(See also Chapter I., Section 6, and Chapter X., Sections 1 and 2.)
It seems to me that I may most propitiously3 attempt to interest you this evening by describing very briefly4 the particular metaphysical and philosophical system in which I do my thinking, and more particularly by setting out for your consideration one or two points in which I seem to myself to differ most widely from current accepted philosophy.
You must be prepared for things that will strike you as crude, for a certain difference of accent and dialect that you may not like, and you must be prepared too to hear what may strike you as the clumsy statement of my ignorant rediscovery of things already beautifully thought out and said. But in the end you may incline to forgive me some of this first offence. . . . It is quite unavoidable that, in setting out these intellectual foundations of mine, I should lapse5 for a moment or so towards autobiography6.
A convergence of circumstances led to my having my knowledge of concrete things quite extensively developed before I came to philosophical examination at all. I have heard someone say that a savage7 or an animal is mentally a purely8 objective being, and in that respect I was like a savage or an animal until I was well over twenty. I was extremely unaware9 of the subjective10 or introverted element in my being. I was a Positivist without knowing it. My early education was a feeble one; it was one in which my private observation, inquiry11 and experiment were far more important factors than any instruction, or rather perhaps the instruction I received was less even than what I learnt for myself, and it terminated at thirteen. I had come into pretty intimate contact with the harder realities of life, with hunger in various forms, and many base and disagreeable necessities, before I was fifteen. About that age, following the indication of certain theological and speculative13 curiosities, I began to learn something of what I will call deliberately14 and justly, Elementary Science — stuff I got out of Cassell’s Popular Educator and cheap text-books — and then, through accidents and ambitions that do not matter in the least to us now, I came to three years of illuminating15 and good scientific work. The central fact of those three years was Huxley’s course in Comparative Anatomy16 at the school in Exhibition Road. About that as a nucleus17 I arranged a spacious18 digest of facts. At the end of that time I had acquired what I still think to be a fairly clear, and complete and ordered view of the ostensibly real universe. Let me try to give you the chief things I had. I had man definitely placed in the great scheme of space and time. I knew him incurably19 for what he was, finite and not final, a being of compromises and adaptations. I had traced his lungs, for example, from a swimming bladder, step by step, with scalpel and probe, through a dozen types or more, I had seen the ancestral caecum shrink to that disease nest, the appendix of to-day, I had watched the gill slit20 patched slowly to the purposes of the ear and the reptile21 jaw22 suspension utilised to eke23 out the needs of a sense organ taken from its native and natural water. I had worked out the development of those extraordinarily24 unsatisfactory and untrustworthy instruments, man’s teeth, from the skin scutes of the shark to their present function as a basis for gold stoppings, and followed the slow unfolding of the complex and painful process of gestation25 through which man comes into the world. I had followed all these things and many kindred things by dissection26 and in embryology — I had checked the whole theory of development again in a year’s course of palaeontology, and I had taken the dimensions of the whole process, by the scale of the stars, in a course of astronomical27 physics. And all that amount of objective elucidation28 came before I had reached the beginnings of any philosophical or metaphysical inquiry, any inquiry as to why I believed, how I believed, what I believed, or what the fundamental stuff of things was.
Now following hard upon this interlude with knowledge, came a time when I had to give myself to teaching, and it became advisable to acquire one of those Teaching Diplomas that are so widely and so foolishly despised, and that enterprise set me to a superficial, but suggestive study of educational method, of educational theory, of logic12, of psychology29, and so at last, when the little affair with the diploma was settled, to philosophy. Now to come to logic over the bracing30 uplands of comparative anatomy is to come to logic with a lot of very natural preconceptions blown clean out of one’s mind. It is, I submit, a way of taking logic in the flank. When you have realised to the marrow31, that all the physical organs of man and all his physical structure are what they are through a series of adaptations and approximations, and that they are kept up to a level of practical efficiency only by the elimination32 of death, and that this is true also of his brain and of his instincts and of many of his mental predispositions, you are not going to take his thinking apparatus34 unquestioningly as being in any way mysteriously different and better. And I had read only a little logic before I became aware of implications that I could not agree with, and assumptions that seemed to me to be altogether at variance35 with the general scheme of objective fact established in my mind.
