. I was more and more struck by the acceptance won by a sober and restrained presentation of this suggestion.
And then, in the fourth year of the BLUE WEEKLY'S career, came the Handitch election, and I was forced by the clamour of my antagonist163, and very willingly forced, to put my convictions to the test. I returned triumphantly164 to Westminster with the Public Endowment of Motherhood as part of my open profession and with the full approval of the party press. Applauding benches of Imperialists cheered me on my way to the table between the whips.
That second time I took the oath I was not one of a crowd of new members, but salient, an event, a symbol of profound changes and new purposes in the national life.
Here it is my political book comes to an end, and in a sense my book ends altogether. For the rest is but to tell how I was swept out of this great world of political possibilities. I close this Third Book as I opened it, with an admission of difficulties and complexities165, but now with a pile of manuscript before me I have to confess them unsurmounted and still entangled166.
Yet my aim was a final simplicity167. I have sought to show my growing realisation that the essential quality of all political and social effort is the development of a great race mind behind the interplay of individual lives. That is the collective human reality, the basis of morality, the purpose of devotion. To that our lives must be given, from that will come the perpetual fresh release and further ennoblement of individual lives....
I have wanted to make that idea of a collective mind play in this book the part United Italy plays in Machiavelli's PRINCE. I have called it the hinterland of reality, shown it accumulating a dominating truth and rightness which must force men's now sporadic motives168 more and more into a disciplined and understanding relation to a plan. And I have tried to indicate how I sought to serve this great clarification of our confusions....
Now I come back to personality and the story of my self-betrayal, and how it is I have had to leave all that far-reaching scheme of mine, a mere project and beginning for other men to take or leave as it pleases them.
1 autobiography | |
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2 tangled | |
adj. 纠缠的,紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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3 constructive | |
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n.违反,不履行;破裂;vt.冲破,攻破 | |
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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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分开( diverge的过去式和过去分词 ); 偏离; 分歧; 分道扬镳 | |
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7 entanglement | |
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8 uncommon | |
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9 furtiveness | |
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10 disposition | |
n.性情,性格;意向,倾向;排列,部署 | |
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11 irrelevant | |
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13 estrangement | |
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15 helping | |
n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的,辅助的 | |
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17 isolated | |
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18 affected | |
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19 tenor | |
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20 obsession | |
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22 intimacy | |
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24 beset | |
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25 unprecedented | |
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26 mere | |
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27 aesthetic | |
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28 sentimental | |
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29 exacting | |
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30 toil | |
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33 reconstruction | |
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35 metropolis | |
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38 fad | |
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41 franchise | |
n.特许,特权,专营权,特许权 | |
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42 disorder | |
n.紊乱,混乱;骚动,骚乱;疾病,失调 | |
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43 suffrage | |
n.投票,选举权,参政权 | |
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44 absurdities | |
n.极端无理性( absurdity的名词复数 );荒谬;谬论;荒谬的行为 | |
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45 follies | |
罪恶,时事讽刺剧; 愚蠢,蠢笨,愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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46 unreasonable | |
adj.不讲道理的,不合情理的,过度的 | |
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47 insistence | |
n.坚持;强调;坚决主张 | |
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48 mingling | |
adj.混合的 | |
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49 convergent | |
adj.会聚的 | |
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50 persuasion | |
n.劝说;说服;持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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51 dishonouring | |
使(人、家族等)丧失名誉(dishonour的现在分词形式) | |
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52 vindictively | |
adv.恶毒地;报复地 | |
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53 unemployed | |
adj.失业的,没有工作的;未动用的,闲置的 | |
