SOUL.

&sect¹; I.

This is a vague and indeterminate term, expressing an unknown principle of known effects, which we feel in ourselves. This word “soul” answers to the “anima” of the Latins — to the “pneuma” of the Greeks — to the term which each and every nation has used to express what they understood no better than we do.

In the proper and literal sense of the Latin and the languages derived² from it, it signifies that which animates³. Thus people say, the soul of men, of animals, and sometimes of plants, to denote their principle of vegetation and life. This word has never been uttered with any but a confused idea, as when it is said in Genesis: “God breathed into his nostrils⁵ the breath of life, and he became a living soul”; and: “The soul of animals is in the blood”; and: “Stay not my soul.”

Thus the soul was taken for the origin and the cause of life, and for life itself. Hence all known nations long imagined that everything died with the body. If anything can be discerned with clearness in the chaos⁶ of ancient histories, it seems that the Egyptians were at least the first who made a distinction between the intelligence and the soul; and the Greeks learned from them to distinguish their “nous” and their “pneuma.” The Latins, after the example of the Greeks, distinguished⁷ “animus” and “anima”; and we have, too, our soul and our understanding. But are that which is the principle of our life, and that which is the principle of our thoughts, two different things? Does that which causes us to digest, and which gives us sensation and memory, resemble that which is the cause of digestion⁸ in animals, and of their sensations and memory?

Here is an eternal object for disputation: I say an eternal object, for having no primitive⁹ notion from which to deduce in this investigation¹⁰, we must ever continue in a labyrinth¹¹ of doubts and feeble conjectures¹³.

We have not the smallest step on which to set our foot, to reach the slightest knowledge of what makes us live and what makes us think. How should we? For we must then have seen life and thought enter a body. Does a father know how he produced his son? Does a mother know how she conceived him? Has anyone ever been able to divine how he acts, how he wakes, or how he sleeps? Does anyone know how his limbs obey his will? Has anyone discovered by what art his ideas are traced in his brain, and issue from it at his command? Feeble automata, moved by the invisible hand which directs us on the stage of this world, which of us has ever perceived the thread which guides us?

We dare to put in question, whether the intelligent soul is spirit or matter; whether it is created before us, or proceeds from nothing at our birth; whether, after animating¹⁴ us for a day on this earth, it lives after us in eternity¹⁵. These questions appear sublime¹⁶; what are they? Questions of blind men asking one another: What is light?

When we wish to have a rude knowledge of a piece of metal, we put it on the fire in a crucible¹⁷; but have we any crucible wherein to put the soul? It is spirit, says one; but what is spirit? Assuredly, no one knows. This is a word so void of meaning, that to tell what spirit is, you are obliged to say what it is not. The soul is matter, says another; but what is matter? We know nothing of it but a few appearances and properties; and not one of these properties, not one of these appearances, can bear the least affinity¹⁹ to thought.

It is something distinct from matter, you say; but what proof have you of this? Is it because matter is divisible and figurable, and thought is not? But how do you know that the first principles of matter are divisible and figurable? It is very likely that they are not; whole sects²⁰ of philosophers assert that the elements of matter have neither figure nor extent. You triumphantly²¹ exclaim: Thought is neither wood, nor stone, nor sand, nor metal; therefore, thought belongs not to matter. Weak and presumptuous²² reasoners! Gravitation is neither wood, nor sand, nor metal, nor stone; nor is motion, or vegetation, or life, any of all these; yet life, vegetation, motion, gravitation, are given to matter. To say that God cannot give thought to matter, is to say the most insolently²³ absurd thing that has ever been advanced in the privileged schools of madness and folly²⁵. We are not assured that God has done this; we are only assured that He can do it. But of what avail is all that has been said, or all that will be said, about the soul? What avails it that it has been called “entelechia,” quintessence, flame, ether — that it has been believed to be universal, uncreated, transmigrant?

Of what avail, in these questions inaccessible²⁶ to reason, are the romances of our uncertain imaginations? What avails it, that the fathers in the four primitive ages believed the soul to be corporeal²⁷? What avails it that Tertullian, with a contradictoriness²⁸ that was familiar to him, decided²⁹ that it is at once corporeal, figured, and simple? We have a thousand testimonies³⁰ of ignorance, but not one which affords us a ray of probability.

How, then, shall we be bold enough to affirm what the soul is? We know certainly that we exist, that we feel, that we think. Seek we to advance one step further — we fall into an abyss of darkness; and in this abyss, we have still the foolish temerity³¹ to dispute whether this soul, of which we have not the least idea, is made before us or with us, and whether it is perishable³² or immortal³³?

The article on “Soul,” and all articles belonging to metaphysics, should begin with a sincere submission³⁴ to the indubitable tenets of the Church. Revelation is doubtless much better than philosophy. Systems exercise the mind, but faith enlightens and guides it.

Are there not words often pronounced of which we have but a very confused idea, or perhaps no idea at all? Is not the word “soul” one of these? When the tongue of a pair of bellows³⁵ is out of order, and the air, escaping through the valve, is not driven with violence towards the fire, the maid-servant says: “The soul of the bellows is burst.” She knows no better, and the question does not at all disturb her quiet.

The gardener uses the expression, “Soul of the plants”; and cultivates them very well without knowing what the term means.

The musical-instrument maker³⁶ places, and shifts forward or backward, the soul of a violin, under the bridge, in the interior of the instrument: a sorry bit of wood more or less gives it or takes from it a harmonious³⁷ soul.

We have several manufactures in which the workmen give the appellation³⁸ of “soul” to their machines; but they are never heard to dispute about the word: it is otherwise with philosophers.

The word “soul,” with us, signifies in general that which animates. Our predecessors³⁹, the Celts, gave their soul the name of “seel,” of which the English have made soul, while the Germans retain “seel”; and it is probable that the ancient Teutons and the ancient Britons had no university quarrels about this expression.

The Greeks distinguished three sorts of souls: “Psyche⁴⁰,” signifying the sensitive soul — the soul of the senses; and hence it was that Love, the son of Aphrodite, had so much passion for Psyche, and that she loved him so tenderly; “Pneuma,” the breath which gave life and motion to the whole machine, and which we have rendered by “spiritus” — spirit — a vague term, which has received a thousand different acceptations: and lastly, “nous,” intelligence.

Thus we possess three souls, without having the slightest notion of any one of them. St. Thomas Aquinas admits these three souls in his quality of peripatetic⁴¹, and distinguishes each of the three into three parts.

“Psyche” was in the breast; “Pneuma” was spread throughout the body; and “Nous” was in the head. There was no other philosophy in our schools until the present day; and woe⁴² to the man who took one of these souls for another!

In this chaos of ideas, there was however a foundation. Men had clearly perceived that in their passions of love, anger, fear, etc., motions were excited within them; the heart and the liver were the seat of the passions. When thinking deeply, one feels a laboring⁴³ in the organs of the head; therefore, the intellectual soul is in the brain. Without respiration⁴⁵ there is no vegetation, no life; therefore, the vegetative soul is in the breast, which receives the breath of the air.

When men had seen in their sleep their dead relatives or friends, they necessarily sought to discover what had appeared to them. It was not the body, which had been consumed on a pile or swallowed up in the sea and eaten by the fishes. However, they would declare it was something, for they had seen it; the dead man had spoken; the dreamer had questioned him. Was it “Psyche”; was it “Pneuma”; was it “Nous,” with whom he had conversed⁴⁷ in his sleep? Then a phantom⁴⁹ was imagined — a slight figure; it was “skia” — it was “daimonos” — a shade of the manes; a small soul of air and fire, extremely slender, wandering none knew where.

In after times, when it was determined⁵⁰ to sound the matter, the undisputed result was, that this soul was corporeal, and all antiquity⁵¹ had no other idea of it. At length came Plato, who so subtilized this soul, that it was doubted whether he did not entirely⁵² separate it from matter; but the problem was never resolved until faith came to enlighten us.

In vain do the materialists adduce the testimony⁵³ of some fathers of the Church who do not express themselves with exactness. St. Iren?us says that the soul is but the breath of life, that it is incorporeal⁵⁴ only in comparison with the mortal body, and that it retains the human figure in order that it may be recognized.

In vain does Tertullian express himself thus: “The corporality of the soul shines forth⁵⁵ in the Gospel. ‘Corporalitas anim? in ipso evangelio relucesseit.’ ” For if the soul had not a body, the image of the soul would not have the image of the body.

In vain does he even relate the vision of a holy woman who had seen a very brilliant soul of the color of the air.

In vain does Tatian expressly say:

Ψυχ? με?ν ο?ν ε? τ?ν ?νθρ?πων πολυμερ?? ε?στιν

—“The soul of man is composed of several parts.”

In vain do they adduce St. Hilary, who said in later times: “There is nothing created which is not corporeal, neither in heaven nor on earth; neither visible nor invisible; all is formed of elements; and souls, whether they inhabit a body or are without a body, have always a corporeal substance.”

In vain does St. Ambrose, in the fourth century, say: “We know nothing but what is material, excepting only the ever-venerable Trinity.”

The whole body of the Church has decided that the soul is immaterial. These holy men had fallen into an error then universal; they were men: but they were not mistaken concerning immortality⁵⁶, because it is evidently announced in the Gospels.

So evident is our need of the decision of the infallible Church on these points of philosophy, that indeed we have not of ourselves any sufficient notion of what is called pure spirit, nor of what is called matter. Pure spirit is an expression which gives us no idea; and we are acquainted with matter only by a few phenomena⁵⁷. So little do we know of it, that we call it substance, which word “substance” means that which is beneath; but this beneath will eternally be concealed⁵⁸ from us; this beneath is the Creator’s secret, and this secret of the Creator is everywhere. We do not know how we receive life, how we give it, how we grow, how we digest, how we sleep, how we think, nor how we feel. The great difficulty is, to comprehend how a being, whatsoever⁵⁹ it be, has thoughts.
§ II.
Locke’s Doubts concerning the Soul.

The author of the article on “Soul,” in the “Encyclop?dia,” who has scrupulously⁶⁰ followed Jacquelot, teaches us nothing. He also rises up against Locke, because the modest Locke has said:

“Perhaps we shall never be capable of knowing whether a material being thinks or not; for this reason — that it is impossible for us to discover, by the contemplation of our own ideas, ‘without revelation,’ whether God has not given to some portion of matter, disposed as He thinks fit, the power of perceiving and thinking; or whether He has joined and united to matter so disposed, an immaterial and thinking substance. For with regard to our notions, it is no less easy for us to conceive that God can, if He pleases, add to an idea of matter the faculty⁶¹ of thinking, than to comprehend that He joins to it another substance with the faculty of thinking; since we know not in what thought consists, nor to what kind of substance this all-powerful Being has thought fit to grant this power, which could be created only by virtue⁶² of the good-will and pleasure of the Creator. I do not see that there is any contradiction in God — that thinking, eternal, and all-powerful Being — giving, if He wills it, certain degrees of feeling, perception, and thought, to certain portions of matter, created and insensible, which He joins together as he thinks fit.”

This was speaking like a profound, religious, and modest man. It is known what contests he had to maintain concerning this opinion, which he appeared to have hazarded, but which was really no other than a consequence of the conviction he felt of the omnipotence⁶³ of God, and the weakness of man. He did not say that matter thought; but he said that we do not know enough to demonstrate that it is impossible for God to add the gift of thought to the unknown being called “matter,” after granting to it those of gravitation and of motion, which are equally incomprehensible.

Assuredly, Locke was not the only one who advanced this opinion; it was that of all the ancients — regarding the soul only as very subtile matter, they consequently affirmed that matter could feel and think.

Such was the opinion of Gassendi, as we find in his objections to Descartes. “It is true,” says Gassendi, “that you know that you think; but you, who think, know not of what kind of substance you are. Thus, though the operation of thought is known to you, the principle of your essence is hidden from you, and you do not know what is the nature of that substance, one of the operations of which is to think. You resemble a blind man who, feeling the heat of the sun, and being informed that it is caused by the sun, should believe himself to have a clear and distinct idea of that luminary⁶⁴, because, if he were asked what the sun is, he could answer, that it is a thing which warms. . . . .”

The same Gassendi, in his “Philosophy of Epicurus,” repeats several times that there is no mathematical evidence of the pure spirituality of the soul.

Descartes, in one of his letters to Elizabeth, princess palatine, says to her: “I confess, that by natural reason alone, we can form many conjectures about the soul, and conceive flattering hopes; but we can have no assurance.” And here Descartes combats in his letters what he advances in his books — a too ordinary contradiction.

We have seen, too, that all the fathers in the first ages of the Church, while they believed the soul immortal, believed it to be material. They thought it as easy for God to preserve as to create. They said, God made it thinking, He will preserve it thinking.

Malebranche has clearly proved, that by ourselves we have no idea, and that objects are incapable⁶⁵ of giving us any; whence he concludes that we see all things in God. This, in substance, is the same as making God the author of all our ideas; for wherewith should we see ourselves in Him, if we had not instruments for seeing? and these instruments are held and directed by him alone. This system is a labyrinth, of which one path would lead you to Spinozism, another to Stoicism, another to chaos.

When men have disputed well and long on matter and spirit, they always end in understanding neither one another nor themselves. No philosopher has ever been able to lift by his own strength the veil which nature has spread over the first principle of things. They dispute, while nature is acting⁶⁶.
§ III.
On the Souls of Beasts, and on Some Empty Ideas.

Before the strange system which supposes animals to be pure machines without any sensation, men had never imagined an immaterial soul in beasts; and no one had carried temerity so far as to say that an oyster⁶⁷ has a spiritual soul. All the world peaceably agreed that beasts had received from God feeling, memory, ideas, but not a pure spirit. No one had abused the gift of reason so far as to say that nature has given to beasts the organs of feeling, in order that they may have no feeling. No one had said that they cry out when wounded, and fly when pursued, without experiencing either pain or fear.

God’s omnipotence was not then denied: it was in His power to communicate to the organized matter of animals pleasure, pain, remembrance, the combination of some ideas; it was in His power to give to several of them, as the ape, the elephant, the hound, the talent of perfecting themselves in the arts which are taught them: not only was it in His power to endow almost all carnivorous animals with the talent of making war better in their experienced old age than in their confiding⁶⁸ youth; not only was it in His power to do this, but He had done it, as the whole world could witness.

Pereira and Descartes maintained against the whole world that it was mistaken; that God had played the conjurer; that He had given to animals all the instruments of life and sensation, that they might have neither sensation or life properly so called. But some pretended philosophers, I know not whom, in order to answer Descartes’ chimera⁶⁹, threw themselves into the opposite chimera very liberally, giving “pure spirit” to toads⁷⁰ and insects. “In vitium ducit culp? fuga.”

Betwixt these two follies⁷¹, the one depriving of feeling the organs of feeling, the other lodging⁷² pure spirit in a bug⁷³ — a mean was imagined, viz., instinct. And what is “instinct”? Oh! it is a substantial form; it is a plastic form; it is a — I know not what — it is instinct. I will be of your opinion, so long as you apply to most things “I know not what”; so long as your philosophy shall begin and end with “I know not”; but when you “affirm,” I shall say to you with Prior, in his poem on the vanity of the world:

Then vainly the philosopher avers⁷⁴

That reason guides our deeds, and instinct theirs.

How can we justly different causes frame,

When the effects entirely are the same?

Instinct and reason how can we divide?

’Tis the fool’s ignorance, and the pedant⁷⁵’s pride.

The author of the article on “Soul,” in the “Encyclop?dia,” explains himself thus: “I represent to myself the soul of beasts as a substance immaterial and intelligent.” But of what kind? It seems to me, that it must be an active principle having sensations, and only sensations. . . . . If we reflect on the nature of the souls of beasts, it does not of itself give us any grounds for believing that their spirituality will save them from annihilation.

I do not understand how you represent to yourself an immaterial substance. To represent a thing to yourself is to make to yourself an image of it; and hitherto no one has been able to paint the mind. I am willing to suppose that by the word “represent,” the author means I “conceive”; for my part, I own that I do not conceive it. Still less do I conceive how a spiritual soul is annihilated⁷⁶, because I have no conception of creation or of nothing; because I never attended God’s council; because I know nothing at all of the principle of things.

If I seek to prove that the soul is a real being, I am stopped, and told that it is a faculty. If I affirm that it is a faculty, and that I have that of thinking, I am answered, that I mistake; that God, the eternal master of all nature, does everything in me, directing all my actions, and all my thoughts; that if I produced my thoughts, I should know those which I should have the next minute; that I never know this; that I am but an automaton⁷⁷ with sensations and ideas, necessarily dependent, and in the hands of the Supreme⁷⁸ Being, infinitely⁷⁹ more subject to Him than clay is to the potter.

