I
The Question
"Are you a Polygamist?"
"Are you an Anarchist1?"
The questions seem impertinent. They are part of a long paper of interrogations I must answer satisfactorily if I am to be regarded as a desirable alien to enter the United States of America. I want very much to pass that great statue of Liberty illuminating2 the World (from a central position in New York Harbor), in order to see things in its light, to talk to certain people, to appreciate certain atmospheres, and so I resist the provocation3 to answer impertinently. I do not even volunteer that I do not smoke and am a total abstainer4; on which points it would seem the States as a whole still keep an open mind. I am full of curiosity about America, I am possessed5 by a prob[Pg 2]lem I feel I cannot adequately discuss even with myself except over there, and I must go even at the price of coming to a decision upon the theoretically open questions these two inquiries6 raise.
My problem I know will seem ridiculous and monstrous7 when I give it in all its stark8 disproportions—attacked by me with my equipment it will call up an image of an elephant assailed9 by an ant who has not even mastered Jiu-jitsu—but at any rate I've come to it in a natural sort of way and it is one I must, for my own peace of mind, make some kind of attempt upon, even if at last it means no more than the ant crawling in an exploratory way hither and thither11 over that vast unconscious carcass and finally getting down and going away. That may be rather good for the ant, and the experience may be of interest to other ants, however infinitesimal from the point of view of the elephant, the final value of his investigation12 may be. And this tremendous problem in my case and now in this—simply; What is going to happen to the United States of America in the next thirty years or so?
I do not know if the reader has ever happened upon any books or writings of mine before, but if, what is highly probable, he has not, he may be curious to know how it is that any human being should be running about in so colossally13 an interrogative state of mind. (For even the present inquiry14 is by no means my maximum limit). And the ex[Pg 3]planation is to be found a little in a mental idiosyncrasy perhaps, but much more in the development of a special way of thinking, of a habit of mind.
That habit of mind may be indicated by a proposition that, with a fine air of discovery, I threw out some years ago, in a happy ignorance that I had been anticipated by no less a person than Heraclitus. "There is no Being but Becoming," that was what appeared to my unscholarly mind to be almost triumphantly15 new. I have since then informed myself more fully16 about Heraclitus, there are moments now when I more than half suspect that all the thinking I shall ever do will simply serve to illuminate17 my understanding of him, but at any rate that apothegm of his does exactly convey the intellectual attitude into which I fall. I am curiously18 not interested in things, and curiously interested in the consequences of things. I wouldn't for the world go to see the United States for what they are—if I had sound reason for supposing that the entire western hemisphere was to be destroyed next Christmas, I should not, I think, be among the multitude that would rush for one last look at that great spectacle,—from which it follows naturally that I don't propose to see Niagara. I should much more probably turn an inquiring visage eastward19, with the west so certainly provided for. I have come to be, I am afraid, even a little insensitive to fine immediate20 things through this anticipatory21 habit.
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This habit of mind confronts and perplexes my sense of things that simply are, with my brooding preoccupation with how they will shape presently, what they will lead to, what seed they will sow and how they will wear. At times, I can assure the reader, this quality approaches otherworldliness, in its constant reference to an all-important here-after. There are times indeed when it makes life seem so transparent22 and flimsy, seem so dissolving, so passing on to an equally transitory series of consequences, that the enhanced sense of instability becomes restlessness and distress23; but on the other hand nothing that exists, nothing whatever, remains24 altogether vulgar or dull and dead or hopeless in its light. But the interest is shifted. The pomp and splendor25 of established order, the braying26 triumphs, ceremonies, consummations, one sees these glittering shows for what they are—through their threadbare grandeur27 shine the little significant things that will make the future....
And now that I am associating myself with great names, let me discover that I find this characteristic turn of mind of mine, not only in Heraclitus, the most fragmentary of philosophers, but for one fine passage at any rate, in Mr. Henry James, the least fragmentary of novelists. In his recent impressions of America I find him apostrophizing the great mansions28 of Fifth Avenue, in words quite after my heart;—
"It's all very well," he writes, "for you to look[Pg 5] as if, since you've had no past, you're going in, as the next best thing, for a magnificent compensatory future. What are you going to make your future of, for all your airs, we want to know? What elements of a future, as futures29 have gone in the great world, are at all assured to you?"
