1
The task that lay before the Assembly of Brissago, viewed as we may view it now from the clarifying standpoint of things accomplished1, was in its broad issues a simple one. Essentially2 it was to place social organisation3 upon the new footing that the swift, accelerated advance of human knowledge had rendered necessary. The council was gathered together with the haste of a salvage4 expedition, and it was confronted with wreckage5; but the wreckage was irreparable wreckage, and the only possibilities of the case were either the relapse of mankind to the agricultural barbarism from which it had emerged so painfully or the acceptance of achieved science as the basis of a new social order. The old tendencies of human nature, suspicion, jealousy7, particularism, and belligerency, were incompatible8 with the monstrous9 destructive power of the new appliances the inhuman10 logic11 of science had produced. The equilibrium12 could be restored only by civilisation13 destroying itself down to a level at which modern apparatus14 could no longer be produced, or by human nature adapting itself in its institutions to the new conditions. It was for the latter alternative that the assembly existed.
Sooner or later this choice would have confronted mankind. The sudden development of atomic science did but precipitate15 and render rapid and dramatic a clash between the new and the customary that had been gathering16 since ever the first flint was chipped or the first fire built together. From the day when man contrived17 himself a tool and suffered another male to draw near him, he ceased to be altogether a thing of instinct and untroubled convictions. From that day forth18 a widening breach19 can be traced between his egotistical passions and the social need. Slowly he adapted himself to the life of the homestead, and his passionate20 impulses widened out to the demands of the clan21 and the tribe. But widen though his impulses might, the latent hunter and wanderer and wonderer in his imagination outstripped22 their development. He was never quite subdued23 to the soil nor quite tamed to the home. Everywhere it needed teaching and the priest to keep him within the bounds of the plough-life and the beast-tending. Slowly a vast system of traditional imperatives24 superposed itself upon his instincts, imperatives that were admirably fitted to make him that cultivator, that cattle-mincer, who was for twice ten thousand years the normal man.
And, unpremeditated, undesired, out of the accumulations of his tilling came civilisation. Civilisation was the agricultural surplus. It appeared as trade and tracks and roads, it pushed boats out upon the rivers and presently invaded the seas, and within its primitive25 courts, within temples grown rich and leisurely26 and amidst the gathering medley27 of the seaport28 towns rose speculation29 and philosophy and science, and the beginning of the new order that has at last established itself as human life. Slowly at first, as we traced it, and then with an accumulating velocity30, the new powers were fabricated. Man as a whole did not seek them nor desire them; they were thrust into his hand. For a time men took up and used these new things and the new powers inadvertently as they came to him, recking nothing of the consequences. For endless generations change led him very gently. But when he had been led far enough, change quickened the pace. It was with a series of shocks that he realised at last that he was living the old life less and less and a new life more and more.
Already before the release of atomic energy the tensions between the old way of living and the new were intense. They were far intenser than they had been even at the collapse32 of the Roman imperial system. On the one hand was the ancient life of the family and the small community and the petty industry, on the other was a new life on a larger scale, with remoter horizons and a strange sense of purpose. Already it was growing clear that men must live on one side or the other. One could not have little tradespeople and syndicated businesses in the same market, sleeping carters and motor trolleys33 on the same road, bows and arrows and aeroplane sharpshooters in the same army, or illiterate34 peasant industries and power-driven factories in the same world. And still less it was possible that one could have the ideas and ambitions and greed and jealousy of peasants equipped with the vast appliances of the new age. If there had been no atomic bombs to bring together most of the directing intelligence of the world to that hasty conference at Brissago, there would still have been, extended over great areas and a considerable space of time perhaps, a less formal conference of responsible and understanding people upon the perplexities of this world-wide opposition36. If the work of Holsten had been spread over centuries and imparted to the world by imperceptible degrees, it would nevertheless have made it necessary for men to take counsel upon and set a plan for the future. Indeed already there had been accumulating for a hundred years before the crisis a literature of foresight37; there was a whole mass of ‘Modern State’ scheming available for the conference to go upon. These bombs did but accentuate38 and dramatise an already developing problem.
2
This assembly was no leap of exceptional minds and super-intelligences into the control of affairs. It was teachable, its members trailed ideas with them to the gathering, but these were the consequences of the ‘moral shock’ the bombs had given humanity, and there is no reason for supposing its individual personalities39 were greatly above the average. It would be possible to cite a thousand instances of error and inefficiency40 in its proceedings41 due to the forgetfulness, irritability42, or fatigue43 of its members. It experimented considerably44 and blundered often. Excepting Holsten, whose gift was highly specialised, it is questionable45 whether there was a single man of the first order of human quality in the gathering. But it had a modest fear of itself, and a consequent directness that gave it a general distinction. There was, of course, a noble simplicity46 about Leblanc, but even of him it may be asked whether he was not rather good and honest-minded than in the fuller sense great.
The ex-king had wisdom and a certain romantic dash, he was a man among thousands, even if he was not a man among millions, but his memoirs47, and indeed his decision to write memoirs, give the quality of himself and his associates. The book makes admirable but astonishing reading. Therein he takes the great work the council was doing for granted as a little child takes God. It is as if he had no sense of it at all. He tells amusing trivialities about his cousin Wilhelm and his secretary Firmin, he pokes48 fun at the American president, who was, indeed, rather a little accident of the political machine than a representative American, and he gives a long description of how he was lost for three days in the mountains in the company of the only Japanese member, a loss that seems to have caused no serious interruption of the work of the council. . . .
The Brissago conference has been written about time after time, as though it were a gathering of the very flower of humanity. Perched up there by the freak or wisdom of Leblanc, it had a certain Olympian quality, and the natural tendency of the human mind to elaborate such a resemblance would have us give its members the likenesses of gods. It would be equally reasonable to compare it to one of those enforced meetings upon the mountain-tops that must have occurred in the opening phases of the Deluge49. The strength of the council lay not in itself but in the circumstances that had quickened its intelligence, dispelled50 its vanities, and emancipated51 it from traditional ambitions and antagonisms52. It was stripped of the accumulation of centuries, a naked government with all that freedom of action that nakedness affords. And its problems were set before it with a plainness that was out of all comparison with the complicated and perplexing intimations of the former time.
3
The world on which the council looked did indeed present a task quite sufficiently53 immense and altogether too urgent for any wanton indulgence in internal dissension. It may be interesting to sketch54 in a few phrases the condition of mankind at the close of the period of warring states, in the year of crisis that followed the release of atomic power. It was a world extraordinarily55 limited when one measures it by later standards, and it was now in a state of the direst confusion and distress56.
It must be remembered that at this time men had still to spread into enormous areas of the land surface of the globe. There were vast mountain wildernesses57, forest wildernesses, sandy deserts, and frozen lands. Men still clung closely to water and arable6 soil in temperate58 or sub-tropical climates, they lived abundantly only in river valleys, and all their great cities had grown upon large navigable rivers or close to ports upon the sea. Over great areas even of this suitable land flies and mosquitoes, armed with infection, had so far defeated human invasion, and under their protection the virgin59 forests remained untouched. Indeed, the whole world even in its most crowded districts was filthy60 with flies and swarming61 with needless insect life to an extent which is now almost incredible. A population map of the world in 1950 would have followed seashore and river course so closely in its darker shading as to give an impression that homo sapiens was an amphibious animal. His roads and railways lay also along the lower contours, only here and there to pierce some mountain barrier or reach some holiday resort did they clamber above 3000 feet. And across the ocean his traffic passed in definite lines; there were hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean no ship ever traversed except by mischance.
Into the mysteries of the solid globe under his feet he had not yet pierced for five miles, and it was still not forty years since, with a tragic62 pertinacity63, he had clambered to the poles of the earth. The limitless mineral wealth of the Arctic and Antarctic circles was still buried beneath vast accumulations of immemorial ice, and the secret riches of the inner zones of the crust were untapped and indeed unsuspected. The higher mountain regions were known only to a sprinkling of guide-led climbers and the frequenters of a few gaunt hotels, and the vast rainless belts of land that lay across the continental64 masses, from Gobi to Sahara and along the backbone65 of America, with their perfect air, their daily baths of blazing sunshine, their nights of cool serenity66 and glowing stars, and their reservoirs of deep-lying water, were as yet only desolations of fear and death to the common imagination.
And now under the shock of the atomic bombs, the great masses of population which had gathered into the enormous dingy67 town centres of that period were dispossessed and scattered68 disastrously69 over the surrounding rural areas. It was as if some brutal70 force, grown impatient at last at man’s blindness, had with the deliberate intention of a rearrangement of population upon more wholesome71 lines, shaken the world. The great industrial regions and the large cities that had escaped the bombs were, because of their complete economic collapse, in almost as tragic plight72 as those that blazed, and the country-side was disordered by a multitude of wandering and lawless strangers. In some parts of the world famine raged, and in many regions there was plague. . . . The plains of north India, which had become more and more dependent for the general welfare on the railways and that great system of irrigation canals which the malignant73 section of the patriots74 had destroyed, were in a state of peculiar75 distress, whole villages lay dead together, no man heeding76, and the very tigers and panthers that preyed78 upon the emaciated79 survivors80 crawled back infected into the jungle to perish. Large areas of China were a prey77 to brigand81 bands. . . .
It is a remarkable82 thing that no complete contemporary account of the explosion of the atomic bombs survives. There are, of course, innumerable allusions83 and partial records, and it is from these that subsequent ages must piece together the image of these devastations.
