Every Jack10 sees in his own particular Jill charms and perfections to the enchantment11 of which we stolid12 onlookers13 are stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the absolute truth, he or we? Which has the more vital insight into the nature of Jill’s existence, as a fact? Is he in excess, being in this matter a maniac14? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological an?sthesia as regards Jill’s magical importance? Surely the latter; surely to Jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely poor Jill’s palpitating little life-throbs are among the wonders of creation, are worthy15 of this sympathetic interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. He struggles toward a union with her inner life, divining her feelings, anticipating her desires, understanding her limits as manfully as he can, and yet inadequately17, too; for he is also afflicted18 with some blindness, even here. Whilst we, dead clods that we are, do not even seek after these things, but are contented19 that that portion of eternal fact named Jill should be for us as if it were not. Jill, who knows her inner life, knows that Jack’s way of taking it — so importantly — is the true and serious way; and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and seriously, too. May the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds about either of them again! Where would any of us be, were there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay us for our insight by making recognizant return? We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and important way.
If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people’s lives; and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. The vice20 of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity21, but its exclusions22 and its jealousies23. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable today, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd.
We have unquestionably a great cloud-bank of ancestral blindness weighing down upon us, only transiently riven here and there by fitful revelations of the truth. It is vain to hope for this state of things to alter much. Our inner secrets must remain for the most part impenetrable by others, for beings as essentially24 practical as we are are necessarily short of sight. But, if we cannot gain much positive insight into one another, cannot we at least use our sense of our own blindness to make us more cautious in going over the dark places? Cannot we escape some of those hideous25 ancestral intolerances and cruelties, and positive reversals of the truth?
For the remainder of this hour I invite you to seek with me some principle to make our tolerance less chaotic26. And, as I began my previous lecture by a personal reminiscence, I am going to ask your indulgence for a similar bit of egotism now.
A few summers ago I spent a happy week at the famous Assembly Grounds on the borders of Chautauqua Lake. The moment one treads that sacred enclosure, one feels one’s self in an atmosphere of success. Sobriety and industry, intelligence and goodness, orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness, pervade27 the air. It is a serious and studious picnic on a gigantic scale. Here you have a town of many thousands of inhabitants, beautifully laid out in the forest and drained, and equipped with means for satisfying all the necessary lower and most of the superfluous28 higher wants of man. You have a first-class college in full blast. You have magnificent music — a chorus of seven hundred voices, with possibly the most perfect open-air auditorium29 in the world. You have every sort of athletic30 exercise from sailing, rowing, swimming, bicycling, to the ball-field and the more artificial doings which the gymnasium affords. You have kindergartens and model secondary schools. You have general religious services and special club-houses for the several sects31. You have perpetually running soda-water fountains, and daily popular lectures by distinguished32 men. You have the best of company, and yet no effort. You have no zymotic diseases, no poverty, no drunkenness, no crime, no police. You have culture, you have kindness, you have cheapness, you have equality, you have the best fruits of what mankind has fought and bled and striven for tinder the name of civilization for centuries. You have, in short, a foretaste of what human society might be, were it all in the light, with no suffering and no dark corners.
I went in curiosity for a day. I stayed for a week, held spell-bound by the charm and ease of everything, by the middle-class paradise, without a sin, without a victim, without a blot33, without a tear.
And yet what was my own astonishment34, on emerging into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself quite unexpectedly and involuntarily saying: “Ouf! what a relief! Now for something primordial35 and savage36, even though it were as bad as an Armenian massacre37, to set the balance straight again. This order is too tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring. This human drama without a villain38 or a pang39; this community so refined that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can make to the brute40 animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid41 lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things — I cannot abide42 with them. Let me take my chances again in the big outside worldly wilderness43 with all its sins and sufferings. There are the heights and depths, the precipices44 and the steep ideals, the gleams of the awful and the infinite; and there is more hope and help a thousand times than in this dead level and quintessence of every mediocrity.”
Such was the sudden right-about-face performed for me by my lawless fancy! There had been spread before me the realization45 — on a small, sample scale of course — of all the ideals for which our civilization has been striving: security, intelligence, humanity, and order; and here was the instinctive46 hostile reaction, not of the natural man, but of a so-called cultivated man upon such a Utopia. There seemed thus to be a self-contradiction and paradox47 somewhere, which I, as a professor drawing a full salary, was in duty bound to unravel48 and explain, if I could.
So I meditated49. And, first of all, I asked myself what the thing was that was so lacking in this Sabbatical city, and the lack of which kept one forever falling short of the higher sort of contentment. And I soon recognized that it was the element that gives to the wicked outer world all its moral style, expressiveness50 and picturesqueness51 — the element of precipitousness, so to call it, of strength and strenuousness53, intensity and danger.
What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate and the grim civic54 monuments remind us of, is the everlasting55 battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism56, reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws57 of death. But in this unspeakable Chautauqua there was no potentiality of death in sight anywhere, and no point of the compass visible from which danger might possibly appear. The ideal was so completely victorious58 already that no sign of any previous battle remained, the place just resting on its oars59. But what our human emotions seem to require is the sight of the struggle going on. The moment the fruits are being merely eaten, things become ignoble60. Sweat and effort, human nature strained to its uttermost and on the rack, yet getting through alive, and then turning its back on its success to pursue another more rare and arduous61 still — this is the sort of thing the presence of which inspires us, and the reality of which it seems to be the function of all the higher forms of literature and fine art to bring home to us and suggest. At Chautauqua there were no racks, even in the place’s historical museum; and no sweat, except possibly the gentle moisture on the brow of some lecturer, or on the sides of some player in the ball-field.