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54 seething | |
沸腾的,火热的 | |
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55 dense | |
a.密集的,稠密的,浓密的;密度大的 | |
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56 piers | |
n.水上平台( pier的名词复数 );(常设有娱乐场所的)突堤;柱子;墙墩 | |
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57 pickets | |
罢工纠察员( picket的名词复数 ) | |
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58 battered | |
adj.磨损的;v.连续猛击;磨损 | |
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59 suburban | |
adj.城郊的,在郊区的 | |
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60 lank | |
adj.瘦削的;稀疏的 | |
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61 steadfast | |
adj.固定的,不变的,不动摇的;忠实的;坚贞不移的 | |
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62 fixed | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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63 defiant | |
adj.无礼的,挑战的 | |
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64 drooping | |
adj. 下垂的,无力的 动词droop的现在分词 | |
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65 fatigue | |
n.疲劳,劳累 | |
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66 extraordinarily | |
adv.格外地;极端地 | |
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67 militant | |
adj.激进的,好斗的;n.激进分子,斗士 | |
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68 countless | |
adj.无数的,多得不计其数的 | |
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69 scattered | |
adj.分散的,稀疏的;散步的;疏疏落落的 | |
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70 averted | |
防止,避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 ); 转移 | |
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71 evoked | |
[医]诱发的 | |
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72 etiquette | |
n.礼仪,礼节;规矩 | |
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73 inadequate | |
adj.(for,to)不充足的,不适当的 | |
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74 insufficient | |
adj.(for,of)不足的,不够的 | |
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75 futility | |
n.无用 | |
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76 habitual | |
adj.习惯性的;通常的,惯常的 | |
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77 preludes | |
n.开端( prelude的名词复数 );序幕;序曲;短篇作品 | |
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78 influential | |
adj.有影响的,有权势的 | |
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79 banished | |
v.放逐,驱逐( banish的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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80 aspirations | |
强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 ); 志向; 发送气音; 发 h 音 | |
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81 kindliness | |
n.厚道,亲切,友好的行为 | |
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82 reminder | |
n.提醒物,纪念品;暗示,提示 | |
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83 groan | |
vi./n.呻吟,抱怨;(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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84 dread | |
vt.担忧,忧虑;惧怕,不敢;n.担忧,畏惧 | |
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85 sneer | |
v.轻蔑;嘲笑;n.嘲笑,讥讽的言语 | |
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86 ecstasies | |
狂喜( ecstasy的名词复数 ); 出神; 入迷; 迷幻药 | |
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87 immoral | |
adj.不道德的,淫荡的,荒淫的,有伤风化的 | |
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88 contemptible | |
adj.可鄙的,可轻视的,卑劣的 | |
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89 decided | |
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的 | |
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90 serene | |
adj. 安详的,宁静的,平静的 | |
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91 sterile | |
adj.不毛的,不孕的,无菌的,枯燥的,贫瘠的 | |
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92 supreme | |
adj.极度的,最重要的;至高的,最高的 | |
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93 averse | |
adj.厌恶的;反对的,不乐意的 | |
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94 converged | |
v.(线条、运动的物体等)会于一点( converge的过去式 );(趋于)相似或相同;人或车辆汇集;聚集 | |
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95 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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96 graft | |
n.移植,嫁接,艰苦工作,贪污;v.移植,嫁接 | |
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97 imperialism | |
n.帝国主义,帝国主义政策 | |
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98 grafting | |
嫁接法,移植法 | |
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99 paramount | |
a.最重要的,最高权力的 | |
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100 organisation | |
n.组织,安排,团体,有机休 | |
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101 sporadic | |
adj.偶尔发生的 [反]regular;分散的 | |
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102 eugenic | |
adj.优生的 | |
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103 multiplication | |
n.增加,增多,倍增;增殖,繁殖;乘法 | |
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104 staples | |
n.(某国的)主要产品( staple的名词复数 );钉书钉;U 形钉;主要部份v.用钉书钉钉住( staple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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105 intermittent | |
adj.间歇的,断断续续的 | |
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106 adverse | |
adj.不利的;有害的;敌对的,不友好的 | |
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107 inclination | |
n.倾斜;点头;弯腰;斜坡;倾度;倾向;爱好 | |
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108 civilisation | |
n.文明,文化,开化,教化 | |
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109 collapse | |
vi.累倒;昏倒;倒塌;塌陷 | |
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110 courageous | |
adj.勇敢的,有胆量的 | |
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111 haphazard | |