I acknowledge then my ignorance; I acknowledge that four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is.

An orthodox philosopher said to a heterodox philosopher, “How can you have brought yourself to imagine that the soul is of its nature mortal, and that it is eternal only by the pure will of God?” “By my experience,” says the other. “How! have you been dead then?” “Yes, very often: in my youth I had a fit of epilepsy; and I assure you, that I was perfectly⁸⁰ dead for several hours: I had no sensation, nor even any recollection from the moment that I was seized. The same thing happens to me now almost every night. I never feel precisely⁸¹ the moment when I fall asleep, and my sleep is absolutely without dreams. I cannot imagine, but by conjectures, how long I have slept. I am dead regularly six hours in twenty-four, which is one-fourth of my life.”

The orthodox then maintained against him that he always thought while he was asleep, without his knowing of it. The heterodox replied: “I believe, by revelation, that I shall think forever in the next world; but I assure you, that I seldom think in this.”

The orthodox was not mistaken in affirming the immortality of the soul, since faith demonstrates that truth; but he might be mistaken in affirming that a sleeping man constantly thinks.

Locke frankly⁸² owned that he did not always think while he was asleep. Another philosopher has said: “Thought is peculiar⁸³ to man, but it is not his essence.”

Let us leave every man at liberty to seek into himself and to lose himself in his ideas. However, it is well to know that in 1750, a philosopher underwent a very severe persecution⁸⁴, for having acknowledged, with Locke, that his understanding was not exercised every moment of the day and of the night, no more than his arms or his legs. Not only was he persecuted⁸⁵ by the ignorance of the court, but the malicious⁸⁷ ignorance of some pretended men of letters assailed⁸⁸ the object of persecution. That which in England had produced only some philosophical⁹⁰ disputes, produced in France the most disgraceful atrocities⁹¹: a Frenchman was made the victim of Locke.

There have always been among the refuse of our literature, some of those wretches⁹² who have sold their pens and caballed against their very benefactors⁹³. This remark is to be sure foreign to the article on “Soul”: but ought one to lose a single opportunity of striking terror into those who render themselves unworthy of the name of literary men, who prostitute the little wit and conscience they have to a vile²⁴ interest, to a chimerical⁹⁵ policy, who betray their friends to flatter fools, who prepare in secret the hemlock-draught with which powerful and wicked ignorance would destroy useful citizens.

Did it ever occur in true Rome, that a Lucretius was denounced to the consuls⁹⁶ for having put the system of Epicurus into verse; a Cicero, for having repeatedly written, that there is no pain after death; or that a Pliny or a Varro was accused of having peculiar notions of the divinity? The liberty of thinking was unlimited⁹⁸ among the Romans. Those of harsh, jealous, and narrow minds, who among us have endeavored to crush this liberty — the parent of our knowledge, the mainspring of the understanding — have made chimerical dangers their pretext⁹⁹; they have forgotten that the Romans, who carried this liberty much further than we do, were nevertheless our conquerors¹⁰⁰, our lawgivers; and that the disputes of schools have no more to do with government than the tub of Diogenes had with the victories of Alexander.

This lesson is worth quite as much as a lesson on the soul. We shall perhaps have occasion more than once to recur¹⁰¹ to it.

In fine, while adoring God with all our soul, let us ever confess our profound ignorance concerning that soul — that faculty of feeling and thinking which we owe to His infinite goodness. Let us acknowledge that our weak reasonings can neither take from nor add to revelation and faith. Let us, in short, conclude that we ought to employ this intelligence, whose nature is unknown, in perfecting the sciences which are the object of the “Encyclop?dia,” as watchmakers make use of springs in their watches, without knowing what spring is.
§ IV.
On the Soul, and on our Ignorance.

Relying on our acquired knowledge, we have ventured to discuss the question: Whether the soul is created before us? Whether it arrives from nothing in our bodies? At what age it came and placed itself between the bladder and the intestines¹⁰², “c?cum” and “rectum”? Whether it received or brought there any ideas, and what those ideas are? Whether, after animating us for a few moments, its essence is to live after us in eternity, without the intervention¹⁰³ of God Himself? Whether, it being a spirit, and God being spirit, they are of like nature? These questions have an appearance of sublimity¹⁰⁴. What are they but questions of men born blind discussing the nature of light?

What have all the philosophers, ancient and modern, taught us? A child is wiser than they: he does not think about what he cannot conceive.

How unfortunate, you will say, for an insatiable curiosity, for an unquenchable thirst after well-being¹⁰⁵, that we are thus ignorant of ourselves! Granted: and there are things yet more unfortunate than this; but I will answer you: “Sors tua mortalis, non est mortale quod optas.” —“Mortal thy fate, thy wishes those of gods.”

Once more let it be repeated, the nature of every principle of things appears to be the secret of the Creator. How does the air convey sound? How are animals formed? How do some of our members constantly obey our will? What hand places ideas in our memory, keeps them there as in a register, and draws them thence sometimes at our command, and sometimes in spite of us? Our own nature, that of the universe, that of the smallest plant — all, to us, involved in utter darkness.

Man is an acting, feeling, and thinking being; this is all we know of the matter: it is not given to us to know either what renders us feeling or thinking, or what makes us act, or what causes us to be. The acting faculty is to us as incomprehensible as the thinking faculty. The difficulty is not so much to conceive how this body of clay has feelings and ideas as to conceive how a being, whatever it be, has ideas and feelings.

Behold¹⁰⁶ on one hand the soul of Archimedes, and on the other that of a simpleton; are they of the same nature? If their essence is to think, then they think always and independently of the body, which cannot act without them. If they think by their own nature, can a soul, which is incapable of performing a single arithmetical operation, be of the same species as that which has measured the heavens? If it is the organs of the body that have made Archimedes think, why does not my idiot think, seeing that he is better constituted than Archimedes, more vigorous, digesting better, performing all his functions better? Because, say you, his brain is not so good; but you suppose this; you have no knowledge of it. No difference has ever been found among sound brains that have been dissected¹⁰⁸; indeed, it is very likely that the brain-pan of a blockhead would be found in a better state than that of Archimedes, which has been prodigiously¹⁰⁹ fatigued¹¹¹, and may be worn and contracted.

Let us then conclude what we have concluded already, that we are ignorant of all first principles. As for those who are ignorant and self-sufficient, they are far below the ape.

Now then dispute, ye choleric¹¹² arguers; present memorials against one another; abuse one another; pronounce your sentences — you who know not a syllable¹¹³ of the matter!
§ V.
Warburton’s Paradox¹¹⁴ on the Immortality of the Soul.

Warburton, the editor and commentator¹¹⁵ of Shakespeare, and Bishop¹¹⁶ of Gloucester, using English liberty, and abusing the custom of vituperating against adversaries¹¹⁷, has composed four volumes to prove that the immortality of the soul was never announced in the Pentateuch; and to conclude from this very proof, that the mission of Moses, which he calls “legation,” was divine. The following is an abstract of his book, which he himself gives at the commencement of the first volume:

“1. That to inculcate the doctrine¹¹⁸ of a future state of rewards and punishments is necessary to the well-being of civil society.

“2. That all mankind [wherein he is mistaken], especially the most wise and learned nations of antiquity, have concurred¹¹⁹ in believing and teaching, that this doctrine was of such use to civil society.

“3. That the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to be found in, nor did it make part of, the Mosaic¹²⁰ dispensation.

“That therefore the law of Moses is of divine origin;

“Which one or both of the two following syllogisms will evince:

“I. Whatever religion and society have no future state for their support must be supported by an extraordinary Providence¹²¹.

“The Jewish religion and society had no future state for their support;

“Therefore the Jewish religion and society were supported by an extraordinary Providence.

“And again,

“II. The ancient lawgivers universally believed that such a religion could be supported only by an extraordinary Providence.

“Moses, an ancient lawgiver, versed⁴⁸ in all the wisdom of Egypt, purposely instituted such a religion;

“Therefore Moses believed his religion was supported by an extraordinary Providence.”

What is most extraordinary, is this assertion of Warburton, which he has put in large characters at the head of his work. He has often been reproached with his extreme temerity and dishonesty in daring to say that all ancient lawgivers believed that a religion which is not founded on rewards and punishments after death cannot be upheld but by an extraordinary Providence: not one of them ever said so. He does not even undertake to adduce a single instance of this in his enormous book, stuffed with an immense number of quotations¹²², all foreign to the subject. He has buried himself under a heap of Greek and Latin authors, ancient and modern, that no one may reach him through this horrible accumulation of coverings. When at length the critic has rummaged¹²³ to the bottom, the author is raised to life from among all those dead, to load his adversaries with abuse.

It is true, that near the close of the fourth volume, after ranging through a hundred labyrinths¹²⁴, and fighting all he met with on the way, he does at last come back to his great question from which he has so long wandered. He takes up the Book of Job, which the learned consider as the work of an Arab; and he seeks to prove, that Job did not believe in the immortality of the soul. He then explains, in his own way, all the texts of Scripture¹²⁵ that have been brought to combat his opinion.

All that should be said of him is, that if he was in the right, it was not for a bishop to be so in the right. He should have felt that two dangerous consequences might be drawn¹²⁶: but all goes by chance in this world. This man, who became an informer and a persecutor¹²⁷, was not made a bishop through the patronage¹²⁸ of a minister of state, until immediately after he wrote his book.

At Salamanca, at Coimbra, or at Rome, he would have been obliged to retract¹²⁹ and to ask pardon. In England he became a peer of the realm, with an income of a hundred thousand livres. Here was something to soften¹³⁰ his manners.
§ VI.
On the Need of Revelation.

The greatest benefit for which we are indebted to the New Testament¹³¹ is its having revealed to us the immortality of the soul. It is therefore quite in vain that this Warburton has sought to cloud this important truth, by continually representing, in his “Legation of Moses,” that “the ancient Jews had no knowledge of this necessary dogma,” and that “the Sadducees did not admit it in the time of our Lord Jesus.”

He interprets in his own way, the very words which Jesus Christ is made to utter: “Have ye not read that which is spoken unto you by God saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” He gives to the parable¹³² of the rich bad man a sense contrary to that of all the churches. Sherlock, bishop of London, and twenty other learned men, have refuted him. Even the English philosophers have reminded him how scandalous it is in an English bishop to manifest an opinion so contrary to the Church of England; and after all, this man has thought proper to call others impious: like Harlequin, in the farce¹³³ of “The Housebreaker” (Le Dévaliseur des Maisons) who, after throwing the furniture out at the window, seeing a man carrying some articles away, cries with all his might —“Stop, thief!”

The revelation of the immortality of the soul, and of pains and rewards after death, is the more to be blessed, as the vain philosophy of men always doubted of it. The great C?sar had no faith in it. He explained himself clearly to the whole senate, when, to prevent Catiline from being put to death, he represented to them that death left man without feeling — that all died with him: and no one refuted this opinion.

The Roman Empire was divided between two great principal sects: that of Epicurus, who affirmed that the divinity was useless to the world, and the soul perished with the body; and that of the Stoics¹³⁴, who regarded the soul as a portion of the divinity, which after death was reunited to its original — to the great All from which it had emanated¹³⁵. So that, whether the soul was believed to be mortal, or to be immortal, all sects united in contemning¹³⁶ the idea of rewards and punishments after death.

There are still remaining numerous monuments of this belief of the Romans. It was from the force of this opinion profoundly engraved¹³⁷ on all hearts, that so many Roman heroes and so many private citizens put themselves to death without the smallest scruple¹³⁸; they did not wait for a tyrant¹³⁹ to deliver them into the hands of the executioner.

Even the most virtuous¹⁴⁰ men, and the most thoroughly¹⁴¹ persuaded of the existence of a God, did not then hope any reward, nor did they fear any punishment. It has been seen in the article on “Apocrypha,” that Clement¹⁴² himself, who was afterwards pope and saint, began with doubting what the first Christians¹⁴³ said of another life, and that he consulted St. Peter at C?sarea. We are very far from believing that St. Clement wrote the history which is attributed to him; but it shows what need mankind had of a precise revelation. All that can surprise us is that a tenet so repressing and so salutary should have left men a prey¹⁴⁵ to so many horrible crimes, who have so short a time to live, and find themselves pressed between the eternities.
§ VII.
Souls of Fools and Monsters.

A child, ill-formed, is born absolutely imbecile, has no ideas, lives without ideas; instances of this have been known. How shall this animal be defined? Doctors have said that it is something between man and beast; others have said that it is a sensitive soul, but not an intellectual soul: it eats, it drinks, it sleeps, it wakes, it has sensations, but it does not think.

Is there for it another life, or is there none? The case has been put, and has not yet been entirely resolved.

Some have said that this creature must have a soul, because its father and its mother had souls. But by this reasoning it would be proved that if it had come into the world without a nose, it should have the reputation of having one, because its father and its mother had one.

A woman is brought to bed: her infant has no chin; its forehead is flat and somewhat black, its eyes round, its nose thin and sharp; its countenance¹⁴⁶ is not much unlike that of a swallow: yet the rest of his body is made like ours. It is decided by a majority of voices that it is a man, and possesses an immaterial soul; whereupon the parents have it baptized. But if this little ridiculous figure has pointed¹⁴⁷ claws, and a mouth in the form of a beak¹⁴⁸, it is declared to be a monster; it has no soul; it is not baptized.

It is known, that in 1726, there was in London a woman who was brought to bed every eight days of a young rabbit. No difficulty was made of refusing baptism to this child, notwithstanding the epidemic¹⁴⁹ folly which prevailed in London for three weeks, of believing that this poor jade¹⁵⁰ actually brought forth wild rabbits. The surgeon who delivered her, named St. André, swore that nothing was more true; and he was believed. But what reason had the credulous¹⁵¹ for refusing a soul to this woman’s offspring? She had a soul; her children must likewise have been furnished with souls, whether they had hands or paws, whether they were born with a snout or with a face: cannot the Supreme Being vouchsafe¹⁵² the gift of thought and sensation to a little nondescript, born of a woman, with the figure of a rabbit, as well as a little nondescript born with the figure of a man? Will the soul which was ready to take up its abode¹⁵³ in this woman’s f?tus return unhoused?

It is very well observed by Locke, with regard to monsters, that immortality must not be attributed to the exterior¹⁵⁴ of a body — that it has nothing to do with the figure. “This immortality,” says he, “is no more attached to the form of one’s face or breast than it is to the way in which one’s beard is clipped or one’s coat is cut.”

He asks: What is the exact measure of deformity by which you can recognize whether an infant has a soul or not? What is the precise degree at which it is to be declared a monster and without a soul?

Again, it is asked: What would a soul be that should have none but chimerical ideas? There are some which never go beyond such. Are they worthy⁹⁴ or unworthy? What is to be made of their pure spirit?

What are we to think of a child with two heads, which is otherwise well formed?” Some say that it has two souls, because it is furnished with two pineal glands¹⁵⁵, with two callous¹⁵⁶ substances, with two “sensoria communia.” Others answer that there cannot be two souls, with but one breast and one navel.

In short, so many questions have been asked about this poor human soul, that if it were necessary to put an end to them all, such an examination of its own person would cause it the most insupportable annoyance¹⁵⁷. The same would happen to it as happened to Cardinal¹⁵⁸ Polignac at a conclave¹⁵⁹: his steward¹⁶⁰, tired of having never been able to make him pass his accounts, took a journey to Rome, and went to the small window of his cell, laden¹⁶¹ with an immense bundle of papers; he read for nearly two hours; at last, finding that no answer was made, he thrust forward his head: the cardinal had been gone almost two hours. Our souls will be gone before their stewards¹⁶² have finished their statements; but let us be just before God — ignorant as both we and our stewards are.

See what is said on the soul in the “Letters of Memmius.”
§ VIII.
Different Opinions Criticised — Apology for Locke.

I must acknowledge, that when I examined the infallible Aristotle, the evangelical doctor, and the divine Plato, I took all these epithets¹⁶³ for nicknames. In all the philosophers who have spoken of the human soul, I have found only blind men, full of babble¹⁶⁴ and temerity, striving to persuade themselves that they have an eagle eye; and others, curious and foolish, believing them on their word, and imagining that they see something too.

I shall not feign¹⁶⁵ to rank Descartes and Malebranche with these teachers of error. The former assures us that the soul of man is a substance, whose essence is to think, which is always thinking, and which, in the mother’s womb, is occupied with fine metaphysical ideas and general axioms, which it afterwards forgets.