I came to an examination of logical processes and of language with the expectation that they would share the profoundly provisional character, the character of irregular limitation and adaptation that pervades36 the whole physical and animal being of man. And I found the thing I had expected. And as a consequence I found a sort of intellectual hardihood about the assumptions of logic, that at first confused me and then roused all the latent scepticism in my mind.
My first quarrel with the accepted logic I developed long ago in a little paper that was printed in the Fortnightly Review in July 1891. It was called the “Rediscovery of the Unique,” and re-reading it I perceive not only how bad and even annoying it was in manner — a thing I have long known — but also how remarkably37 bad it was in expression. I have good reason for doubting whether my powers of expression in these uses have very perceptibly improved, but at any rate I am doing my best now with that previous failure before me.
That unfortunate paper, among other oversights38 I can no longer regard as trivial, disregarded quite completely the fact that a whole literature upon the antagonism39 of the one and the many, of the specific ideal and the individual reality, was already in existence. It defined no relations to other thought or thinkers. I understand now, what I did not understand then, why it was totally ignored. But the idea underlying40 that paper I cling to to-day. I consider it an idea that will ultimately be regarded as one of primary importance to human thought, and I will try and present the substance of that early paper again now very briefly, as the best opening of my general case. My opening scepticism is essentially41 a doubt of the objective reality of classification. I have no hesitation42 in saying that is the first and primary proposition of my philosophy.
I have it in my mind that classification is a necessary condition of the working of the mental implement43, but that it is a departure from the objective truth of things, that classification is very serviceable for the practical purposes of life but a very doubtful preliminary to those fine penetrations45 the philosophical purpose, in its more arrogant46 moods, demands. All the peculiarities47 of my way of thinking derive48 from that.
A mind nourished upon anatomical study is of course permeated49 with the suggestion of the vagueness and instability of biological species. A biological species is quite obviously a great number of unique individuals which is separable from other biological species only by the fact that an enormous number of other linking individuals are inaccessible50 in time — are in other words dead and gone — and each new individual in that species does, in the distinction of its own individuality, break away in however infinitesimal degree from the previous average properties of the species. There is no property of any species, even the properties that constitute the specific definition, that is not a matter of more or less. If, for example, a species be distinguished51 by a single large red spot on the back, you will find if you go over a great number of specimens52 that red spot shrinking here to nothing, expanding there to a more general redness, weakening to pink, deepening to russet and brown, shading into crimson53, and so on, and so on. And this is true not only of biological species. It is true of the mineral specimens constituting a mineral species, and I remember as a constant refrain in the lectures of Prof. Judd upon rock classification, the words “they pass into one another by insensible gradations.” That is true, I hold, of all things.
You will think perhaps of atoms of the elements as instances of identically similar things, but these are things not of experience but of theory, and there is not a phenomenon in chemistry that is not equally well explained on the supposition that it is merely the immense quantities of atoms necessarily taken in any experiment that mask by the operation of the law of averages the fact that each atom also has its unique quality, its special individual difference. This idea of uniqueness in all individuals is not only true of the classifications of material science; it is true, and still more evidently true, of the species of common thought, it is true of common terms. Take the word chair. When one says chair, one thinks vaguely55 of an average chair. But collect individual instances, think of armchairs and reading chairs, and dining-room chairs and kitchen chairs, chairs that pass into benches, chairs that cross the boundary and become settees, dentists’ chairs, thrones, opera stalls, seats of all sorts, those miraculous56 fungoid growths that cumber57 the floor of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition, and you will perceive what a lax bundle in fact is this simple straightforward58 term. In co-operation with an intelligent joiner I would undertake to defeat any definition of chair or chairishness that you gave me. Chairs just as much as individual organisms, just as much as mineral and rock specimens, are unique things — if you know them well enough you will find an individual difference even in a set of machine-made chairs — and it is only because we do not possess minds of unlimited59 capacity, because our brain has only a limited number of pigeon-holes for our correspondence with an unlimited universe of objective uniques, that we have to delude60 ourselves into the belief that there is a chairishness in this species common to and distinctive61 of all chairs.
