Now the blindness in human beings, of which this discourse4 will treat, is the blindness with which we all are afflicted5 in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves.
We are practical beings, each of us with limited functions and duties to perform. Each is bound to feel intensely the importance of his own duties and the significance of the situations that call these forth6. But this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for sympathy with which we vainly look to others. The others are too much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in ours. Hence the stupidity and injustice7 of our opinions, so far as they deal with the significance of alien lives. Hence the falsity of our judgments, so far as they presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of other persons’ conditions or ideals.
Take our dogs and ourselves, connected as we are by a tie more intimate than most ties in this world; and yet, outside of that tie of friendly fondness, how insensible, each of us, to all that makes life significant for the other! — we to the rapture8 of bones under hedges, or smells of trees and lamp-posts, they to the delights of literature and art. As you sit reading the most moving romance you ever fell upon, what sort of a judge is your fox-terrier of your behavior? With all his good will toward you, the nature of your conduct is absolutely excluded from his comprehension. To sit there like a senseless statue, when you might be taking him to walk and throwing sticks for him to catch! What queer disease is this that comes over you every day, of holding things and staring at them like that for hours together, paralyzed of motion and vacant of all conscious life? The African savages10 came nearer the truth; but they, too, missed it, when they gathered wonderingly round one of our American travellers who, in the interior, had just come into possession of a stray copy of the New York Commercial Advertiser, and was devouring11 it column by column. When he got through, they offered him a high price for the mysterious object; and, being asked for what they wanted it, they said: “For an eye medicine,”— that being the only reason they could conceive of for the protracted12 bath which he had given his eyes upon its surface.
The spectator’s judgment2 is sure to miss the root of the matter, and to possess no truth. The subject judged knows a part of the world of reality which the judging spectator fails to see, knows more while the spectator knows less; and, wherever there is conflict of opinion and difference of vision, we are bound to believe that the truer side is the side that feels the more, and not the side that feels the less.
Let me take a personal example of the kind that befalls each one of us daily:—
Some years ago, while journeying in the mountains of North Carolina, I passed by a large number of ‘coves14,’ as they call them there, or heads of small valleys between the hills, which had been newly cleared and planted. The impression on my mind was one of unmitigated squalor. The settler had in every case cut down the more manageable trees, and left their charred15 stumps16 standing17. The larger trees he had girdled and killed, in order that their foliage18 should not cast a shade. He had then built a log cabin, plastering its chinks with clay, and had set up a tall zigzag19 rail fence around the scene of his havoc20, to keep the pigs and cattle out. Finally, he had irregularly planted the intervals21 between the stumps and trees with Indian corn, which grew among the chips; and there he dwelt with his wife and babes — an axe22, a gun, a few utensils23, and some pigs and chickens feeding in the woods, being the sum total of his possessions.
The forest had been destroyed; and what had ‘improved’ it out of existence was hideous24, a sort of ulcer25, without a single element of artificial grace to make up for the loss of Nature’s beauty. Ugly, indeed, seemed the life of the squatter26, scudding27, as the sailors say, under bare poles, beginning again away back where our first ancestors started, and by hardly a single item the better off for all the achievements of the intervening generations.
Talk about going back to nature! I said to myself, oppressed by the dreariness28, as I drove by. Talk of a country life for one’s old age and for one’s children! Never thus, with nothing but the bare ground and one’s bare hands to fight the battle! Never, without the best spoils of culture woven in! The beauties and commodities gained by the centuries are sacred. They are our heritage and birthright. No modern person ought to be willing to live a day in such a state of rudimentariness and denudation29.
Then I said to the mountaineer who was driving me, “What sort of people are they who have to make these new clearings?” “All of us,” he replied. “Why, we ain’t happy here, unless we are getting one of these coves under cultivation30.” I instantly felt that I had been losing the whole inward significance of the situation. Because to me the clearings spoke31 of naught32 but denudation, I thought that to those whose sturdy arms and obedient axes had made them they could tell no other story. But, when they looked on the hideous stumps, what they thought of was personal victory. The chips, the girdled trees, and the vile33 split rails spoke of honest sweat, persistent34 toil35 and final reward. The cabin was a warrant of safety for self and wife and babes. In short, the clearing, which to me was a mere36 ugly picture on the retina, was to them a symbol redolent with moral memories and sang a very p?an of duty, struggle, and success.
I had been as blind to the peculiar37 ideality of their conditions as they certainly would also have been to the ideality of mine, had they had a peep at my strange indoor academic ways of life at Cambridge.
* * * * *
Wherever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it, there the life becomes genuinely significant. Sometimes the eagerness is more knit up with the motor activities, sometimes with the perceptions, sometimes with the imagination, sometimes with reflective thought. But, wherever it is found, there is the zest38, the tingle39, the excitement of reality; and there is ‘importance’ in the only real and positive sense in which importance ever anywhere can be.
Robert Louis Stevenson has illustrated40 this by a case, drawn41 from the sphere of the imagination, in an essay which I really think deserves to become immortal42, both for the truth of its matter and the excellence43 of its form.
“Toward the end of September,” Stevenson writes, “when school-time was drawing near, and the nights were already black, we would begin to sally from our respective villas44, each equipped with a tin bull’s-eye lantern. The thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain; and the grocers, about the due time, began to garnish45 their windows with our particular brand of luminary46. We wore them buckled47 to the waist upon a cricket belt, and over them, such was the rigor48 of the game, a buttoned top-coat. They smelled noisomely of blistered49 tin. They never burned aright, though they would always burn our fingers. Their use was naught, the pleasure of them merely fanciful, and yet a boy with a bull’s-eye under his top-coat asked for nothing more. The fishermen used lanterns about their boats, and it was from them, I suppose, that we had got the hint; but theirs were not bull’s-eyes, nor did we ever play at being fishermen. The police carried them at their belts, and we had plainly copied them in that; yet we did not pretend to be policemen. Burglars, indeed, we may have had some haunting thought of; and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely. But take it for all in all, the pleasure of the thing was substantive50; and to be a boy with a bull’s-eye under his top-coat was good enough for us.