Such absence of human nature in extremis anywhere seemed, then, a sufficient explanation for Chautauqua’s flatness and lack of zest62.
But was not this a paradox well calculated to fill one with dismay? It looks indeed, thought I, as if the romantic idealists with their pessimism63 about our civilization were, after all, quite right. An irremediable flatness is coming over the world. Bourgeoisie and mediocrity, church sociables and teachers’ conventions, are taking the place of the old heights and depths and romantic chiaroscuro64. And, to get human life in its wild intensity, we must in future turn more and more away from the actual, and forget it, if we can, in the romancer’s or the poet’s pages. The whole world, delightful65 and sinful as it may still appear for a moment to one just escaped from the Chautauquan enclosure, is nevertheless obeying more and more just those ideals that are sure to make of it in the end a mere Chautauqua Assembly on an enormous scale. Was im Gesang soll leben muss im Leben untergehn. Even now, in our own country, correctness, fairness, and compromise for every small advantage are crowding out all other qualities. The higher heroisms and the old rare flavors are passing out of life.16
16 This address was composed before the Cuban and Philippine wars. Such outbursts of the passion of mastery are, however, only episodes in a social process which in the long run seems everywhere tending toward the Chautauquan ideals.
With these thoughts in my mind, I was speeding with the train toward Buffalo66, when, near that city, the sight of a workman doing something on the dizzy edge of a sky-scaling iron construction brought me to my senses very suddenly. And now I perceived, by a flash of insight, that I had been steeping myself in pure ancestral blindness, and looking at life with the eyes of a remote spectator. Wishing for heroism and the spectacle of human nature on the rack, I had never noticed the great fields of heroism lying round about me, I had failed to see it present and alive. I could only think of it as dead and embalmed67, labelled and costumed, as it is in the pages of romance. And yet there it was before me in the daily lives of the laboring69 classes. Not in clanging fights and desperate marches only is heroism to be looked for, but on every railway bridge and fire-proof building that is going up today. On freight-trains, on the decks of vessels70, in cattle-yards and mines, on lumber-rafts, among the firemen and the policemen, the demand for courage is incessant71; and the supply never fails. There, every day of the year somewhere, is human nature in extremis for you. And wherever a scythe72, an axe73, a pick, or a shovel74 is wielded75, you have it sweating and aching and with its powers of patient endurance racked to the utmost under the length of hours of the strain.
As I awoke to all this unidealized heroic life around me, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes; and a wave of sympathy greater than anything I had ever before felt with the common life of common men began to fill my soul. It began to seem as if virtue76 with horny hands and dirty skin were the only virtue genuine and vital enough to take account of. Every other virtue poses; none is absolutely unconscious and simple, and unexpectant of decoration or recognition, like this. These are our soldiers, thought I, these our sustainers, these the very parents of our life.
Many years ago, when in Vienna, I had had a similar feeling of awe77 and reverence78 in looking at the peasant-women, in from the country on their business at the market for the day. Old hags many of them were, dried and brown and wrinkled, kerchiefed and short-petticoated, with thick wool stockings on their bony shanks, stumping79 through the glittering thoroughfares, looking neither to the right nor the left, bent80 on duty, envying nothing, humble-hearted, remote; — and yet at bottom, when you came to think of it, bearing the whole fabric81 of the splendors82 and corruptions83 of that city on their laborious84 backs. For where would any of it have been without their unremitting, unrewarded labor68 in the fields? And so with us: not to our generals and poets, I thought, but to the Italian and Hungarian laborers85 in the Subway, rather, ought the monuments of gratitude87 and reverence of a city like Boston to be reared.
* * * * *
If any of you have been readers of Tolsto?, you will see that I passed into a vein88 of feeling similar to his, with its abhorrence89 of all that conventionally passes for distinguished, and its exclusive deification of the bravery, patience, kindliness90, and dumbness of the unconscious natural man.
Where now is our Tolsto?, I said, to bring the truth of all this home to our American bosoms91, fill us with a better insight, and wean us away from that spurious literary romanticism on which our wretched culture — as it calls itself — is fed? Divinity lies all about us, and culture is too hidebound to even suspect the fact. Could a Howells or a Kipling be enlisted92 in this mission? or are they still too deep in the ancestral blindness, and not humane93 enough for the inner joy and meaning of the laborer86’s existence to be really revealed? Must we wait for some one born and bred and living as a laborer himself, but who, by grace of Heaven, shall also find a literary voice?
And there I rested on that day, with a sense of widening of vision, and with what it is surely fair to call an increase of religious insight into life. In God’s eyes the differences of social position, of intellect, of culture, of cleanliness, of dress, which different men exhibit, and all the other rarities and exceptions on which they so fantastically pin their pride, must be so small as practically quite to vanish; and all that should remain is the common fact that here we are, a countless94 multitude of vessels of life, each of us pent in to peculiar difficulties, with which we must severally struggle by using whatever of fortitude95 and goodness we can summon up. The exercise of the courage, patience, and kindness, must be the significant portion of the whole business; and the distinctions of position can only be a manner of diversifying97 the phenomenal surface upon which these underground virtues98 may manifest their effects. At this rate, the deepest human life is everywhere, is eternal. And, if any human attributes exist only in particular individuals, they must belong to the mere trapping and decoration of the surface-show.