The phenomena84, it must be remembered, changed greatly from day to day, and even from hour to hour, as the exploding bomb shifted its position, threw off fragments or came into contact with water or a fresh texture85 of soil. Barnet, who came within forty miles of Paris early in October, is concerned chiefly with his account of the social confusion of the country-side and the problems of his command, but he speaks of heaped cloud masses of steam. ‘All along the sky to the south-west’ and of a red glare beneath these at night. Parts of Paris were still burning, and numbers of people were camped in the fields even at this distance watching over treasured heaps of salvaged86 loot. He speaks too of the distant rumbling87 of the explosion —‘like trains going over iron bridges.’
Other descriptions agree with this; they all speak of the ‘continuous reverberations,’ or of the ‘thudding and hammering,’ or some such phrase; and they all testify to a huge pall89 of steam, from which rain would fall suddenly in torrents90 and amidst which lightning played. Drawing nearer to Paris an observer would have found the salvage camps increasing in number and blocking up the villages, and large numbers of people, often starving and ailing91, camping under improvised92 tents because there was no place for them to go. The sky became more and more densely93 overcast94 until at last it blotted95 out the light of day and left nothing but a dull red glare ‘extraordinarily depressing to the spirit.’ In this dull glare, great numbers of people were still living, clinging to their houses and in many cases subsisting96 in a state of partial famine upon the produce in their gardens and the stores in the shops of the provision dealers97.
Coming in still closer, the investigator98 would have reached the police cordon99, which was trying to check the desperate enterprise of those who would return to their homes or rescue their more valuable possessions within the ‘zone of imminent100 danger.’
That zone was rather arbitrarily defined. If our spectator could have got permission to enter it, he would have entered also a zone of uproar101, a zone of perpetual thunderings, lit by a strange purplish-red light, and quivering and swaying with the incessant102 explosion of the radio-active substance. Whole blocks of buildings were alight and burning fiercely, the trembling, ragged103 flames looking pale and ghastly and attenuated104 in comparison with the full-bodied crimson105 glare beyond. The shells of other edifices106 already burnt rose, pierced by rows of window sockets107 against the red-lit mist.
Every step farther would have been as dangerous as a descent within the crater108 of an active volcano. These spinning, boiling bomb centres would shift or break unexpectedly into new regions, great fragments of earth or drain or masonry109 suddenly caught by a jet of disruptive force might come flying by the explorer’s head, or the ground yawn a fiery110 grave beneath his feet. Few who adventured into these areas of destruction and survived attempted any repetition of their experiences. There are stories of puffs111 of luminous112, radio-active vapour drifting sometimes scores of miles from the bomb centre and killing113 and scorching114 all they overtook. And the first conflagrations115 from the Paris centre spread westward116 half-way to the sea.
Moreover, the air in this infernal inner circle of red-lit ruins had a peculiar dryness and a blistering117 quality, so that it set up a soreness of the skin and lungs that was very difficult to heal. . . .
Such was the last state of Paris, and such on a larger scale was the condition of affairs in Chicago, and the same fate had overtaken Berlin, Moscow, Tokio, the eastern half of London, Toulon, Kiel, and two hundred and eighteen other centres of population or armament. Each was a flaming centre of radiant destruction that only time could quench118, that indeed in many instances time has still to quench. To this day, though indeed with a constantly diminishing uproar and vigour119, these explosions continue. In the map of nearly every country of the world three or four or more red circles, a score of miles in diameter, mark the position of the dying atomic bombs and the death areas that men have been forced to abandon around them. Within these areas perished museums, cathedrals, palaces, libraries, galleries of masterpieces, and a vast accumulation of human achievement, whose charred120 remains121 lie buried, a legacy122 of curious material that only future generations may hope to examine. . . .
4
The state of mind of the dispossessed urban population which swarmed123 and perished so abundantly over the country-side during the dark days of the autumnal months that followed the Last War, was one of blank despair. Barnet gives sketch after sketch of groups of these people, camped among the vineyards of Champagne124, as he saw them during his period of service with the army of pacification125.
There was, for example, that ‘man-milliner’ who came out from a field beside the road that rises up eastward126 out of Epernay, and asked how things were going in Paris. He was, says Barnet, a round-faced man, dressed very neatly127 in black — so neatly that it was amazing to discover he was living close at hand in a tent made of carpets — and he had ‘an urbane128 but insistent129 manner,’ a carefully trimmed moustache and beard, expressive130 eyebrows131, and hair very neatly brushed.
‘No one goes into Paris,’ said Barnet.
‘But, Monsieur, that is very unenterprising,’ the man by the wayside submitted.
‘The danger is too great. The radiations eat into people’s skins.’
The eyebrows protested. ‘But is nothing to be done?’
‘Nothing can be done.’
‘But, Monsieur, it is extraordinarily inconvenient132, this living in exile and waiting. My wife and my little boy suffer extremely. There is a lack of amenity133. And the season advances. I say nothing of the expense and difficulty in obtaining provisions. . . . When does Monsieur think that something will be done to render Paris — possible?’
Barnet considered his interlocutor.
‘I’m told,’ said Barnet, ‘that Paris is not likely to be possible again for several generations.’
‘Oh! but this is preposterous134! Consider, Monsieur! What are people like ourselves to do in the meanwhile? I am a costumier. All my connections and interests, above all my style, demand Paris . . . .’
Barnet considered the sky, from which a light rain was beginning to fall, the wide fields about them from which the harvest had been taken, the trimmed poplars by the wayside.
‘Naturally,’ he agreed, ‘you want to go to Paris. But Paris is over.’
‘Over!’
‘Finished.’
‘But then, Monsieur — what is to become — of ME?’
Barnet turned his face westward, whither the white road led.
‘Where else, for example, may I hope to find — opportunity?’
Barnet made no reply.
‘Perhaps on the Riviera. Or at some such place as Homburg. Or some plague perhaps.’
‘All that,’ said Barnet, accepting for the first time facts that had lain evident in his mind for weeks; ‘all that must be over, too.’
There was a pause. Then the voice beside him broke out. ‘But, Monsieur, it is impossible! It leaves — nothing.’
‘No. Not very much.’
‘One cannot suddenly begin to grow potatoes!’
‘It would be good if Monsieur could bring himself ——’
‘To the life of a peasant! And my wife —— You do not know the distinguished135 delicacy136 of my wife, a refined helplessness, a peculiar dependent charm. Like some slender tropical creeper — with great white flowers. . . . But all this is foolish talk. It is impossible that Paris, which has survived so many misfortunes, should not presently revive.’
‘I do not think it will ever revive. Paris is finished. London, too, I am told — Berlin. All the great capitals were stricken. . . . ’
‘But ——! Monsieur must permit me to differ.’
‘It is so.’
‘It is impossible. Civilisations do not end in this manner. Mankind will insist.’
‘On Paris?’
‘On Paris.’
‘Monsieur, you might as well hope to go down the Maelstrom137 and resume business there.’
‘I am content, Monsieur, with my own faith.’
‘The winter comes on. Would not Monsieur be wiser to seek a house?’
‘Farther from Paris? No, Monsieur. But it is not possible, Monsieur, what you say, and you are under a tremendous mistake. . . . Indeed you are in error. . . . I asked merely for information. . . . ’
‘When last I saw him,’ said Barnet, ‘he was standing35 under the signpost at the crest139 of the hill, gazing wistfully, yet it seemed to me a little doubtfully, now towards Paris, and altogether heedless of a drizzling140 rain that was wetting him through and through. . . . ’
5
This effect of chill dismay, of a doom141 as yet imperfectly apprehended142 deepens as Barnet’s record passes on to tell of the approach of winter. It was too much for the great mass of those unwilling143 and incompetent144 nomads145 to realise that an age had ended, that the old help and guidance existed no longer, that times would not mend again, however patiently they held out. They were still in many cases looking to Paris when the first snowflakes of that pitiless January came swirling146 about them. The story grows grimmer. . . .
If it is less monstrously147 tragic after Barnet’s return to England, it is, if anything, harder. England was a spectacle of fear-embittered householders, hiding food, crushing out robbery, driving the starving wanderers from every faltering148 place upon the roads lest they should die inconveniently149 and reproachfully on the doorsteps of those who had failed to urge them onward150. . . .
The remnants of the British troops left France finally in March, after urgent representations from the provisional government at Orleans that they could be supported no longer. They seem to have been a fairly well-behaved, but highly parasitic151 force throughout, though Barnet is clearly of opinion that they did much to suppress sporadic152 brigandage153 and maintain social order. He came home to a famine-stricken country, and his picture of the England of that spring is one of miserable154 patience and desperate expedients155. The country was suffering much more than France, because of the cessation of the overseas supplies on which it had hitherto relied. His troops were given bread, dried fish, and boiled nettles156 at Dover, and marched inland to Ashford and paid off. On the way thither157 they saw four men hanging from the telegraph posts by the roadside, who had been hung for stealing swedes. The labour refuges of Kent, he discovered, were feeding their crowds of casual wanderers on bread into which clay and sawdust had been mixed. In Surrey there was a shortage of even such fare as that. He himself struck across country to Winchester, fearing to approach the bomb-poisoned district round London, and at Winchester he had the luck to be taken on as one of the wireless158 assistants at the central station and given regular rations31. The station stood in a commanding position on the chalk hill that overlooks the town from the east. . . .
Thence he must have assisted in the transmission of the endless cipher159 messages that preceded the gathering at Brissago, and there it was that the Brissago proclamation of the end of the war and the establishment of a world government came under his hands.
He was feeling ill and apathetic160 that day, and he did not realise what it was he was transcribing161. He did it mechanically, as a part of his tedious duty.