“When two of these asses51 met, there would be an anxious ‘Have you got your lantern?’ and a gratified ‘Yes!’ That was the shibboleth52, and very needful, too; for, as it was the rule to keep our glory contained, none could recognize a lantern-bearer unless (like the polecat) by the smell. Four or five would sometimes climb into the belly53 of a ten-man lugger, with nothing but the thwarts54 above them — for the cabin was usually locked — or chose out some hollow of the links where the wind might whistle overhead. Then the coats would be unbuttoned, and the bull’s-eyes discovered; and in the chequering glimmer55, under the huge, windy hall of the night, and cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware, these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch56 together in the cold sand of the links, or on the scaly57 bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight them with inappropriate talk. Woe58 is me that I cannot give some specimens59! . . . But the talk was but a condiment60, and these gatherings61 themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer. The essence of this bliss62 was to walk by yourself in the black night, the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned, not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public — a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool’s heart, to know you had a bull’s-eye at your belt, and to exult63 and sing over the knowledge.
“It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid64. It may be contended rather that a (somewhat minor) bard65 in almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor. Justice is not done to the versatility66 and the unplumbed childishness of man’s imagination. His life from without may seem but a rude mound67 of mud: there will be some golden chamber68 at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of bull’s-eye at his belt.”
. . . “There is one fable69 that touches very near the quick of life — the fable of the monk70 who passed into the woods, heard a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two, and found himself at his return a stranger at his convent gates; for he had been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived but one to recognize him. It is not only in the woods that this enchanter carols, though perhaps he is native there. He sings in the most doleful places. The miser71 hears him and chuckles72, and his days are moments. With no more apparatus73 than an evil-smelling lantern, I have evoked74 him on the naked links. All life that is not merely mechanical is spun75 out of two strands76 — seeking for that bird and hearing him. And it is just this that makes life so hard to value, and the delight of each so incommunicable. And it is just a knowledge of this, and a remembrance of those fortunate hours in which the bird has sung to us, that fills us with such wonder when we turn to the pages of the realist. There, to be sure, we find a picture of life in so far as it consists of mud and of old iron, cheap desires and cheap fears, that which we are ashamed to remember and that which we are careless whether we forget; but of the note of that time-devouring nightingale we hear no news.”
. . . “Say that we came [in such a realistic romance] on some such business as that of my lantern-bearers on the links, and described the boys as very cold, spat77 upon by flurries of rain, and drearily78 surrounded, all of which they were; and their talk as silly and indecent, which it certainly was. To the eye of the observer they are wet and cold and drearily surrounded; but ask themselves, and they are in the heaven of a recondite79 pleasure, the ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern.”
“For, to repeat, the ground of a man’s joy is often hard to hit. It may hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it may reside in the mysterious inwards of psychology80. . . . It has so little bond with externals . . . that it may even touch them not, and the man’s true life, for which he consents to live, lie together in the field of fancy. . . . In such a case the poetry runs underground. The observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. For to look at the man is but to court deception81. We shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment82; but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome83 of foliage, hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales. And the true realism were that of the poets, to climb after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse of the heaven in which he lives. And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing.”
“For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action. That is the explanation, that the excuse. To one who has not the secret of the lanterns the scene upon the links is meaningless. And hence the haunting and truly spectral84 unreality of realistic books. . . . In each we miss the personal poetry, the enchanted85 atmosphere, that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; in each, life falls dead like dough86, instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colors of the sunset; each is true, each inconceivable; for no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, with the painted windows and the storied wall.”4
4 ‘The Lantern-bearers,’ in the volume entitled ‘Across the Plains.’ Abridged88 in the quotation89.
These paragraphs are the best thing I know in all Stevenson. “To miss the joy is to miss all.” Indeed, it is. Yet we are but finite, and each one of us has some single specialized90 vocation91 of his own. And it seems as if energy in the service of its particular duties might be got only by hardening the heart toward everything unlike them. Our deadness toward all but one particular kind of joy would thus be the price we inevitably92 have to pay for being practical creatures. Only in some pitiful dreamer, some philosopher, poet, or romancer, or when the common practical man becomes a lover, does the hard externality give way, and a gleam of insight into the ejective world, as Clifford called it, the vast world of inner life beyond us, so different from that of outer seeming, illuminate93 our mind. Then the whole scheme of our customary values gets confounded, then our self is riven and its narrow interests fly to pieces, then a new centre and a new perspective must be found.