I had already when I read that, figured myself as addressing if not these particular last triumphs of the fine Transatlantic art of architecture, then at least America in general in some such words. It is not unpleasant to be anticipated by the chief Master of one's craft, it is indeed, when one reflects upon his peculiar30 intimacy31 with this problem, enormously reassuring32, and so I have very gladly annexed33 his phrasing and put it here to honor and adorn34 and in a manner to explain my own enterprise. I have already studied some of these fine buildings through the mediation35 of an illustrated36 magazine—they appear solid, they appear wonderful and well done to the highest pitch—and before many days now I shall, I hope, reconstruct that particular moment, stand—the latest admirer from England—regarding these portentous37 magnificences, from the same sidewalk—will they call it?—as my illustrious predecessor38, and with his question ringing in my mind all the louder for their proximity39, and the universally acknowledged invigoration of the American atmosphere. "What are you going to make your future of, for all your airs?"
And then I suppose I shall return to crane my[Pg 6] neck at the Flat-Iron Building or the Times sky-scraper, and ask all that too, an identical question.
II
Philosophical41
Certain phases in the development of these prophetic exercises one may perhaps be permitted to trace.
To begin with, I remember that to me in my boyhood speculation42 about the Future was a monstrous joke. Like most people of my generation I was launched into life with millennial43 assumptions. This present sort of thing, I believed, was going on for a time, interesting personally perhaps but as a whole inconsecutive, and then—it might be in my lifetime or a little after it—there would be trumpets44 and shoutings and celestial45 phenomena46, a battle of Armageddon and the Judgment47. As I saw it, it was to be a strictly48 protestant and individualistic judgment, each soul upon its personal merits. To talk about the Man of the Year Million was of course in the face of this great conviction, a whimsical play of fancy. The Year Million was just as impossible, just as gayly nonsensical as fairy-land....
I was a student of biology before I realized that this, my finite and conclusive49 End, at least in the material and chronological50 form, had somehow vanished from the scheme of things. In the place of it had come a blackness and a vagueness about[Pg 7] the endless vista51 of years ahead, that was tremendous—that terrified. That is a phase in which lots of educated people remain to this day. "All this scheme of things, life, force, destiny which began not six thousand years, mark you, but an infinity52 ago, that has developed out of such strange weird53 shapes and incredible first intentions, out of gaseous54 nebul?, carboniferous swamps, saurian giantry and arboreal55 apes, is by the same tokens to continue, developing—into what?" That was the overwhelming riddle56 that came to me, with that realization57 of an End averted58, that has come now to most of our world.
The phase that followed the first helpless stare of the mind was a wild effort to express one's sudden apprehension59 of unlimited60 possibility. One made fantastic exaggerations, fantastic inversions61 of all recognized things. Anything of this sort might come, anything of any sort. The books about the future that followed the first stimulus62 of the world's realization of the implications of Darwinian science, have all something of the monstrous experimental imaginings of children. I myself, in my microcosmic way, duplicated the times. Almost the first thing I ever wrote—it survives in an altered form as one of a bookful of essays,—was of this type; "The Man of the Year Million," was presented as a sort of pantomime head and a shrivelled body, and years after that, the Time Machine, my first published book, ran in the same vein63. At that point, at a brief astonished stare down the vistas64 of time-[Pg 8]to-come, at something between wonder and amazed, incredulous, defeated laughter, most people, I think, stop. But those who are doomed65 to the prophetic habit of mind go on.
The next phase, the third phase, is to shorten the range of the outlook, to attempt something a little more proximate than the final destiny of man. One becomes more systematic66, one sets to work to trace the great changes of the last century or so, and one produces these in a straight line and according to the rule of three. If the maximum velocity67 of land travel in 1800 was twelve miles an hour and in 1900 (let us say) sixty miles an hour, then one concludes that in 2000 A.D. it will be three hundred miles an hour. If the population of America in 1800—but I refrain from this second instance. In that fashion one got out a sort of gigantesque caricature of the existing world, everything swollen68 to vast proportions and massive beyond measure. In my case that phase produced a book, When the Sleeper69 Wakes, in which, I am told, by competent New-Yorkers, that I, starting with London, an unbiassed mind, this rule-of-three method and my otherwise unaided imagination, produced something more like Chicago than any other place wherein righteous men are likely to be found. That I shall verify in due course, but my present point is merely that to write such a book is to discover how thoroughly71 wrong this all too obvious method of enlarging the present is.