Afterwards there came a rush of messages arising out of the declaration that strained him very much, and in the evening when he was relieved, he ate his scanty162 supper and then went out upon the little balcony before the station, to smoke and rest his brains after this sudden and as yet inexplicable163 press of duty. It was a very beautiful, still evening. He fell talking to a fellow operator, and for the first time, he declares, ‘I began to understand what it was all about. I began to see just what enormous issues had been under my hands for the past four hours. But I became incredulous after my first stimulation164. “This is some sort of Bunkum,” I said very sagely165.
‘My colleague was more hopeful. “It means an end to bomb-throwing and destruction,” he said. “It means that presently corn will come from America.”
‘“Who is going to send corn when there is no more value in money?” I asked.
‘Suddenly we were startled by a clashing from the town below. The cathedral bells, which had been silent ever since I had come into the district, were beginning, with a sort of rheumatic difficulty, to ring. Presently they warmed a little to the work, and we realised what was going on. They were ringing a peal166. We listened with an unbelieving astonishment167 and looking into each other’s yellow faces.
‘“They mean it,” said my colleague.
‘“But what can they do now?” I asked. “Everything is broken down. . . . ”’
And on that sentence, with an unexpected artistry, Barnet abruptly168 ends his story.
6
From the first the new government handled affairs with a certain greatness of spirit. Indeed, it was inevitable169 that they should act greatly. From the first they had to see the round globe as one problem; it was impossible any longer to deal with it piece by piece. They had to secure it universally from any fresh outbreak of atomic destruction, and they had to ensure a permanent and universal pacification. On this capacity to grasp and wield170 the whole round globe their existence depended. There was no scope for any further performance.
So soon as the seizure171 of the existing supplies of atomic ammunition172 and the apparatus for synthesising Carolinum was assured, the disbanding or social utilisation of the various masses of troops still under arms had to be arranged, the salvation173 of the year’s harvests, and the feeding, housing, and employment of the drifting millions of homeless people. In Canada, in South America, and Asiatic Russia there were vast accumulations of provision that was immovable only because of the breakdown174 of the monetary175 and credit systems. These had to be brought into the famine districts very speedily if entire depopulation was to be avoided, and their transportation and the revival176 of communications generally absorbed a certain proportion of the soldiery and more able unemployed178. The task of housing assumed gigantic dimensions, and from building camps the housing committee of the council speedily passed to constructions of a more permanent type. They found far less friction179 than might have been expected in turning the loose population on their hands to these things. People were extraordinarily tamed by that year of suffering and death; they were disillusioned180 of their traditions, bereft181 of once obstinate182 prejudices; they felt foreign in a strange world, and ready to follow any confident leadership. The orders of the new government came with the best of all credentials183, rations. The people everywhere were as easy to control, one of the old labour experts who had survived until the new time witnesses, ‘as gangs of emigrant184 workers in a new land.’ And now it was that the social possibilities of the atomic energy began to appear. The new machinery185 that had come into existence before the last wars increased and multiplied, and the council found itself not only with millions of hands at its disposal but with power and apparatus that made its first conceptions of the work it had to do seem pitifully timid. The camps that were planned in iron and deal were built in stone and brass186; the roads that were to have been mere138 iron tracks became spacious187 ways that insisted upon architecture; the cultivations of foodstuffs189 that were to have supplied emergency rations, were presently, with synthesisers, fertilisers, actinic light, and scientific direction, in excess of every human need.
The government had begun with the idea of temporarily reconstituting the social and economic system that had prevailed before the first coming of the atomic engine, because it was to this system that the ideas and habits of the great mass of the world’s dispossessed population was adapted. Subsequent rearrangement it had hoped to leave to its successors — whoever they might be. But this, it became more and more manifest, was absolutely impossible. As well might the council have proposed a revival of slavery. The capitalist system had already been smashed beyond repair by the onset190 of limitless gold and energy; it fell to pieces at the first endeavour to stand it up again. Already before the war half of the industrial class had been out of work, the attempt to put them back into wages employment on the old lines was futile191 from the outset — the absolute shattering of the currency system alone would have been sufficient to prevent that, and it was necessary therefore to take over the housing, feeding, and clothing of this worldwide multitude without exacting192 any return in labour whatever. In a little while the mere absence of occupation for so great a multitude of people everywhere became an evident social danger, and the government was obliged to resort to such devices as simple decorative193 work in wood and stone, the manufacture of hand-woven textiles, fruit-growing, flower-growing, and landscape gardening on a grand scale to keep the less adaptable194 out of mischief195, and of paying wages to the younger adults for attendance at schools that would equip them to use the new atomic machinery. . . . So quite insensibly the council drifted into a complete reorganisation of urban and industrial life, and indeed of the entire social system.
Ideas that are unhampered by political intrigue196 or financial considerations have a sweeping197 way with them, and before a year was out the records of the council show clearly that it was rising to its enormous opportunity, and partly through its own direct control and partly through a series of specific committees, it was planning a new common social order for the entire population of the earth. ‘There can be no real social stability or any general human happiness while large areas of the world and large classes of people are in a phase of civilisation different from the prevailing198 mass. It is impossible now to have great blocks of population misunderstanding the generally accepted social purpose or at an economic disadvantage to the rest.’ So the council expressed its conception of the problem it had to solve. The peasant, the field-worker, and all barbaric cultivators were at an ‘economic disadvantage’ to the more mobile and educated classes, and the logic of the situation compelled the council to take up systematically199 the supersession201 of this stratum202 by a more efficient organisation of production. It developed a scheme for the progressive establishment throughout the world of the ‘modern system’ in agriculture, a system that should give the full advantages of a civilised life to every agricultural worker, and this replacement203 has been going on right up to the present day. The central idea of the modern system is the substitution of cultivating guilds204 for the individual cultivator, and for cottage and village life altogether. These guilds are associations of men and women who take over areas of arable or pasture land, and make themselves responsible for a certain average produce. They are bodies small enough as a rule to be run on a strictly206 democratic basis, and large enough to supply all the labour, except for a certain assistance from townspeople during the harvest, needed upon the land farmed. They have watchers’ bungalows207 or chalets on the ground cultivated, but the ease and the costlessness of modern locomotion208 enables them to maintain a group of residences in the nearest town with a common dining-room and club house, and usually also a guild205 house in the national or provincial209 capital. Already this system has abolished a distinctively211 ‘rustic’ population throughout vast areas of the old world, where it has prevailed immemorially. That shy, unstimulated life of the lonely hovel, the narrow scandals and petty spites and persecutions of the small village, that hoarding212, half inanimate existence away from books, thought, or social participation213 and in constant contact with cattle, pigs, poultry214, and their excrement215, is passing away out of human experience. In a little while it will be gone altogether. In the nineteenth century it had already ceased to be a necessary human state, and only the absence of any collective intelligence and an imagined need for tough and unintelligent soldiers and for a prolific216 class at a low level, prevented its systematic200 replacement at that time. . . .
And while this settlement of the country was in progress, the urban camps of the first phase of the council’s activities were rapidly developing, partly through the inherent forces of the situation and partly through the council’s direction, into a modern type of town. . . .
7
It is characteristic of the manner in which large enterprises forced themselves upon the Brissago council, that it was not until the end of the first year of their administration and then only with extreme reluctance217 that they would take up the manifest need for a lingua franca for the world. They seem to have given little attention to the various theoretical universal languages which were proposed to them. They wished to give as little trouble to hasty and simple people as possible, and the world-wide alstribution of English gave them a bias218 for it from the beginning. The extreme simplicity of its grammar was also in its favour.
It was not without some sacrifices that the English-speaking peoples were permitted the satisfaction of hearing their speech used universally. The language was shorn of a number of grammatical peculiarities219, the distinctive210 forms for the subjunctive mood for example and most of its irregular plurals220 were abolished; its spelling was systematised and adapted to the vowel221 sounds in use upon the continent of Europe, and a process of incorporating foreign nouns and verbs commenced that speedily reached enormous proportions. Within ten years from the establishment of the World Republic the New English Dictionary had swelled222 to include a vocabulary of 250,000 words, and a man of 1900 would have found considerable difficulty in reading an ordinary newspaper. On the other hand, the men of the new time could still appreciate the older English literature. . . . Certain minor223 acts of uniformity accompanied this larger one. The idea of a common understanding and a general simplification of intercourse224 once it was accepted led very naturally to the universal establishment of the metric system of weights and measures, and to the disappearance225 of the various makeshift calendars that had hitherto confused chronology. The year was divided into thirteen months of four weeks each, and New Year’s Day and Leap Year’s Day were made holidays, and did not count at all in the ordinary week. So the weeks and the months were brought into correspondence. And moreover, as the king put it to Firmin, it was decided226 to ‘nail down Easter.’ . . . In these matters, as in so many matters, the new civilisation came as a simplification of ancient complications; the history of the calendar throughout the world is a history of inadequate227 adjustments, of attempts to fix seed-time and midwinter that go back into the very beginning of human society; and this final rectification228 had a symbolic229 value quite beyond its practical convenience. But the council would have no rash nor harsh innovations, no strange names for the months, and no alteration230 in the numbering of the years.