The change is well described by my colleague, Josiah Royce:—
“What, then, is our neighbor? Thou hast regarded his thought, his feeling, as somehow different from thine. Thou hast said, ‘A pain in him is not like a pain in me, but something far easier to bear.’ He seems to thee a little less living than thou; his life is dim, it is cold, it is a pale fire beside thy own burning desires. . . . So, dimly and by instinct hast thou lived with thy neighbor, and hast known him not, being blind. Thou hast made [of him] a thing, no Self at all. Have done with this illusion, and simply try to learn the truth. Pain is pain, joy is joy, everywhere, even as in thee. In all the songs of the forest birds; in all the cries of the wounded and dying, struggling in the captor’s power; in the boundless94 sea where the myriads95 of water-creatures strive and die; amid all the countless96 hordes97 of savage9 men; in all sickness and sorrow; in all exultation98 and hope, everywhere, from the lowest to the noblest, the same conscious, burning, wilful99 life is found, endlessly manifold as the forms of the living creatures, unquenchable as the fires of the sun, real as these impulses that even now throb100 in thine own little selfish heart. Lift up thy eyes, behold101 that life, and then turn away, and forget it as thou canst; but, if thou hast known that, thou hast begun to know thy duty.”5
5 The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 157–162 (abridged).
* * * * *
This higher vision of an inner significance in what, until then, we had realized only in the dead external way, often comes over a person suddenly; and, when it does so, it makes an epoch102 in his history. As Emerson says, there is a depth in those moments that constrains103 us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. The passion of love will shake one like an explosion, or some act will awaken104 a remorseful105 compunction that hangs like a cloud over all one’s later day.
This mystic sense of hidden meaning starts upon us often from non-human natural things. I take this passage from ‘Obermann,’ a French novel that had some vogue106 in its day: “Paris, March 7. — It was dark and rather cold. I was gloomy, and walked because I had nothing to do. I passed by some flowers placed breast-high upon a wall. A jonquil in bloom was there. It is the strongest expression of desire: it was the first perfume of the year. I felt all the happiness destined107 for man. This unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom108 of the ideal world, arose in me complete. I never felt anything so great or so instantaneous. I know not what shape, what analogy, what secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a limitless beauty. . . . I shall never enclose in a conception this power, this immensity that nothing will express; this form that nothing will contain; this ideal of a better world which one feels, but which it would seem that nature has not made.”6
6 De Sénancour: Obermann, Lettre XXX.
Wordsworth and Shelley are similarly full of this sense of a limitless significance in natural things. In Wordsworth it was a somewhat austere110 and moral significance — a ‘lonely cheer.’
“To every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower,
Even the loose stones that cover the highway,
I gave a moral life: I saw them feel
Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass
Lay bedded in some quickening soul, and all
That I beheld111 respired with inward meaning.”7
7 The Prelude112, Book III.
“Authentic tidings of invisible things!” Just what this hidden presence in nature was, which Wordsworth so rapturously felt, and in the light of which he lived, tramping the hills for days together, the poet never could explain logically or in articulate conceptions. Yet to the reader who may himself have had gleaming moments of a similar sort the verses in which Wordsworth simply proclaims the fact of them come with a heart-satisfying authority:—
“Magnificent
The morning rose, in memorable113 pomp,
Glorious as ere I had beheld. In front
The sea lay laughing at a distance; near
The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds,
Grain-tinctured, drenched114 in empyrean light;
And in the meadows and the lower grounds
Was all the sweetness of a common dawn —
Dews, vapors115, and the melody of birds,
And laborers116 going forth to till the fields.”
“Ah! need I say, dear Friend, that to the brim
My heart was full; I made no vows117, but vows
Were then made for me; bond unknown to me
Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly,
A dedicated118 Spirit. On I walked,
In thankful blessedness, which yet survives.”8
8 The Prelude, Book IV.
As Wordsworth walked, filled with his strange inner joy, responsive thus to the secret life of nature round about him, his rural neighbors, tightly and narrowly intent upon their own affairs, their crops and lambs and fences, must have thought him a very insignificant119 and foolish personage. It surely never occurred to any one of them to wonder what was going on inside of him or what it might be worth. And yet that inner life of his carried the burden of a significance that has fed the souls of others, and fills them to this day with inner joy.
Richard Jefferies has written a remarkable120 autobiographic document entitled The Story of my Heart. It tells, in many pages, of the rapture with which in youth the sense of the life of nature filled him. On a certain hill-top he says:—
“I was utterly121 alone with the sun and the earth. Lying down on the grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air, and the distant sea, far beyond sight. . . . With all the intensity122 of feeling which exalted123 me, all the intense communion I held with the earth, the sun and sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the ocean — in no manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be written — with these I prayed as if they were the keys of an instrument. . . . The great sun, burning with light, the strong earth — dear earth — the warm sky, the pure air, the thought of ocean, the inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a rapture, an ecstasy124, an inflatus. With this inflatus, too, I prayed. . . . The prayer, this soul-emotion, was in itself, not for an object: it was a passion. I hid my face in the grass. I was wholly prostrated125, I lost myself in the wrestle126, I was rapt and carried away. . . . Had any shepherd accidentally seen me lying on the turf, he would only have thought I was resting a few minutes. I made no outward show. Who could have imagined the whirlwind of passion that was going on in me as I reclined there!”9
9 Op. cit., Boston, Roberts, 1883, pp. 5, 6.
Surely, a worthless hour of life, when measured by the usual standards of commercial value. Yet in what other kind of value can the preciousness of any hour, made precious by any standard, consist, if it consist not in feelings of excited significance like these, engendered128 in some one, by what the hour contains?
Yet so blind and dead does the clamor of our own practical interests make us to all other things, that it seems almost as if it were necessary to become worthless as a practical being, if one is to hope to attain129 to any breadth of insight into the impersonal130 world of worths as such, to have any perception of life’s meaning on a large objective scale. Only your mystic, your dreamer, or your insolvent131 tramp or loafer, can afford so sympathetic an occupation, an occupation which will change the usual standards of human value in the twinkling of an eye, giving to foolishness a place ahead of power, and laying low in a minute the distinctions which it takes a hard-working conventional man a lifetime to build up. You may be a prophet, at this rate; but you cannot be a worldly success.