Thus are men’s lives levelled up as well as levelled down — levelled up in their common inner meaning, levelled down in their outer gloriousness and show. Yet always, we must confess, this levelling insight tends to be obscured again; and always the ancestral blindness returns and wraps us up, so that we end once more by thinking that creation can be for no other purpose than to develop remarkable99 situations and conventional distinctions and merits. And then always some new leveller in the shape of a religious prophet has to arise — the Buddha100, the Christ, or some Saint Francis, some Rousseau or Tolsto?— to redispel our blindness. Yet, little by little, there comes some stable gain; for the world does get more humane, and the religion of democracy tends toward permanent increase.
This, as I said, became for a time my conviction, and gave me great content. I have put the matter into the form of a personal reminiscence, so that I might lead you into it more directly and completely, and so save time. But now I am going to discuss the rest of it with you in a more impersonal101 way.
Tolsto?‘s levelling philosophy began long before he had the crisis of melancholy102 commemorated103 in that wonderful document of his entitled ‘My Confession104,’ which led the way to his more specifically religious works. In his masterpiece ‘War and Peace,’— assuredly the greatest of human novels — the r?le of the spiritual hero is given to a poor little soldier named Karata?eff, so helpful, so cheerful, and so devout105 that, in spite of his ignorance and filthiness106, the sight of him opens the heavens, which have been closed, to the mind of the principal character of the book; and his example evidently is meant by Tolsto? to let God into the world again for the reader. Poor little Karata?eff is taken prisoner by the French; and, when too exhausted107 by hardship and fever to march, is shot as other prisoners were in the famous retreat from Moscow. The last view one gets of him is his little figure leaning against a white birch-tree, and uncomplainingly awaiting the end.
“The more,” writes Tolsto? in the work ‘My Confession,’ “the more I examined the life of these laboring folks, the more persuaded I became that they veritably have faith, and get from it alone the sense and the possibility of life. . . . Contrariwise to those of our own class, who protest against destiny and grow indignant at its rigor108, these people receive maladies and misfortunes without revolt, without opposition109, and with a firm and tranquil110 confidence that all had to be like that, could not be otherwise, and that it is all right so. . . . The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life. We see only a cruel jest in suffering and death, whereas these people live, suffer, and draw near to death with tranquillity111, and oftener than not with joy. . . . There are enormous multitudes of them happy with the most perfect happiness, although deprived of what for us is the sole good of life. Those who understand life’s meaning, and know how to live and die thus, are to be counted not by twos, threes, tens, but by hundreds, thousands, millions. They labor quietly, endure privations and pains, live and die, and throughout everything see the good without seeing the vanity. I had to love these people. The more I entered into their life, the more I loved them; and the more it became possible for me to live, too. It came about not only that the life of our society, of the learned and of the rich, disgusted me — more than that, it lost all semblance112 of meaning in my eyes. All our actions, our deliberations, our sciences, our arts, all appeared to me with a new significance. I understood that these things might be charming pastimes, but that one need seek in them no depth, whereas the life of the hard-working populace, of that multitude of human beings who really contribute to existence, appeared to me in its true light. I understood that there veritably is life, that the meaning which life there receives is the truth; and I accepted it.”17
17 My Confession, X. (condensed).
In a similar way does Stevenson appeal to our piety113 toward the elemental virtue of mankind.
“What a wonderful thing,” he writes,18 “is this Man! How surprising are his attributes! Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, savagely114 surrounded, savagely descended115, irremediably condemned116 to prey117 upon his fellow-lives — who should have blamed him, had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous? . . . [Yet] it matters not where we look, under what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of ignorance, burdened with what erroneous morality; in ships at sea, a man inured118 to hardship and vile119 pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle120 in a tavern121, and a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he, for all that, simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly122 like a child, constant to toil123, brave to drown, for others; . . . in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbors, tempted124 perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace, . . . often repaying the world’s scorn with service, often standing3 firm upon a scruple125; . . . everywhere some virtue cherished or affected126, everywhere some decency127 of thought and courage, everywhere the ensign of man’s ineffectual goodness — ah! if I could show you this! If I could show you these men and women all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls.”
18 Across the Plains: “Pulvis et Umbra” (abridged).
All this is as true as it is splendid, and terribly do we need our Tolsto?s and Stevensons to keep our sense for it alive. Yet you remember the Irishman who, when asked, “Is not one man as good as another?” replied, “Yes; and a great deal better, too!” Similarly (it seems to me) does Tolsto? overcorrect our social prejudices, when he makes his love of the peasant so exclusive, and hardens his heart toward the educated man as absolutely as he does. Grant that at Chautauqua there was little moral effort, little sweat or muscular strain in view. Still, deep down in the souls of the participants we may be sure that something of the sort was hid, some inner stress, some vital virtue not found wanting when required. And, after all, the question recurs128, and forces itself upon us, Is it so certain that the surroundings and circumstances of the virtue do make so little difference in the importance of the result? Is the functional129 utility, the worth to the universe of a certain definite amount of courage, kindliness, and patience, no greater if the possessor of these virtues is in an educated situation, working out far-reaching tasks, than if he be an illiterate130 nobody, hewing131 wood and drawing water, just to keep himself alive? Tolsto?‘s philosophy, deeply enlightening though it certainly is, remains132 a false abstraction. It savors133 too much of that Oriental pessimism and nihilism of his, which declares the whole phenomenal world and its facts and their distinctions to be a cunning fraud.