The world had already been put upon one universal monetary basis. For some months after the accession of the council, the world’s affairs had been carried on without any sound currency at all. Over great regions money was still in use, but with the most extravagant231 variations in price and the most disconcerting fluctuations232 of public confidence. The ancient rarity of gold upon which the entire system rested was gone. Gold was now a waste product in the release of atomic energy, and it was plain that no metal could be the basis of the monetary system again. Henceforth all coins must be token coins. Yet the whole world was accustomed to metallic233 money, and a vast proportion of existing human relationships had grown up upon a cash basis, and were almost inconceivable without that convenient liquidating234 factor. It seemed absolutely necessary to the life of the social organisation to have some sort of currency, and the council had therefore to discover some real value upon which to rest it. Various such apparently235 stable values as land and hours of work were considered. Ultimately the government, which was now in possession of most of the supplies of energy-releasing material, fixed236 a certain number of units of energy as the value of a gold sovereign, declared a sovereign to be worth exactly twenty marks, twenty-five francs, five dollars, and so forth, with the other current units of the world, and undertook, under various qualifications and conditions, to deliver energy upon demand as payment for every sovereign presented. On the whole, this worked satisfactorily. They saved the face of the pound sterling237. Coin was rehabilitated238, and after a phase of price fluctuations, began to settle down to definite equivalents and uses again, with names and everyday values familiar to the common run of people. . . .
8
As the Brissago council came to realise that what it had supposed to be temporary camps of refugees were rapidly developing into great towns of a new type, and that it was remoulding the world in spite of itself, it decided to place this work of redistributing the non-agricultural population in the hands of a compactor and better qualified239 special committee. That committee is now, far more than the council of any other of its delegated committees, the active government of the world. Developed from an almost invisible germ of ‘town-planning’ that came obscurely into existence in Europe or America (the question is still in dispute) somewhere in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, its work, the continual active planning and replanning of the world as a place of human habitation, is now so to speak the collective material activity of the race. The spontaneous, disorderly spreadings and recessions of populations, as aimless and mechanical as the trickling240 of spilt water, which was the substance of history for endless years, giving rise here to congestions, here to chronic241 devastating242 wars, and everywhere to a discomfort243 and disorderliness that was at its best only picturesque244, is at an end. Men spread now, with the whole power of the race to aid them, into every available region of the earth. Their cities are no longer tethered to running water and the proximity245 of cultivation188, their plans are no longer affected246 by strategic considerations or thoughts of social insecurity. The aeroplane and the nearly costless mobile car have abolished trade routes; a common language and a universal law have abolished a thousand restraining inconveniences, and so an astonishing dispersal of habitations has begun. One may live anywhere. And so it is that our cities now are true social gatherings247, each with a character of its own and distinctive interests of its own, and most of them with a common occupation. They lie out in the former deserts, these long wasted sun-baths of the race, they tower amidst eternal snows, they hide in remote islands, and bask248 on broad lagoons249. For a time the whole tendency of mankind was to desert the river valleys in which the race had been cradled for half a million years, but now that the War against Flies has been waged so successfully that this pestilential branch of life is nearly extinct, they are returning thither with a renewed appetite for gardens laced by watercourses, for pleasant living amidst islands and houseboats and bridges, and for nocturnal lanterns reflected by the sea.
Man who is ceasing to be an agricultural animal becomes more and more a builder, a traveller, and a maker250. How much he ceases to be a cultivator of the soil the returns of the Redistribution Committee showed. Every year the work of our scientific laboratories increases the productivity and simplifies the labour of those who work upon the soil, and the food now of the whole world is produced by less than one per cent. of its population, a percentage which still tends to decrease. Far fewer people are needed upon the land than training and proclivity251 dispose towards it, and as a consequence of this excess of human attention, the garden side of life, the creation of groves252 and lawns and vast regions of beautiful flowers, has expanded enormously and continues to expand. For, as agricultural method intensifies254 and the quota255 is raised, one farm association after another, availing itself of the 1975 regulations, elects to produce a public garden and pleasaunce in the place of its former fields, and the area of freedom and beauty is increased. And the chemists’ triumphs of synthesis, which could now give us an entirely256 artificial food, remain largely in abeyance257 because it is so much more pleasant and interesting to eat natural produce and to grow such things upon the soil. Each year adds to the variety of our fruits and the delightfulness258 of our flowers.
9
The early years of the World Republic witnessed a certain recrudescence of political adventure. There was, it is rather curious to note, no revival of separatism after the face of King Ferdinand Charles had vanished from the sight of men, but in a number of countries, as the first urgent physical needs were met, there appeared a variety of personalities having this in common, that they sought to revive political trouble and clamber by its aid to positions of importance and satisfaction. In no case did they speak in the name of kings, and it is clear that monarchy259 must have been far gone in obsolescence260 before the twentieth century began, but they made appeals to the large survivals of nationalist and racial feeling that were everywhere to be found, they alleged261 with considerable justice that the council was overriding262 racial and national customs and disregarding religious rules. The great plain of India was particularly prolific in such agitators263. The revival of newspapers, which had largely ceased during the terrible year because of the dislocation of the coinage, gave a vehicle and a method of organisation to these complaints. At first the council disregarded this developing opposition, and then it recognised it with an entirely devastating frankness.
Never, of course, had there been so provisional a government. It was of an extravagant illegality. It was, indeed, hardly more than a club, a club of about a hundred persons. At the outset there were ninety-three, and these were increased afterwards by the issue of invitations which more than balanced its deaths, to as many at one time as one hundred and nineteen. Always its constitution has been miscellaneous. At no time were these invitations issued with an admission that they recognised a right. The old institution or monarchy had come out unexpectedly well in the light of the new regime. Nine of the original members of the first government were crowned heads who had resigned their separate sovereignty, and at no time afterwards did the number of its royal members sink below six. In their case there was perhaps a kind of attenuated claim to rule, but except for them and the still more infinitesimal pretensions264 of one or two ax-presidents of republics, no member of the council had even the shade of a right to his participation in its power. It was natural, therefore, that its opponents should find a common ground in a clamour for representative government, and build high hopes upon a return, to parliamentary institutions.
The council decided to give them everything they wanted, but in a form that suited ill with their aspirations265. It became at one stroke a representative body. It became, indeed, magnificently representative. It became so representative that the politicians were drowned in a deluge of votes. Every adult of either sex from pole to pole was given a vote, and the world was divided into ten constituencies, which voted on the same day by means of a simple modification266 of the world post. Membership of the government, it was decided, must be for life, save in the exceptional case of a recall; but the elections, which were held quinquenially, were arranged to add fifty members on each occasion. The method of proportional representation with one transferable vote was adopted, and the voter might also write upon his voting paper in a specially267 marked space, the name of any of his representatives that he wished to recall. A ruler was recallable by as many votes as the quota by which he had been elected, and the original members by as many votes in any constituency as the returning quotas268 in the first election.
Upon these conditions the council submitted itself very cheerfully to the suffrages269 of the world. None of its members were recalled, and its fifty new associates, which included twenty-seven which it had seen fit to recommend, were of an altogether too miscellaneous quality to disturb the broad trend of its policy. Its freedom from rules or formalities prevented any obstructive proceedings, and when one of the two newly arrived Home Rule members for India sought for information how to bring in a bill, they learnt simply that bills were not brought in. They asked for the speaker, and were privileged to hear much ripe wisdom from the ex-king Egbert, who was now consciously among the seniors of the gathering. Thereafter they were baffled men. . . .
But already by that time the work of the council was drawing to an end. It was concerned not so much for the continuation of its construction as for the preservation270 of its accomplished work from the dramatic instincts of the politician.
The life of the race becomes indeed more and more independent of the formal government. The council, in its opening phase, was heroic in spirit; a dragon-slaying body, it slashed271 out of existence a vast, knotted tangle272 of obsolete273 ideas and clumsy and jealous proprietorships; it secured by a noble system of institutional precautions, freedom of inquiry275, freedom of criticism, free communications, a common basis of education and understanding, and freedom from economic oppression. With that its creative task was accomplished. It became more and more an established security and less and less an active intervention276. There is nothing in our time to correspond with the continual petty making and entangling277 of laws in an atmosphere of contention278 that is perhaps the most perplexing aspect of constitutional history in the nineteenth century. In that age they seem to have been perpetually making laws when we should alter regulations. The work of change which we delegate to these scientific committees of specific general direction which have the special knowledge needed, and which are themselves dominated by the broad intellectual process of the community, was in those days inextricably mixed up with legislation. They fought over the details; we should as soon think of fighting over the arrangement of the parts of a machine. We know nowadays that such things go on best within laws, as life goes on between earth and sky. And so it is that government gathers now for a day or so in each year under the sunshine of Brissago when Saint Bruno’s lilies are in flower, and does little more than bless the work of its committees. And even these committees are less originative and more expressive of the general thought than they were at first. It becomes difficult to mark out the particular directive personalities of the world. Continually we are less personal. Every good thought contributes now, and every able brain falls within that informal and dispersed279 kingship which gathers together into one purpose the energies of the race.
10
It is doubtful if we shall ever see again a phase of human existence in which ‘politics,’ that is to say a partisan280 interference with the ruling sanities of the world, will be the dominant281 interest among serious men. We seem to have entered upon an entirely new phase in history in which contention as distinguished from rivalry282, has almost abruptly ceased to be the usual occupation, and has become at most a subdued and hidden and discredited283 thing. Contentious284 professions cease to be an honourable285 employment for men. The peace between nations is also a peace between individuals. We live in a world that comes of age. Man the warrior286, man the lawyer, and all the bickering287 aspects of life, pass into obscurity; the grave dreamers, man the curious learner, and man the creative artist, come forward to replace these barbaric aspects of existence by a less ignoble288 adventure.