Let me repeat; this is of the very smallest importance in all the practical affairs of life, or indeed in relation to anything but philosophy and wide generalisations. But in philosophy it matters profoundly. If I order two new-laid eggs for breakfast, up come two unhatched but still unique avian individuals, and the chances are they serve my rude physiological62 purpose. I can afford to ignore the hens’ eggs of the past that were not quite so nearly this sort of thing, and the hens’ eggs of the future that will accumulate modification63 age by age; I can venture to ignore the rare chance of an abnormality in chemical composition and of any startling aberration64 in my physiological reaction; I can, with a confidence that is practically perfect, say with unqualified simplicity65 “two eggs,” but not if my concern is not my morning’s breakfast but the utmost possible truth.
Now let me go on to point out whither this idea of uniqueness tends. I submit to you that syllogism66 is based on classification, that all hard logical reasoning tends to imply and is apt to imply a confidence in the objective reality of classification. Consequently in denying that I deny the absolute validity of logic. Classification and number, which in truth ignore the fine differences of objective realities, have in the past of human thought been imposed upon things. Let me for clearness’ sake take a liberty here — commit, as you may perhaps think, an unpardonable insolence68. Hindoo thought and Greek thought alike impress me as being overmuch obsessed69 by an objective treatment of certain necessary preliminary conditions of human thought — number and definition and class and abstract form. But these things, number, definition, class and abstract form, I hold, are merely unavoidable conditions of mental activity — regrettable conditions rather than essential facts. The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.
It was about this difficulty that the mind of Plato played a little inconclusively all his life. For the most part he tended to regard the idea as the something behind reality, whereas it seems to me that the idea is the more proximate and less perfect thing, the thing by which the mind, by ignoring individual differences, attempts to comprehend an otherwise unmanageable number of unique realities.
Let me give you a rough figure of what I am trying to convey in this first attack upon the philosophical validity of general terms. You have seen the results of those various methods of black and white reproduction that involve the use of a rectangular net. You know the sort of process picture I mean — it used to be employed very frequently in reproducing photographs. At a little distance you really seem to have a faithful reproduction of the original picture, but when you peer closely you find not the unique form and masses of the original, but a multitude of little rectangles, uniform in shape and size. The more earnestly you go into the thing, the closer you look, the more the picture is lost in reticulations. I submit the world of reasoned inquiry has a very similar relation to the world I call objectively real. For the rough purposes of every day the net-work picture will do, but the finer your purpose the less it will serve, and for an ideally fine purpose, for absolute and general knowledge that will be as true for a man at a distance with a telescope as for a man with a microscope it will not serve at all.
It is true you can make your net of logical interpretation70 finer and finer, you can fine your classification more and more — up to a certain limit. But essentially you are working in limits, and as you come closer, as you look at finer and subtler things, as you leave the practical purpose for which the method exists, the element of error increases. Every species is vague, every term goes cloudy at its edges, and so in my way of thinking, relentless71 logic is only another phrase for a stupidity — for a sort of intellectual pigheadedness. If you push a philosophical or metaphysical inquiry through a series of valid67 syllogisms — never committing any generally recognised fallacy — you nevertheless leave a certain rubbing and marginal loss of objective truth and you get deflections that are difficult to trace, at each phase in the process. Every species waggles about in its definition, every tool is a little loose in its handle, every scale has its individual error. So long as you are reasoning for practical purposes about the finite things of experience, you can every now and then check your process, and correct your adjustments. But not when you make what are called philosophical and theological inquiries72, when you turn your implement towards the final absolute truth of things. Doing that is like firing at an inaccessible, unmarkable and indestructible target at an unknown distance, with a defective73 rifle and variable cartridges74. Even if by chance you hit, you cannot know that you hit, and so it will matter nothing at all.
This assertion of the necessary untrustworthiness of all reasoning processes arising out of the fallacy of classification in what is quite conceivably a universe of uniques, forms only one introductory aspect of my general scepticism of the Instrument of Thought.
I have now to tell you of another aspect of this scepticism of the instrument which concerns negative terms.