* * * * *
A mere bare fraud is just what our Western common sense will never believe the phenomenal world to be. It admits fully16 that the inner joys and virtues are the essential part of life’s business, but it is sure that some positive part is also played by the adjuncts of the show. If it is idiotic134 in romanticism to recognize the heroic only when it sees it labelled and dressed-up in books, it is really just as idiotic to see it only in the dirty boots and sweaty shirt of some one in the fields. It is with us really under every disguise: at Chautauqua; here in your college; in the stock-yards and on the freight-trains; and in the czar of Russia’s court. But, instinctively135, we make a combination of two things in judging the total significance of a human being. We feel it to be some sort of a product (if such a product only could be calculated) of his inner virtue and his outer place — neither singly taken, but both conjoined. If the outer differences had no meaning for life, why indeed should all this immense variety of them exist? They must be significant elements of the world as well.
Just test Tolsto?‘s deification of the mere manual laborer by the facts. This is what Mr. Walter Wyckoff, after working as an unskilled laborer in the demolition136 of some buildings at West Point, writes of the spiritual condition of the class of men to which he temporarily chose to belong:—
“The salient features of our condition are plain enough. We are grown men, and are without a trade. In the labor-market we stand ready to sell to the highest bidder137 our mere muscular strength for so many hours each day. We are thus in the lowest grade of labor. And, selling our muscular strength in the open market for what it will bring, we sell it under peculiar conditions. It is all the capital that we have. We have no reserve means of subsistence, and cannot, therefore, stand off for a ‘reserve price.’ We sell under the necessity of satisfying imminent138 hunger. Broadly speaking, we must sell our labor or starve; and, as hunger is a matter of a few hours, and we have no other way of meeting this need, we must sell at once for what the market offers for our labor.
“Our employer is buying labor in a dear market, and he will certainly get from us as much work as he can at the price. The gang-boss is secured for this purpose, and thoroughly139 does he know his business. He has sole command of us. He never saw us before, and he will discharge us all when the débris is cleared away. In the mean time he must get from us, if he can, the utmost of physical labor which we, individually and collectively, are capable of. If he should drive some of us to exhaustion140, and we should not be able to continue at work, he would not be the loser; for the market would soon supply him with others to take our places.
“We are ignorant men, but so much we clearly see — that we have sold our labor where we could sell it dearest, and our employer has bought it where he could buy it cheapest. He has paid high, and he must get all the labor that he can; and, by a strong instinct which possesses us, we shall part with as little as we can. From work like ours there seems to us to have been eliminated every element which constitutes the nobility of labor. We feel no personal pride in its progress, and no community of interest with our employer. There is none of the joy of responsibility, none of the sense of achievement, only the dull monotony of grinding toil, with the longing141 for the signal to quit work, and for our wages at the end.
“And being what we are, the dregs of the labor-market, and having no certainty of permanent employment, and no organization among ourselves, we must expect to work under the watchful142 eye of a gang-boss, and be driven, like the wage-slaves that we are, through our tasks.
“All this is to tell us, in effect, that our lives are hard, barren, hopeless lives.”
And such hard, barren, hopeless lives, surely, are not lives in which one ought to be willing permanently143 to remain. And why is this so? Is it because they are so dirty? Well, Nansen grew a great deal dirtier on his polar expedition; and we think none the worse of his life for that. Is it the insensibility? Our soldiers have to grow vastly more insensible, and we extol144 them to the skies. Is it the poverty? Poverty has been reckoned the crowning beauty of many a heroic career. Is it the slavery to a task, the loss of finer pleasures?
Such slavery and loss are of the very essence of the higher fortitude, and are always counted to its credit — read the records of missionary145 devotion all over the world. It is not any one of these things, then, taken by itself — no, nor all of them together — that make such a life undesirable146. A man might in truth live like an unskilled laborer, and do the work of one, and yet count as one of the noblest of God’s creatures. Quite possibly there were some such persons in the gang that our author describes; but the current of their souls ran underground; and he was too steeped in the ancestral blindness to discern it.
If there were any such morally exceptional individuals, however, what made them different from the rest? It can only have been this — that their souls worked and endured in obedience147 to some inner ideal, while their comrades were not actuated by anything worthy of that name. These ideals of other lives are among those secrets that we can almost never penetrate148, although something about the man may often tell us when they are there. In Mr. Wyckoff’s own case we know exactly what the self-imposed ideal was. Partly he had stumped149 himself, as the boys say, to carry through a strenuous52 achievement; but mainly he wished to enlarge his sympathetic insight into fellow-lives. For this his sweat and toil acquire a certain heroic significance, and make us accord to him exceptional esteem150. But it is easy to imagine his fellows with various other ideals. To say nothing of wives and babies, one may have been a convert of the Salvation151 Army, and had a nightingale singing of expiation152 and forgiveness in his heart all the while he labored153. Or there might have been an apostle like Tolsto? himself, or his compatriot Bondareff, in the gang, voluntarily embracing labor as their religious mission. Class-loyalty was undoubtedly154 an ideal with many. And who knows how much of that higher manliness155 of poverty, of which Phillips Brooks156 has spoken so penetratingly, was or was not present in that gang?