There is no natural life of man. He is, and always has been, a sheath of varied289 and even incompatible possibilities, a palimpsest of inherited dispositions291. It was the habit of many writers in the early twentieth century to speak of competition and the narrow, private life of trade and saving and suspicious isolation292 as though such things were in some exceptional way proper to the human constitution, and as though openness of mind and a preference for achievement over possession were abnormal and rather unsubstantial qualities. How wrong that was the history of the decades immediately following the establishment of the world republic witnesses. Once the world was released from the hardening insecurities of a needless struggle for life that was collectively planless and individually absorbing, it became apparent that there was in the vast mass of people a long, smothered294 passion to make things. The world broke out into making, and at first mainly into aesthetic295 making. This phase of history, which has been not inaptly termed the ‘Efflorescence,’ is still, to a large extent, with us. The majority of our population consists of artists, and the bulk of activity in the world lies no longer with necessities but with their elaboration, decoration, and refinement296. There has been an evident change in the quality of this making during recent years. It becomes more purposeful than it was, losing something of its first elegance297 and prettiness and gaining in intensity298; but that is a change rather of hue299 than of nature. That comes with a deepening philosophy and a sounder education. For the first joyous300 exercises of fancy we perceive now the deliberation of a more constructive301 imagination. There is a natural order in these things, and art comes before science as the satisfaction of more elemental needs must come before art, and as play and pleasure come in a human life before the development of a settled purpose. . . .
For thousands of years this gathering impulse to creative work must have struggled in man against the limitations imposed upon him by his social ineptitude302. It was a long smouldering fire that flamed out at last in all these things. The evidence of a pathetic, perpetually thwarted304 urgency to make something, is one of the most touching305 aspects of the relics306 and records of our immediate293 ancestors. There exists still in the death area about the London bombs, a region of deserted307 small homes that furnish the most illuminating308 comment on the old state of affairs. These homes are entirely horrible, uniform, square, squat309, hideously310 proportioned, uncomfortable, dingy, and in some respects quite filthy, only people in complete despair of anything better could have lived in them, but to each is attached a ridiculous little rectangle of land called ‘the garden,’ containing usually a prop177 for drying clothes and a loathsome312 box of offal, the dustbin, full of egg-shells, cinders313, and such-like refuse. Now that one may go about this region in comparitive security — for the London radiations have dwindled314 to inconsiderable proportions — it is possible to trace in nearly every one of these gardens some effort to make. Here it is a poor little plank315 summer-house, here it is a ‘fountain’ of bricks and oyster-shells, here a ‘rockery,’ here a ‘workshop.’ And in the houses everywhere there are pitiful little decorations, clumsy models, feeble drawings. These efforts are almost incredibly inept303, like the drawings of blindfolded316 men, they are only one shade less harrowing to a sympathetic observer than the scratchings one finds upon the walls of the old prisons, but there they are, witnessing to the poor buried instincts that struggled up towards the light. That god of joyous expression our poor fathers ignorantly sought, our freedom has declared to us. . . .
In the old days the common ambition of every simple soul was to possess a little property, a patch of land, a house uncontrolled by others, an ‘independence’ as the English used to put it. And what made this desire for freedom and prosperity so strong, was very evidently the dream of self-expression, of doing something with it, of playing with it, of making a personal delightfulness, a distinctiveness317. Property was never more than a means to an end, nor avarice318 more than a perversion319. Men owned in order to do freely. Now that every one has his own apartments and his own privacy secure, this disposition290 to own has found its release in a new direction. Men study and save and strive that they may leave behind them a series of panels in some public arcade320, a row of carven figures along a terrace, a grove253, a pavilion. Or they give themselves to the penetration321 of some still opaque322 riddle323 in phenomena as once men gave themselves to the accumulation of riches. The work that was once the whole substance of social existence — for most men spent all their lives in earning a living — is now no more than was the burden upon one of those old climbers who carried knapsacks of provisions on their backs in order that they might ascend324 mountains. It matters little to the easy charities of our emancipated time that most people who have made their labour contribution produce neither new beauty nor new wisdom, but are simply busy about those pleasant activities and enjoyments325 that reassure326 them that they are alive. They help, it may be, by reception and reverberation88, and they hinder nothing. . . .
11
Now all this phase of gigantic change in the contours and appearances of human life which is going on about us, a change as rapid and as wonderful as the swift ripening327 of adolescence328 to manhood after the barbaric boyish years, is correlated with moral and mental changes at least as unprecedented329. It is not as if old things were going out of life and new things coming in, it is rather that the altered circumstances of men are making an appeal to elements in his nature that have hitherto been suppressed, and checking tendencies that have hitherto been over-stimulated and over-developed. He has not so much grown and altered his essential being as turned new aspects to the light. Such turnings round into a new attitude the world has seen on a less extensive scale before. The Highlanders of the seventeenth century, for example, were cruel and bloodthirsty robbers, in the nineteenth their descendants were conspicuously330 trusty and honourable men. There was not a people in Western Europe in the early twentieth century that seemed capable of hideous311 massacres331, and none that had not been guilty of them within the previous two centuries. The free, frank, kindly332, gentle life of the prosperous classes in any European country before the years of the last wars was in a different world of thought and feeling from that of the dingy, suspicious, secretive, and uncharitable existence of the respectable poor, or the constant personal violence, the squalor and naive333 passions of the lowest stratum. Yet there were no real differences of blood and inherent quality between these worlds; their differences were all in circumstances, suggestion, and habits of mind. And turning to more individual instances the constantly observed difference between one portion of a life and another consequent upon a religious conversion334, were a standing example of the versatile335 possibilities of human nature.
The catastrophe336 of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and businesses and economic relations shook them also out of their old established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them from the past. To borrow a word from the old-fashioned chemists, men were made nascent337; they were released from old ties; for good or evil they were ready for new associations. The council carried them forward for good; perhaps if his bombs had reached their destination King Ferdinand Charles might have carried them back to an endless chain of evils. But his task would have been a harder one than the council’s. The moral shock of the atomic bombs had been a profound one, and for a while the cunning side of the human animal was overpowered by its sincere realisation of the vital necessity for reconstruction338. The litigious and trading spirits cowered339 together, scared at their own consequences; men thought twice before they sought mean advantages in the face of the unusual eagerness to realise new aspirations, and when at last the weeds revived again and ‘claims’ began to sprout340, they sprouted341 upon the stony342 soil of law-courts reformed, of laws that pointed343 to the future instead of the past, and under the blazing sunshine of a transforming world. A new literature, a new interpretation344 of history were springing into existence, a new teaching was already in the schools, a new faith in the young. The worthy345 man who forestalled346 the building of a research city for the English upon the Sussex downs by buying up a series of estates, was dispossessed and laughed out of court when he made his demand for some preposterous compensation; the owner of the discredited Dass patents makes his last appearance upon the scroll347 of history as the insolvent348 proprietor274 of a paper called The Cry for Justice, in which he duns the world for a hundred million pounds. That was the ingenuous349 Dass’s idea of justice, that he ought to be paid about five million pounds annually350 because he had annexed351 the selvage of one of Holsten’s discoveries. Dass came at last to believe quite firmly in his right, and he died a victim of conspiracy352 mania353 in a private hospital at Nice. Both of these men would probably have ended their days enormously wealthy, and of course ennobled in the England of the opening twentieth century, and it is just this novelty of their fates that marks the quality of the new age.
The new government early discovered the need of a universal education to fit men to the great conceptions of its universal rule. It made no wrangling354 attacks on the local, racial, and sectarian forms of religious profession that at that time divided the earth into a patchwork355 of hatreds356 and distrusts; it left these organisations to make their peace with God in their own time; but it proclaimed as if it were a mere secular357 truth that sacrifice was expected from all, that respect had to be shown to all; it revived schools or set them up afresh all around the world, and everywhere these schools taught the history of war and the consequences and moral of the Last War; everywhere it was taught not as a sentiment but as a matter of fact that the salvation of the world from waste and contention was the common duty and occupation of all men and women. These things which are now the elementary commonplaces of human intercourse seemed to the councillors of Brissago, when first they dared to proclaim them, marvellously daring discoveries, not untouched by doubt, that flushed the cheek and fired the eye.
The council placed all this educational reconstruction in the hands of a committee of men and women, which did its work during the next few decades with remarkable breadth and effectiveness. This educational committee was, and is, the correlative upon the mental and spiritual side of the redistribution committee. And prominent upon it, and indeed for a time quite dominating it, was a Russian named Karenin, who was singular in being a congenital cripple. His body was bent358 so that he walked with difficulty, suffered much pain as he grew older, and had at last to undergo two operations. The second killed him. Already malformation, which was to be seen in every crowd during the middle ages so that the crippled beggar was, as it were, an essential feature of the human spectacle, was becoming a strange thing in the world. It had a curious effect upon Karenin’s colleagues; their feeling towards him was mingled359 with pity and a sense of inhumanity that it needed usage rather than reason to overcome. He had a strong face, with little bright brown eyes rather deeply sunken and a large resolute360 thin-lipped mouth. His skin was very yellow and wrinkled, and his hair iron gray. He was at all times an impatient and sometimes an angry man, but this was forgiven him because of the hot wire of suffering that was manifestly thrust through his being. At the end of his life his personal prestige was very great. To him far more than to any contemporary is it due that self-abnegation, self-identification with the world spirit, was made the basis of universal education. That general memorandum361 to the teachers which is the key-note of the modern educational system, was probably entirely his work.