Walt Whitman, for instance, is accounted by many of us a contemporary prophet. He abolishes the usual human distinctions, brings all conventionalisms into solution, and loves and celebrates hardly any human attributes save those elementary ones common to all members of the race. For this he becomes a sort of ideal tramp, a rider on omnibus-tops and ferry-boats, and, considered either practically or academically, a worthless, unproductive being. His verses are but ejaculations — things mostly without subject or verb, a succession of interjections on an immense scale. He felt the human crowd as rapturously as Wordsworth felt the mountains, felt it as an overpoweringly significant presence, simply to absorb one’s mind in which should be business sufficient and worthy132 to fill the days of a serious man. As he crosses Brooklyn ferry, this is what he feels:—
Flood-tide below me! I watch you, face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see
you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired133 in the usual costumes!
how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross,
returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence,
are more to me, and more in my meditations134, than you
might suppose.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from
shore to shore;
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide;
Others will see the shipping135 of Manhattan north and west,
and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east;
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the
sun half an hour high.
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years
hence, others will see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the
falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide.
It avails not, neither time or place — distance avails not.
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I
felt;
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a
crowd;
Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and
the bright flow, I was refresh’d;
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the
swift current, I stood, yet was hurried;
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the
thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, I looked.
I too many and many a time cross’d the river, the sun half
an hour high;
I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls — I saw them high in
the air, with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
I saw how the glistening136 yellow lit up parts of their bodies,
and left the rest in strong shadow,
I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging
toward the south.
Saw the white sails of schooners137 and sloops138, saw the ships
at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars;
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight139, the ladled cups,
the frolicsome140 crests141 and glistening;
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray
walls of the granite142 store-houses by the docks;
On the neighboring shores, the fires from the foundry chimneys
burning high . . . into the night,
Casting their flicker143 of black . . . into the clefts144 of streets.
These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you.10
10 ‘Crossing Brooklyn Ferry’ (abridged).
And so on, through the rest of a divinely beautiful poem. And, if you wish to see what this hoary145 loafer considered the most worthy way of profiting by life’s heaven-sent opportunities, read the delicious volume of his letters to a young car-conductor who had become his friend:—
“NEW YORK, Oct. 9, 1868.
“Dear Pete — It is splendid here this forenoon — bright and
cool. I was out early taking a short walk by the river only
two squares from where I live. . . . Shall I tell you about [my
life] just to fill up? I generally spend the forenoon in my
room writing, etc., then take a bath fix up and go out about
twelve and loafe somewhere or call on someone down town or on
business, or perhaps if it is very pleasant and I feel like
it ride a trip with some driver friend on Broadway from 23rd
Street to Bowling146 Green, three miles each way. (Every day I
find I have plenty to do, every hour is occupied with
something.) You know it is a never ending amusement and study
and recreation for me to ride a couple of hours on a pleasant
afternoon on a Broadway stage in this way. You see everything
as you pass, a sort of living, endless panorama147 — shops and
splendid buildings and great windows: on the broad sidewalks
crowds of women richly dressed continually passing,
altogether different, superior in style and looks from any to
be seen anywhere else — in fact a perfect stream of
people — men too dressed in high style, and plenty of
foreigners — and then in the streets the thick crowd of
carriages, stages, carts, hotel and private coaches, and in
fact all sorts of vehicles and many first class teams, mile
after mile, and the splendor148 of such a great street and so
many tall, ornamental149, noble buildings many of them of white
marble, and the gayety and motion on every side: you will not
wonder how much attraction all this is on a fine day, to a
great loafer like me, who enjoys so much seeing the busy
world move by him, and exhibiting itself for his amusement,
while he takes it easy and just looks on and observes.”11
11 Calamus, Boston, 1897, pp. 41, 42.
Truly a futile150 way of passing the time, some of you may say, and not altogether creditable to a grown-up man. And yet, from the deepest point of view, who knows the more of truth, and who knows the less — Whitman on his omnibus-top, full of the inner joy with which the spectacle inspires him, or you, full of the disdain151 which the futility152 of his occupation excites?
When your ordinary Brooklynite or New Yorker, leading a life replete153 with too much luxury, or tired and careworn154 about his personal affairs, crosses the ferry or goes up Broadway, his fancy does not thus ‘soar away into the colors of the sunset’ as did Whitman’s, nor does he inwardly realize at all the indisputable fact that this world never did anywhere or at any time contain more of essential divinity, or of eternal meaning, than is embodied155 in the fields of vision over which his eyes so carelessly pass. There is life; and there, a step away, is death. There is the only kind of beauty there ever was. There is the old human struggle and its fruits together. There is the text and the sermon, the real and the ideal in one. But to the jaded156 and unquickened eye it is all dead and common, pure vulgarism, flatness, and disgust. “Hech! it is a sad sight!” says Carlyle, walking at night with some one who appeals to him to note the splendor of the stars. And that very repetition of the scene to new generations of men in secula seculorum, that eternal recurrence157 of the common order, which so fills a Whitman with mystic satisfaction, is to a Schopenhauer, with the emotional an?sthesia, the feeling of ‘awful inner emptiness’ from out of which he views it all, the chief ingredient of the tedium158 it instils159. What is life on the largest scale, he asks, but the same recurrent inanities160, the same dog barking, the same fly buzzing, forevermore? Yet of the kind of fibre of which such inanities consist is the material woven of all the excitements, joys, and meanings that ever were, or ever shall be, in this world.