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One goes on therefore—if one is to succumb72 altogether to the prophetic habit—to a really "scientific" attack upon the future. The "scientific" phase is not final, but it is far more abundantly fruitful than its predecessors73. One attempts a rude wide analysis of contemporary history, one seeks to clear and detach operating causes and to work them out, and so, combining this necessary set of consequences with that, to achieve a synthetic74 forecast in terms just as broad and general and vague as the causes considered are few. I made, it happens, an experiment in this scientific sort of prophecy in a book called Anticipations75, and I gave an altogether excessive exposition and defence of it, I went altogether too far in this direction, in a lecture to the Royal Institution, "The Discovery of the Future," that survives in odd corners as a pamphlet, and is to be found, like a scrap40 of old newspaper in the roof gutter76 of a museum, in Nature (vol. LXV., p. 326) and in the Smithsonian Report (for 1902). Within certain limits, however, I still believe this scientific method is sound. It gives sound results in many cases, results at any rate as sound as those one gets from the "laws" of political economy; one can claim it really does effect a sort of prophecy on the material side of life.
For example, it was quite obvious about 1899 that invention and enterprise were very busy with the means of locomotion77, and one could deduce from that certain practically inevitable78 consequences[Pg 10] in the distribution of urban populations. With easier, quicker means of getting about there were endless reasons, hygienic, social, economic, why people should move from the town centres towards their peripheries79, and very few why they should not. The towns one inferred therefore, would get slacker, more diffused80, the countryside more urban. From that, from the spatial81 widening of personal interests that ensued, one could infer certain changes in the spirits of local politics, and so one went on to a number of fairly valid82 adumbrations. Then again starting from the practical supersession83 in the long run of all unskilled labor84 by machinery85 one can work out with a pretty fair certainty many coming social developments, and the broad trend of one group of influences at least from the moral attitude of the mass of common people. In industry, in domestic life again, one foresees a steady development of complex appliances, demanding, and indeed in an epoch86 of frequently changing methods forcing, a flexible understanding, versatility87 of effort, a universal rising standard of education. So too a study of military methods and apparatus88 convinces one of the necessary transfer of power in the coming century from the ignorant and enthusiastic masses who made the revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and won Napoleon his wars, to any more deliberate, more intelligent and more disciplined class that may possess an organized purpose. But where will one find that class? There[Pg 11] comes a question that goes outside science, that takes one at once into a field beyond the range of the "scientific" method altogether.
So long as one adopts the assumptions of the old political economist89 and assumes men without idiosyncrasy, without prejudices, without, as people say, wills of their own, so long as one imagines a perfectly90 acquiescent91 humanity that will always in the long run under pressure liquefy and stream along the line of least resistance to its own material advantage, the business of prophecy is easy. But from the first I felt distrust for that facility in prophesying92, I perceived that always there lurked93 something, an incalculable opposition94 to these mechanically conceived forces, in law, in usage and prejudice, in the poi?tic power of exceptional individual men. I discovered for myself over again, the inseparable nature of the two functions of the prophet. In my Anticipations, for example, I had intended simply to work out and foretell95, and before I had finished I was in a fine full blast of exhortation96....
That by an easy transition brought me to the last stage in the life history of the prophetic mind, as it is at present known to me. One comes out on the other side of the "scientific" method, into the large temperance, the valiant97 inconclusiveness, the released creativeness of philosophy. Much may be foretold98 as certain, much more as possible, but the last decisions and the greatest decisions, lie in the[Pg 12] hearts and wills of unique incalculable men. With them we have to deal as our ultimate reality in all these matters, and our methods have to be not "scientific" at all for all the greater issues, the humanly important issues, but critical, literary, even if you will—artistic. Here insight is of more account than induction99 and the perception of fine tones than the counting of heads. Science deals with necessity and necessity is here but the firm ground on which our freedom goes. One passes from affairs of predestination to affairs of free will.