‘Whosoever would save his soul shall lose it,’ he wrote. ‘That is the device upon the seal of this document, and the starting point of all we have to do. It is a mistake to regard it as anything but a plain statement of fact. It is the basis for your work. You have to teach self-forgetfulness, and everything else that you have to teach is contributory and subordinate to that end. Education is the release of man from self. You have to widen the horizons of your children, encourage and intensify362 their curiosity and their creative impulses, and cultivate and enlarge their sympathies. That is what you are for. Under your guidance and the suggestions you will bring to bear on them, they have to shed the old Adam of instinctive363 suspicions, hostilities364, and passions, and to find themselves again in the great being of the universe. The little circles of their egotisms have to be opened out until they become arcs in the sweep of the racial purpose. And this that you teach to others you must learn also sedulously365 yourselves. Philosophy, discovery, art, every sort of skill, every sort of service, love: these are the means of salvation from that narrow loneliness of desire, that brooding preoccupation with self and egotistical relationships, which is hell for the individual, treason to the race, and exile from God. . . . ’
12
As things round themselves off and accomplish themselves, one begins for the first time to see them clearly. From the perspectives of a new age one can look back upon the great and widening stream of literature with a complete understanding. Things link up that seemed disconnected, and things that were once condemned366 as harsh and aimless are seen to be but factors in the statement of a gigantic problem. An enormous bulk of the sincerer writing of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries falls together now into an unanticipated unanimity367; one sees it as a huge tissue of variations upon one theme, the conflict of human egotism and personal passion and narrow imaginations on the one hand, against the growing sense of wider necessities and a possible, more spacious life.
That conflict is in evidence in so early a work as Voltaire’s Candide, for example, in which the desire for justice as well as happiness beats against human contrariety and takes refuge at last in a forced and inconclusive contentment with little things. Candide was but one of the pioneers of a literature of uneasy complaint that was presently an innumerable multitude of books. The novels more particularly of the nineteenth century, if one excludes the mere story-tellers from our consideration, witness to this uneasy realisation of changes that call for effort and of the lack of that effort. In a thousand aspects, now tragically368, now comically, now with a funny affectation of divine detachment, a countless370 host of witnesses tell their story of lives fretting371 between dreams and limitations. Now one laughs, now one weeps, now one reads with a blank astonishment at this huge and almost unpremeditated record of how the growing human spirit, now warily372, now eagerly, now furiously, and always, as it seems, unsuccessfully, tried to adapt itself to the maddening misfit of its patched and ancient garments. And always in these books as one draws nearer to the heart of the matter there comes a disconcerting evasion373. It was the fantastic convention of the time that a writer should not touch upon religion. To do so was to rouse the jealous fury of the great multitude of professional religious teachers. It was permitted to state the discord374, but it was forbidden to glance at any possible reconciliation375. Religion was the privilege of the pulpit. . . .
It was not only from the novels that religion was omitted. It was ignored by the newspapers; it was pedantically376 disregarded in the discussion of business questions, it played a trivial and apologetic part in public affairs. And this was done not out of contempt but respect. The hold of the old religious organisations upon men’s respect was still enormous, so enormous that there seemed to be a quality of irreverence377 in applying religion to the developments of every day. This strange suspension of religion lasted over into the beginnings of the new age. It was the clear vision of Marcus Karenin much more than any other contemporary influence which brought it back into the texture of human life. He saw religion without hallucinations, without superstitious379 reverence378, as a common thing as necessary as food and air, as land and energy to the life of man and the well-being380 of the Republic. He saw that indeed it had already percolated381 away from the temples and hierarchies382 and symbols in which men had sought to imprison383 it, that it was already at work anonymously384 and obscurely in the universal acceptance of the greater state. He gave it clearer expression, rephrased it to the lights and perspectives of the new dawn. . . .
But if we return to our novels for our evidence of the spirit of the times it becomes evident as one reads them in their chronological385 order, so far as that is now ascertainable386, that as one comes to the latter nineteenth and the earlier twentieth century the writers are much more acutely aware of secular change than their predecessors387 were. The earlier novelists tried to show ‘life as it is,’ the latter showed life as it changes. More and more of their characters are engaged in adaptation to change or suffering from the effects of world changes. And as we come up to the time of the Last Wars, this newer conception of the everyday life as a reaction to an accelerated development is continually more manifest. Barnet’s book, which has served us so well, is frankly388 a picture of the world coming about like a ship that sails into the wind. Our later novelists give a vast gallery of individual conflicts in which old habits and customs, limited ideas, ungenerous temperaments389, and innate390 obsessions391 are pitted against this great opening out of life that has happened to us. They tell us of the feelings of old people who have been wrenched392 away from familiar surroundings, and how they have had to make peace with uncomfortable comforts and conveniences that are still strange to them. They give us the discord between the opening egotisms of youths and the ill-defined limitations of a changing social life. They tell of the universal struggle of jealousy to capture and cripple our souls, of romantic failures and tragical369 misconceptions of the trend of the world, of the spirit of adventure, and the urgency of curiosity, and how these serve the universal drift. And all their stories lead in the end either to happiness missed or happiness won, to disaster or salvation. The clearer their vision and the subtler their art, the more certainly do these novels tell of the possibility of salvation for all the world. For any road in life leads to religion for those upon it who will follow it far enough. . . .
It would have seemed a strange thing to the men of the former time that it should be an open question as it is to-day whether the world is wholly Christian393 or not Christian at all. But assuredly we have the spirit, and as surely have we left many temporary forms behind. Christianity was the first expression of world religion, the first complete repudiation394 of tribalism and war and disputation. That it fell presently into the ways of more ancient rituals cannot alter that. The common sense of mankind has toiled395 through two thousand years of chastening experience to find at last how sound a meaning attaches to the familiar phrases of the Christian faith. The scientific thinker as he widens out to the moral problems of the collective life, comes inevitably396 upon the words of Christ, and as inevitably does the Christian, as his thought grows clearer, arrive at the world republic. As for the claims of the sects397, as for the use of a name and successions, we live in a time that has shaken itself free from such claims and consistencies398.
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essentially
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organisation
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salvage
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wreckage
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jealousy
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monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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10
inhuman
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| adj.残忍的，不人道的，无人性的 | |
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11
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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12
equilibrium
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| n.平衡，均衡，相称，均势，平静 | |
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13
civilisation
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| n.文明，文化，开化，教化 | |
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14
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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15
precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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16
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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17
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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18
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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19
breach
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| n.违反，不履行；破裂；vt.冲破，攻破 | |
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20
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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21
clan
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| n.氏族，部落，宗族，家族，宗派 | |
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22
outstripped
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| v.做得比…更好，（在赛跑等中）超过( outstrip的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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23
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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24
imperatives
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| n.必要的事( imperative的名词复数 )；祈使语气；必须履行的责任 | |
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25
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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26
leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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27
medley
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| n.混合 | |
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28
seaport
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| n.海港，港口，港市 | |
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29
speculation
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| n.思索，沉思；猜测；投机 | |
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30
velocity
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| n.速度，速率 | |
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31
rations
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| 定量( ration的名词复数 )； 配给量； 正常量； 合理的量 | |
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32
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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33
trolleys
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| n.（两轮或四轮的）手推车( trolley的名词复数 )；装有脚轮的小台车；电车 | |
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34
illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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35
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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36
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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37
foresight
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| n.先见之明，深谋远虑 | |
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38
accentuate
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| v.着重，强调 | |
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39
personalities
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| n. 诽谤，（对某人容貌、性格等所进行的）人身攻击； 人身攻击；人格, 个性, 名人( personality的名词复数 ) | |
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40
inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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41
proceedings
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| n.进程，过程，议程；诉讼(程序)；公报 | |
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42
irritability
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| n.易怒 | |
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43
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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44
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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45
questionable
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| adj.可疑的，有问题的 | |
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46
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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47
memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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48
pokes
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| v.伸出( poke的第三人称单数 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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49
deluge
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| n./vt.洪水，暴雨，使泛滥 | |
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50
dispelled
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| v.驱散，赶跑( dispel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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51
emancipated
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| adj.被解放的，不受约束的v.解放某人（尤指摆脱政治、法律或社会的束缚）( emancipate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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52
antagonisms
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| 对抗，敌对( antagonism的名词复数 ) | |
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53
sufficiently
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| adv.足够地，充分地 | |
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54
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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55
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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56
distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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57
wildernesses
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| 荒野( wilderness的名词复数 )； 沙漠； （政治家）在野； 不再当政（或掌权） | |
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58
temperate
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| adj.温和的，温带的，自我克制的，不过分的 | |
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59
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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60
filthy
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| adj.卑劣的；恶劣的，肮脏的 | |
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61
swarming
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| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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62
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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63
pertinacity
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| n.执拗，顽固 | |
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64
continental
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| adj.大陆的，大陆性的，欧洲大陆的 | |
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65
backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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66
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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67
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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68
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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69
disastrously
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| ad.灾难性地 | |
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70
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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71
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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72
plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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73
malignant
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|
| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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74
patriots
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| 爱国者，爱国主义者( patriot的名词复数 ) | |
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75
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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76
heeding
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| v.听某人的劝告，听从( heed的现在分词 ) | |
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77
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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78
preyed
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|
| v.掠食( prey的过去式和过去分词 )；掠食；折磨；（人）靠欺诈为生 | |
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79
emaciated
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| adj.衰弱的，消瘦的 | |
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80
survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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81
brigand
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| n.土匪，强盗 | |
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82
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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83
allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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84
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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85
texture
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| n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理 | |
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86
salvaged
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| （从火灾、海难等中）抢救（某物）( salvage的过去式和过去分词 )； 回收利用（某物） | |
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87
rumbling
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| n. 隆隆声, 辘辘声 adj. 隆隆响的 动词rumble的现在分词 | |
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88
reverberation
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| 反响； 回响； 反射； 反射物 | |
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89
pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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90
torrents
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| n.倾注；奔流( torrent的名词复数 )；急流；爆发；连续不断 | |
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91
ailing
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| v.生病 | |
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92
improvised
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| a.即席而作的,即兴的 | |
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93
densely
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| ad.密集地；浓厚地 | |
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94
overcast
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|
| adj.阴天的，阴暗的，愁闷的；v.遮盖，（使）变暗，包边缝；n.覆盖，阴天 | |
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95
blotted
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| 涂污( blot的过去式和过去分词 )； （用吸墨纸）吸干 | |
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96
subsisting
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| v.（靠很少的钱或食物）维持生活，生存下去( subsist的现在分词 ) | |
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97
dealers
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| n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者 | |
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98
investigator
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| n.研究者，调查者，审查者 | |
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99
cordon
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| n.警戒线，哨兵线 | |
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100
imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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101
uproar
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| n.骚动，喧嚣，鼎沸 | |
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102
incessant
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| adj.不停的，连续的 | |
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103
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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104
attenuated
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| v.（使）变细( attenuate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）变薄；（使）变小；减弱 | |
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105
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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106
edifices