To be rapt with satisfied attention, like Whitman, to the mere spectacle of the world’s presence, is one way, and the most fundamental way, of confessing one’s sense of its unfathomable significance and importance. But how can one attain to the feeling of the vital significance of an experience, if one have it not to begin with? There is no receipt which one can follow. Being a secret and a mystery, it often comes in mysteriously unexpected ways. It blossoms sometimes from out of the very grave wherein we imagined that our happiness was buried. Benvenuto Cellini, after a life all in the outer sunshine, made of adventures and artistic161 excitements, suddenly finds himself cast into a dungeon162 in the Castle of San Angelo. The place is horrible. Rats and wet and mould possess it. His leg is broken and his teeth fall out, apparently163 with scurvy164. But his thoughts turn to God as they have never turned before. He gets a Bible, which he reads during the one hour in the twenty-four in which a wandering ray of daylight penetrates165 his cavern166. He has religious visions. He sings psalms167 to himself, and composes hymns168. And thinking, on the last day of July, of the festivities customary on the morrow in Rome, he says to himself: “All these past years I celebrated169 this holiday with the vanities of the world: from this year henceforward I will do it with the divinity of God. And then I said to myself, ‘Oh, how much more happy I am for this present life of mine than for all those things remembered!’"12
12 Vita, lib. 2, chap. iv.
But the great understander of these mysterious ebbs170 and flows is Tolsto?. They throb all through his novels. In his ‘War and Peace,’ the hero, Peter, is supposed to be the richest man in the Russian empire. During the French invasion he is taken prisoner, and dragged through much of the retreat. Cold, vermin, hunger, and every form of misery171 assail172 him, the result being a revelation to him of the real scale of life’s values. “Here only, and for the first time, he appreciated, because he was deprived of it, the happiness of eating when he was hungry, of drinking when he was thirsty, of sleeping when he was sleepy, and of talking when he felt the desire to exchange some words. . . . Later in life he always recurred173 with joy to this month of captivity174, and never failed to speak with enthusiasm of the powerful and ineffaceable sensations, and especially of the moral calm which he had experienced at this epoch. When at daybreak, on the morrow of his imprisonment175, he saw [I abridge87 here Tolsto?‘s description] the mountains with their wooded slopes disappearing in the grayish mist; when he felt the cool breeze caress176 him; when he saw the light drive away the vapors, and the sun rise majestically177 behind the clouds and cupolas, and the crosses, the dew, the distance, the river, sparkle in the splendid, cheerful rays — his heart overflowed178 with emotion. This emotion kept continually with him, and increased a hundred-fold as the difficulties of his situation grew graver. . . . He learnt that man is meant for happiness, and that this happiness is in him, in the satisfaction of the daily needs of existence, and that unhappiness is the fatal result, not of our need, but of our abundance. . . . When calm reigned179 in the camp, and the embers paled, and little by little went out, the full moon had reached the zenith. The woods and the fields roundabout lay clearly visible; and, beyond the inundation180 of light which filled them, the view plunged182 into the limitless horizon. Then Peter cast his eyes upon the firmament183, filled at that hour with myriads of stars. ‘All that is mine,’ he thought. ‘All that is in me, is me! And that is what they think they have taken prisoner! That is what they have shut up in a cabin!’ So he smiled, and turned in to sleep among his comrades.”13
13 La Guerre et la Paix, Paris, 1884, vol. iii. pp. 268, 275, 316.
The occasion and the experience, then, are nothing. It all depends on the capacity of the soul to be grasped, to have its life-currents absorbed by what is given. “Crossing a bare common,” says Emerson, “in snow puddles184, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink185 of fear.”
Life is always worth living, if one have such responsive sensibilities. But we of the highly educated classes (so called) have most of us got far, far away from Nature. We are trained to seek the choice, the rare, the exquisite186 exclusively, and to overlook the common. We are stuffed with abstract conceptions, and glib187 with verbalities and verbosities; and in the culture of these higher functions the peculiar sources of joy connected with our simpler functions often dry up, and we grow stone-blind and insensible to life’s more elementary and general goods and joys.
The remedy under such conditions is to descend188 to a more profound and primitive189 level. To be imprisoned190 or shipwrecked or forced into the army would permanently191 show the good of life to many an over-educated pessimist192. Living in the open air and on the ground, the lop-sided beam of the balance slowly rises to the level line; and the over-sensibilities and insensibilities even themselves out. The good of all the artificial schemes and fevers fades and pales; and that of seeing, smelling, tasting, sleeping, and daring and doing with one’s body, grows and grows. The savages and children of nature, to whom we deem ourselves so much superior, certainly are alive where we are often dead, along these lines; and, could they write as glibly193 as we do, they would read us impressive lectures on our impatience194 for improvement and on our blindness to the fundamental static goods of life. “Ah! my brother,” said a chieftain to his white guest, “thou wilt195 never know the happiness of both thinking of nothing and doing nothing. This, next to sleep, is the most enchanting196 of all things. Thus we were before our birth, and thus we shall be after death. Thy people, . . . when they have finished reaping one field, they begin to plough another; and, if the day were not enough, I have seen them plough by moonlight. What is their life to ours — the life that is as naught to them? Blind that they are, they lose it all! But we live in the present.”14
14 Quoted by Lotze, Microcosmus, English translation, vol. ii. p. 240.
The intense interest that life can assume when brought down to the non-thinking level, the level of pure sensorial perception, has been beautifully described by a man who can write — Mr. W.H. Hudson, in his volume, “Idle Days in Patagonia.”
“I spent the greater part of one winter,” says this admirable author, “at a point on the Rio Negro, seventy or eighty miles from the sea.”