This discovery spread at once beyond the field of prophesying. The end, the aim, the test of science, as a model man understands the word, is foretelling100 by means of "laws," and my error in attempting a complete "scientific" forecast of human affairs arose in too careless an assent101 to the ideas about me, and from accepting uncritically such claims as that history should be "scientific," and that economics and sociology (for example) are "sciences." Directly one gauges102 the fuller implications of that uniqueness of individuals Darwin's work has so permanently103 illuminated104, one passes beyond that. The ripened105 prophet realizes Schopenhauer—as indeed I find Professor Münsterberg saying. "The deepest sense of human affairs is reached," he writes, "when we consider them not as appearances but as decisions." There one has the same thing coming to meet one from the psychological side....
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But my present business isn't to go into this shadowy, metaphysical foundation world on which our thinking rests, but to the brightly lit overworld of America. This philosophical excursion is set here just to prepare the reader quite frankly106 for speculations107 and to disabuse108 his mind of the idea that in writing of the Future in America I'm going to write of houses a hundred stories high and flying-machines in warfare109 and things like that. I am not going to America to work a pretentious110 horoscope, to discover a Destiny, but to find out what I can of what must needs make that Destiny,—a great nation's Will.
III
The Will of America
The material factors in a nation's future are subordinate factors, they present advantages, such as the easy access of the English to coal and the sea, or disadvantages, such as the ice-bound seaboard of the Russians, but these are the circumstances and not necessarily the rulers of its fate. The essential factor in the destiny of a nation, as of a man and of mankind, lies in the form of its will and in the quality and quantity of its will. The drama of a nation's future, as of a man's, lies in this conflict of its will with what would else be "scientifically" predictable, materially inevitable. If the man, if the nation was an automaton111 fitted with good[Pg 14] average motives112, so and so, one could say exactly, would be done. It's just where the thing isn't automatic that our present interest comes in.
I might perhaps reverse the order of the three aspects of will I have named, for manifestly where the quantity of will is small, it matters nothing what the form or quality. The man or the people that wills feebly is the sport of every circumstance, and there if anywhere the scientific method holds truest or even altogether true. Do geographical113 positions or mineral resources make for riches? Then such a people will grow insecurely and disastrously114 rich. Is an abundant prolific115 life at a low level indicated? They will pullulate and suffer. If circumstances make for a choice between comfort and reproduction, your feeble people will dwindle116 and pass; if war, if conquest tempt10 them then they will turn from all preoccupations and follow the drums. Little things provoke their unstable117 equilibrium118, to hostility119, to forgiveness....
And be it noted120 that the quantity of will in a nation is not necessarily determined121 by adding up the wills of all its people. I am told, and I am disposed to believe it, that the Americans of the United States are a people of great individual force of will, the clear strong faces of many young Americans, something almost Roman in the faces of their statesmen and politicians, a distinctive122 quality I detect in such Americans as I have met, a quality of sharply cut determination even though it be only about[Pg 15] details and secondary things, that one must rouse one's self to meet, inclines me to give a provisional credit to that, but how far does all this possible will-force aggregate123 to a great national purpose?—what algebraically does it add up to when this and that have cancelled each other? That may be a different thing altogether.
And next to this net quantity of will a nation or people may possess, come the questions of its quality, its flexibility124, its consciousness and intellectuality. A nation may be full of will and yet inflexibly125 and disastrously stupid in the expression of that will. There was probably more will-power, mere70 haughty126 and determined self-assertion in the young bull that charged the railway engine than in several regiments127 of men, but it was after all a low quality of will with no method but a violent and injudicious directness, and in the end it was suicidal and futile128. There again is the substance for ramifying Enquiries. How subtle, how collected and patient, how far capable of a long plan, is this American nation? Suppose it has a will so powerful and with such resources that whatever simple end may be attained129 by rushing upon it is America's for the asking, there still remains the far more important question of the ends that are not obvious, that are intricate and complex and not to be won by booms and cataclysms131 of effort.
An Englishman comes to think that most of the permanent and precious things for which a nation's[Pg 16] effort goes are like that, and here too I have an open mind and unsatisfied curiosities.