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| n.大建筑物( edifice的名词复数 ) | |
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107
sockets
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| n.套接字，使应用程序能够读写与收发通讯协定(protocol)与资料的程序( Socket的名词复数 )；孔( socket的名词复数 )；（电器上的）插口；托座；凹穴 | |
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108
crater
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| n.火山口，弹坑 | |
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109
masonry
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| n.砖土建筑；砖石 | |
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110
fiery
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| adj.燃烧着的，火红的；暴躁的；激烈的 | |
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111
puffs
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| n.吸( puff的名词复数 )；（烟斗或香烟的）一吸；一缕（烟、蒸汽等）；（呼吸或风的）呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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112
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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113
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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114
scorching
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| adj. 灼热的 | |
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115
conflagrations
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| n.大火（灾）( conflagration的名词复数 ) | |
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116
westward
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| n.西方，西部；adj.西方的，向西的；adv.向西 | |
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117
blistering
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| adj.酷热的；猛烈的；使起疱的；可恶的v.起水疱；起气泡；使受暴晒n.[涂料] 起泡 | |
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118
quench
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| vt.熄灭，扑灭；压制 | |
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119
vigour
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| （=vigor）n.智力，体力，精力 | |
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120
charred
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| v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦 | |
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121
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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122
legacy
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| n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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123
swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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124
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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125
pacification
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| n. 讲和，绥靖，平定 | |
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126
eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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127
neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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128
urbane
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| adj.温文尔雅的，懂礼的 | |
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129
insistent
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| adj.迫切的，坚持的 | |
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130
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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131
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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132
inconvenient
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| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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133
amenity
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| n.pl.生活福利设施，文娱康乐场所；（不可数）愉快，适意 | |
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134
preposterous
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| adj.荒谬的，可笑的 | |
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135
distinguished
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| adj.卓越的，杰出的，著名的 | |
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136
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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137
maelstrom
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| n.大乱动；大漩涡 | |
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138
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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139
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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140
drizzling
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| 下蒙蒙细雨，下毛毛雨( drizzle的现在分词 ) | |
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141
doom
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| n.厄运，劫数；v.注定，命定 | |
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142
apprehended
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| 逮捕，拘押( apprehend的过去式和过去分词 )； 理解 | |
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143
unwilling
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| adj.不情愿的 | |
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144
incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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145
nomads
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| n.游牧部落的一员( nomad的名词复数 )；流浪者；游牧生活；流浪生活 | |
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146
swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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147
monstrously
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148
faltering
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| 犹豫的，支吾的，蹒跚的 | |
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149
inconveniently
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| ad.不方便地 | |
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150
onward
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|
| adj.向前的，前进的；adv.向前，前进，在先 | |
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151
parasitic
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| adj.寄生的 | |
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152
sporadic
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|
| adj.偶尔发生的 [反]regular；分散的 | |
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153
brigandage
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| n.抢劫；盗窃；土匪；强盗 | |
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154
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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155
expedients
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| n.应急有效的，权宜之计的( expedient的名词复数 ) | |
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156
nettles
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| n.荨麻( nettle的名词复数 ) | |
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157
thither
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| adv.向那里；adj.在那边的，对岸的 | |
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158
wireless
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| adj.无线的；n.无线电 | |
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159
cipher
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| n.零；无影响力的人；密码 | |
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160
apathetic
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| adj.冷漠的，无动于衷的 | |
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161
transcribing
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|
| （用不同的录音手段）转录( transcribe的现在分词 )； 改编（乐曲）（以适应他种乐器或声部）； 抄写； 用音标标出（声音） | |
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162
scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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163
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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164
stimulation
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| n.刺激，激励，鼓舞 | |
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165
sagely
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| adv. 贤能地，贤明地 | |
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166
peal
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| n.钟声；v.鸣响 | |
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167
astonishment
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|
| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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168
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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169
inevitable
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|
| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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170
wield
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| vt.行使，运用，支配；挥，使用(武器等) | |
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171
seizure
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| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
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172
ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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173
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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174
breakdown
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| n.垮，衰竭；损坏，故障，倒塌 | |
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175
monetary
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| adj.货币的，钱的；通货的；金融的；财政的 | |
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176
revival
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| n.复兴，复苏，（精力、活力等的）重振 | |
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177
prop
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| vt.支撑；n.支柱，支撑物；支持者，靠山 | |
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178
unemployed
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|
| adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的 | |
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179
friction
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| n.摩擦，摩擦力 | |
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180
disillusioned
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| a.不再抱幻想的，大失所望的，幻想破灭的 | |
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181
bereft
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| adj.被剥夺的 | |
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182
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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183
credentials
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| n.证明，资格，证明书，证件 | |
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184
emigrant
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| adj.移居的，移民的；n.移居外国的人，移民 | |
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185
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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186
brass
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|
| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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187
spacious
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| adj.广阔的，宽敞的 | |
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188
cultivation
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|
| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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189
foodstuffs
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| 食物，食品( foodstuff的名词复数 ) | |
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190
onset
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| n.进攻，袭击，开始，突然开始 | |
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191
futile
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|
| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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192
exacting
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| adj.苛求的，要求严格的 | |
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193
decorative
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|
| adj.装饰的，可作装饰的 | |
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194
adaptable
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|
| adj.能适应的，适应性强的，可改编的 | |
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195
mischief
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|
| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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196
intrigue
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|
| vt.激起兴趣，迷住；vi.耍阴谋；n.阴谋，密谋 | |
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197
sweeping
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|
| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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198
prevailing
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|
| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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199
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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200
systematic
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|
| adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的 | |
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201
supersession
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| 取代，废弃； 代谢 | |
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202
stratum
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| n.地层，社会阶层 | |
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203
replacement
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| n.取代，替换，交换；替代品，代用品 | |
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204
guilds
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| 行会，同业公会，协会( guild的名词复数 ) | |
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205
guild
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| n.行会，同业公会，协会 | |
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206
strictly
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|
| adv.严厉地，严格地；严密地 | |
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207
bungalows
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| n.平房( bungalow的名词复数 )；单层小屋，多于一层的小屋 | |
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208
locomotion
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| n.运动，移动 | |
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209
provincial
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|
| adj.省的，地方的；n．外省人，乡下人 | |
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210
distinctive
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|
| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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211
distinctively
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|
| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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212
hoarding
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|
| n.贮藏；积蓄；临时围墙；囤积v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的现在分词 ) | |
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213
participation
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| n.参与，参加，分享 | |
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214
poultry
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| n.家禽，禽肉 | |
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215
excrement
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| n.排泄物，粪便 | |
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216
prolific
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|
| adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的 | |
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217
reluctance
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|
| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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218
bias
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| n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见 | |
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219
peculiarities
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|
| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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220
plurals
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| n.复数，复数形式( plural的名词复数 ) | |
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221
vowel
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| n.元音；元音字母 | |
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222
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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223
minor
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| adj.较小(少)的，较次要的；n.辅修学科；vi.辅修 | |
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224
intercourse
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|
| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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225
disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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226
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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227
inadequate
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|
| adj.(for,to)不充足的，不适当的 | |
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228
rectification
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| n. 改正, 改订, 矫正 | |
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229
symbolic
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|
| adj.象征性的，符号的，象征主义的 | |
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230
alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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231
extravagant
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|
| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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232
fluctuations
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|
| 波动，涨落，起伏( fluctuation的名词复数 ) | |
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233
metallic
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|
| adj.金属的；金属制的；含金属的；产金属的；像金属的 | |
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234
liquidating
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|
| v.清算( liquidate的现在分词 )；清除（某人）；清偿；变卖 | |
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235
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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236
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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237
sterling
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|
| adj.英币的(纯粹的，货真价实的)；n.英国货币(英镑) | |
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238
rehabilitated
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|
| 改造（罪犯等）( rehabilitate的过去式和过去分词 )； 使恢复正常生活； 使恢复原状； 修复 | |
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239
qualified
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| adj.合格的，有资格的，胜任的，有限制的 | |
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240
trickling
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|
| n.油画底色含油太多而成泡沫状突起v.滴( trickle的现在分词 )；淌；使)慢慢走；缓慢移动 | |
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241
chronic
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| adj.(疾病)长期未愈的，慢性的；极坏的 | |
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242
devastating
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|
| adj.毁灭性的，令人震惊的，强有力的 | |
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243
discomfort
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| n.不舒服，不安，难过，困难，不方便 | |
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244
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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245
proximity
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| n.接近，邻近 | |
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246
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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247
gatherings
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| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
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248
bask
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|
| vt.取暖，晒太阳，沐浴于 | |
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249
lagoons
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|
| n.污水池( lagoon的名词复数 )；潟湖；（大湖或江河附近的）小而浅的淡水湖；温泉形成的池塘 | |
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250
maker
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| n.制造者，制造商 | |
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251
proclivity
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|
| n.倾向，癖性 | |
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252
groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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253
grove
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| n.林子，小树林，园林 | |
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254
intensifies
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|
| n.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的名词复数 )v.（使）增强， （使）加剧( intensify的第三人称单数 ) | |
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255
quota
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|
| n.（生产、进出口等的）配额，（移民的）限额 | |