. . . “It was my custom to go out every morning on horseback with my gun, and, followed by one dog, to ride away from the valley; and no sooner would I climb the terrace, and plunge181 into the gray, universal thicket197, than I would find myself as completely alone as if five hundred instead of only five miles separated me from the valley and river. So wild and solitary198 and remote seemed that gray waste, stretching away into infinitude, a waste untrodden by man, and where the wild animals are so few that they have made no discoverable path in the wilderness199 of thorns. . . . Not once nor twice nor thrice, but day after day I returned to this solitude200, going to it in the morning as if to attend a festival, and leaving it only when hunger and thirst and the westering sun compelled me. And yet I had no object in going — no motive201 which could be put into words; for, although I carried a gun, there was nothing to shoot — the shooting was all left behind in the valley. . . . Sometimes I would pass a whole day without seeing one mammal, and perhaps not more than a dozen birds of any size. The weather at that time was cheerless, generally with a gray film of cloud spread over the sky, and a bleak202 wind, often cold enough to make my bridle-hand quite numb13. . . . At a slow pace, which would have seemed intolerable under other circumstances, I would ride about for hours together at a stretch. On arriving at a hill, I would slowly ride to its summit, and stand there to survey the prospect203. On every side it stretched away in great undulations, wild and irregular. How gray it all was! Hardly less so near at hand than on the haze-wrapped horizon where the hills were dim and the outline obscured by distance. Descending204 from my outlook, I would take up my aimless wanderings again, and visit other elevations205 to gaze on the same landscape from another point; and so on for hours. And at noon I would dismount, and sit or lie on my folded poncho206 for an hour or longer. One day in these rambles207 I discovered a small grove208 composed of twenty or thirty trees, growing at a convenient distance apart, that had evidently been resorted to by a herd127 of deer or other wild animals. This grove was on a hill differing in shape from other hills in its neighborhood; and, after a time, I made a point of finding and using it as a resting-place every day at noon. I did not ask myself why I made choice of that one spot, sometimes going out of my way to sit there, instead of sitting down under any one of the millions of trees and bushes on any other hillside. I thought nothing about it, but acted unconsciously. Only afterward209 it seemed to me that, after having rested there once, each time I wished to rest again, the wish came associated with the image of that particular clump210 of trees, with polished stems and clean bed of sand beneath; and in a short time I formed a habit of returning, animal like, to repose211 at that same spot.”
“It was, perhaps, a mistake to say that I would sit down and rest, since I was never tired; and yet, without being tired, that noon-day pause, during which I sat for an hour without moving, was strangely grateful. All day there would be no sound, not even the rustling212 of a leaf. One day, while listening to the silence, it occurred to my mind to wonder what the effect would be if I were to shout aloud. This seemed at the time a horrible suggestion, which almost made me shudder213. But during those solitary days it was a rare thing for any thought to cross my mind. In the state of mind I was in, thought had become impossible. My state was one of suspense214 and watchfulness215; yet I had no expectation of meeting an adventure, and felt as free from apprehension216 as I feel now while sitting in a room in London. The state seemed familiar rather than strange, and accompanied by a strong feeling of elation109; and I did not know that something had come between me and my intellect until I returned to my former self — to thinking, and the old insipid217 existence [again].”
“I had undoubtedly218 gone back; and that state of intense watchfulness or alertness, rather, with suspension of the higher intellectual faculties219, represented the mental state of the pure savage. He thinks little, reasons little, having a surer guide in his [mere sensory220 perceptions]. He is in perfect harmony with nature, and is nearly on a level, mentally, with the wild animals he preys222 on, and which in their turn sometimes prey221 on him.”15
15 Op. cit., pp. 210–222 (abridged).
For the spectator, such hours as Mr. Hudson writes of form a mere tale of emptiness, in which nothing happens, nothing is gained, and there is nothing to describe. They are meaningless and vacant tracts223 of time. To him who feels their inner secret, they tingle with an importance that unutterably vouches224 for itself. I am sorry for the boy or girl, or man or woman, who has never been touched by the spell of this mysterious sensorial life, with its irrationality225, if so you like to call it, but its vigilance and its supreme226 felicity. The holidays of life are its most vitally significant portions, because they are, or at least should be, covered with just this kind of magically irresponsible spell.
* * * * *
And now what is the result of all these considerations and quotations227? It is negative in one sense, but positive in another. It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however unintelligible228 these may be to us. Hands off: neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations. It is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings229, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field.