“A rugged157, barren land,” says Phillips Brooks, “is poverty to live in — a land where I am thankful very often if I can get a berry or a root to eat. But living in it really, letting it bear witness to me of itself, not dishonoring it all the time by judging it after the standard of the other lands, gradually there come out its qualities. Behold158! no land like this barren and naked land of poverty could show the moral geology of the world. See how the hard ribs159 . . . stand out strong and solid. No life like poverty could so get one to the heart of things and make men know their meaning, could so let us feel life and the world with all the soft cushions stripped off and thrown away. . . . Poverty makes men come very near each other, and recognize each other’s human hearts; and poverty, highest and best of all, demands and cries out for faith in God. . . . I know how superficial and unfeeling, how like mere mockery, words in praise of poverty may seem. . . . But I am sure that the poor man’s dignity and freedom, his self-respect and energy, depend upon his cordial knowledge that his poverty is a true region and kind of life, with its own chances of character, its own springs of happiness and revelations of God. Let him resist the characterlessness which often goes with being poor. Let him insist on respecting the condition where he lives. Let him learn to love it, so that by and by, [if] he grows rich, he shall go out of the low door of the old familiar poverty with a true pang of regret, and with a true honor for the narrow home in which he has lived so long.”19
19 Sermons. 5th Series, New York, 1893, pp. 166, 167.
The barrenness and ignobleness of the more usual laborer’s life consist in the fact that it is moved by no such ideal inner springs. The backache, the long hours, the danger, are patiently endured — for what? To gain a quid of tobacco, a glass of beer, a cup of coffee, a meal, and a bed, and to begin again the next day and shirk as much as one can. This really is why we raise no monument to the laborers in the Subway, even though they be our conscripts, and even though after a fashion our city is indeed based upon their patient hearts and enduring backs and shoulders. And this is why we do raise monuments to our soldiers, whose outward conditions were even brutaller still. The soldiers are supposed to have followed an ideal, and the laborers are supposed to have followed none.
You see, my friends, how the plot now thickens; and how strangely the complexities160 of this wonderful human nature of ours begin to develop under our hands. We have seen the blindness and deadness to each other which are our natural inheritance; and, in spite of them, we have been led to acknowledge an inner meaning which passeth show, and which may be present in the lives of others where we least descry161 it. And now we are led to say that such inner meaning can be complete and valid162 for us also, only when the inner joy, courage, and endurance are joined with an ideal.
* * * * *
But what, exactly, do we mean by an ideal? Can we give no definite account of such a word?
To a certain extent we can. An ideal, for instance, must be something intellectually conceived, something of which we are not unconscious, if we have it; and it must carry with it that sort of outlook, uplift, and brightness that go with all intellectual facts. Secondly163, there must be novelty in an ideal — novelty at least for him whom the ideal grasps. Sodden164 routine is incompatible165 with ideality, although what is sodden routine for one person may be ideal novelty for another. This shows that there is nothing absolutely ideal: ideals are relative to the lives that entertain them. To keep out of the gutter166 is for us here no part of consciousness at all, yet for many of our brethren it is the most legitimately167 engrossing168 of ideals.
Now, taken nakedly, abstractly, and immediately, you see that mere ideals are the cheapest things in life. Everybody has them in some shape or other, personal or general, sound or mistaken, low or high; and the most worthless sentimentalists and dreamers, drunkards, shirks and verse-makers, who never show a grain of effort, courage, or endurance, possibly have them on the most copious171 scale. Education, enlarging as it does our horizon and perspective, is a means of multiplying our ideals, of bringing new ones into view. And your college professor, with a starched172 shirt and spectacles, would, if a stock of ideals were all alone by itself enough to render a life significant, be the most absolutely and deeply significant of men. Tolsto? would be completely blind in despising him for a prig, a pedant173 and a parody174; and all our new insight into the divinity of muscular labor would be altogether off the track of truth.
But such consequences as this, you instinctively feel, are erroneous. The more ideals a man has, the more contemptible175, on the whole, do you continue to deem him, if the matter ends there for him, and if none of the laboring man’s virtues are called into action on his part — no courage shown, no privations undergone, no dirt or scars contracted in the attempt to get them realized. It is quite obvious that something more than the mere possession of ideals is required to make a life significant in any sense that claims the spectator’s admiration176. Inner joy, to be sure, it may have, with its ideals; but that is its own private sentimental169 matter. To extort177 from us, outsiders as we are, with our own ideals to look after, the tribute of our grudging178 recognition, it must back its ideal visions with what the laborers have, the sterner stuff of manly179 virtue; it must multiply their sentimental surface by the dimension of the active will, if we are to have depth, if we are to have anything cubical and solid in the way of character.
The significance of a human life for communicable and publicly recognizable purposes is thus the offspring of a marriage of two different parents, either of whom alone is barren. The ideals taken by themselves give no reality, the virtues by themselves no novelty. And let the orientalists and pessimists180 say what they will, the thing of deepest — or, at any rate, of comparatively deepest — significance in life does seem to be its character of progress, or that strange union of reality with ideal novelty which it continues from one moment to another to present. To recognize ideal novelty is the task of what we call intelligence. Not every one’s intelligence can tell which novelties are ideal. For many the ideal thing will always seem to cling still to the older more familiar good. In this case character, though not significant totally, may be still significant pathetically. So, if we are to choose which is the more essential factor of human character, the fighting virtue or the intellectual breadth, we must side with Tolsto?, and choose that simple faithfulness to his light or darkness which any common unintellectual man can show.