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256
entirely
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|
| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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257
abeyance
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|
| n.搁置，缓办，中止，产权未定 | |
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258
delightfulness
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|
| n.delightful（令人高兴的，使人愉快的，给人快乐的，讨人喜欢的）的变形 | |
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259
monarchy
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| n.君主，最高统治者；君主政体，君主国 | |
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260
obsolescence
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| n.过时，陈旧，废弃 | |
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261
alleged
|
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| a.被指控的，嫌疑的 | |
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262
overriding
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| a.最主要的 | |
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263
agitators
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|
| n.（尤指政治变革的）鼓动者( agitator的名词复数 )；煽动者；搅拌器；搅拌机 | |
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264
pretensions
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| 自称( pretension的名词复数 )； 自命不凡； 要求； 权力 | |
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265
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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266
modification
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| n.修改，改进，缓和，减轻 | |
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267
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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268
quotas
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| （正式限定的）定量( quota的名词复数 )； 定额； 指标； 摊派 | |
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269
suffrages
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| （政治性选举的）选举权，投票权( suffrage的名词复数 ) | |
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270
preservation
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| n.保护，维护，保存，保留，保持 | |
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271
slashed
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| v.挥砍( slash的过去式和过去分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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272
tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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273
obsolete
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| adj.已废弃的，过时的 | |
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274
proprietor
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| n.所有人；业主；经营者 | |
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275
inquiry
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| n.打听，询问，调查，查问 | |
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276
intervention
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| n.介入，干涉，干预 | |
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277
entangling
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| v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的现在分词 ) | |
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278
contention
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| n.争论，争辩，论战；论点，主张 | |
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279
dispersed
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| adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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280
partisan
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| adj.党派性的；游击队的；n.游击队员；党徒 | |
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281
dominant
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|
| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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282
rivalry
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| n.竞争，竞赛，对抗 | |
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283
discredited
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| 不足信的，不名誉的 | |
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284
contentious
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| adj.好辩的，善争吵的 | |
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285
honourable
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|
| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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286
warrior
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|
| n.勇士，武士，斗士 | |
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287
bickering
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|
| v.争吵( bicker的现在分词 )；口角；（水等）作潺潺声；闪烁 | |
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288
ignoble
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|
| adj.不光彩的，卑鄙的；可耻的 | |
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289
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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290
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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291
dispositions
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|
| 安排( disposition的名词复数 )； 倾向； （财产、金钱的）处置； 气质 | |
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292
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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293
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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294
smothered
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|
| （使）窒息， （使）透不过气( smother的过去式和过去分词 )； 覆盖； 忍住； 抑制 | |
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295
aesthetic
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|
| adj.美学的，审美的，有美感 | |
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296
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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297
elegance
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|
| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
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298
intensity
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|
| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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299
hue
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|
| n.色度；色调；样子 | |
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300
joyous
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|
| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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301
constructive
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|
| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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302
ineptitude
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|
| n.不适当；愚笨，愚昧的言行 | |
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303
inept
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|
| adj.不恰当的，荒谬的，拙劣的 | |
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304
thwarted
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|
| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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305
touching
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|
| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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306
relics
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|
| [pl.］n.遗物，遗迹，遗产；遗体，尸骸 | |
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307
deserted
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|
| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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308
illuminating
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|
| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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309
squat
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|
| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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310
hideously
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|
| adv.可怕地，非常讨厌地 | |
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311
hideous
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|
| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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312
loathsome
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|
| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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313
cinders
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|
| n.煤渣( cinder的名词复数 )；炭渣；煤渣路；煤渣跑道 | |
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314
dwindled
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|
| v.逐渐变少或变小( dwindle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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315
plank
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|
| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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316
blindfolded
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|
| v.（尤指用布）挡住（某人）的视线( blindfold的过去式 )；蒙住（某人）的眼睛；使不理解；蒙骗 | |
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317
distinctiveness
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|
| 特殊[独特]性 | |
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318
avarice
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|
| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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319
perversion
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|
| n.曲解；堕落；反常 | |
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320
arcade
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|
| n.拱廊；(一侧或两侧有商店的)通道 | |
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321
penetration
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|
| n.穿透，穿人，渗透 | |
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322
opaque
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|
| adj.不透光的；不反光的，不传导的；晦涩的 | |
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323
riddle
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|
| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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324
ascend
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|
| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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325
enjoyments
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|
| 愉快( enjoyment的名词复数 )； 令人愉快的事物； 享有； 享受 | |
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326
reassure
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|
| v.使放心，使消除疑虑 | |
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327
ripening
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|
| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的现在分词 )；熟化；熟成 | |
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328
adolescence
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|
| n.青春期，青少年 | |
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329
unprecedented
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|
| adj.无前例的，新奇的 | |
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330
conspicuously
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|
| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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331
massacres
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|
| 大屠杀( massacre的名词复数 )； 惨败 | |
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332
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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333
naive
|
|
| adj.幼稚的，轻信的；天真的 | |
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334
conversion
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|
| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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335
versatile
|
|
| adj.通用的，万用的；多才多艺的，多方面的 | |
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336
catastrophe
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|
| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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337
nascent
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|
| adj.初生的，发生中的 | |
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338
reconstruction
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|
| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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339
cowered
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|
| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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340
sprout
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|
| n.芽，萌芽；vt.使发芽，摘去芽；vi.长芽，抽条 | |
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341
sprouted
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|
| v.发芽( sprout的过去式和过去分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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342
stony
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|
| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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343
pointed
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|
| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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344
interpretation
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|
| n.解释，说明，描述；艺术处理 | |
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345
worthy
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|
| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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346
forestalled
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|
| v.先发制人，预先阻止( forestall的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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347
scroll
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|
| n.卷轴，纸卷；(石刻上的)漩涡 | |
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348
insolvent
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|
| adj.破产的，无偿还能力的 | |
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349
ingenuous
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|
| adj.纯朴的，单纯的；天真的；坦率的 | |
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350
annually
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|
| adv.一年一次，每年 | |
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351
annexed
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|
| [法] 附加的，附属的 | |
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352
conspiracy
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|
| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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353
mania
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|
| n.疯狂；躁狂症，狂热，癖好 | |
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354
wrangling
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|
| v.争吵，争论，口角( wrangle的现在分词 ) | |
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355
patchwork
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|
| n.混杂物；拼缝物 | |
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356
hatreds
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|
| n.仇恨，憎恶( hatred的名词复数 )；厌恶的事 | |
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357
secular
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|
| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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358
bent
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|
| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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359
mingled
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|
| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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360
resolute
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|
| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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361
memorandum
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|
| n.备忘录，便笺 | |
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362
intensify
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|
| vt.加强；变强；加剧 | |
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363
instinctive
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|
| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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364
hostilities
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|
| n.战争；敌意(hostility的复数)；敌对状态；战事 | |
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365
sedulously
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|
| ad.孜孜不倦地 | |
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366
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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367
unanimity
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|
| n.全体一致，一致同意 | |
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368
tragically
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|
| adv. 悲剧地，悲惨地 | |
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369
tragical
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|
| adj. 悲剧的, 悲剧性的 | |
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370
countless
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|
| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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371
fretting
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|
| n. 微振磨损 adj. 烦躁的, 焦虑的 | |
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372
warily
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|
| adv.留心地 | |
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373
evasion
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|
| n.逃避，偷漏(税) | |
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374
discord
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| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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375
reconciliation
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|
| n.和解，和谐，一致 | |
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376
pedantically
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377
irreverence
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|
| n.不尊敬 | |
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378
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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379
superstitious
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|
| adj.迷信的 | |
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380
well-being
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|
| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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381
percolated
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|
| v.滤( percolate的过去式和过去分词 )；渗透；（思想等）渗透；渗入 | |
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382
hierarchies
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|
| 等级制度( hierarchy的名词复数 )； 统治集团； 领导层； 层次体系 | |
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383
imprison
|
|
| vt.监禁，关押，限制，束缚 | |
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384
anonymously
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|
| ad.用匿名的方式 | |
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385
chronological
|
|
| adj.按年月顺序排列的，年代学的 | |
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386
ascertainable
|
|
| adj.可确定（探知），可发现的 | |
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387
predecessors
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|
| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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388
frankly
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|
| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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389
temperaments
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|
| 性格( temperament的名词复数 )； （人或动物的）气质； 易冲动； （性情）暴躁 | |
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390
innate
|
|
| adj.天生的，固有的，天赋的 | |
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391
obsessions
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|
| n.使人痴迷的人（或物）( obsession的名词复数 )；着魔；困扰 | |
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392
wrenched
|
|
| v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛 | |
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393
Christian
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|
| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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394
repudiation
|
|
| n.拒绝；否认；断绝关系；抛弃 | |
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395
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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396
inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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397
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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398
consistencies
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| 一致性( consistency的名词复数 )； 连贯性； 坚实度； 浓度 | |
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