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judgments
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| 判断( judgment的名词复数 )； 鉴定； 评价； 审判 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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radically
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| ad.根本地，本质地 | |
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discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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afflicted
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| 使受痛苦，折磨( afflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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rapture
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| n.狂喜；全神贯注；着迷；v.使狂喜 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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savages
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| 未开化的人，野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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devouring
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| 吞没( devour的现在分词 )； 耗尽； 津津有味地看； 狼吞虎咽地吃光 | |
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protracted
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| adj.拖延的；延长的v.拖延“protract”的过去式和过去分词 | |
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numb
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| adj.麻木的，失去感觉的；v.使麻木 | |
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coves
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| n.小海湾( cove的名词复数 )；家伙 | |
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charred
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| v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦 | |
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stumps
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| （被砍下的树的）树桩( stump的名词复数 )； 残肢； （板球三柱门的）柱； 残余部分 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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foliage
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| n.叶子，树叶，簇叶 | |
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zigzag
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| n.曲折，之字形；adj.曲折的，锯齿形的；adv.曲折地，成锯齿形地；vt.使曲折；vi.曲折前行 | |
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havoc
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| n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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utensils
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| 器具，用具，器皿( utensil的名词复数 )； 器物 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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ulcer
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| n.溃疡，腐坏物 | |
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squatter
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| n.擅自占地者 | |
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scudding
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| n.刮面v.（尤指船、舰或云彩）笔直、高速而平稳地移动( scud的现在分词 ) | |
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dreariness
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| 沉寂，可怕，凄凉 | |
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denudation
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| n.剥下；裸露；滥伐；剥蚀 | |
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cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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spoke
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| 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 | |
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naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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tingle
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| vi.感到刺痛，感到激动；n.刺痛，激动 | |
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illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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garnish
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| n.装饰，添饰，配菜 | |
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luminary
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| n.名人，天体 | |
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buckled
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| a. 有带扣的 | |
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rigor
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| n.严酷，严格，严厉 | |
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blistered
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| adj.水疮状的，泡状的v.（使）起水泡( blister的过去式和过去分词 )；（使表皮等）涨破，爆裂 | |
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substantive
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| adj.表示实在的；本质的、实质性的；独立的；n.实词，实名词；独立存在的实体 | |
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asses
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| n. 驴，愚蠢的人，臀部 adv. (常用作后置)用于贬损或骂人 | |
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shibboleth
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| n.陈规陋习；口令；暗语 | |
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belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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thwarts
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| 阻挠( thwart的第三人称单数 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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crouch
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| v.蹲伏，蜷缩，低头弯腰；n.蹲伏 | |
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scaly
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| adj.鱼鳞状的；干燥粗糙的 | |
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woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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specimens
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| n.样品( specimen的名词复数 )；范例；（化验的）抽样；某种类型的人 | |
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condiment
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| n.调味品 | |
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gatherings
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| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
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bliss
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| n.狂喜，福佑，天赐的福 | |
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exult
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| v.狂喜，欢腾；欢欣鼓舞 | |
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stolid
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| adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的 | |
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bard
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| n.吟游诗人 | |
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versatility
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| n.多才多艺，多样性，多功能 | |
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mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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fable
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| n.寓言；童话；神话 | |
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monk
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| n.和尚，僧侣，修道士 | |
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miser
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| n.守财奴，吝啬鬼 (adj.miserly) | |
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chuckles
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的名词复数 ) | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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strands
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| n.（线、绳、金属线、毛发等的）股( strand的名词复数 )；缕；海洋、湖或河的)岸；（观点、计划、故事等的）部份v.使滞留，使搁浅( strand的第三人称单数 ) | |
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spat
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| n.口角，掌击；v.发出呼噜呼噜声 | |
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78
drearily
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| 沉寂地，厌倦地，可怕地 | |
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79
recondite
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| adj.深奥的，难解的 | |
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80
psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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81
deception
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| n.欺骗，欺诈；骗局，诡计 | |
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82
nourishment
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| n.食物，营养品；营养情况 | |
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83
dome
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| n.圆屋顶，拱顶 | |
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84
spectral
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| adj.幽灵的，鬼魂的 | |
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85
enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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86
dough
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| n.生面团；钱，现款 | |
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87
abridge
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| v.删减，删节，节略，缩短 | |
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88
abridged
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| 削减的，删节的 | |
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89
quotation
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| n.引文，引语，语录；报价，牌价，行情 | |
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90
specialized
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| adj.专门的，专业化的 | |
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91
vocation
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| n.职业，行业 | |
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92
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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93
illuminate
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| vt.照亮，照明；用灯光装饰；说明，阐释 | |
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94
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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95
myriads
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|
| n.无数，极大数量( myriad的名词复数 ) | |
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96
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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97
hordes
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| n.移动着的一大群( horde的名词复数 )；部落 | |
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98
exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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99
wilful
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| adj.任性的，故意的 | |
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100
throb
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| v.震颤，颤动；(急速强烈地)跳动，搏动 | |
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101
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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102
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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103
constrains
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| 强迫( constrain的第三人称单数 )； 强使； 限制； 约束 | |
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104
awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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105
remorseful
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| adj.悔恨的 | |
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106
Vogue
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|
| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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107
destined
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|
| adj.命中注定的；(for)以…为目的地的 | |
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108
phantom
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| n.幻影，虚位，幽灵；adj.错觉的，幻影的，幽灵的 | |
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109
elation
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| n.兴高采烈，洋洋得意 | |
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110
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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111
beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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112
prelude
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| n.序言，前兆，序曲 | |
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113
memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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114
drenched
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|
| adj.湿透的；充满的v.使湿透( drench的过去式和过去分词 )；在某人（某物）上大量使用（某液体） | |
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115
vapors
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| n.水汽，水蒸气，无实质之物( vapor的名词复数 )；自夸者；幻想 [药]吸入剂 [古]忧郁（症）v.自夸，（使）蒸发( vapor的第三人称单数 ) | |
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116
laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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117
vows
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| 誓言( vow的名词复数 )； 郑重宣布，许愿 | |
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118
dedicated
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| adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的 | |
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119
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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120
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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121
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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122
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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123
exalted
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| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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124
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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125
prostrated
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|