* * * * *
But, with all this beating and tacking181 on my part, I fear you take me to be reaching a confused result. I seem to be just taking things up and dropping them again. First I took up Chautauqua, and dropped that; then Tolsto? and the heroism of common toil, and dropped them; finally, I took up ideals, and seem now almost dropping those. But please observe in what sense it is that I drop them. It is when they pretend singly to redeem182 life from insignificance183. Culture and refinement184 all alone are not enough to do so. Ideal aspirations185 are not enough, when uncombined with pluck and will. But neither are pluck and will, dogged endurance and insensibility to danger enough, when taken all alone. There must be some sort of fusion186, some chemical combination among these principles, for a life objectively and thoroughly significant to result.
Of course, this is a somewhat vague conclusion. But in a question of significance, of worth, like this, conclusions can never be precise. The answer of appreciation187, of sentiment, is always a more or a less, a balance struck by sympathy, insight, and good will. But it is an answer, all the same, a real conclusion. And, in the course of getting it, it seems to me that our eyes have been opened to many important things. Some of you are, perhaps, more livingly aware than you were an hour ago of the depths of worth that lie around you, hid in alien lives. And, when you ask how much sympathy you ought to bestow188, although the amount is, truly enough, a matter of ideal on your own part, yet in this notion of the combination of ideals with active virtues you have a rough standard for shaping your decision. In any case, your imagination is extended. You divine in the world about you matter for a little more humility189 on your own part, and tolerance, reverence, and love for others; and you gain a certain inner joyfulness190 at the increased importance of our common life. Such joyfulness is a religious inspiration and an element of spiritual health, and worth more than large amounts of that sort of technical and accurate information which we professors are supposed to be able to impart.
To show the sort of thing I mean by these words, I will just make one brief practical illustration and then close.
We are suffering today in America from what is called the labor-question; and, when you go out into the world, you will each and all of you be caught up in its perplexities. I use the brief term labor-question to cover all sorts of anarchistic191 discontents and socialistic projects, and the conservative resistances which they provoke. So far as this conflict is unhealthy and regrettable — and I think it is so only to a limited extent — the unhealthiness consists solely192 in the fact that one-half of our fellow-countrymen remain entirely193 blind to the internal significance of the lives of the other half. They miss the joys and sorrows, they fail to feel the moral virtue, and they do not guess the presence of the intellectual ideals. They are at cross-purposes all along the line, regarding each other as they might regard a set of dangerously gesticulating automata, or, if they seek to get at the inner motivation, making the most horrible mistakes. Often all that the poor man can think of in the rich man is a cowardly greediness for safety, luxury, and effeminacy, and a boundless194 affectation. What he is, is not a human being, but a pocket-book, a bank-account. And a similar greediness, turned by disappointment into envy, is all that many rich men can see in the state of mind of the dissatisfied poor. And, if the rich man begins to do the sentimental act over the poor man, what senseless blunders does he make, pitying him for just those very duties and those very immunities195 which, rightly taken, are the condition of his most abiding196 and characteristic joys! Each, in short, ignores the fact that happiness and unhappiness and significance are a vital mystery; each pins them absolutely on some ridiculous feature of the external situation; and everybody remains outside of everybody else’s sight.
Society has, with all this, undoubtedly got to pass toward some newer and better equilibrium197, and the distribution of wealth has doubtless slowly got to change: such changes have always happened, and will happen to the end of time. But if, after all that I have said, any of you expect that they will make any genuine vital difference on a large scale, to the lives of our descendants, you will have missed the significance of my entire lecture. The solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing — the marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with some fidelity198, courage, and endurance; with some man’s or woman’s pains. — And, whatever or wherever life may be, there will always be the chance for that marriage to take place.
Fitz–James Stephen wrote many years ago words to this effect more eloquent199 than any I can speak: “The ‘Great Eastern,’ or some of her successors,” he said, “will perhaps defy the roll of the Atlantic, and cross the seas without allowing their passengers to feel that they have left the firm land. The voyage from the cradle to the grave may come to be performed with similar facility. Progress and science may perhaps enable untold200 millions to live and die without a care, without a pang, without an anxiety. They will have a pleasant passage and plenty of brilliant conversation. They will wonder that men ever believed at all in clanging fights and blazing towns and sinking ships and praying hands; and, when they come to the end of their course, they will go their way, and the place thereof will know them no more. But it seems unlikely that they will have such a knowledge of the great ocean on which they sail, with its storms and wrecks201, its currents and icebergs202, its huge waves and mighty203 winds, as those who battled with it for years together in the little craft, which, if they had few other merits, brought those who navigated204 them full into the presence of time and eternity205, their maker170 and themselves, and forced them to have some definite view of their relations to them and to each other.”20
20 Essays by a Barrister, London, 1862, p. 318.
In this solid and tridimensional sense, so to call it, those philosophers are right who contend that the world is a standing thing, with no progress, no real history. The changing conditions of history touch only the surface of the show. The altered equilibriums206 and redistributions only diversify96 our opportunities and open chances to us for new ideals. But, with each new ideal that comes into life, the chance for a life based on some old ideal will vanish; and he would needs be a presumptuous207 calculator who should with confidence say that the total sum of significances is positively208 and absolutely greater at any one epoch209 than at any other of the world.