Classes in logic are not only represented by circles with a hard firm outline, whereas they have no such definite limits, but also there is a constant disposition33 to think of negative terms as if they represented positive classes. With words just as with numbers and abstract forms there are definite phases of human development. There is, you know, with regard to number, the phase when man can barely count at all, or counts in perfect good faith and sanity75 upon his fingers. Then there is the phase when he is struggling with the development of number, when he begins to elaborate all sorts of ideas about numbers, until at last he develops complex superstitions76 about perfect numbers and imperfect numbers, about threes and sevens and the like. The same is the case with abstracted forms, and even to-day we are scarcely more than heads out of the vast subtle muddle77 of thinking about spheres and ideally perfect forms and so on, that was the price of this little necessary step to clear thinking. You know better than I do how large a part numerical and geometrical magic, numerical and geometrical philosophy has played in the history of the mind. And the whole apparatus of language and mental communication is beset78 with like dangers. The language of the savage is, I suppose, purely positive; the thing has a name, the name has a thing. This indeed is the tradition of language, and to-day even, we, when we hear a name, are predisposed — and sometimes it is a very vicious disposition — to imagine forthwith something answering to the name. We are disposed, as an incurable79 mental vice44, to accumulate intension in terms. If I say to you Wodget or Crump, you find yourself passing over the fact that these are nothings, these are, so to speak, mere54 blankety blanks, and trying to think what sort of thing a Wodget or a Crump may be. And where this disposition has come in, in its most alluring80 guise81, is in the case of negative terms. Our instrument of knowledge persists in handling even such openly negative terms as the Absolute, the Infinite, as though they were real existences, and when the negative element is ever so little disguised, as it is in such a word as Omniscience82, then the illusion of positive reality may be complete.
Please remember that I am trying to tell you my philosophy, and not arguing about yours. Let me try and express how in my mind this matter of negative terms has shaped itself. I think of something which I may perhaps best describe as being off the stage or out of court, or as the Void without Implications, or as Nothingness or as Outer Darkness. This is a sort of hypothetical Beyond to the visible world of human thought, and thither83 I think all negative terms reach at last, and merge84 and become nothing. Whatever positive class you make, whatever boundary you draw, straight away from that boundary begins the corresponding negative class and passes into the illimitable horizon of nothingness. You talk of pink things, you ignore, if you are a trained logician85, the more elusive86 shades of pink, and draw your line. Beyond is the not pink, known and knowable, and still in the not pink region one comes to the Outer Darkness. Not blue, not happy, not iron, all the not classes meet in that Outer Darkness. That same Outer Darkness and nothingness is infinite space, and infinite time, and any being of infinite qualities, and all that region I rule out of court in my philosophy altogether. I will neither affirm nor deny if I can help it about any not things. I will not deal with not things at all, except by accident and inadvertence. If I use the word ‘infinite’ I use it as one often uses ‘countless87,’ “the countless hosts of the enemy”— or ‘immeasurable’—“immeasurable cliffs”— that is to say as the limit of measurement rather than as the limit of imaginary measurability, as a convenient equivalent to as many times this cloth yard as you can, and as many again and so on and so on. Now a great number of apparently88 positive terms are, or have become, practically negative terms and are under the same ban with me. A considerable number of terms that have played a great part in the world of thought, seem to me to be invalidated by this same defect, to have no content or an undefined content or an unjustifiable content. For example, that word Omniscient89, as implying infinite knowledge, impresses me as being a word with a delusive90 air of being solid and full, when it is really hollow with no content whatever. I am persuaded that knowing is the relation of a conscious being to something not itself, that the thing known is defined as a system of parts and aspects and relationships, that knowledge is comprehension, and so that only finite things can know or be known. When you talk of a being of infinite extension and infinite duration, omniscient and omnipotent91 and Perfect, you seem to me to be talking in negatives of nothing whatever. When you speak of the Absolute you speak to me of nothing. If however you talk of a great yet finite and thinkable being, a being not myself, extending beyond my imagination in time and space, knowing all that I can think of as known and capable of doing all that I can think of as done, you come into the sphere of my mental operations, and into the scheme of my philosophy. . . .
These then are my first two charges against our Instrument of Knowledge, firstly, that it can work only by disregarding individuality and treating uniques as identically similar objects in this respect or that, so as to group them under one term, and that once it has done so it tends automatically to intensify92 the significance of that term, and secondly93, that it can only deal freely with negative terms by treating them as though they were positive. But I have a further objection to the Instrument of Human Thought, that is not correlated to these former objections and that is also rather more difficult to convey.