As for Father Malebranche, he is quite persuaded that we see all in God — and he has found partisans¹⁶⁶: for the most extravagant¹⁶⁷ fables¹⁶⁸ are those which are the best received by the weak imaginations of men. Various philosophers then had written the romance of the soul: at length, a wise man modestly wrote its history. Of this history I am about to give an abridgment¹⁷⁰, according to the conception I have formed of it. I very well know that all the world will not agree with Locke’s ideas; it is not unlikely, that against Descartes and Malebranche, Locke was right, but that against the Sorbonne he was wrong: I speak according to the lights of philosophy, not according to the relations of the faith.

It is not for me to think otherwise than humanly; theologians decide divinely, which is quite another thing: reason and faith are of contrary natures. In a word, here follows a short abstract of Locke, which I would censure¹⁷¹, if I were a theologian, but which I adopt for a moment, simply as a hypothesis — a conjecture¹² of philosophy. Humanly speaking, the question is: What is the soul?

1. The word “soul” is one of those which everyone pronounces without understanding it; we understand only those things of which we have an idea; we have no idea of soul — spirit; therefore we do not understand it.

2. We have then been pleased to give the name of soul to the faculty of feeling and thinking, as we have given that of life to the faculty of living, and that of will to the faculty of willing.

Reasoners have come and said: Man is composed of matter and spirit: matter is extended and divisible; spirit is neither extended nor divisible; therefore, say they, it is of another nature. This is a joining together of beings which are not made for each other, and which God unites in spite of their nature. We see little of the body, we see nothing of the soul; it has no parts, therefore it is eternal; it has ideas pure and spiritual, therefore it does not receive them from matter; nor does it receive them from itself, therefore God gives them to it, and it brings with it at its birth the ideas of God, infinity¹⁷², and all general ideas.

Still humanly speaking, I answer these gentlemen that they are very knowing. They tell us, first, that there is a soul, and then what that soul must be. They pronounce the word “matter,” and then plainly decide what it is. And I say to them: You have no knowledge either of spirit or of matter. By spirit you can imagine only the faculty of thinking; by matter you can understand only a certain assemblage of qualities, colors, extents, and solidities, which it has pleased you to call matter; and you have assigned limits to matter and to the soul, even before you are sure of the existence of either the one or the other.

As for matter, you gravely teach that it has only extent and solidity; and I tell you modestly, that it is capable of a thousand properties about which neither you nor I know anything. You say that the soul is indivisible, eternal; and here you assume that which is in question. You are much like the regent of a college, who, having never in his life seen a clock, should all at once have an English repeater put into his hands. This man, a good peripatetic, is struck by the exactness with which the hands mark the time, and still more astonished that a button, pressed by the finger, should sound precisely the hour marked by the hand. My philosopher will not fail to prove that there is in this machine a soul which governs it and directs its springs. He learnedly demonstrates his opinion by the simile¹⁷³ of the angels who keep the celestial¹⁷⁴ spheres in motion; and in the class he forms fine theses, maintained on the souls of watches. One of his scholars opens the watch, and nothing is found but springs; yet the system of the soul of watches is still maintained, and is considered as demonstrated. I am that scholar, opening the watch called man; but instead of boldly defining what we do not understand, I endeavor to examine by degrees what we wish to know.

Let us take an infant at the moment of its birth, and follow, step by step, the progress of its understanding. You do me the honor of informing me that God took the trouble of creating a soul, to go and take up its abode in this body when about six weeks old; that this soul, on its arrival, is provided with metaphysical ideas — having consequently a very clear knowledge of spirit, of abstract ideas, of infinity — being, in short, a very knowing person. But unfortunately it quits the uterus in the uttermost ignorance: for eighteen months it knows nothing but its nurse’s teat; and when at the age of twenty years an attempt is made to bring back to this soul’s recollection all the scientific ideas which it had when it entered its body, it is often too dull of apprehension¹⁷⁵ to conceive any one of them. There are whole nations which have never had so much as one of these ideas. What, in truth, were the souls of Descartes and Malebranche thinking of, when they imagined such reveries? Let us then follow the idea of the child, without stopping at the imaginings of the philosophers.

The day that his mother was brought to bed of him and his soul, there were born in the house a dog, a cat, and a canary bird. At the end of eighteen months I make the dog an excellent hunter; in a year the canary bird whistles an air; in six weeks the cat is master of its profession; and the child, at the end of four years, does nothing. I, a gross person, witnessing this prodigious¹¹⁰ difference, and never having seen a child, think at first that the cat, the dog, and the canary are very intelligent creatures, and that the infant is an automaton. However, by little and little, I perceive that this child has ideas and memory, that he has the same passions as these animals; and then I acknowledge that he is, like them, a rational creature. He communicates to me different ideas by some words which he has learned, in like manner as my dog, by diversified¹⁷⁶ cries, makes known to me exactly his different wants. I perceive at the age of six or seven years the child combines in his little brain almost as many ideas as my hound in his; and at length, as he grows older, he acquires an infinite variety of knowledge. Then what am I to think of him? Shall I believe that he is of a nature altogether different? Undoubtedly¹⁷⁷ not; for you see on one hand an idiot, and on the other a Newton; yet you assert that they are of one and the same nature — that there is no difference but that of greater and less. The better to assure myself of the verisimilitude of my probable opinion, I examine the dog and the child both waking and sleeping — I have them each bled immediately; then their ideas seem to escape with their blood. In this state I call them — they do not answer; and if I draw from them a few more ounces, my two machines, which before had ideas in great plenty and passions of every kind, have no longer any feeling. I next examine my two animals while they sleep; I perceive that the dog, after eating too much, has dreams; he hunts and cries after the game; my youngster, in the same state, talks to his mistress and makes love in his dreams. If both have eaten moderately, I observe that neither of them dream; in short, I see that the faculties¹⁷⁸ of feeling, perceiving, and expressing their ideas unfold themselves gradually, and also become weaker by degrees. I discover many more affinities¹⁷⁹ between them than between any man of strong mind and one absolutely imbecile. What opinion then shall I entertain of their nature? That which every people at first imagined, before Egyptian policy asserted the spirituality, the immortality, of the soul. I shall even suspect that Archimedes and a mole¹⁸⁰ are but different varieties of the same species — as an oak and a grain of mustard are formed by the same principles, though the one is a large tree and the other the seed of a small plant. I shall believe that God has given portions of intelligence to portions of matter organized for thinking; I shall believe that matter has sensations in proportion to the fineness of its senses, that it is they which proportion them to the measure of our ideas; I shall believe that the oyster in its shell has fewer sensations and senses, because its soul being attached to its shell, five senses would not at all be useful to it. There are many animals with only two senses; we have five — which are very few. It is to be believed that in other worlds there are other animals enjoying twenty or thirty senses, and that other species, yet more perfect, have senses to infinity.

Such, it appears to me, is the most natural way of reasoning on the matter — that is, of guessing and inspecting with certainty. A long time elapsed before men were ingenious enough to imagine an unknown being, which is ourselves, which does all in us, which is not altogether ourselves, and which lives after us. Nor was so bold an idea adopted all at once. At first this word “soul” signifies life, and was common to us and the other animals; then our pride made us a soul apart, and caused us to imagine a substantial form for other creatures. This human pride asks: What then is that power of perceiving and feeling, which in man is called soul, and in the brute¹⁸² instinct? I will satisfy this demand when the natural philosophers shall have informed me what is sound, light, space, body, time. I will say, in the spirit of the wise Locke: Philosophy consists in stopping when the torch of physical science fails us. I observe the effects of nature; but I freely own that of first principles I have no more conception than you have. All I do know is that I ought not to attribute to several causes — especially to unknown causes — that which I can attribute to a known cause; now I can attribute to my body the faculty of thinking and feeling; therefore I ought not to seek this faculty of thinking and feeling in another substance, called soul or spirit, of which I cannot have the smallest idea. You exclaim against this proposition. Do you then think it irreligious to dare to say that the body can think? But what would you say, Locke would answer, if you yourselves were found guilty of irreligion in thus daring to set bounds to the power of God? What man upon earth can affirm, without absurd impiety¹⁸³, that it is impossible for God to give to matter sensation and thought? Weak and presumptuous that you are! you boldly advance that matter does not think, because you do not conceive how matter of any kind should think.

Ye great philosophers, who decide on the power of God, and say that God can of a stone make an angel — do you not see that, according to yourselves, God would in that case only give to a stone the power of thinking? for if the matter of the stone did not remain, there would no longer be a stone; there would be a stone annihilated and an angel created. Whichever way you turn you are forced to acknowledge two things — your ignorance and the boundless¹⁸⁴ power of the Creator; your ignorance, to which thinking matter is repugnant; and the Creator’s power, to which certes it is not impossible.

You, who know that matter does not perish, will dispute whether God has the power to preserve in that matter the noblest quality with which He has endowed it. Extent subsists¹⁸⁶ perfectly without body, through Him, since there are philosophers who believe in a void; accidents subsist¹⁸⁵ very well without substance with Christians who believe in transubstantiation. God, you say, cannot do that which implies contradiction. To be sure of this, it is necessary to know more of the matter than you do know; it is all in vain; you will never know more than this — that you are a body, and that you think. Many persons who have learned at school to doubt of nothing, who take their syllogisms for oracles¹⁸⁷ and their superstitions¹⁸⁸ for religion, consider Locke as impious and dangerous. These superstitious¹⁸⁹ people are in society what cowards are in an army; they are possessed¹⁹⁰ by and communicate panic terror. We must have the compassion¹⁹¹ to dissipate their fears; they must be made sensible that the opinions of philosophers will never do harm to religion. We know for certain that light comes from the sun, and that the planets revolve¹⁹² round that luminary; yet we do not read with any the less edification in the Bible that light was made before the sun, and that the sun stood still over the village of Gibeon. It is demonstrated that the rainbow is necessarily formed by the rain; yet we do not the least reverence¹⁹³ the sacred text which says that God set His bow in the clouds, after the Deluge¹⁹⁴, as a sign that there should never be another inundation¹⁹⁵.

What though the mystery of the Trinity and that of the eucharist are contradictory¹⁹⁶ to known demonstrations¹⁹⁷? They are not the less venerated¹⁹⁸ by Catholic philosophers, who know that the things of reason and those of faith are different in their nature. The notion of the antipodes was condemned¹⁹⁹ by the popes and the councils; yet the popes discovered the antipodes and carried thither²⁰⁰ that very Christian¹⁴⁴ religion, the destruction of which had been thought to be sure, in case there could be found a man who, as it was then expressed, should have, as relative to our own position, his head downwards²⁰¹ and his feet upwards²⁰², and who, as the very unphilosophical St. Augustine says, should have fallen from heaven.

And now, let me once repeat that, while I write with freedom, I warrant no opinion — I am responsible for nothing. Perhaps there are, among these dreams, some reasonings, and even some reveries, to which I should give the preference; but there is not one that I would not unhesitatingly sacrifice to religion and to my country.
§ IX.

I shall suppose a dozen of good philosophers in an island where they have never seen anything but vegetables. Such an island, and especially twelve such philosophers, would be very hard to find; however, the fiction is allowable. They admire the life which circulates in the fibres of the plants, appearing to be alternately lost and renewed; and as they know not how a plant springs up, how it derives²⁰³ its nourishment²⁰⁴ and growth, they call this a vegetative soul. What, they are asked, do you understand by a vegetative soul? They answer: It is a word that serves to express the unknown spring by which all this is operated. But do you not see, a mechanic will ask them, that all this is naturally done by weights, levers, wheels, and pulleys? No, the philosophers will say; there is in this vegetation something other than ordinary motion; there is a secret power which all plants have of drawing to themselves the juices which nourish them; and this power cannot be explained by any system of mechanics; it is a gift which God has made to matter, and the nature of which neither you nor we comprehend.

After disputing thus, our reasoners at length discover animals. Oh, oh! say they, after a long examination, here are beings organized like ourselves. It is indisputable that they have memory, and often more than we have. They have our passions; they have knowledge; they make us understand all their wants; they perpetuate²⁰⁵ their species like us. Our philosophers dissect¹⁰⁷ some of these beings, and find in them hearts and brains. What! say they, can the author of these machines, who does nothing in vain, have given them all the organs of feeling, in order that they may have no feeling? It were absurd to think so — there is certainly something in them which, for want of knowing a better term, we likewise call soul — something that experiences sensations, and has a certain number of ideas. But what is this principle? Is it something absolutely different from matter? Is it a pure spirit? Is it a middle being, between matter, of which we know little, and pure spirit, of which we know nothing? Is it a property given by God to organized matter?

They then make experiments upon insects; upon earth worms — they cut them into several parts, and are astonished to find that, after a short time, there come heads to all these divided parts; the same animal is reproduced, and its very destruction becomes the means of its multiplication²⁰⁶. Has it several souls, which wait until the head is cut off the original trunk, to animate⁴ the reproduced parts? They are like trees, which put forth fresh branches, and are reproduced from slips. Have these trees several souls? It is not likely. Then it is very probable that the soul of these reptiles²⁰⁷ is of a different kind from that which we call vegetative soul in plants; that it is a faculty of a superior order, which God has vouchsafed²⁰⁸ to give to certain portions of matter. Here is a fresh proof of His power — a fresh subject of adoration²⁰⁹.

A man of violent temper, and a bad reasoner, hears this discourse²¹⁰ and says to them: You are wicked wretches, whose bodies should be burned for the good of your souls, for you deny the immortality of the soul of man. Our philosophers then look at one another in perfect astonishment²¹¹, and one of them mildly answers him: Why burn us so hastily? Whence have you concluded that we have an idea that your cruel soul is mortal? From your believing, returns the other, that God has given to the brutes²¹² which are organized like us, the faculty of having feelings and ideas. Now this soul of the beasts perishes with them; therefore you believe that the soul of man perishes also.

The philosopher replies: We are not at all sure that what we call “soul” in animal perishes with them; we know very well that matter does not perish, and we believe that God may have put in animals something which, if God will it, shall forever retain the faculty of having ideas. We are very far from affirming that such is the case, for it is hardly for men to be so confident; but we dare not set bounds to the power of God. We say that it is very probable that the beasts, which are matter, have received from Him a little intelligence. We are every day discovering properties of matter — that is, presents from God — of which we had before no idea. We at first defined matter to be an extended substance; next we found it necessary to add solidity; some time afterwards we were obliged to admit that this matter has a force which is called “vis inerti?”; and after this, to our great astonishment, we had to acknowledge that matter gravitates.

When we sought to carry our researches further, we were forced to recognize beings resembling matter in some things, but without the other attributes with which matter is gifted. The elementary fire, for instance, acts upon our senses like other bodies; but it does not, like them, tend to a centre; on the contrary, it escapes from the centre in straight lines on every side. It does not seem to obey the laws of attraction, of gravitation, like other bodies. There are mysteries in optics, for which it would be hard to account, without venturing to suppose that the rays of light penetrate²¹³ one another. There is certainly something in light which distinguishes it from known matter. Light seems to be a middle being between bodies and other kinds of beings of which we are ignorant! It is very likely that these other kinds are themselves a medium leading to other creatures, and that there is a chain of substances extending to infinity. “Usque adeo quod tangit idem est, tamen ultima distant!”

This idea seems to us to be worthy of the greatness of God, if anything is worthy of it. Among these substances He has doubtless had power to choose one which He has lodged²¹⁴ in our bodies, and which we call the human soul; and the sacred books which we have read inform us that this soul is immortal. Reason is in accordance with revelation; for how should any substance perish? Every mode is destroyed; the substance remains²¹⁵. We cannot conceive the creation of a substance; we cannot conceive its annihilation; but we dare not affirm that the absolute master of all beings cannot also give feelings and perceptions to the being which we call matter. You are quite sure that the essence of your soul is to think; but we are not so sure of this; for when we examine a f?tus, we can hardly believe that its soul had many ideas in its head; and we very much doubt whether, in a sound and deep sleep, or in a complete lethargy, any one ever meditated²¹⁶. Thus it appears to us that thought may very well be, not the essence of the thinking being, but a present made by the Creator to beings which we call thinking; from all which we suspect that, if He would, He could make this present to an atom; and could preserve this atom and His present forever, or destroy it at His pleasure. The difficulty consists not so much in divining how matter could think, as in divining how any substance whatever does think. You have ideas only because God has been pleased to give them to you; why would you prevent Him from giving them to other species? Can you really be so fearless as to dare to believe that your soul is precisely of the same kind as the substances which approach nearest to the Divinity? There is great probability that they are of an order very superior, and that consequently God has vouchsafed to give them a way of thinking infinitely finer, just as He has given a very limited measure of ideas to the animals which are of an order inferior to you. I know not how I live, nor how I give life; yet you would have me know how I have ideas. The soul is a timepiece which God has given us to manage; but He has not told us of what the spring of this timepiece is composed.