And lastly there is the form of the nation's purpose. I have been reading what I can find about that in books for some time, and now I want to cross over the Atlantic, more particularly for that, to question more or less openly certain Americans, not only men and women, but the mute expressive132 presences of house and appliance, of statue, flag and public building, and the large collective visages of crowds, what it is all up to, what it thinks it is all after, how far it means to escape or improve upon its purely133 material destinies? I want over there to find whatever consciousness or vague consciousness of a common purpose there may be, what is their Vision, their American Utopia, how much will there is shaping to attain130 it, how much capacity goes with the will—what, in short, there is in America, over and above the mere mechanical consequences of scattering134 multitudes of energetic Europeans athwart a vast healthy, productive and practically empty continent in the temperate135 zone. There you have the terms of reference of an enquiry, that is I admit (as Mr. Morgan Richards the eminent136 advertisement agent would say), "mammoth137 in character."
The American reader may very reasonably inquire at this point why an Englishman does not begin with the future of his own country. The answer is that this particular one has done so, and[Pg 17] that in many ways he has found his intimacy and proximity a disadvantage. One knows too much of the things that seem to matter and that ultimately don't, one is full of misleading individual instances intensely seen, one can't see the wood for the trees. One comes to America at last, not only with the idea of seeing America, but with something more than an incidental hope of getting one's own England there in the distance and as a whole, for the first time in one's life. And the problem of America, from this side anyhow, has an air of being simpler. For all the Philippine adventure her future still seems to lie on the whole compactly in one continent, and not as ours is, dispersed138 round and about the habitable globe, strangely entangled139 with India, with Japan, with Africa and with the great antagonism140 the Germans force upon us at our doors. Moreover one cannot look ten years ahead in England, without glancing across the Atlantic. "There they are," we say to one another, "those Americans! They speak our language, read our books, give us books, share our mind. What we think still goes into their heads in a measure, and their thoughts run through our brains. What will they be up to?"
Our future is extraordinarily141 bound up in America's and in a sense dependent upon it. It is not that we dream very much of political reunions of Anglo Saxondom and the like. So long as we British retain our wide and accidental sprawl142 of[Pg 18] empire about the earth we cannot expect or desire the Americans to share our stresses and entanglements143. Our Empire has its own adventurous144 and perilous145 outlook. But our civilization is a different thing from our Empire, a thing that reaches out further into the future, that will be going on changed beyond recognition. Because of our common language, of our common traditions, Americans are a part of our community, are becoming indeed the larger part of our community of thought and feeling and outlook—in a sense far more intimate than any link we have with Hindoo or Copt or Cingalese. A common Englishman has an almost pathetic pride and sense of proprietorship146 in the States; he is fatally ready to fall in with the idea that two nations that share their past, that still, a little restively147, share one language, may even contrive148 to share an infinitely149 more interesting future. Even if he does not chance to be an American now, his grandson may be. America is his inheritance, his reserved accumulating investment. In that sense indeed America belongs to the whole western world; all Europe owns her promise, but to the Englishman the sense of participation150 is intense. "We did it," he will tell of the most American of achievements, of the settlement of the middle west for example, and this is so far justifiable151 that numberless men, myself included, are Englishmen, Australian, New-Zealand[Pg 19]ers, Canadians, instead of being Americans, by the merest accidents of life. My father still possesses the stout152 oak box he had had made to emigrate withal, everything was arranged that would have got me and my brothers born across the ocean, and only the coincidence of a business opportunity and an illness of my mother's, arrested that. It was so near a thing as that with me, which prevents my blood from boiling with patriotic153 indignation instead of patriotic solicitude154 at the frequent sight of red-coats as I see them from my study window going to and fro to Shorncliffe camp.
Well I learn from Professor Münsterberg how vain my sense of proprietorship is, but still this much of it obstinately155 remains, that I will at any rate look at the American future.
By the accidents that delayed that box it comes about that if I want to see what America is up to, I have among other things to buy a Baedeker and a steamer ticket and fill up the inquiring blanks in this remarkable156 document before me, the long string of questions that begins:—
"Are you a Polygamist?"
"Are you an Anarchist?"
Here I gather is one little indication of the great will I am going to study. It would seem that the United States of America regard Anarchy157 and Polygamy with aversion, regard indeed Anarchists158 and Polygamists as creatures unfit to mingle159 with the already very various eighty million of citizens[Pg 20] who constitute their sovereign powers, and on the other hand hold these creatures so inflexibly honorable as certainly to tell these damning truths about themselves in this matter....