Essentially this idea is to present a sort of stratification in human ideas. I have it very much in mind that various terms in our reasoning lie, as it were, at different levels and in different planes, and that we accomplish a large amount of error and confusion by reasoning terms together that do not lie or nearly lie in the same plane.
Let me endeavour to make myself a little less obscure by a most flagrant instance from physical things. Suppose some one began to talk seriously of a man seeing an atom through a microscope, or better perhaps of cutting one in half with a knife. There are a number of non-analytical94 people who would be quite prepared to believe that an atom could be visible to the eye or cut in this manner. But any one at all conversant95 with physical conceptions would almost as soon think of killing96 the square root of 2 with a rook rifle as of cutting an atom in half with a knife. Our conception of an atom is reached through a process of hypothesis and analysis, and in the world of atoms there are no knives and no men to cut. If you have thought with a strong consistent mental movement, then when you have thought of your atom under the knife blade, your knife blade has itself become a cloud of swinging grouped atoms, and your microscope lens a little universe of oscillatory and vibratory molecules97. If you think of the universe, thinking at the level of atoms, there is neither knife to cut, scale to weigh nor eye to see. The universe at that plane to which the mind of the molecular98 physicist99 descends100 has none of the shapes or forms of our common life whatever. This hand with which I write is in the universe of molecular physics a cloud of warring atoms and molecules, combining and recombining, colliding, rotating, flying hither and thither in the universal atmosphere of ether.
You see, I hope, what I mean, when I say that the universe of molecular physics is at a different level from the universe of common experience; — what we call stable and solid is in that world a freely moving system of interlacing centres of force, what we call colour and sound is there no more than this length of vibration101 or that. We have reached to a conception of that universe of molecular physics by a great enterprise of organised analysis, and our universe of daily experiences stands in relation to that elemental world as if it were a synthesis of those elemental things.
I would suggest to you that this is only a very extreme instance of the general state of affairs, that there may be finer and subtler differences of level between one term and another, and that terms may very well be thought of as lying obliquely102 and as being twisted through different levels.
It will perhaps give a clearer idea of what I am seeking to convey if I suggest a concrete image for the whole world of a man’s thought and knowledge. Imagine a large clear jelly, in which at all angles and in all states of simplicity or contortion103 his ideas are imbedded. They are all valid and possible ideas as they lie, none in reality incompatible104 with any. If you imagine the direction of up or down in this clear jelly being as it were the direction in which one moves by analysis or by synthesis, if you go down for example from matter to atoms and centres of force and up to men and states and countries — if you will imagine the ideas lying in that manner — you will get the beginning of my intention. But our Instrument, our process of thinking, like a drawing before the discovery of perspective, appears to have difficulties with the third dimension, appears capable only of dealing105 with or reasoning about ideas by projecting them upon the same plane. It will be obvious that a great multitude of things may very well exist together in a solid jelly, which would be overlapping106 and incompatible and mutually destructive, when projected together upon one plane. Through the bias107 in our Instrument to do this, through reasoning between terms not in the same plane, an enormous amount of confusion, perplexity and mental deadlocking109 occurs.
The old theological deadlock108 between predestination and free-will serves admirably as an example of the sort of deadlock I mean. Take life at the level of common sensation and common experience and there is no more indisputable fact than man’s freedom of will, unless it is his complete moral responsibility. But make only the least penetrating110 of analyses and you perceive a world of inevitable111 consequences, a rigid112 succession of cause and effect. Insist upon a flat agreement between the two, and there you are! The Instrument fails.
It is upon these three objections, and upon an extreme suspicion of abstract terms which arises materially out of my first and second objections, that I chiefly rest my case for a profound scepticism of the remoter possibilities of the Instrument of Thought. It is a thing no more perfect than the human eye or the human ear, though like those other instruments it may have undefined possibilities of evolution towards increased range, and increased power.
So much for my main contention113. But before I conclude I may — since I am here — say a little more in the autobiographical vein114, and with a view to your discussion to show how I reconcile this fundamental scepticism with the very positive beliefs about world-wide issues I possess, and the very definite distinction I make between right and wrong.