Is there anything in all this from which it can be inferred that our souls are mortal? Once more let us repeat it — we think as you do of the immortality announced to us by faith; but we believe that we are too ignorant to affirm that God has not the power of granting thought to whatever being He pleases. You bound the power of the Creator, which is boundless; and we extend it as far as His existence extends. Forgive us for believing Him to be omnipotent²¹⁷, as we forgive you for restraining His power. You doubtless know all that He can do, and we know nothing of it. Let us live as brethren; let us adore our common Father in peace — you with your knowing and daring souls, we with our ignorant and timid souls. We have a day to live; let us pass it calmly, without quarrelling about difficulties that will be cleared up in the immortal life which will begin tomorrow.

The brutal²¹⁸ man, having nothing good to say in reply, talked a long while, and was very angry. Our poor philosophers employed themselves for some weeks in reading history; and after reading well, they spoke⁴⁶ as follows to this barbarian²¹⁹, who was so unworthy to have an immortal soul:

My friend, we have read that in all antiquity things went on as well as they do in our own times — that there were even greater virtues²²⁰, and that philosophers were not persecuted for the opinions which they held; why, then, should you seek to injure us for opinions which we do not hold? We read that all the ancients believed matter to be eternal. They who saw that it was created left the others at rest. Pythagoras had been a cock, his relations had been swine; but no one found fault with this; his sect was cherished and revered²²¹ by all, except the cooks and those who had beans to sell.

The Stoics acknowledged a god, nearly the same as the god afterwards so rashly admitted by the Spinozists; yet Stoicism was a sect the most fruitful in heroic virtues, and the most accredited²²².

The Epicureans made their god like our canons, whose indolent corpulence upholds their divinity, and who take their nectar and ambrosia²²³ in quiet, without meddling²²⁴ with anything. These Epicureans boldly taught the materiality and the mortality of the soul; but they were not the less respected; they were admitted into all offices; and their crooked²²⁵ atoms never did the world any harm.

The Platonists, like the Gymnosophists, did not do us the honor to think that God had condescended²²⁶ to form us Himself. According to them, He left this task to His officers — to genii, who in the course of their work made many blunders. The god of the Platonists was an excellent workman, who employed here below very indifferent assistants; but men did not the less reverence the school of Plato.

In short, among the Greeks and the Romans, so many sects as there were, so many ways of thinking about God and the soul, the past and the future, none of these sects were persecutors. They were all mistaken — and we are very sorry for it; but they were all peaceful — and this confounds us, this condemns²²⁸ us, this shows us that most of the reasoners of the present day are monsters, and that those of antiquity were men. They sang publicly on the Roman stage: “Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil.” —“Naught after death, and death is nothing.”

These opinions made men neither better nor worse; all was governed, all went on as usual; and Titus, Trajan, and Aurelius governed the earth like beneficent deities²²⁹.

Passing from the Greeks and the Romans to barbarous nations, let us only contemplate²³⁰ the Jews. Superstitious, cruel, and ignorant as this wretched people were, still they honored the Pharisees, who admitted the fatality²³¹ of destiny and the metempsychosis; they also paid respect to the Sadducees, who absolutely denied the immortality of the soul and the existence of spirits, taking for their foundation the law of Moses, which had made no mention of pain or reward after death. The Essenes, who also believed in fatality, and who never offered up victims in the temple, were reverenced²³² still more than the Pharisees and the Sadducees. None of their opinions ever disturbed the government. Yet here were abundant subjects for slaughtering²³³, burning, and exterminating²³⁴ one another, had they been so inclined. Oh, miserable²³⁵ men! profit by these examples. Think, and let others think. It is the solace²³⁶ of our feeble minds in this short life. What! will you receive with politeness a Turk, who believes that Mahomet travelled to the moon; will you be careful not to displease²³⁷ the pasha Bonneval; and yet will you have your brother hanged, drawn, and quartered, because he believes that God created intelligence in every creature?

So spake one of the philosophers; and another of them added: Believe me, it need never be feared that any philosophical opinion will hurt the religion of a country. What though our mysteries are contrary to our demonstrations, they are not the less reverenced by our Christian philosophers, who know that the objects of reason and faith are of different natures. Philosophers will never form a religious sect; and why? Because they are without enthusiasm. Divide mankind into twenty parts; and of these, nineteen consist of those who labor⁴⁴ with their hands, and will never know that there has been such a person as Locke in the world. In the remaining twentieth, how few men will be found who read! and among those who read, there are twenty that read novels for one that studies philosophy. Those who think are excessively few; and those few do not set themselves to disturb the world.

Who are they who have waved the torch of discord²³⁸ in their native country? Are they Pomponatius, Montaigne, La Vayer, Descartes, Gassendi, Bayle, Spinoza, Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Boulainvilliers, the Consul⁹⁷ Maillet, Toland, Collins, Flood, Woolston, Bekker, the author disguised under the name of Jacques Massé, he of the “Turkish Spy,” he of the “Lettres Persanes,” of the “Lettres Juives,” of the “Pensées Philosophiques”? No; they are for the most part theologians, who, having at first been ambitious of becoming leaders of a sect, have soon become ambitious to be leaders of a party. Nay²³⁹, not all the books of modern philosophy put together will ever make so much noise in the world as was once made by the dispute of the Cordeliers about the form of their hoods²⁴⁰ and sleeves.
§ X.
On the Antiquity of the Dogma of the Immortality of the Soul — A Fragment.

The dogma of the immortality of the soul is at once the most consoling and the most repressing idea that the mind of man can receive. This fine philosophy was as ancient among the Egyptians as their pyramids; and before them it was known to the Persians. I have already elsewhere related the allegory of the first Zoroaster, cited in the “Sadder,” in which God shows to Zoroaster a place of chastisement²⁴¹, such as the Dardaroth or Keron of the Egyptians, the Hades and the Tartarus of the Greeks, which we have but imperfectly rendered in our modern tongues by the words “inferno,” “enfer,” “infernal regions,” “hell,” “bottomless pit.” In this place of punishment God showed to Zoroaster all the bad kings; one of them had but one foot; Zoroaster asked the reason; and God answered that this king had done only one good action in his life, which was by approaching to kick forward a trough which was not near enough to a poor ass¹⁸ dying of hunger. God had placed this wicked man’s foot in heaven; the rest of his body was in hell.

This fable¹⁶⁹, which cannot be too often repeated, shows how ancient was the opinion of another life. The Indians were persuaded of it, as their metempsychosis proves. The Chinese venerated the souls of their ancestors. Each of these nations had founded powerful empires long before the Egyptians. This is a very important truth, which I think I have already proved by the very nature of the soil of Egypt. The most favorable grounds must have been cultivated the first; the ground of Egypt is the least favorable of all, being under water four months of the year; it was not until after immense labor, and consequently after a prodigious lapse¹⁸¹ of time, that towns were at length raised which the Nile could not inundate²⁴².

This empire, then, ancient as it was, was much less ancient than the empires of Asia; and in both one and the other it was believed that the soul existed after death. It is true that all these nations, without exception, considered the soul as a light ethereal form, an image of the body; the Greek word signifying “breath” was invented long after by the Greeks. But it is beyond a doubt that a part of ourselves was considered as immortal. Rewards and punishments in another life were the grand foundation of ancient theology.

Pherecides was the first among the Greeks who believed that souls existed from all eternity, and not the first, as has been supposed, who said that the soul survived the body. Ulysses, long before Pherecides, had seen the souls of heroes in the infernal regions; but that souls were as old as the world was a system which had sprung up in the East, and was brought into the West by Pherecides. I do not believe that there is among us a single system which is not to be found among the ancients. The materials of all our modern edifices²⁴³ are taken from the wreck²⁴⁴ of antiquity.
§ XI.

It would be a fine thing to see one’s soul. “Know thyself” is an excellent precept²⁴⁵; but it belongs only to God to put it in practice. Who but He can know His own essence?

We call “soul” that which animates. Owing to our limited intelligence we know scarcely anything more of the matter. Three-fourths of mankind go no further, and give themselves no concern about the thinking being; the other fourth seek it; no one has found it, or ever will find it.

Poor pedant! thou seest a plant which vegetates²⁴⁶, and thou sayest, “vegetation,” or perhaps “vegetative soul.” Thou remarkest that bodies have and communicate motion, and thou sayest, “force”; thou seest thy dog learn his craft under thee, and thou exclaimest, “instinct,” “sensitive soul”! Thou hast combined ideas, and thou exclaimest, “spirit”!

But pray, what dost thou understand by these words? This flower vegetates; but is there any real being called vegetation? This body pushes along another, but does it possess within itself a distinct being called force? Thy dog brings thee a partridge, but is there any being called instinct? Wouldst thou not laugh, if a reasoner — though he had been preceptor to Alexander — were to say to thee: All animals live; therefore there is in them a being, a substantial form, which is life?

If a tulip could speak and were to tell thee: I and my vegetation are two beings evidently joined together; wouldst thou not laugh at the tulip?

Let us at first see what thou knowest, of what thou art certain; that thou walkest with thy feet; that thou digestest with thy stomach; that thou feelest with thy whole body; and that thou thinkest with thy head. Let us see if thy reason alone can have given thee light enough by which to conclude, without supernatural aid, that thou hast a soul.

The first philosophers, whether Chald?ans or Egyptians, said: There must be something within us which produces our thoughts; that something must be very subtile; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it is a quintessence; it is a slender likeness²⁴⁷; it is an antelechia; it is a number; it is a harmony. Lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a compound of the same and the other. “It is atoms which think in us,” said Epicurus, after Democrites. But, my friend, how does an atom think? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter.

The opinion which one ought to adopt is, doubtless, that the soul is an immaterial being; but certainly we cannot conceive what an immaterial being is. No, answer the learned; but we know that its nature is to think. And whence do you know this? We know, because it does think. Oh, ye learned! I am much afraid that you are as ignorant as Epicurus! The nature of a stone is to fall, because it does fall; but I ask you, what makes it fall?

We know, continue they, that a stone has no soul. Granted; I believe it as well as you. We know that an affirmative and a negative are not divisible, are not parts of matter. I am of your opinion. But matter, otherwise unknown to us, possesses qualities which are not material, which are not divisible; it has gravitation towards a centre, which God has given it; and this gravitation has no parts; it is not divisible. The moving force of bodies is not a being composed of parts. In like manner the vegetation of organized bodies, their life, their instinct, are not beings apart, divisible beings; you can no more cut in two the vegetation of a rose, the life of a horse, the instinct of a dog, than you can cut in two a sensation, an affirmation, a negation²⁴⁸. Therefore your fine argument, drawn from the indivisibility of thought, proves nothing at all.

What, then, do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

Now tell me honestly, is this power of feeling and thinking the same as that which causes you to digest and to walk? You own that it is not; for in vain might your understanding say to your stomach — Digest; it will not, if it be sick. In vain might your immaterial being order your feet to walk; they will not stir, if they have the gout.

The Greeks clearly perceived that thought has frequently nothing to do with the play of our organs; they admitted the existence of an animal soul for these organs, and for the thoughts a soul finer, more subtile — a nous.

But we find that this soul of thought has, on a thousand occasions, the ascendency over the animal soul. The thinking soul commands the hands to take, and they obey. It does not tell the heart to beat, the blood to flow, the chyle to form; all this is done without it. Here then are two souls much involved, and neither of them having the mastery.

Now, this first animal soul certainly does not exist; it is nothing more than the movement of our organs. Take heed²⁴⁹, O man! lest thou have no more proofs but thy weak reason that the other soul exists. Thou canst not know it but by faith; thou art born, thou eatest, thou thinkest, thou wakest, thou sleepest, without knowing how. God has given thee the faculty of thinking, as He has given thee all the rest; and if He had not come at the time appointed by His providence, to teach thee that thou hast an immaterial and an immortal soul, thou wouldst have no proof whatever of it.

Let us examine the fine systems on the soul, which thy philosophy has fabricated.

One says that the soul of man is part of the substance of God Himself; another that it is part of the great whole; a third that it is created from all eternity; a fourth that it is made, and not created. Others assure us that God makes souls according as they are wanted, and that they arrive at the moment of copulation. They are lodged in the seminal²⁵⁰ animalcules, cries one. No, says another, they take up their abode in the Fallopian tubes. A third comes and says: You are all wrong; the soul waits for six weeks, until the f?tus is formed, and then it takes possession of the pineal gland⁸⁹; but if it finds a false conception, it returns and waits for a better opportunity. The last opinion is that its dwelling²⁵¹ is in the callous body; this is the post assigned to it by La Peyronie. A man should be first surgeon to the king of France to dispose in this way of the lodging of the soul. Yet the callous body was not so successful in the world as the surgeon was.

St. Thomas in his question 75 and following, says that the soul is a form subsisting²⁵² per se, that it is all in all, that its essence differs from its power; that there are three vegetative souls, viz., the nutritive, the argumentative, and the generative; that the memory of spiritual things is spiritual, and the memory of corporeal things is corporeal; that the rational soul is a form “immaterial as to its operations, and material as to its being.” St. Thomas wrote two thousand pages, of like force and clearness; and he is the angel of the schools.

Nor have there been fewer systems contrived²⁵³ on the way in which this soul will feel, when it shall have laid aside the body with which it felt; how it will hear without ears, smell without a nose, and touch without hands; what body it will afterwards resume, whether that which it had at two years old, or at eighty; how the I — the identity of the same person will subsist; how the soul of a man become imbecile at the age of fifteen, and dying imbecile at the age of seventy, will resume the thread of the ideas which he had at the age of puberty; by what contrivance a soul, the leg of whose body shall be cut off in Europe, and one of its arms lost in America, will recover this leg and arm, which, having been transformed into vegetables, will have passed into the blood of some other animal. We should never finish, if we were to seek to give an account of all the extravagances which this poor human soul has imagined about itself.

It is very singular that, in the laws of God’s people, not a word is said of the spirituality and immortality of the soul; nothing in the Decalogue, nothing in Leviticus, or in Deuteronomy.

It is quite certain, it is indubitable, that Moses nowhere proposes to the Jews pains and rewards in another life; that he never mentions to them the immortality of their souls; that he never gives them hopes of heaven, nor threatens them with hell; all is temporal.

Many illustrious commentators²⁵⁴ have thought that Moses was perfectly acquainted with these two great dogmas; and they prove it by the words of Jacob, who, believing that his son had been devoured²⁵⁵ by wild beasts, said in his grief: “I will go down into the grave — in infernum — unto my son”; that is, I will die, since my son is dead.

They further prove it by the passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel; but the Hebrews, to whom Moses spoke, could not have read either Ezekiel or Isaiah, who did not come until several centuries after.

It is quite useless to dispute about the private opinions of Moses. The fact is that in his public laws he never spoke of a life to come; that he limited all rewards and punishments to the time present. If he knew of a future life, why did he not expressly set forth that dogma? And if he did not know of it, what were the object and extent of his mission? This question is asked by many great persons. The answer is, that the Master of Moses, and of all men, reserved to Himself the right of expounding²⁵⁷ to the Jews, at His own time, a doctrine which they were not in a condition to understand when they were in the desert.

If Moses had announced the immortality of the soul, a great school among the Jews would not have constantly combated it. This great retreat of the Sadducees would not have been authorized²⁵⁸ in the State; the Sadducees would not have filled the highest offices, nor would pontiffs have been chosen from their body.

It appears that it was not until after the founding of Alexandria that the Jews were divided into three sects — the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The historian Josephus, who was a Pharisee, informs us in the thirteenth book of his “Antiquities” that the Pharisees believed in the metempsychosis; the Sadducees believed that the soul perished with the body; the Essenes, says Josephus, held that souls were immortal; according to them souls descended²²⁷ in an a?rial form into the body, from the highest region of the air, whither they were carried back again by a violent attraction; and after death, those which had belonged to the good dwelt beyond the ocean in a country where there was neither heat nor cold, nor wind, nor rain. The souls of the wicked went into a climate of an opposite description. Such was the theology of the Jews.

He who alone was to instruct all men came and condemned these three sects; but without Him we could never have known anything of our soul; for the philosophers never had any determinate idea of it; and Moses — the only true lawgiver in the world before our own — Moses, who talked with God face to face, left men in the most profound ignorance on this great point. It is, then, only for seventeen hundred years that there has been any certainty of the soul’s existence and its immortality.

Cicero had only doubts; his grandson and granddaughter might learn the truth from the first Galileans who came to Rome.

But before that time, and since then, in all the rest of the earth where the apostles did not penetrate, each one must have said to his soul: What art thou? whence comest thou? what dost thou? whither goest thou? Thou art I know not what, thinking and feeling: and wert thou to feel and think for a hundred thousand millions of years, thou wouldst never know any more by thine own light without the assistance of God.