I am speaking broadly, I know, and omitting to consider certain qualifications in which I myself believe. But one can only make one point in one lecture, and I shall be well content if I have brought my point home to you this evening in even a slight degree. There are compensations: and no outward changes of condition in life can keep the nightingale of its eternal meaning from singing in all sorts of different men’s hearts. That is the main fact to remember. If we could not only admit it with our lips, but really and truly believe it, how our convulsive insistencies, how our antipathies210 and dreads211 of each other, would soften212 down! If the poor and the rich could look at each other in this way, sub specie ?ternatis, how gentle would grow their disputes! what tolerance and good humor, what willingness to live and let live, would come into the world!
the end
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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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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tolerance
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| n.宽容；容忍，忍受；耐药力；公差 | |
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intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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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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pretension
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| n.要求；自命，自称；自负 | |
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injustices
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| 不公平( injustice的名词复数 )； 非正义； 待…不公正； 冤枉 | |
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jack
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| n.插座，千斤顶，男人；v.抬起，提醒，扛举；n.（Jake）杰克 | |
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enchantment
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| n.迷惑，妖术，魅力 | |
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stolid
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| adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的 | |
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onlookers
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| n.旁观者，观看者( onlooker的名词复数 ) | |
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maniac
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| n.精神癫狂的人；疯子 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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inadequately
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| ad.不够地；不够好地 | |
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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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contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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exclusions
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| n.不包括的项目：如接受服务项目是由投保以前已患有的疾病或伤害引致的，保险公司有权拒绝支付。；拒绝( exclusion的名词复数 )；排除；被排斥在外的人（或事物）；排外主义 | |
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jealousies
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| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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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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chaotic
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| adj.混沌的，一片混乱的，一团糟的 | |
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pervade
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| v.弥漫，遍及，充满，渗透，漫延 | |
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superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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auditorium
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| n.观众席，听众席；会堂，礼堂 | |
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athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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blot
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| vt.弄脏（用吸墨纸）吸干；n.污点，污渍 | |
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astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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primordial
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| adj.原始的；最初的 | |
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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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massacre
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| n.残杀，大屠杀；v.残杀，集体屠杀 | |
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villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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pang
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| n.剧痛，悲痛，苦闷 | |
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brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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tepid
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| adj.微温的，温热的，不太热心的 | |
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abide
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| vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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precipices
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| n.悬崖，峭壁( precipice的名词复数 ) | |
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realization
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| n.实现；认识到，深刻了解 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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unravel
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| v.弄清楚（秘密）；拆开，解开，松开 | |
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meditated
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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expressiveness
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| n.富有表现力 | |
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picturesqueness
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strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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strenuousness
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civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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everlasting
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| adj.永恒的，持久的，无止境的 | |
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heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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jaws
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| n.口部；嘴 | |
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victorious
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| adj.胜利的，得胜的 | |
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oars
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| n.桨，橹( oar的名词复数 )；划手v.划（行）( oar的第三人称单数 ) | |
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ignoble
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| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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arduous
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| adj.艰苦的，费力的，陡峭的 | |
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zest
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| n.乐趣；滋味，风味；兴趣 | |
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pessimism
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| n.悲观者，悲观主义者，厌世者 | |
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chiaroscuro
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| n.明暗对照法 | |
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delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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buffalo
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| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
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embalmed
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| adj.用防腐药物保存（尸体）的v.保存（尸体）不腐( embalm的过去式和过去分词 )；使不被遗忘；使充满香气 | |
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labor
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| 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 | |
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laboring
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| 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 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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scythe
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| n. 长柄的大镰刀，战车镰； v. 以大镰刀割 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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wielded
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| 手持着使用（武器、工具等）( wield的过去式和过去分词 )； 具有； 运用（权力）； 施加（影响） | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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reverence
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| 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 | |
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stumping
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| 僵直地行走，跺步行走( stump的现在分词 )； 把（某人）难住； 使为难； （选举前）在某一地区作政治性巡回演说 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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splendors
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| n.华丽( splendor的名词复数 )；壮丽；光辉；显赫 | |
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corruptions
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| n.堕落( corruption的名词复数 )；腐化；腐败；贿赂 | |
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laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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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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laborer
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| n.劳动者，劳工 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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vein
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| n.血管，静脉；叶脉，纹理；情绪；vt.使成脉络 | |
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89
abhorrence
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| n.憎恶；可憎恶的事 | |
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90
kindliness
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| n.厚道，亲切，友好的行为 | |
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91
bosoms
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| 胸部( bosom的名词复数 )； 胸怀； 女衣胸部（或胸襟）； 和爱护自己的人在一起的情形 | |
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92
enlisted
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| adj.应募入伍的v.（使）入伍， （使）参军( enlist的过去式和过去分词 )；获得（帮助或支持） | |
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93
humane
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| adj.人道的，富有同情心的 | |
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94
countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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95
fortitude
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| n.坚忍不拔；刚毅 | |
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96
diversify
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| v.（使）不同，（使）变得多样化 | |
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97
diversifying
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| v.使多样化，多样化( diversify的现在分词 )；进入新的商业领域 | |
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98
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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99
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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100
Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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101
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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102
melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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103
commemorated
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| v.纪念，庆祝( commemorate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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104
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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105
devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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106
filthiness
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107
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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108
rigor
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| n.严酷，严格，严厉 | |
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109
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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110
tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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111
tranquillity
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| n. 平静, 安静 | |
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112
semblance
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| n.外貌，外表 | |