I reconcile these things by simply pointing out to you that if there is any validity in my image of that three dimensional jelly in which our ideas are suspended, such a reconciliation115 as you demand in logic, such a projection116 of the things as in accordance upon one plane, is totally unnecessary and impossible.
This insistence117 upon the element of uniqueness in being, this subordination of the class to the individual difference, not only destroys the universal claim of philosophy, but the universal claim of ethical118 imperatives119, the universal claim of any religious teaching. If you press me back upon my fundamental position I must confess I put faith and standards and rules of conduct upon exactly the same level as I put my belief of what is right in art, and what I consider right practice in art. I have arrived at a certain sort of self-knowledge and there are, I find, very distinct imperatives for me, but I am quite prepared to admit there is no proving them imperative120 on any one else. One’s political proceedings121, one’s moral acts are, I hold, just as much self-expression as one’s poetry or painting or music. But since life has for its primordial122 elements assimilation and aggression123, I try not only to obey my imperatives, but to put them persuasively124 and convincingly into other minds, to bring about my good and to resist and overcome my evil as though they were the universal Good and the universal Evil in which unthinking men believe. And it is obviously in no way contradictory125 to this philosophy, for me, if I find others responding sympathetically to any notes of mine or if I find myself responding sympathetically to notes sounding about me, to give that common resemblance between myself and others a name, to refer these others and myself in common to this thing as if it were externalised and spanned us all.
Scepticism of the Instrument is for example not incompatible with religious association and with organisation126 upon the basis of a common faith. It is possible to regard God as a Being synthetic127 in relation to men and societies, just as the idea of a universe of atoms and molecules and inorganic128 relationships is analytical in relation to human life.
The repudiation129 of demonstration130 in any but immediate131 and verifiable cases that this Scepticism of the Instrument amounts to, the abandonment of any universal validity for moral and religious propositions, brings ethical, social and religious teaching into the province of poetry, and does something to correct the estrangement132 between knowledge and beauty that is a feature of so much mental existence at this time. All these things are self-expression. Such an opinion sets a new and greater value on that penetrating and illuminating quality of mind we call insight, insight which when it faces towards the contradictions that arise out of the imperfections of the mental instrument is called humour. In these innate133, unteachable qualities I hold — in humour and the sense of beauty — lies such hope of intellectual salvation134 from the original sin of our intellectual instrument as we may entertain in this uncertain and fluctuating world of unique appearances. . . .
So frankly135 I spread my little equipment of fundamental assumptions before you, heartily136 glad of the opportunity you have given me of taking them out, of looking at them with the particularity the presence of hearers ensures, and of hearing the impression they make upon you. Of course, such a sketch137 must have an inevitable crudity138 of effect. The time I had for it — I mean the time I was able to give in preparation — was altogether too limited for any exhaustive finish of presentation; but I think on the whole I have got the main lines of this sketch map of my mental basis true. Whether I have made myself comprehensible is a different question altogether. It is for you rather than me to say how this sketch map of mine lies with regard to your own more systematic139 cartography. . . .
The End
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Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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propitiously
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briefly
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lapse
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| n.过失，流逝，失效，抛弃信仰，间隔；vi.堕落，停止，失效，流逝；vt.使失效 | |
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autobiography
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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purely
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unaware
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subjective
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| a.主观(上)的，个人的 | |
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inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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speculative
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| adj.思索性的，暝想性的，推理的 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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anatomy
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| n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织 | |
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nucleus
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| n.核，核心，原子核 | |
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spacious
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incurably
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slit
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reptile
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jaw
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eke
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extraordinarily
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gestation
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dissection
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astronomical
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elucidation
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| n.说明，阐明 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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30
bracing
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| adj.令人振奋的 | |
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31
marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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32
elimination
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| n.排除，消除，消灭 | |
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33
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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35
variance
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| n.矛盾，不同 | |
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36
pervades
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| v.遍及，弥漫( pervade的第三人称单数 ) | |
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37
remarkably
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| ad.不同寻常地，相当地 | |
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38
oversights
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| n.疏忽( oversight的名词复数 )；忽略；失察；负责 | |
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39
antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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40
underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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41
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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42
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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43
implement
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| n.(pl.)工具，器具；vt.实行，实施，执行 | |
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44
vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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45
penetrations
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| 渗透( penetration的名词复数 )； 穿透； 突破； （男人阴茎的）插入 | |
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46
arrogant
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| adj.傲慢的，自大的 | |
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47
peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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48
derive
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| v.取得；导出；引申；来自；源自；出自 | |
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49
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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50
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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51
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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52
specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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53
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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54
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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55
vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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56
miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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57
cumber
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| v.拖累，妨碍；n.妨害；拖累 | |
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58
straightforward
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| adj.正直的，坦率的；易懂的，简单的 | |
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59
unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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60
delude
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| vt.欺骗；哄骗 | |
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61
distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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62
physiological
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| adj.生理学的，生理学上的 | |
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63
modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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64
aberration
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| n.离开正路，脱离常规，色差 | |
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65
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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66
syllogism
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| n.演绎法，三段论法 | |
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67
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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68
insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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obsessed
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| adj.心神不宁的,鬼迷心窍的,沉迷的 | |
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interpretation
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| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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71
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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72
inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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73
defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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74
cartridges
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| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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75
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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76
superstitions
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| 迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 ) | |
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77
muddle
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| n.困惑，混浊状态；vt.使混乱，使糊涂，使惊呆；vi.胡乱应付，混乱 | |
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78
beset
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| v.镶嵌；困扰，包围 | |
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79
incurable
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| adj.不能医治的，不能矫正的，无救的；n.不治的病人，无救的人 | |
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80
alluring
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| adj.吸引人的，迷人的 | |
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81
guise
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| n.外表，伪装的姿态 | |
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82
omniscience
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| n.全知，全知者，上帝 | |
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83
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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84
merge
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| v.(使)结合，(使)合并，(使)合为一体 | |
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85
logician
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| n.逻辑学家 | |
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86
elusive
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| adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的 | |
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87
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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88
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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89
omniscient
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| adj.无所不知的；博识的 | |
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90
delusive
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| adj.欺骗的，妄想的 | |
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91
omnipotent
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| adj.全能的，万能的 | |
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92
intensify
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| vt.加强；变强；加剧 | |
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93
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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94
analytical
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| adj.分析的；用分析法的 | |
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95
conversant
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| adj.亲近的，有交情的，熟悉的 | |
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96
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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97
molecules
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| 分子( molecule的名词复数 ) | |
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98
molecular
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| adj.分子的；克分子的 | |
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99
physicist
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| n.物理学家，研究物理学的人 | |
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100
descends
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| v.下来( descend的第三人称单数 )；下去；下降；下斜 | |
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101
vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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102
obliquely
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| adv.斜； 倾斜； 间接； 不光明正大 | |
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103
contortion
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| n.扭弯，扭歪，曲解 | |
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104
incompatible
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| adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的 | |
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105
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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106
overlapping
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| adj./n.交迭（的） | |
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107
bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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108
deadlock
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| n.僵局，僵持 | |
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109
deadlocking
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| 停顿（deadlock的现在分词形式） | |
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110
penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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111
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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112
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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113
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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114
vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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115
reconciliation
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| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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116
projection
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| n.发射，计划，突出部分 | |
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117
insistence
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| n.坚持；强调；坚决主张 | |
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118
ethical
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| adj.伦理的，道德的，合乎道德的 | |
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119
imperatives
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| n.必要的事( imperative的名词复数 )；祈使语气；必须履行的责任 | |
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120
imperative
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| n.命令，需要；规则；祈使语气；adj.强制的；紧急的 | |
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121
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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122
primordial
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| adj.原始的；最初的 | |
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123
aggression
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| n.进攻，侵略，侵犯，侵害 | |
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124
persuasively
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| adv.口才好地；令人信服地 | |
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125
contradictory
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| adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立 | |
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126
organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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127
synthetic
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| adj.合成的，人工的；综合的；n.人工制品 | |
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128
inorganic
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| adj.无生物的；无机的 | |
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129
repudiation
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| n.拒绝；否认；断绝关系；抛弃 | |
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130
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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131
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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132
estrangement
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| n.疏远，失和，不和 | |
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133
innate
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| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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134
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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135
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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136
heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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137
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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138
crudity
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| n.粗糙，生硬；adj.粗略的 | |
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139
systematic
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| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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