O man! God has given thee understanding for thy own good conduct, and not to penetrate into the essence of the things which He has created.

So thought Locke; and before Locke, Gassendi; and before Gassendi, a multitude of sages²⁵⁶; but we have bachelors who know all of which those great men were ignorant.

Some cruel enemies of reason have dared to rise up against these truths, acknowledged by all the wise. They have carried their dishonesty and impudence²⁵⁹ so far as to charge the authors of this work with having affirmed that the soul is matter. You well know, persecutors of innocence²⁶⁰, that we have said quite the contrary. You must have read these very words against Epicurus, Democritus, and Lucretius: “My friend, how does an atom think? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter.” It is then evident, ye are calumniators.

No one knows what that material being is, which is called “spirit,” to which — be it observed — you give this material name, signifying “wind.” All the first fathers of the Church believed the soul to be corporeal. It is impossible for us limited beings to know whether our intelligence is substance or faculty: we cannot thoroughly know either the extended being, or the thinking beings, or the mechanism²⁶¹ of thought.

We exclaim to you, with the ever to be revered Gassendi and Locke, that we know nothing by ourselves of the secrets of the Creator. And are you gods, who know everything? We repeat to you, that you cannot know the nature and distinction of the soul but by revelation. And is not this revelation sufficient for you? You must surely be enemies of this revelation which we claim, since you persecute⁸⁶ those who expect everything from it, and believe only in it.

Yes, we tell you, we defer²⁶² wholly to the word of God; and you, enemies of reason and of God, treat the humble²⁶³ doubt and humble submission of the philosopher as the wolf in the fable treated the lamb; you say to him: You said ill of me last year; I must suck your blood. Philosophy takes no revenge; she smiles in peace at your vain endeavors; she mildly enlightens mankind, whom you would brutalize, to make them like yourselves.

1 sect   

n.派别，宗教，学派，派系

参考例句：

• When he was sixteen he joined a religious sect.他16岁的时候加入了一个宗教教派。
• Each religious sect in the town had its own church.该城每一个宗教教派都有自己的教堂。

2 derived   

vi.起源；由来；衍生；导出v.得到( derive的过去式和过去分词 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取

参考例句：

• Many English words are derived from Latin and Greek. 英语很多词源出于拉丁文和希腊文。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He derived his enthusiasm for literature from his father. 他对文学的爱好是受他父亲的影响。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 animates   

v.使有生气( animate的第三人称单数 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命

参考例句：

• The soul animates the body. 灵魂使肉体有生命。 来自辞典例句
• It is probable that life animates all the planets revolving round all the stars. 生命为一切围绕恒星旋转的行星注入活力。 来自辞典例句

4 animate   

v.赋于生命，鼓励；adj.有生命的，有生气的

参考例句：

• We are animate beings,living creatures.我们是有生命的存在，有生命的动物。
• The girls watched,little teasing smiles animating their faces.女孩们注视着，脸上挂着调皮的微笑，显得愈加活泼。

5 nostrils   

鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Her nostrils flared with anger. 她气得两个鼻孔都鼓了起来。
• The horse dilated its nostrils. 马张大鼻孔。

6 chaos   

n.混乱，无秩序

参考例句：

• After the failure of electricity supply the city was in chaos.停电后，城市一片混乱。
• The typhoon left chaos behind it.台风后一片混乱。

7 distinguished   

adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的

参考例句：

• Elephants are distinguished from other animals by their long noses.大象以其长长的鼻子显示出与其他动物的不同。
• A banquet was given in honor of the distinguished guests.宴会是为了向贵宾们致敬而举行的。

8 digestion   

n.消化，吸收

参考例句：

• This kind of tea acts as an aid to digestion.这种茶可助消化。
• This food is easy of digestion.这食物容易消化。

9 primitive   

adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物

参考例句：

• It is a primitive instinct to flee a place of danger.逃离危险的地方是一种原始本能。
• His book describes the march of the civilization of a primitive society.他的著作描述了一个原始社会的开化过程。

10 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

11 labyrinth   

n.迷宫；难解的事物；迷路

参考例句：

• He wandered through the labyrinth of the alleyways.他在迷宫似的小巷中闲逛。
• The human mind is a labyrinth.人的心灵是一座迷宫。

12 conjecture   

n./v.推测，猜测

参考例句：

• She felt it no use to conjecture his motives.她觉得猜想他的动机是没有用的。
• This conjecture is not supported by any real evidence.这种推测未被任何确切的证据所证实。

13 conjectures   

推测，猜想( conjecture的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• That's weighing remote military conjectures against the certain deaths of innocent people. 那不过是牵强附会的军事假设，而现在的事实却是无辜者正在惨遭杀害，这怎能同日而语！
• I was right in my conjectures. 我所猜测的都应验了。

14 animating   

v.使有生气( animate的现在分词 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命

参考例句：

• Nature has her animating spirit as well as man who is nature's child. 大自然就象它的孩子――人类一样，有活生生的灵魂。 来自辞典例句
• They were doubtlessly the animating principle of many hours that superficially seemed vacant. 在表面看来无所事事的许多时刻中，它们无疑是活跃的因素。 来自辞典例句

15 eternity   

n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷

参考例句：

• The dull play seemed to last an eternity.这场乏味的剧似乎演个没完没了。
• Finally,Ying Tai and Shan Bo could be together for all of eternity.英台和山伯终能双宿双飞，永世相随。

16 sublime   

adj.崇高的，伟大的；极度的，不顾后果的

参考例句：

• We should take some time to enjoy the sublime beauty of nature.我们应该花些时间去欣赏大自然的壮丽景象。
• Olympic games play as an important arena to exhibit the sublime idea.奥运会，就是展示此崇高理念的重要舞台。

17 crucible   

n.坩锅，严酷的考验

参考例句：

• The alliance had been forged in the crucible of war.这个联盟经受了战争的严峻考验。
• Put the required amount of metal into the crucible.把适量的金属放入坩埚。

18 ass   

n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人

参考例句：

• He is not an ass as they make him.他不象大家猜想的那样笨。
• An ass endures his burden but not more than his burden.驴能负重但不能超过它能力所负担的。

19 affinity   

n.亲和力，密切关系

参考例句：

• I felt a great affinity with the people of the Highlands.我被苏格兰高地人民深深地吸引。
• It's important that you share an affinity with your husband.和丈夫有共同的爱好是十分重要的。

20 sects   

n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Members of these sects are ruthlessly persecuted and suppressed. 这些教派的成员遭到了残酷的迫害和镇压。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He had subdued the religious sects, cleaned up Saigon. 他压服了宗教派别，刷新了西贡的面貌。 来自辞典例句

21 triumphantly   

ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地

参考例句：

• The lion was roaring triumphantly. 狮子正在发出胜利的吼叫。
• Robert was looking at me triumphantly. 罗伯特正得意扬扬地看着我。

22 presumptuous   

adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的

参考例句：

• It would be presumptuous for anybody to offer such a view.任何人提出这种观点都是太放肆了。
• It was presumptuous of him to take charge.他自拿主张，太放肆了。

23 insolently   

adv.自豪地，自傲地

参考例句：

• No does not respect, speak insolently,satire, etc for TT management team member. 不得发表对TT管理层人员不尊重、出言不逊、讽刺等等的帖子。 来自互联网
• He had replied insolently to his superiors. 他傲慢地回答了他上司的问题。 来自互联网

24 vile   

adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的

参考例句：

• Who could have carried out such a vile attack?会是谁发起这么卑鄙的攻击呢？
• Her talk was full of vile curses.她的话里充满着恶毒的咒骂。

25 folly   

n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话

参考例句：

• Learn wisdom by the folly of others.从别人的愚蠢行动中学到智慧。
• Events proved the folly of such calculations.事情的进展证明了这种估计是愚蠢的。

26 inaccessible   

adj.达不到的，难接近的

参考例句：

• This novel seems to me among the most inaccessible.这本书对我来说是最难懂的小说之一。
• The top of Mount Everest is the most inaccessible place in the world.珠穆朗玛峰是世界上最难到达的地方。

27 corporeal   

adj.肉体的，身体的；物质的

参考例句：

• The body is the corporeal habitation of the soul.身体为灵魂之有形寓所。
• He is very religious;corporeal world has little interest for him.他虔信宗教，对物质上的享受不感兴趣。

28 contradictoriness   

矛盾性

参考例句：

• The fundamental cause of the development of a thing lies in its internal contradictoriness. 事物发展的根本原因在于其内部矛盾。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

29 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

30 testimonies   

（法庭上证人的）证词( testimony的名词复数 )； 证明，证据

参考例句：

• Davie poured forth his eloquence upon the controversies and testimonies of the day. 戴维向他滔滔不绝地谈那些当时有争论的问题和上帝的箴言。
• Remove from me reproach and contempt; for I have kept thy testimonies. 22求你除掉我所受的羞辱和藐视，因我遵守你的法度。

31 temerity   

n.鲁莽，冒失

参考例句：

• He had the temerity to ask for higher wages after only a day's work.只工作了一天，他就蛮不讲理地要求增加工资。
• Tins took some temerity,but it was fruitless.这件事做得有点莽撞，但结果还是无用。

32 perishable   

adj.（尤指食物）易腐的，易坏的

参考例句：

• Many fresh foods are highly perishable.许多新鲜食物都极易腐败。
• Fruits are perishable in transit.水果在运送时容易腐烂。

33 immortal   

adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的

参考例句：

• The wild cocoa tree is effectively immortal.野生可可树实际上是不会死的。
• The heroes of the people are immortal!人民英雄永垂不朽！

34 submission   

n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出

参考例句：

• The defeated general showed his submission by giving up his sword.战败将军缴剑表示投降。
• No enemy can frighten us into submission.任何敌人的恐吓都不能使我们屈服。

35 bellows   

n.风箱；发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的名词复数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的第三人称单数 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫

参考例句：

• His job is to blow the bellows for the blacksmith. 他的工作是给铁匠拉风箱。 来自辞典例句
• You could, I suppose, compare me to a blacksmith's bellows. 我想，你可能把我比作铁匠的风箱。 来自辞典例句

36 maker   

n.制造者，制造商

参考例句：

• He is a trouble maker，You must be distant with him.他是个捣蛋鬼，你不要跟他在一起。
• A cabinet maker must be a master craftsman.家具木工必须是技艺高超的手艺人。

37 harmonious   

adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的

参考例句：

• Their harmonious relationship resulted in part from their similar goals.他们关系融洽的部分原因是他们有着相似的目标。
• The room was painted in harmonious colors.房间油漆得色彩调和。

38 appellation   

n.名称，称呼

参考例句：

• The emperor of Russia Peter I was given the appellation " the Great ".俄皇彼得一世被加上了“大帝”的称号。
• Kinsfolk appellation is the kinfolks system reflection in language.亲属称谓是亲属制度在语言中的反应。

39 predecessors   

n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身

参考例句：

• The new government set about dismantling their predecessors' legislation. 新政府正着手废除其前任所制定的法律。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Will new plan be any more acceptable than its predecessors? 新计划比原先的计划更能令人满意吗？ 来自《简明英汉词典》

40 psyche   

n.精神；灵魂

参考例句：

• His exploration of the myth brings insight into the American psyche.他对这个神话的探讨揭示了美国人的心理。
• She spent her life plumbing the mysteries of the human psyche.她毕生探索人类心灵的奥秘。

41 peripatetic   

adj.漫游的，逍遥派的，巡回的

参考例句：

• Her father was in the army and the family led a peripatetic existence.她父亲是军人，所以全家人随军过着一种流动的生活。
• Peripatetic music teachers visit the school regularly.兼职音乐教师定期到校授课。

42 woe   

n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌

参考例句：

• Our two peoples are brothers sharing weal and woe.我们两国人民是患难与共的兄弟。
• A man is well or woe as he thinks himself so.自认祸是祸，自认福是福。

43 laboring   

n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转

参考例句：

• The young man who said laboring was beneath his dignity finally put his pride in his pocket and got a job as a kitchen porter. 那个说过干活儿有失其身份的年轻人最终只能忍辱，做了厨房搬运工的工作。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• But this knowledge did not keep them from laboring to save him. 然而，这并不妨碍她们尽力挽救他。 来自飘（部分）

44 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

45 respiration   

n.呼吸作用；一次呼吸；植物光合作用

参考例句：

• They tried artificial respiration but it was of no avail.他们试做人工呼吸，可是无效。
• They made frequent checks on his respiration,pulse and blood.他们经常检查他的呼吸、脉搏和血液。

46 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

47 conversed   

v.交谈，谈话( converse的过去式 )

参考例句：

• I conversed with her on a certain problem. 我与她讨论某一问题。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• She was cheerful and polite, and conversed with me pleasantly. 她十分高兴，也很客气，而且愉快地同我交谈。 来自辞典例句

48 versed   

adj. 精通，熟练

参考例句：

• He is well versed in history.他精通历史。
• He versed himself in European literature. 他精通欧洲文学。

49 phantom   

n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的

参考例句：

• I found myself staring at her as if she were a phantom.我发现自己瞪大眼睛看着她，好像她是一个幽灵。
• He is only a phantom of a king.他只是有名无实的国王。

50 determined   

adj.坚定的；有决心的

参考例句：

• I have determined on going to Tibet after graduation.我已决定毕业后去西藏。
• He determined to view the rooms behind the office.他决定查看一下办公室后面的房间。

51 antiquity   

n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹

参考例句：

• The museum contains the remains of Chinese antiquity.博物馆藏有中国古代的遗物。
• There are many legends about the heroes of antiquity.有许多关于古代英雄的传说。

52 entirely   

ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The fire was entirely caused by their neglect of duty. 那场火灾完全是由于他们失职而引起的。
• His life was entirely given up to the educational work. 他的一生统统献给了教育工作。

53 testimony   

n.证词；见证，证明

参考例句：

• The testimony given by him is dubious.他所作的证据是可疑的。
• He was called in to bear testimony to what the police officer said.他被传入为警官所说的话作证。

54 incorporeal   

adj.非物质的，精神的

参考例句：

• The real life is guided by our incorporeal intellection.我想，这表示我们无形的思想导引着真实的人生。
• They seemed to have the power to touch the incorporeal and see the invisible.他们似乎有一种力量能触摸到无形的和看到不可见的东西。

55 forth   

adv.向前；向外，往外

参考例句：

• The wind moved the trees gently back and forth.风吹得树轻轻地来回摇晃。
• He gave forth a series of works in rapid succession.他很快连续发表了一系列的作品。

56 immortality   

n.不死，不朽

参考例句：

• belief in the immortality of the soul 灵魂不灭的信念
• It was like having immortality while you were still alive. 仿佛是当你仍然活着的时候就得到了永生。

57 phenomena   

n.现象

参考例句：

• Ade couldn't relate the phenomena with any theory he knew.艾德无法用他所知道的任何理论来解释这种现象。
• The object of these experiments was to find the connection,if any,between the two phenomena.这些实验的目的就是探索这两种现象之间的联系，如果存在着任何联系的话。

58 concealed   

a.隐藏的，隐蔽的

参考例句：

• The paintings were concealed beneath a thick layer of plaster. 那些画被隐藏在厚厚的灰泥层下面。
• I think he had a gun concealed about his person. 我认为他当时身上藏有一支枪。

59 whatsoever   

adv.（用于否定句中以加强语气）任何；pron.无论什么

参考例句：

• There's no reason whatsoever to turn down this suggestion.没有任何理由拒绝这个建议。
• All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,do ye even so to them.你想别人对你怎样，你就怎样对人。

60 scrupulously   

adv.一丝不苟地；小心翼翼地，多顾虑地

参考例句：

• She toed scrupulously into the room. 她小心翼翼地踮着脚走进房间。 来自辞典例句
• To others he would be scrupulously fair. 对待别人，他力求公正。 来自英汉非文学 - 文明史

61 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

62 virtue   

n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力

参考例句：

• He was considered to be a paragon of virtue.他被认为是品德尽善尽美的典范。
• You need to decorate your mind with virtue.你应该用德行美化心灵。

63 omnipotence   

n.全能，万能，无限威力

参考例句：

• Central bankers have never had any illusions of their own omnipotence. 中行的银行家们已经不再对于他们自己的无所不能存有幻想了。 来自互联网
• Introduce an omnipotence press automatism dividing device, explained it operation principle. 介绍了冲压万能自动分度装置，说明了其工作原理。 来自互联网

64 luminary   

n.名人，天体

参考例句：

• That luminary gazed earnestly at some papers before him.那个大好佬在用心细看面前的报纸。
• Now that a new light shone upon the horizon,this older luminary paled in the west.现在东方地平线上升起了一轮朝阳，这弯残月就在西边天际失去了光泽。

65 incapable   

adj.无能力的，不能做某事的

参考例句：

• He would be incapable of committing such a cruel deed.他不会做出这么残忍的事。
• Computers are incapable of creative thought.计算机不会创造性地思维。

66 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

67 oyster   

n.牡蛎；沉默寡言的人

参考例句：

• I enjoy eating oyster; it's really delicious.我喜欢吃牡蛎，它味道真美。
• I find I fairly like eating when he finally persuades me to taste the oyster.当他最后说服我尝尝牡蛎时，我发现我相当喜欢吃。

68 confiding   

adj.相信人的，易于相信的v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的现在分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等）

参考例句：

• The girl is of a confiding nature. 这女孩具有轻信别人的性格。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Celia, though confiding her opinion only to Andrew, disagreed. 西莉亚却不这么看，尽管她只向安德鲁吐露过。 来自辞典例句

69 chimera   

n.神话怪物；梦幻

参考例句：

• Religious unity remained as much a chimera as ever.宗教统一仍然和从前一样，不过是个妄想。
• I am fighting against my chimera.我在与狂想抗争。

70 toads   

n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆( toad的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• All toads blink when they swallow. 所有的癞蛤蟆吞食东西时都会眨眼皮。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Toads have shorter legs and are generally more clumsy than frogs. 蟾蜍比青蛙脚短，一般说来没有青蛙灵活。 来自辞典例句

71 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 )

参考例句：

• He has given up youthful follies. 他不再做年轻人的荒唐事了。
• The writings of Swift mocked the follies of his age. 斯威夫特的作品嘲弄了他那个时代的愚人。

72 lodging   

n.寄宿，住所；(大学生的)校外宿舍

参考例句：

• The bill is inclusive of the food and lodging. 账单包括吃、住费用。
• Where can you find lodging for the night? 你今晚在哪里借宿?