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113
piety
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| n.虔诚，虔敬 | |
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114
savagely
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| adv. 野蛮地，残酷地 | |
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115
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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116
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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117
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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118
inured
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| adj.坚强的，习惯的 | |
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119
vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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120
fiddle
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| n.小提琴；vi.拉提琴；不停拨弄，乱动 | |
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121
tavern
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| n.小旅馆，客栈；小酒店 | |
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122
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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123
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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124
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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125
scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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126
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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127
decency
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| n.体面，得体，合宜，正派，庄重 | |
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128
recurs
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| 再发生，复发( recur的第三人称单数 ) | |
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129
functional
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| adj.为实用而设计的，具备功能的，起作用的 | |
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130
illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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131
hewing
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| v.（用斧、刀等）砍、劈( hew的现在分词 )；砍成；劈出；开辟 | |
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132
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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133
savors
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| v.意味，带有…的性质( savor的第三人称单数 )；给…加调味品；使有风味；品尝 | |
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134
idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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135
instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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136
demolition
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| n.破坏,毁坏,毁坏之遗迹 | |
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137
bidder
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| n.(拍卖时的)出价人，报价人，投标人 | |
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138
imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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139
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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140
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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141
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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142
watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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143
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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144
extol
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| v.赞美，颂扬 | |
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145
missionary
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| adj.教会的，传教(士)的；n.传教士 | |
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146
undesirable
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| adj.不受欢迎的，不良的，不合意的，讨厌的；n.不受欢迎的人，不良分子 | |
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147
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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148
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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149
stumped
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| 僵直地行走，跺步行走( stump的过去式和过去分词 )； 把（某人）难住； 使为难； （选举前）在某一地区作政治性巡回演说 | |
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150
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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151
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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152
expiation
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| n.赎罪，补偿 | |
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153
labored
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| adj.吃力的，谨慎的v.努力争取(for)( labor的过去式和过去分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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154
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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155
manliness
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| 刚毅 | |
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156
brooks
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| n.小溪( brook的名词复数 ) | |
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157
rugged
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| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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158
behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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159
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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160
complexities
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| 复杂性(complexity的名词复数)； 复杂的事物 | |
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161
descry
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| v.远远看到；发现；责备 | |
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162
valid
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| adj.有确实根据的；有效的；正当的，合法的 | |
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163
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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164
sodden
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| adj.浑身湿透的；v.使浸透；使呆头呆脑 | |
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165
incompatible
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| adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的 | |
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166
gutter
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| n.沟，街沟，水槽，檐槽，贫民窟 | |
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167
legitimately
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| ad.合法地；正当地，合理地 | |
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168
engrossing
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| adj.使人全神贯注的，引人入胜的v.使全神贯注( engross的现在分词 ) | |
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169
sentimental
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| adj.多愁善感的，感伤的 | |
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170
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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171
copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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172
starched
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| adj.浆硬的，硬挺的，拘泥刻板的v.把（衣服、床单等）浆一浆( starch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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173
pedant
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| n.迂儒；卖弄学问的人 | |
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174
parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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175
contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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176
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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177
extort
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| v.勒索，敲诈，强要 | |
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178
grudging
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| adj.勉强的，吝啬的 | |
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179
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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180
pessimists
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| n.悲观主义者( pessimist的名词复数 ) | |
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181
tacking
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| （帆船）抢风行驶，定位焊[铆]紧钉 | |
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182
redeem
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| v.买回，赎回，挽回，恢复，履行（诺言等） | |
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183
insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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184
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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185
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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186
fusion
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| n.溶化；熔解；熔化状态，熔和；熔接 | |
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187
appreciation
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| n.评价；欣赏；感谢；领会，理解；价格上涨 | |
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188
bestow
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| v.把…赠与，把…授予；花费 | |
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189
humility
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| n.谦逊，谦恭 | |
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190
joyfulness
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191
anarchistic
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| 无政府主义的 | |
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192
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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193
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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194
boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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195
immunities
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| 免除，豁免( immunity的名词复数 )； 免疫力 | |
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196
abiding
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| adj.永久的，持久的，不变的 | |
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197
equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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198
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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199
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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200
untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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201
wrecks
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| n.沉船( wreck的名词复数 )；（事故中）遭严重毁坏的汽车（或飞机等）；（身体或精神上）受到严重损伤的人；状况非常糟糕的车辆（或建筑物等）v.毁坏[毁灭]某物( wreck的第三人称单数 )；使（船舶）失事，使遇难，使下沉 | |
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202
icebergs
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| n.冰山，流冰( iceberg的名词复数 ) | |
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203
mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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204
navigated
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| v.给（船舶、飞机等）引航，导航( navigate的过去式和过去分词 )；（从海上、空中等）横越；横渡；飞跃 | |
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205
eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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206
equilibriums
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| n.平衡，均势（equilibrium的复数形式） | |
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207
presumptuous
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| adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的 | |
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208
positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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209
epoch
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| n.(新)时代；历元 | |
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210
antipathies
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| 反感( antipathy的名词复数 )； 引起反感的事物； 憎恶的对象； （在本性、倾向等方面的）不相容 | |
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211
dreads
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| n.恐惧，畏惧( dread的名词复数 )；令人恐惧的事物v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的第三人称单数 ) | |
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212
soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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