It's a little odd. One has a second or so of doubt about the quality of that particular manifestation160 of will.
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1 anarchist | |
n.无政府主义者 | |
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2 illuminating | |
a.富于启发性的,有助阐明的 | |
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3 provocation | |
n.激怒,刺激,挑拨,挑衅的事物,激怒的原因 | |
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4 abstainer | |
节制者,戒酒者,弃权者 | |
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5 possessed | |
adj.疯狂的;拥有的,占有的 | |
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6 inquiries | |
n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 );疑问;探究;打听 | |
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7 monstrous | |
adj.巨大的;恐怖的;可耻的,丢脸的 | |
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8 stark | |
adj.荒凉的;严酷的;完全的;adv.完全地 | |
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9 assailed | |
v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 );困扰;质问;毅然应对 | |
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10 tempt | |
vt.引诱,勾引,吸引,引起…的兴趣 | |
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11 thither | |
adv.向那里;adj.在那边的,对岸的 | |
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12 investigation | |
n.调查,调查研究 | |
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13 colossally | |
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14 inquiry | |
n.打听,询问,调查,查问 | |
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15 triumphantly | |
ad.得意洋洋地;得胜地;成功地 | |
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16 fully | |
adv.完全地,全部地,彻底地;充分地 | |
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17 illuminate | |
vt.照亮,照明;用灯光装饰;说明,阐释 | |
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18 curiously | |
adv.有求知欲地;好问地;奇特地 | |
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19 eastward | |
adv.向东;adj.向东的;n.东方,东部 | |
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20 immediate | |
adj.立即的;直接的,最接近的;紧靠的 | |
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21 anticipatory | |
adj.预想的,预期的 | |
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22 transparent | |
adj.明显的,无疑的;透明的 | |
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23 distress | |
n.苦恼,痛苦,不舒适;不幸;vt.使悲痛 | |
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24 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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25 splendor | |
n.光彩;壮丽,华丽;显赫,辉煌 | |
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26 braying | |
v.发出驴叫似的声音( bray的现在分词 );发嘟嘟声;粗声粗气地讲话(或大笑);猛击 | |
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27 grandeur | |
n.伟大,崇高,宏伟,庄严,豪华 | |
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28 mansions | |
n.宅第,公馆,大厦( mansion的名词复数 ) | |
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29 futures | |
n.期货,期货交易 | |
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30 peculiar | |
adj.古怪的,异常的;特殊的,特有的 | |
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31 intimacy | |
n.熟悉,亲密,密切关系,亲昵的言行 | |
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32 reassuring | |
a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的,使人放心的 | |
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33 annexed | |
[法] 附加的,附属的 | |
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34 adorn | |
vt.使美化,装饰 | |
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35 mediation | |
n.调解 | |
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36 illustrated | |
adj. 有插图的,列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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37 portentous | |
adj.不祥的,可怕的,装腔作势的 | |
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38 predecessor | |
n.前辈,前任 | |
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39 proximity | |
n.接近,邻近 | |
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40 scrap | |
n.碎片;废料;v.废弃,报废 | |
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41 philosophical | |
adj.哲学家的,哲学上的,达观的 | |
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42 speculation | |
n.思索,沉思;猜测;投机 | |
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43 millennial | |
一千年的,千福年的 | |
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44 trumpets | |
喇叭( trumpet的名词复数 ); 小号; 喇叭形物; (尤指)绽开的水仙花 | |
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45 celestial | |
adj.天体的;天上的 | |
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46 phenomena | |
n.现象 | |
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47 judgment | |
n.审判;判断力,识别力,看法,意见 | |
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48 strictly | |
adv.严厉地,严格地;严密地 | |
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49 conclusive | |
adj.最后的,结论的;确凿的,消除怀疑的 | |
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50 chronological | |
adj.按年月顺序排列的,年代学的 | |
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51 vista | |
n.远景,深景,展望,回想 | |
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52 infinity | |
n.无限,无穷,大量 | |
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53 weird | |
adj.古怪的,离奇的;怪诞的,神秘而可怕的 | |
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54 gaseous | |
adj.气体的,气态的 | |
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55 arboreal | |
adj.树栖的;树的 | |
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56 riddle | |
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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57 realization | |
n.实现;认识到,深刻了解 | |