73 bug   

n.虫子；故障；窃听器；vt.纠缠；装窃听器

参考例句：

• There is a bug in the system.系统出了故障。
• The bird caught a bug on the fly.那鸟在飞行中捉住了一只昆虫。

74 avers   

v.断言( aver的第三人称单数 )；证实；证明…属实；作为事实提出

参考例句：

• He avers that chaos will erupt if he loses. 他断言，如果他失败将会爆发动乱。 来自辞典例句
• He avers he will not attend the meeting. 他断言不会参加那个会议。 来自互联网

75 pedant   

n.迂儒；卖弄学问的人

参考例句：

• He's a bit of a pedant.这人有点迂。
• A man of talent is one thing,and a pedant another.有才能的人和卖弄学问的人是不一样的。

76 annihilated   

v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃

参考例句：

• Our soldiers annihilated a force of three hundred enemy troops. 我军战士消灭了300名敌军。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• We annihilated the enemy. 我们歼灭了敌人。 来自《简明英汉词典》

77 automaton   

n.自动机器，机器人

参考例句：

• This is a fully functional automaton.这是一个有全自动功能的机器人。
• I get sick of being thought of as a political automaton.我讨厌被看作政治机器。

78 supreme   

adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的

参考例句：

• It was the supreme moment in his life.那是他一生中最重要的时刻。
• He handed up the indictment to the supreme court.他把起诉书送交最高法院。

79 infinitely   

adv.无限地，无穷地

参考例句：

• There is an infinitely bright future ahead of us.我们有无限光明的前途。
• The universe is infinitely large.宇宙是无限大的。

80 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

81 precisely   

adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地

参考例句：

• It's precisely that sort of slick sales-talk that I mistrust.我不相信的正是那种油腔滑调的推销宣传。
• The man adjusted very precisely.那个人调得很准。

82 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

83 peculiar   

adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的

参考例句：

• He walks in a peculiar fashion.他走路的样子很奇特。
• He looked at me with a very peculiar expression.他用一种很奇怪的表情看着我。

84 persecution   

n. 迫害,烦扰

参考例句：

• He had fled from France at the time of the persecution. 他在大迫害时期逃离了法国。
• Their persecution only serves to arouse the opposition of the people. 他们的迫害只激起人民对他们的反抗。

85 persecuted   

（尤指宗教或政治信仰的）迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的过去式和过去分词 )； 烦扰，困扰或骚扰某人

参考例句：

• Throughout history, people have been persecuted for their religious beliefs. 人们因宗教信仰而受迫害的情况贯穿了整个历史。
• Members of these sects are ruthlessly persecuted and suppressed. 这些教派的成员遭到了残酷的迫害和镇压。

86 persecute   

vt.迫害，虐待；纠缠，骚扰

参考例句：

• They persecute those who do not conform to their ideas.他们迫害那些不信奉他们思想的人。
• Hitler's undisguised effort to persecute the Jews met with worldwide condemnation.希特勒对犹太人的露骨迫害行为遭到世界人民的谴责。

87 malicious   

adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的

参考例句：

• You ought to kick back at such malicious slander. 你应当反击这种恶毒的污蔑。
• Their talk was slightly malicious.他们的谈话有点儿心怀不轨。

88 assailed   

v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对

参考例句：

• He was assailed with fierce blows to the head. 他的头遭到猛烈殴打。
• He has been assailed by bad breaks all these years. 这些年来他接二连三地倒霉。 来自《用法词典》

89 gland   

n.腺体，(机)密封压盖，填料盖

参考例句：

• This is a snake's poison gland.这就是蛇的毒腺。
• Her mother has an underactive adrenal gland.她的母亲肾上腺机能不全。

90 philosophical   

adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的

参考例句：

• The teacher couldn't answer the philosophical problem.老师不能解答这个哲学问题。
• She is very philosophical about her bad luck.她对自己的不幸看得很开。

91 atrocities   

n.邪恶，暴行( atrocity的名词复数 )；滔天大罪

参考例句：

• They were guilty of the most barbarous and inhuman atrocities. 他们犯有最野蛮、最灭绝人性的残暴罪行。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The enemy's atrocities made one boil with anger. 敌人的暴行令人发指。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

92 wretches   

n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋

参考例句：

• The little wretches were all bedraggledfrom some roguery. 小淘气们由于恶作剧而弄得脏乎乎的。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• The best courage for us poor wretches is to fly from danger. 对我们这些可怜虫说来，最好的出路还是躲避危险。 来自辞典例句

93 benefactors   

n.捐助者，施主( benefactor的名词复数 )；恩人

参考例句：

• I rate him among my benefactors. 我认为他是我的一个恩人。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• We showed high respect to benefactors. 我们对捐助者表达了崇高的敬意。 来自辞典例句

94 worthy   

adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的

参考例句：

• I did not esteem him to be worthy of trust.我认为他不值得信赖。
• There occurred nothing that was worthy to be mentioned.没有值得一提的事发生。

95 chimerical   

adj.荒诞不经的，梦幻的

参考例句：

• His Utopia is not a chimerical commonwealth but a practical improvement on what already exists.他的乌托邦不是空想的联邦，而是对那些已经存在的联邦事实上的改进。
• Most interpret the information from the victims as chimerical thinking.大多数来自于受害者的解释是被当作空想。

96 consuls   

领事( consul的名词复数 )； （古罗马共和国时期）执政官 （古罗马共和国及其军队的最高首长，同时共有两位，每年选举一次）

参考例句：

• American consuls warned that millions more were preparing to leave war-ravaged districts. 美国驻外领事们预告，还有几百万人正在准备离开战争破坏的地区。
• The legionaries, on their victorious return, refused any longer to obey the consuls. 军团士兵在凯旋归国时，不肯服从执政官的命令。

97 consul   

n.领事；执政官

参考例句：

• A consul's duty is to help his own nationals.领事的职责是帮助自己的同胞。
• He'll hold the post of consul general for the United States at Shanghai.他将就任美国驻上海总领事(的职务)。

98 unlimited   

adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的

参考例句：

• They flew over the unlimited reaches of the Arctic.他们飞过了茫茫无边的北极上空。
• There is no safety in unlimited technological hubris.在技术方面自以为是会很危险。

99 pretext   

n.借口，托词

参考例句：

• He used his headache as a pretext for not going to school.他借口头疼而不去上学。
• He didn't attend that meeting under the pretext of sickness.他以生病为借口，没参加那个会议。

100 conquerors   

征服者，占领者( conqueror的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The Danes had selfconfidence of conquerors, and their security precautions were casual. 这些丹麦人具有征服者的自信，而且他们的安全防卫也是漫不经心的。
• The conquerors believed in crushing the defeated people into submission, knowing that they could not win their loyalty by the victory. 征服者们知道他们的胜利并不能赢得失败者的忠心，于是就认为只有通过武力才能将他们压服。

101 recur   

vi.复发，重现，再发生

参考例句：

• Economic crises recur periodically.经济危机周期性地发生。
• Of course,many problems recur at various periods.当然，有许多问题会在不同的时期反复提出。

102 intestines   

n.肠( intestine的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Perhaps the most serious problems occur in the stomach and intestines. 最严重的问题或许出现在胃和肠里。 来自辞典例句
• The traps of carnivorous plants function a little like the stomachs and small intestines of animals. 食肉植物的捕蝇器起着动物的胃和小肠的作用。 来自辞典例句

103 intervention   

n.介入，干涉，干预

参考例句：

• The government's intervention in this dispute will not help.政府对这场争论的干预不会起作用。
• Many people felt he would be hostile to the idea of foreign intervention.许多人觉得他会反对外来干预。

104 sublimity   

崇高，庄严，气质高尚

参考例句：

• It'suggests no crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no sublimity. 这决不会叫人联想到晶莹的清水，如画的两岸，雄壮的气势。
• Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's facility in writing, and the sublimity of his language. 对汤姆流利的书写、响亮的内容，哈克贝利心悦诚服。

105 well-being   

n.安康，安乐，幸福

参考例句：

• He always has the well-being of the masses at heart.他总是把群众的疾苦挂在心上。
• My concern for their well-being was misunderstood as interference.我关心他们的幸福，却被误解为多管闲事。

106 behold   

v.看，注视，看到

参考例句：

• The industry of these little ants is wonderful to behold.这些小蚂蚁辛勤劳动的样子看上去真令人惊叹。
• The sunrise at the seaside was quite a sight to behold.海滨日出真是个奇景。

107 dissect   

v.分割；解剖

参考例句：

• In biology class we had to dissect a frog.上生物课时我们得解剖青蛙。
• Not everyone can dissect and digest the public information they receive.不是每个人都可以解析和消化他们得到的公共信息的。

108 dissected   

adj.切开的，分割的，（叶子）多裂的v.解剖（动物等）( dissect的过去式和过去分词 )；仔细分析或研究

参考例句：

• Her latest novel was dissected by the critics. 评论家对她最近出版的一部小说作了详细剖析。
• He dissected the plan afterward to learn why it had failed. 他事后仔细剖析那项计划以便搞清它失败的原因。 来自《简明英汉词典》

109 prodigiously   

adv.异常地，惊人地，巨大地

参考例句：

• Such remarks, though, hardly begin to explain that prodigiously gifted author Henry James. 然而这样的说法，一点也不能解释这个得天独厚的作家亨利·詹姆斯的情况。 来自辞典例句
• The prices of farms rose prodigiously. 农场的价格飞快上涨。 来自互联网

110 prodigious   

adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的

参考例句：

• This business generates cash in prodigious amounts.这种业务收益丰厚。
• He impressed all who met him with his prodigious memory.他惊人的记忆力让所有见过他的人都印象深刻。

111 fatigued   

adj. 疲乏的

参考例句：

• The exercises fatigued her. 操练使她感到很疲乏。
• The President smiled, with fatigued tolerance for a minor person's naivety. 总统笑了笑，疲惫地表现出对一个下级人员的天真想法的宽容。

112 choleric   

adj.易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• His pride and choleric temper were to ruin him.他生性高傲自恃而又易于发怒，这会毁了他的。
• He was affable at one moment,choleric the next.他一会儿还和蔼可亲，可一转眼就火冒三丈。

113 syllable   

n.音节；vt.分音节

参考例句：

• You put too much emphasis on the last syllable.你把最后一个音节读得太重。
• The stress on the last syllable is light.最后一个音节是轻音节。

114 paradox   

n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物)

参考例句：

• The story contains many levels of paradox.这个故事存在多重悖论。
• The paradox is that Japan does need serious education reform.矛盾的地方是日本确实需要教育改革。

115 commentator   

n.注释者，解说者；实况广播评论员

参考例句：

• He is a good commentator because he can get across the game.他能简单地解说这场比赛，是个好的解说者。
• The commentator made a big mistake during the live broadcast.在直播节目中评论员犯了个大错误。

116 bishop   

n.主教，（国际象棋）象

参考例句：

• He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
• Two years after his death the bishop was canonised.主教逝世两年后被正式封为圣者。

117 adversaries   

n.对手，敌手( adversary的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• That would cause potential adversaries to recoil from a challenge. 这会迫使潜在的敌人在挑战面前退缩。 来自辞典例句
• Every adversaries are more comfortable with a predictable, coherent America. 就连敌人也会因有可以预料的，始终一致的美国而感到舒服得多。 来自辞典例句

118 doctrine   

n.教义；主义；学说

参考例句：

• He was impelled to proclaim his doctrine.他不得不宣扬他的教义。
• The council met to consider changes to doctrine.宗教议会开会考虑更改教义。

119 concurred   

同意（concur的过去式与过去分词形式）

参考例句：

• Historians have concurred with each other in this view. 历史学家在这个观点上已取得一致意见。
• So many things concurred to give rise to the problem. 许多事情同时发生而导致了这一问题。

120 mosaic   

n./adj.镶嵌细工的，镶嵌工艺品的，嵌花式的

参考例句：

• The sky this morning is a mosaic of blue and white.今天早上的天空是幅蓝白相间的画面。
• The image mosaic is a troublesome work.图象镶嵌是个麻烦的工作。

121 providence   

n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝

参考例句：

• It is tempting Providence to go in that old boat.乘那艘旧船前往是冒大险。
• To act as you have done is to fly in the face of Providence.照你的所作所为那样去行事，是违背上帝的意志的。

122 quotations   

n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价

参考例句：

• The insurance company requires three quotations for repairs to the car. 保险公司要修理这辆汽车的三家修理厂的报价单。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• These quotations cannot readily be traced to their sources. 这些引语很难查出出自何处。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

123 rummaged   

翻找，搜寻( rummage的过去式和过去分词 )； 已经海关检查

参考例句：

• I rummaged through all the boxes but still could not find it. 几个箱子都翻腾遍了也没有找到。
• The customs officers rummaged the ship suspected to have contraband goods. 海关人员仔细搜查了一艘有走私嫌疑的海轮。

124 labyrinths   

迷宫( labyrinth的名词复数 )； （文字，建筑）错综复杂的

参考例句：

• I was engulfed in labyrinths of trouble too great to get out at all. 我陷入困难的迷宫中去，简直无法脱身。
• I've explored ancient castles, palaces, temples, tombs, catacombs and labyrinths. 我曾在古堡、古皇宫、古神庙、古墓、地下墓穴和迷宫中探险。

125 scripture   

n.经文，圣书，手稿；Scripture:(常用复数)《圣经》，《圣经》中的一段

参考例句：

• The scripture states that God did not want us to be alone.圣经指出上帝并不是想让我们独身一人生活。
• They invoked Hindu scripture to justify their position.他们援引印度教的经文为他们的立场辩护。

126 drawn   

v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的

参考例句：

• All the characters in the story are drawn from life.故事中的所有人物都取材于生活。
• Her gaze was drawn irresistibly to the scene outside.她的目光禁不住被外面的风景所吸引。

127 persecutor   

n. 迫害者

参考例句：

• My persecutor impervious to the laughter, continued to strike me. 打我的那个人没有受到笑声的影响，继续打着我。
• I am the persecutor of my self in the wild hunt. 我将自己置身于这狂野的追猎。

128 patronage   

n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场

参考例句：

• Though it was not yet noon,there was considerable patronage.虽然时间未到中午，店中已有许多顾客惠顾。
• I am sorry to say that my patronage ends with this.很抱歉，我的赞助只能到此为止。

129 retract   

vt.缩回，撤回收回，取消

参考例句：

• The criminals should stop on the precipice, retract from the wrong path and not go any further.犯罪分子应当迷途知返，悬崖勒马，不要在错误的道路上继续走下去。
• I don't want to speak rashly now and later have to retract my statements.我不想现在说些轻率的话，然后又要收回自己说过的话。