adj.无计划的,随意的,杂乱无章的 | |
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112 qualified | |
adj.合格的,有资格的,胜任的,有限制的 | |
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113 puny | |
adj.微不足道的,弱小的 | |
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114 legislative | |
n.立法机构,立法权;adj.立法的,有立法权的 | |
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115 celibate | |
adj.独身的,独身主义的;n.独身者 | |
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116 ignobly | |
卑贱地,下流地 | |
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117 treacherous | |
adj.不可靠的,有暗藏的危险的;adj.背叛的,背信弃义的 | |
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118 modernise | |
vt.使现代化 | |
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119 premium | |
n.加付款;赠品;adj.高级的;售价高的 | |
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120 instinctive | |
adj.(出于)本能的;直觉的;(出于)天性的 | |
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121 secrecy | |
n.秘密,保密,隐蔽 | |
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122 machinery | |
n.(总称)机械,机器;机构 | |
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123 dependence | |
n.依靠,依赖;信任,信赖;隶属 | |
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124 incessant | |
adj.不停的,连续的 | |
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125 honeymoon | |
n.蜜月(假期);vi.度蜜月 | |
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126 solitary | |
adj.孤独的,独立的,荒凉的;n.隐士 | |
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127 fecund | |
adj.多产的,丰饶的,肥沃的 | |
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128 orphanages | |
孤儿院( orphanage的名词复数 ) | |
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129 asylums | |
n.避难所( asylum的名词复数 );庇护;政治避难;精神病院 | |
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130 begotten | |
v.为…之生父( beget的过去分词 );产生,引起 | |
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131 rectifying | |
改正,矫正( rectify的现在分词 ); 精馏; 蒸流; 整流 | |
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132 decadence | |
n.衰落,颓废 | |
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133 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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134 utterly | |
adv.完全地,绝对地 | |
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135 snarl | |
v.吼叫,怒骂,纠缠,混乱;n.混乱,缠结,咆哮 | |
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136 begetting | |
v.为…之生父( beget的现在分词 );产生,引起 | |
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137 preposterous | |
adj.荒谬的,可笑的 | |
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138 impasse | |
n.僵局;死路 | |
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139 essentially | |
adv.本质上,实质上,基本上 | |
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140 unlimited | |
adj.无限的,不受控制的,无条件的 | |
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141 degradation | |
n.降级;低落;退化;陵削;降解;衰变 | |
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142 esteemed | |
adj.受人尊敬的v.尊敬( esteem的过去式和过去分词 );敬重;认为;以为 | |
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143 chattel | |
n.动产;奴隶 | |
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144 astonishment | |
n.惊奇,惊异 | |
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145 feminist | |
adj.主张男女平等的,女权主义的 | |
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146 browbeating | |
v.(以言辞或表情)威逼,恫吓( browbeat的现在分词 ) | |
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147 participation | |
n.参与,参加,分享 | |
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148 guardian | |
n.监护人;守卫者,保护者 | |
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149 traction | |
n.牵引;附着摩擦力 | |
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150 permanently | |
adv.永恒地,永久地,固定不变地 | |
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151 morale | |
n.道德准则,士气,斗志 | |
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152 crumble | |
vi.碎裂,崩溃;vt.弄碎,摧毁 | |
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153 dwindles | |
v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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154 monstrous | |
adj.巨大的;恐怖的;可耻的,丢脸的 | |
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155 monstrously | |
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156 reconstructions | |
重建( reconstruction的名词复数 ); 再现; 重建物; 复原物 | |
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157 concurrently | |
adv.同时地 | |
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158 speculations | |
n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 );思考;投机活动;推断 | |
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159 bass | |
n.男低音(歌手);低音乐器;低音大提琴 | |
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160 undertaking | |
n.保证,许诺,事业 | |
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161 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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162 sane | |
adj.心智健全的,神志清醒的,明智的,稳健的 | |
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163 antagonist | |
n.敌人,对抗者,对手 | |
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164 triumphantly | |
ad.得意洋洋地;得胜地;成功地 | |
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165 complexities | |
复杂性(complexity的名词复数); 复杂的事物 | |
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166 entangled | |
adj.卷入的;陷入的;被缠住的;缠在一起的v.使某人(某物/自己)缠绕,纠缠于(某物中),使某人(自己)陷入(困难或复杂的环境中)( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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167 simplicity | |
n.简单,简易;朴素;直率,单纯 | |
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168 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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