| v.使俯伏，使拜倒( prostrate的过去式和过去分词 )；（指疾病、天气等）使某人无能为力 | |
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126
wrestle
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|
| vi.摔跤，角力；搏斗；全力对付 | |
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127
herd
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| n.兽群，牧群；vt.使集中，把…赶在一起 | |
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128
engendered
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| v.产生（某形势或状况），造成，引起( engender的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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129
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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130
impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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131
insolvent
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| adj.破产的，无偿还能力的 | |
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132
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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133
attired
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|
| adj.穿着整齐的v.使穿上衣服，使穿上盛装( attire的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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134
meditations
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| 默想( meditation的名词复数 )； 默念； 沉思； 冥想 | |
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135
shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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136
glistening
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|
| adj.闪耀的，反光的v.湿物闪耀，闪亮( glisten的现在分词 ) | |
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137
schooners
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| n.（有两个以上桅杆的）纵帆船( schooner的名词复数 ) | |
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138
sloops
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| n.单桅纵帆船( sloop的名词复数 ) | |
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139
twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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140
frolicsome
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|
| adj.嬉戏的，闹着玩的 | |
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141
crests
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|
| v.到达山顶（或浪峰）( crest的第三人称单数 )；到达洪峰，达到顶点 | |
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142
granite
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|
| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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143
flicker
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| vi./n.闪烁，摇曳，闪现 | |
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144
clefts
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|
| n.裂缝( cleft的名词复数 )；裂口；cleave的过去式和过去分词；进退维谷 | |
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145
hoary
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|
| adj.古老的；鬓发斑白的 | |
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146
bowling
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| n.保龄球运动 | |
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147
panorama
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| n.全景，全景画，全景摄影，全景照片[装置] | |
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148
splendor
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| n.光彩；壮丽，华丽；显赫，辉煌 | |
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149
ornamental
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|
| adj.装饰的；作装饰用的；n.装饰品；观赏植物 | |
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150
futile
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|
| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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151
disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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152
futility
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| n.无用 | |
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153
replete
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| adj.饱满的，塞满的；n.贮蜜蚁 | |
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154
careworn
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| adj.疲倦的，饱经忧患的 | |
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155
embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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156
jaded
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|
| adj.精疲力竭的；厌倦的；（因过饱或过多而）腻烦的；迟钝的 | |
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157
recurrence
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| n.复发，反复，重现 | |
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158
tedium
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| n.单调；烦闷 | |
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159
instils
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| v.逐渐使某人获得（某种可取的品质），逐步灌输( instil的第三人称单数 ) | |
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160
inanities
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|
| n.空洞( inanity的名词复数 )；浅薄；愚蠢；空洞的言行 | |
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161
artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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162
dungeon
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| n.地牢，土牢 | |
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163
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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164
scurvy
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| adj.下流的，卑鄙的，无礼的；n.坏血病 | |
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165
penetrates
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| v.穿过( penetrate的第三人称单数 )；刺入；了解；渗透 | |
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166
cavern
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| n.洞穴，大山洞 | |
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167
psalms
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| n.赞美诗( psalm的名词复数 )；圣诗；圣歌；(中的) | |
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168
hymns
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| n.赞美诗，圣歌，颂歌( hymn的名词复数 ) | |
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169
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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170
ebbs
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| 退潮( ebb的名词复数 )； 落潮； 衰退 | |
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171
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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172
assail
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| v.猛烈攻击，抨击，痛斥 | |
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173
recurred
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| 再发生，复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 )； 治愈 | |
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174
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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175
imprisonment
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| n.关押，监禁，坐牢 | |
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176
caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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177
majestically
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| 雄伟地； 庄重地； 威严地； 崇高地 | |
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178
overflowed
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| 溢出的 | |
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179
reigned
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| vi.当政，统治（reign的过去式形式） | |
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180
inundation
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| n.the act or fact of overflowing | |
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181
plunge
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| v.跳入，(使)投入，(使)陷入；猛冲 | |
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182
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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183
firmament
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| n.苍穹；最高层 | |
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184
puddles
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| n.水坑， （尤指道路上的）雨水坑( puddle的名词复数 ) | |
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185
brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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186
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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187
glib
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| adj.圆滑的，油嘴滑舌的 | |
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188
descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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189
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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190
imprisoned
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| 下狱，监禁( imprison的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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191
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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192
pessimist
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| n.悲观者；悲观主义者；厌世 | |
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193
glibly
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| adv.流利地，流畅地；满口 | |
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194
impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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195
wilt
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| v.(使)植物凋谢或枯萎；(指人)疲倦，衰弱 | |
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196
enchanting
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| a.讨人喜欢的 | |
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197
thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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198
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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199
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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200
solitude
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| n. 孤独; 独居,荒僻之地,幽静的地方 | |
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201
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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202
bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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203
prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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204
descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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205
elevations
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| （水平或数量）提高( elevation的名词复数 )； 高地； 海拔； 提升 | |
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206
poncho
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| n.斗篷，雨衣 | |
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207
rambles
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的第三人称单数 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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208
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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209
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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210
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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211
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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212
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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213
shudder
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| v.战粟，震动，剧烈地摇晃；n.战粟，抖动 | |
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214
suspense
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| n.（对可能发生的事）紧张感，担心，挂虑 | |
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215
watchfulness
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| 警惕，留心； 警觉（性） | |
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216
apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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217
insipid
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| adj.无味的，枯燥乏味的，单调的 | |
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218
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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219
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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220
sensory
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| adj.知觉的，感觉的，知觉器官的 | |
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221
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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222
preys
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| v.掠食( prey的第三人称单数 )；掠食；折磨；（人）靠欺诈为生 | |
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223
tracts
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| 大片土地( tract的名词复数 )； 地带； （体内的）道； （尤指宣扬宗教、伦理或政治的）短文 | |
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224
vouches
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| v.保证( vouch的第三人称单数 )；担保；确定；确定地说 | |
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225
irrationality
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| n. 不合理，无理性 | |
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226
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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227
quotations
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| 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 | |
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228
unintelligible
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| adj.无法了解的，难解的，莫明其妙的 | |
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229
blessings
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| n.（上帝的）祝福( blessing的名词复数 )；好事；福分；因祸得福 | |
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