130 soften   

v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和

参考例句：

• Plastics will soften when exposed to heat.塑料适当加热就可以软化。
• This special cream will help to soften up our skin.这种特殊的护肤霜有助于使皮肤变得柔软。

131 testament   

n.遗嘱；证明

参考例句：

• This is his last will and testament.这是他的遗愿和遗嘱。
• It is a testament to the power of political mythology.这说明，编造政治神话可以产生多大的威力。

132 parable   

n.寓言，比喻

参考例句：

• This is an ancient parable.这是一个古老的寓言。
• The minister preached a sermon on the parable of the lost sheep.牧师讲道时用了亡羊的比喻。

133 farce   

n.闹剧，笑剧，滑稽戏；胡闹

参考例句：

• They played a shameful role in this farce.他们在这场闹剧中扮演了可耻的角色。
• The audience roared at the farce.闹剧使观众哄堂大笑。

134 stoics   

禁欲主义者，恬淡寡欲的人，不以苦乐为意的人( stoic的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Stoics I can handle this shit. 斯多葛：我能掌握这大便。
• The most famous exercise of meditation is the premeditatio mallorum as practiced by the Stoics. 冥思最著名的练习是禁欲学派所实行的[消灾冥思]。

135 emanated   

v.从…处传出，传出( emanate的过去式和过去分词 )；产生，表现，显示

参考例句：

• Do you know where these rumours emanated from? 你知道谣言出自何处吗？ 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The rumor emanated from Chicago. 谣言来自芝加哥。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

136 contemning   

v.侮辱，蔑视( contemn的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• She rushed forward in contemning dangers. 她不顾危险往前冲。 来自互联网

137 engraved   

v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的过去式和过去分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中）

参考例句：

• The silver cup was engraved with his name. 银杯上刻有他的名字。
• It was prettily engraved with flowers on the back. 此件雕刻精美，背面有花饰图案。 来自《简明英汉词典》

138 scruple   

n./v.顾忌，迟疑

参考例句：

• It'seemed to her now that she could marry him without the remnant of a scruple.她觉得现在她可以跟他成婚而不需要有任何顾忌。
• He makes no scruple to tell a lie.他说起谎来无所顾忌。

139 tyrant   

n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人

参考例句：

• The country was ruled by a despotic tyrant.该国处在一个专制暴君的统治之下。
• The tyrant was deaf to the entreaties of the slaves.暴君听不到奴隶们的哀鸣。

140 virtuous   

adj.有品德的，善良的，贞洁的，有效力的

参考例句：

• She was such a virtuous woman that everybody respected her.她是个有道德的女性，人人都尊敬她。
• My uncle is always proud of having a virtuous wife.叔叔一直为娶到一位贤德的妻子而骄傲。

141 thoroughly   

adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地

参考例句：

• The soil must be thoroughly turned over before planting.一定要先把土地深翻一遍再下种。
• The soldiers have been thoroughly instructed in the care of their weapons.士兵们都系统地接受过保护武器的训练。

142 clement   

adj.仁慈的；温和的

参考例句：

• A clement judge reduced his sentence.一位仁慈的法官为他减了刑。
• The planet's history contains many less stable and clement eras than the holocene.地球的历史包含着许多不如全新世稳定与温和的地质时期。

143 Christians   

n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Christians of all denominations attended the conference. 基督教所有教派的人都出席了这次会议。
• His novel about Jesus caused a furore among Christians. 他关于耶稣的小说激起了基督教徒的公愤。

144 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

145 prey   

n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨

参考例句：

• Stronger animals prey on weaker ones.弱肉强食。
• The lion was hunting for its prey.狮子在寻找猎物。

146 countenance   

n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同

参考例句：

• At the sight of this photograph he changed his countenance.他一看见这张照片脸色就变了。
• I made a fierce countenance as if I would eat him alive.我脸色恶狠狠地，仿佛要把他活生生地吞下去。

147 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

148 beak   

n.鸟嘴，茶壶嘴，钩形鼻

参考例句：

• The bird had a worm in its beak.鸟儿嘴里叼着一条虫。
• This bird employs its beak as a weapon.这种鸟用嘴作武器。

149 epidemic   

n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的

参考例句：

• That kind of epidemic disease has long been stamped out.那种传染病早已绝迹。
• The authorities tried to localise the epidemic.当局试图把流行病限制在局部范围。

150 jade   

n.玉石；碧玉；翡翠

参考例句：

• The statue was carved out of jade.这座塑像是玉雕的。
• He presented us with a couple of jade lions.他送给我们一对玉狮子。

151 credulous   

adj.轻信的，易信的

参考例句：

• You must be credulous if she fooled you with that story.连她那种话都能把你骗倒，你一定是太容易相信别人了。
• Credulous attitude will only make you take anything for granted.轻信的态度只会使你想当然。

152 vouchsafe   

v.惠予，准许

参考例句：

• Elinor would not vouchsafe any answer.埃莉诺不想给予任何回答。
• Vouchsafe me a spirit of faith and knowledge.赐予我信心和一颗有知识的心灵。

153 abode   

n.住处，住所

参考例句：

• It was ten months before my father discovered his abode.父亲花了十个月的功夫，才好不容易打听到他的住处。
• Welcome to our humble abode!欢迎光临寒舍！

154 exterior   

adj.外部的，外在的；表面的

参考例句：

• The seed has a hard exterior covering.这种子外壳很硬。
• We are painting the exterior wall of the house.我们正在给房子的外墙涂漆。

155 glands   

n.腺( gland的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a snake's poison glands 蛇的毒腺
• the sebaceous glands in the skin 皮脂腺

156 callous   

adj.无情的，冷淡的，硬结的，起老茧的

参考例句：

• He is callous about the safety of his workers.他对他工人的安全毫不关心。
• She was selfish,arrogant and often callous.她自私傲慢，而且往往冷酷无情。

157 annoyance   

n.恼怒，生气，烦恼

参考例句：

• Why do you always take your annoyance out on me?为什么你不高兴时总是对我出气？
• I felt annoyance at being teased.我恼恨别人取笑我。

158 cardinal   

n.(天主教的)红衣主教；adj.首要的，基本的

参考例句：

• This is a matter of cardinal significance.这是非常重要的事。
• The Cardinal coloured with vexation. 红衣主教感到恼火，脸涨得通红。

159 conclave   

n.秘密会议，红衣主教团

参考例句：

• Signore,I ask and I prey,that you break this conclave.各位阁下，我请求，并祈祷，你们能停止这次秘密会议。
• I met my partner at that conclave and my life moved into a huge shift.我就是在那次大会上遇到了我的伴侣的，而我的生活就转向了一个巨大的改变。

160 steward   

n.乘务员，服务员；看管人；膳食管理员

参考例句：

• He's the steward of the club.他是这家俱乐部的管理员。
• He went around the world as a ship's steward.他当客船服务员，到过世界各地。

161 laden   

adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的

参考例句：

• He is laden with heavy responsibility.他肩负重任。
• Dragging the fully laden boat across the sand dunes was no mean feat.将满载货物的船拖过沙丘是一件了不起的事。

162 stewards   

（轮船、飞机等的）乘务员( steward的名词复数 )； （俱乐部、旅馆、工会等的）管理员； （大型活动的）组织者； （私人家中的）管家

参考例句：

• The stewards all wore armbands. 乘务员都戴了臂章。
• The stewards will inspect the course to see if racing is possible. 那些干事将检视赛马场看是否适宜比赛。

163 epithets   

n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He insulted me, using rude epithets. 他用粗话诅咒我。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He cursed me, using a lot of rude epithets. 他用上许多粗鲁的修饰词来诅咒我。 来自辞典例句

164 babble   

v.含糊不清地说，胡言乱语地说，儿语

参考例句：

• No one could understand the little baby's babble. 没人能听懂这个小婴孩的话。
• The babble of voices in the next compartment annoyed all of us.隔壁的车厢隔间里不间歇的嘈杂谈话声让我们都很气恼。

165 feign   

vt.假装，佯作

参考例句：

• He used to feign an excuse.他惯于伪造口实。
• She knew that her efforts to feign cheerfulness weren't convincing.她明白自己强作欢颜是瞒不了谁的。

166 partisans   

游击队员( partisan的名词复数 )； 党人； 党羽； 帮伙

参考例句：

• Every movement has its partisans. 每一运动都有热情的支持者。
• He was rescued by some Italian partisans. 他被几名意大利游击队员所救。

167 extravagant   

adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的

参考例句：

• They tried to please him with fulsome compliments and extravagant gifts.他们想用溢美之词和奢华的礼品来取悦他。
• He is extravagant in behaviour.他行为放肆。

168 fables   

n.寓言( fable的名词复数 )；神话，传说

参考例句：

• Some of Aesop's Fables are satires. 《伊索寓言》中有一些是讽刺作品。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• Little Mexican boys also breathe the American fables. 墨西哥族的小孩子对美国神话也都耳濡目染。 来自辞典例句

169 fable   

n.寓言；童话；神话

参考例句：

• The fable is given on the next page. 这篇寓言登在下一页上。
• He had some motive in telling this fable. 他讲这寓言故事是有用意的。

170 abridgment   

n.删节，节本

参考例句：

• An abridgment of the book has been published for young readers.他们为年轻读者出版了这本书的节本。
• This abridgment provides a concise presentation of this masterpiece of Buddhist literature.这个删节本提供了简明介绍佛教文学的杰作。

171 censure   

v./n.责备；非难；责难

参考例句：

• You must not censure him until you know the whole story.在弄清全部事实真相前不要谴责他。
• His dishonest behaviour came under severe censure.他的不诚实行为受到了严厉指责。

172 infinity   

n.无限，无穷，大量

参考例句：

• It is impossible to count up to infinity.不可能数到无穷大。
• Theoretically,a line can extend into infinity.从理论上来说直线可以无限地延伸。

173 simile   

n.直喻，明喻

参考例句：

• I believe this simile largely speaks the truth.我相信这种比拟在很大程度上道出了真实。
• It is a trite simile to compare her teeth to pearls.把她的牙齿比做珍珠是陈腐的比喻。

174 celestial   

adj.天体的；天上的

参考例句：

• The rosy light yet beamed like a celestial dawn.玫瑰色的红光依然象天上的朝霞一样绚丽。
• Gravity governs the motions of celestial bodies.万有引力控制着天体的运动。

175 apprehension   

n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑

参考例句：

• There were still areas of doubt and her apprehension grew.有些地方仍然存疑，于是她越来越担心。
• She is a girl of weak apprehension.她是一个理解力很差的女孩。

176 diversified   

adj.多样化的，多种经营的v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的过去式和过去分词 )；进入新的商业领域

参考例句：

• The college biology department has diversified by adding new courses in biotechnology. 该学院生物系通过增加生物技术方面的新课程而变得多样化。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Take grain as the key link, develop a diversified economy and ensure an all-round development. 以粮为纲，多种经营，全面发展。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

177 undoubtedly   

adv.确实地，无疑地

参考例句：

• It is undoubtedly she who has said that.这话明明是她说的。
• He is undoubtedly the pride of China.毫无疑问他是中国的骄傲。

178 faculties   

n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院

参考例句：

• Although he's ninety, his mental faculties remain unimpaired. 他虽年届九旬，但头脑仍然清晰。
• All your faculties have come into play in your work. 在你的工作中，你的全部才能已起到了作用。 来自《简明英汉词典》

179 affinities   

n.密切关系( affinity的名词复数 )；亲近；（生性）喜爱；类同

参考例句：

• Cubism had affinities with the new European interest in Jazz. 主体派和欧洲新近的爵士音乐热有密切关系。 来自辞典例句
• The different isozymes bind calcium ions with different affinities. 不同的同功酶以不同的亲和力与钙离子相结合。 来自辞典例句

180 mole   

n.胎块；痣；克分子

参考例句：

• She had a tiny mole on her cheek.她的面颊上有一颗小黑痣。
• The young girl felt very self- conscious about the large mole on her chin.那位年轻姑娘对自己下巴上的一颗大痣感到很不自在。

181 lapse   

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

参考例句：

• The incident was being seen as a serious security lapse.这一事故被看作是一次严重的安全疏忽。
• I had a lapse of memory.我记错了。

182 brute   

n.野兽，兽性

参考例句：

• The aggressor troops are not many degrees removed from the brute.侵略军简直象一群野兽。
• That dog is a dangerous brute.It bites people.那条狗是危险的畜牲，它咬人。

183 impiety   

n.不敬；不孝

参考例句：

• His last act must be a deed of impiety. 他最后的行为就是这一种不孝。
• His remarks show impiety to religion.他的话表现出对宗教的不敬。

184 boundless   

adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的

参考例句：

• The boundless woods were sleeping in the deep repose of nature.无边无际的森林在大自然静寂的怀抱中酣睡着。
• His gratitude and devotion to the Party was boundless.他对党无限感激、无限忠诚。

185 subsist   

vi.生存，存在，供养

参考例句：

• We are unable to subsist without air and water.没有空气和水我们就活不下去。
• He could subsist on bark and grass roots in the isolated island.在荒岛上他只能靠树皮和草根维持生命。

186 subsists   

v.（靠很少的钱或食物）维持生活，生存下去( subsist的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• This plant subsists in water holes only during the rainy season. 这种植物只有雨季在水坑里出现。 来自辞典例句
• The hinge is that the enterprise subsists on suiting the development of data communication. 适应数据通信的发展是通信企业生存的关键。 来自互联网

187 oracles   

神示所( oracle的名词复数 )； 神谕； 圣贤； 哲人

参考例句：

• Do all oracles tell the truth? 是否所有的神谕都揭示真理？ 来自哲学部分
• The ancient oracles were often vague and equivocal. 古代的神谕常是意义模糊和模棱两可的。

188 superstitions   

迷信，迷信行为( superstition的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Old superstitions seem incredible to educated people. 旧的迷信对于受过教育的人来说是不可思议的。
• Do away with all fetishes and superstitions. 破除一切盲目崇拜和迷信。

189 superstitious   

adj.迷信的

参考例句：

• They aim to deliver the people who are in bondage to superstitious belief.他们的目的在于解脱那些受迷信束缚的人。
• These superstitious practices should be abolished as soon as possible.这些迷信做法应尽早取消。

190 possessed   

adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的

参考例句：

• He flew out of the room like a man possessed.他像着了魔似地猛然冲出房门。
• He behaved like someone possessed.他行为举止像是魔怔了。

191 compassion   

n.同情，怜悯

参考例句：

• He could not help having compassion for the poor creature.他情不自禁地怜悯起那个可怜的人来。
• Her heart was filled with compassion for the motherless children.她对于没有母亲的孩子们充满了怜悯心。

192 revolve   

vi.(使)旋转；循环出现

参考例句：

• The planets revolve around the sun.行星绕着太阳运转。
• The wheels began to revolve slowly.车轮开始慢慢转动。

193 reverence   

n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬

参考例句：

• He was a bishop who was held in reverence by all.他是一位被大家都尊敬的主教。
• We reverence tradition but will not be fettered by it.我们尊重传统，但不被传统所束缚。

194 deluge   

n./vt.洪水，暴雨，使泛滥

参考例句：

• This little stream can become a deluge when it rains heavily.雨大的时候，这条小溪能变作洪流。
• I got caught in the deluge on the way home.我在回家的路上遇到倾盆大雨。

195 inundation   

n.the act or fact of overflowing

参考例句：

• Otherwise, inundation would ensue to our dismay. 若不疏导，只能眼巴巴看着它泛滥。
• Therefore this psychology preceded the inundation of Caudillo politics after independence. 在独立后，这一心态助长了考迪罗主义的泛滥。

196 contradictory   

adj.反驳的，反对的，抗辩的；n.正反对，矛盾对立

参考例句：

• The argument is internally contradictory.论据本身自相矛盾。
• What he said was self-contradictory.他讲话前后不符。

197 demonstrations   

证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威

参考例句：

• Lectures will be interspersed with practical demonstrations. 讲课中将不时插入实际示范。
• The new military government has banned strikes and demonstrations. 新的军人政府禁止罢工和示威活动。

198 venerated   

敬重（某人或某事物），崇敬( venerate的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• My father venerated General Eisenhower. 我父亲十分敬仰艾森豪威尔将军。
• He used the sacraments and venerated the saints. 他行使圣事，崇拜圣人。 来自英汉非文学 - 文明史

199 condemned   

adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He condemned the hypocrisy of those politicians who do one thing and say another. 他谴责了那些说一套做一套的政客的虚伪。
• The policy has been condemned as a regressive step. 这项政策被认为是一种倒退而受到谴责。

200 thither   

adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的

参考例句：

• He wandered hither and thither looking for a playmate.他逛来逛去找玩伴。
• He tramped hither and thither.他到处流浪。

201 downwards   

adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地）

参考例句：

• He lay face downwards on his bed.他脸向下伏在床上。
• As the river flows downwards,it widens.这条河愈到下游愈宽。

202 upwards   

adv.向上，在更高处...以上

参考例句：

• The trend of prices is still upwards.物价的趋向是仍在上涨。
• The smoke rose straight upwards.烟一直向上升。

203 derives   

v.得到( derive的第三人称单数 )；（从…中）得到获得；源于；（从…中）提取

参考例句：

• English derives in the main from the common Germanic stock. 英语主要源于日耳曼语系。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He derives his income from freelance work. 他以自由职业获取收入。 来自《简明英汉词典》

204 nourishment   

n.食物，营养品；营养情况

参考例句：

• Lack of proper nourishment reduces their power to resist disease.营养不良降低了他们抵抗疾病的能力。
• He ventured that plants draw part of their nourishment from the air.他大胆提出植物从空气中吸收部分养分的观点。

205 perpetuate   

v.使永存，使永记不忘

参考例句：

• This monument was built to perpetuate the memory of the national hero.这个纪念碑建造的意义在于纪念民族英雄永垂不朽。
• We must perpetuate the system.我们必须将此制度永久保持。

206 multiplication   

n.增加，增多，倍增；增殖，繁殖；乘法

参考例句：

• Our teacher used to drum our multiplication tables into us.我们老师过去老是让我们反覆背诵乘法表。
• The multiplication of numbers has made our club building too small.会员的增加使得我们的俱乐部拥挤不堪。

207 reptiles   

n.爬行动物，爬虫( reptile的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Snakes and crocodiles are both reptiles. 蛇和鳄鱼都是爬行动物。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Birds, reptiles and insects come from eggs. 鸟类、爬虫及昆虫是卵生的。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

208 vouchsafed   

v.给予，赐予( vouchsafe的过去式和过去分词 )；允诺

参考例句：

• He vouchsafed to me certain family secrets. 他让我知道了某些家庭秘密。
• The significance of the event does, indeed, seem vouchsafed. 这个事件看起来确实具有重大意义。 来自辞典例句

209 adoration   

n.爱慕，崇拜

参考例句：

• He gazed at her with pure adoration.他一往情深地注视着她。
• The old lady fell down in adoration before Buddhist images.那老太太在佛像面前顶礼膜拜。

210 discourse   

n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述

参考例句：

• We'll discourse on the subject tonight.我们今晚要谈论这个问题。
• He fell into discourse with the customers who were drinking at the counter.他和站在柜台旁的酒客谈了起来。

211 astonishment   

n.惊奇，惊异

参考例句：

• They heard him give a loud shout of astonishment.他们听见他惊奇地大叫一声。
• I was filled with astonishment at her strange action.我对她的奇怪举动不胜惊异。

212 brutes   

兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性

参考例句：

• They're not like dogs; they're hideous brutes. 它们不像狗，是丑陋的畜牲。
• Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes struck his nostrils. 突然，他的鼻尖闻到了老鼠的霉臭味。 来自英汉文学

213 penetrate   

v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解

参考例句：

• Western ideas penetrate slowly through the East.西方观念逐渐传入东方。
• The sunshine could not penetrate where the trees were thickest.阳光不能透入树木最浓密的地方。

214 lodged   

v.存放( lodge的过去式和过去分词 )；暂住；埋入；（权利、权威等）归属

参考例句：

• The certificate will have to be lodged at the registry. 证书必须存放在登记处。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Our neighbours lodged a complaint against us with the police. 我们的邻居向警方控告我们。 来自《简明英汉词典》

215 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

216 meditated   

深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑

参考例句：

• He meditated for two days before giving his answer. 他在作出答复之前考虑了两天。
• She meditated for 2 days before giving her answer. 她考虑了两天才答复。

217 omnipotent   

adj.全能的，万能的

参考例句：

• When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science.我们达到万能以后就不需要科学了。
• Money is not omnipotent,but we can't survive without money.金钱不是万能的，但是没有金钱我们却无法生存。

218 brutal   

adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的

参考例句：

• She has to face the brutal reality.她不得不去面对冷酷的现实。
• They're brutal people behind their civilised veneer.他们表面上温文有礼，骨子里却是野蛮残忍。

219 barbarian   

n.野蛮人；adj.野蛮(人)的；未开化的

参考例句：

• There is a barbarian tribe living in this forest.有一个原始部落居住在这个林区。
• The walled city was attacked by barbarian hordes.那座有城墙的城市遭到野蛮部落的袭击。

220 virtues   

美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处

参考例句：

• Doctors often extol the virtues of eating less fat. 医生常常宣扬少吃脂肪的好处。
• She delivered a homily on the virtues of family life. 她进行了一场家庭生活美德方面的说教。

221 revered   

v.崇敬，尊崇，敬畏( revere的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• A number of institutions revered and respected in earlier times have become Aunt Sally for the present generation. 一些早年受到尊崇的惯例，现在已经成了这代人嘲弄的对象了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The Chinese revered corn as a gift from heaven. 中国人将谷物奉为上天的恩赐。 来自辞典例句

222 accredited   

adj.可接受的；可信任的；公认的；质量合格的v.相信( accredit的过去式和过去分词 )；委托；委任；把…归结于

参考例句：

• The discovery of distillation is usually accredited to the Arabs of the 11th century. 通常认为，蒸馏法是阿拉伯人在11世纪发明的。
• Only accredited journalists were allowed entry. 只有正式认可的记者才获准入内。

223 ambrosia   

n.神的食物；蜂食

参考例句：

• Later Aphrodite herself brought ambrosia.后来阿芙洛狄特亲自带了仙肴。
• People almost everywhere are buying it as if it were the biggest glass of ambrosia in the world for a nickel.几乎所有地方的人们都在买它，就好像它是世界上能用五分钱买到的最大瓶的美味。

224 meddling   

v.干涉，干预（他人事务）( meddle的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• He denounced all "meddling" attempts to promote a negotiation. 他斥责了一切“干预”促成谈判的企图。 来自辞典例句
• They liked this field because it was never visited by meddling strangers. 她们喜欢这块田野，因为好事的陌生人从来不到那里去。 来自辞典例句

225 crooked   

adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的

参考例句：

• He crooked a finger to tell us to go over to him.他弯了弯手指，示意我们到他那儿去。
• You have to drive slowly on these crooked country roads.在这些弯弯曲曲的乡间小路上你得慢慢开车。

226 condescended   

屈尊，俯就( condescend的过去式和过去分词 )； 故意表示和蔼可亲

参考例句：

• We had to wait almost an hour before he condescended to see us. 我们等了几乎一小时他才屈尊大驾来见我们。
• The king condescended to take advice from his servants. 国王屈驾向仆人征求意见。

227 descended   

a.为...后裔的，出身于...的

参考例句：

• A mood of melancholy descended on us. 一种悲伤的情绪袭上我们的心头。
• The path descended the hill in a series of zigzags. 小路呈连续的之字形顺着山坡蜿蜒而下。

228 condemns   

v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的第三人称单数 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地

参考例句：

• Her widowhood condemns her to a lonely old age. 守寡使她不得不过着孤独的晚年生活。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The public opinion condemns prostitution. 公众舆论遣责卖淫。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

229 deities   

n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明

参考例句：

• Zeus and Aphrodite were ancient Greek deities. 宙斯和阿佛洛狄是古希腊的神。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Taoist Wang hesitated occasionally about these transactions for fearof offending the deities. 道士也有过犹豫，怕这样会得罪了神。 来自汉英文学 - 现代散文

230 contemplate   

vt.盘算，计议；周密考虑；注视，凝视

参考例句：

• The possibility of war is too horrifying to contemplate.战争的可能性太可怕了，真不堪细想。
• The consequences would be too ghastly to contemplate.后果不堪设想。

231 fatality   

n.不幸，灾祸，天命

参考例句：

• She struggle against fatality in vain.她徒然奋斗反抗宿命。
• He began to have a growing sense of fatality.他开始有一种越来越强烈的宿命感。

232 reverenced   

v.尊敬，崇敬( reverence的过去式和过去分词 )；敬礼

参考例句：

• The name of Albert Einstein is still reverenced by the scientists all over the world. 爱因斯坦的名字仍然受到世界各地科学家的崇敬。 来自互联网
• For it is always necessary to be loved, but not always necessary to be reverenced. 一个人总是能得到必要的爱，却不总是能得到必要的尊敬。 来自互联网

233 slaughtering   

v.屠杀，杀戮，屠宰( slaughter的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The Revolutionary Tribunal went to work, and a steady slaughtering began. 革命法庭投入工作，持续不断的大屠杀开始了。 来自英汉非文学 - 历史
• \"Isn't it terrific slaughtering pigs? “宰猪的！ 来自汉英文学 - 中国现代小说

234 exterminating   

v.消灭，根绝( exterminate的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Man is exterminating too many species for zoos to be much help. 人类正在导致过多物种灭绝，动物园也无济于事。 来自辞典例句
• Germany is exterminating the Jews of Europe. 德国正在灭绝欧洲犹太人。 来自辞典例句

235 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

236 solace   

n.安慰；v.使快乐；vt.安慰(物)，缓和

参考例句：

• They sought solace in religion from the harshness of their everyday lives.他们日常生活很艰难，就在宗教中寻求安慰。
• His acting career took a nosedive and he turned to drink for solace.演艺事业突然一落千丈，他便借酒浇愁。

237 displease   

vt.使不高兴，惹怒；n.不悦，不满，生气

参考例句：

• Not wishing to displease her,he avoided answering the question.为了不惹她生气，他对这个问题避而不答。
• She couldn't afford to displease her boss.她得罪不起她的上司。

238 discord   

n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐

参考例句：

• These two answers are in discord.这两个答案不一样。
• The discord of his music was hard on the ear.他演奏的不和谐音很刺耳。

239 nay   

adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者

参考例句：

• He was grateful for and proud of his son's remarkable,nay,unique performance.他为儿子出色的，不，应该是独一无二的表演心怀感激和骄傲。
• Long essays,nay,whole books have been written on this.许多长篇大论的文章，不，应该说是整部整部的书都是关于这件事的。

240 hoods   

n.兜帽( hood的名词复数 )；头巾；（汽车、童车等的）折合式车篷；汽车发动机罩v.兜帽( hood的第三人称单数 )；头巾；（汽车、童车等的）折合式车篷；汽车发动机罩

参考例句：

• Michael looked at the four hoods sitting in the kitchen. 迈克尔瞅了瞅坐在厨房里的四条汉子。 来自教父部分
• Eskimos wear hoods to keep their heads warm. 爱斯基摩人戴兜帽使头暖和。 来自辞典例句

241 chastisement   

n.惩罚

参考例句：

• You cannot but know that we live in a period of chastisement and ruin. 你们必须认识到我们生活在一个灾难深重、面临毁灭的时代。 来自辞典例句
• I think the chastisement to him is too critical. 我认为对他的惩罚太严厉了。 来自互联网

242 inundate   

vt.淹没，泛滥，压倒

参考例句：

• If the dam breaks,it will inundate large parts of the town.如果水坝坍塌，该城的大部分将被淹没。
• The course changes frequently,and the area is so flat that a small change in the level of the river may inundate a considerable area.河道变化多端，下游地区却很平坦，水位少许上涨河流就会淹没一大片土地。

243 edifices   

n.大建筑物( edifice的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• They complain that the monstrous edifices interfere with television reception. 他们抱怨说，那些怪物般的庞大建筑，干扰了电视接收。 来自辞典例句
• Wealthy officials and landlords built these queer edifices a thousand years ago. 有钱的官吏和地主在一千年前就修建了这种奇怪的建筑物。 来自辞典例句

244 wreck   

n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难

参考例句：

• Weather may have been a factor in the wreck.天气可能是造成这次失事的原因之一。
• No one can wreck the friendship between us.没有人能够破坏我们之间的友谊。

245 precept   

n.戒律；格言

参考例句：

• It occurs to me that example is always more efficacious than precept.我想到身教重于言教。
• The son had well profited by the precept and example of the father.老太爷的言传身教早已使他儿子获益无穷。

246 vegetates   

v.过单调呆板的生活( vegetate的第三人称单数 )；植物似地生长；（瘤、疣等）长大

参考例句：

• This fungus usually vegetates vigorously. 蘑菇经常像植物一样旺盛地生长。 来自互联网

247 likeness   

n.相像，相似（之处）

参考例句：

• I think the painter has produced a very true likeness.我认为这位画家画得非常逼真。
• She treasured the painted likeness of her son.她珍藏她儿子的画像。

248 negation   

n.否定；否认

参考例句：

• No reasonable negation can be offered.没有合理的反对意见可以提出。
• The author boxed the compass of negation in his article.该作者在文章中依次探讨了各种反面的意见。

249 heed   

v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心

参考例句：

• You must take heed of what he has told.你要注意他所告诉的事。
• For the first time he had to pay heed to his appearance.这是他第一次非得注意自己的外表不可了。

250 seminal   

adj.影响深远的；种子的

参考例句：

• The reforms have been a seminal event in the history of the NHS.这些改革已成为英国国民保健制度史上影响深远的一件大事。
• The emperor's importance as a seminal figure of history won't be diminished.做为一个开创性历史人物的重要性是不会减弱的。

251 dwelling   

n.住宅，住所，寓所

参考例句：

• Those two men are dwelling with us.那两个人跟我们住在一起。
• He occupies a three-story dwelling place on the Park Street.他在派克街上有一幢3层楼的寓所。

252 subsisting   

v.（靠很少的钱或食物）维持生活，生存下去( subsist的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Perfect God and perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human subsisting. 衪是完全的神又是完全的人，且有理性的灵魂和人类血肉之躯。 来自互联网
• The benevolence subsisting in her character draws her friends closer to her. 存在于她性格中的仁慈吸引她的朋友们接近她。 来自互联网

253 contrived   

adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的

参考例句：

• There was nothing contrived or calculated about what he said.他说的话里没有任何蓄意捏造的成分。
• The plot seems contrived.情节看起来不真实。

254 commentators   

n.评论员( commentator的名词复数 )；时事评论员；注释者；实况广播员

参考例句：

• Sports commentators repeat the same phrases ad nauseam. 体育解说员翻来覆去说着同样的词语，真叫人腻烦。
• Television sports commentators repeat the same phrases ad nauseam. 电视体育解说员说来说去就是那么几句话，令人厌烦。 来自《简明英汉词典》

255 devoured   

吞没( devour的过去式和过去分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光

参考例句：

• She devoured everything she could lay her hands on: books, magazines and newspapers. 无论是书、杂志，还是报纸，只要能弄得到，她都看得津津有味。
• The lions devoured a zebra in a short time. 狮子一会儿就吃掉了一匹斑马。

256 sages   

n.圣人( sage的名词复数 )；智者；哲人；鼠尾草（可用作调料）

参考例句：

• Homage was paid to the great sages buried in the city. 向安葬在此城市的圣哲们表示敬意。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Confucius is considered the greatest of the ancient Chinese sages. 孔子被认为是古代中国最伟大的圣人。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

257 expounding   

论述，详细讲解( expound的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Soon Gandhi was expounding the doctrine of ahimsa (nonviolence). 不久甘地就四出阐释非暴力主义思想。
• He was expounding, of course, his philosophy of leadership. 当然，他这是在阐述他的领导哲学。

258 authorized   

a.委任的，许可的

参考例句：

• An administrative order is valid if authorized by a statute.如果一个行政命令得到一个法规的认可那么这个命令就是有效的。

259 impudence   

n.厚颜无耻；冒失；无礼

参考例句：

• His impudence provoked her into slapping his face.他的粗暴让她气愤地给了他一耳光。
• What knocks me is his impudence.他的厚颜无耻使我感到吃惊。

260 innocence   

n.无罪；天真；无害

参考例句：

• There was a touching air of innocence about the boy.这个男孩有一种令人感动的天真神情。
• The accused man proved his innocence of the crime.被告人经证实无罪。

261 mechanism   

n.机械装置；机构，结构

参考例句：

• The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
• The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。

262 defer   

vt.推迟，拖延；vi.(to)遵从，听从，服从

参考例句：

• We wish to defer our decision until next week.我们希望推迟到下星期再作出决定。
• We will defer to whatever the committee decides.我们遵从委员会作出的任何决定。

263 humble   

adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低

参考例句：

• In my humble opinion,he will win the election.依我拙见，他将在选举中获胜。
• Defeat and failure make people humble.挫折与失败会使人谦卑。