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58 averted | |
防止,避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 ); 转移 | |
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59 apprehension | |
n.理解,领悟;逮捕,拘捕;忧虑 | |
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60 unlimited | |
adj.无限的,不受控制的,无条件的 | |
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61 inversions | |
倒置( inversion的名词复数 ); (尤指词序)倒装; 转化; (染色体的)倒位 | |
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62 stimulus | |
n.刺激,刺激物,促进因素,引起兴奋的事物 | |
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63 vein | |
n.血管,静脉;叶脉,纹理;情绪;vt.使成脉络 | |
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64 vistas | |
长条形景色( vista的名词复数 ); 回顾; 展望; (未来可能发生的)一系列情景 | |
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65 doomed | |
命定的 | |
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66 systematic | |
adj.有系统的,有计划的,有方法的 | |
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67 velocity | |
n.速度,速率 | |
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68 swollen | |
adj.肿大的,水涨的;v.使变大,肿胀 | |
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69 sleeper | |
n.睡眠者,卧车,卧铺 | |
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70 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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71 thoroughly | |
adv.完全地,彻底地,十足地 | |
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72 succumb | |
v.屈服,屈从;死 | |
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73 predecessors | |
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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74 synthetic | |
adj.合成的,人工的;综合的;n.人工制品 | |
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75 anticipations | |
预期( anticipation的名词复数 ); 预测; (信托财产收益的)预支; 预期的事物 | |
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76 gutter | |
n.沟,街沟,水槽,檐槽,贫民窟 | |
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77 locomotion | |
n.运动,移动 | |
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78 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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79 peripheries | |
n.外围( periphery的名词复数 );边缘;周围 | |
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80 diffused | |
散布的,普及的,扩散的 | |
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81 spatial | |
adj.空间的,占据空间的 | |
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82 valid | |
adj.有确实根据的;有效的;正当的,合法的 | |
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83 supersession | |
取代,废弃; 代谢 | |
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84 labor | |
n.劳动,努力,工作,劳工;分娩;vi.劳动,努力,苦干;vt.详细分析;麻烦 | |
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85 machinery | |
n.(总称)机械,机器;机构 | |
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86 epoch | |
n.(新)时代;历元 | |
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87 versatility | |
n.多才多艺,多样性,多功能 | |
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88 apparatus | |
n.装置,器械;器具,设备 | |
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89 economist | |
n.经济学家,经济专家,节俭的人 | |
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90 perfectly | |
adv.完美地,无可非议地,彻底地 | |
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91 acquiescent | |
adj.默许的,默认的 | |
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92 prophesying | |
v.预告,预言( prophesy的现在分词 ) | |
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93 lurked | |
vi.潜伏,埋伏(lurk的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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94 opposition | |
n.反对,敌对 | |
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95 foretell | |
v.预言,预告,预示 | |
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96 exhortation | |
n.劝告,规劝 | |
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97 valiant | |
adj.勇敢的,英勇的;n.勇士,勇敢的人 | |
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98 foretold | |
v.预言,预示( foretell的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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99 induction | |
n.感应,感应现象 | |
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100 foretelling | |
v.预言,预示( foretell的现在分词 ) | |
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101 assent | |
v.批准,认可;n.批准,认可 | |
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102 gauges | |
n.规格( gauge的名词复数 );厚度;宽度;标准尺寸v.(用仪器)测量( gauge的第三人称单数 );估计;计量;划分 | |
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103 permanently | |
adv.永恒地,永久地,固定不变地 | |
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104 illuminated | |
adj.被照明的;受启迪的 | |
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105 ripened | |
v.成熟,使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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106 frankly | |
adv.坦白地,直率地;坦率地说 | |
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107 speculations | |
n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 );思考;投机活动;推断 | |
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108 disabuse | |
v.解惑;矫正 | |
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109 warfare | |
n.战争(状态);斗争;冲突 | |
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110 pretentious | |
adj.自命不凡的,自负的,炫耀的 | |
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111 automaton | |
n.自动机器,机器人 | |
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112 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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113 geographical | |
adj.地理的;地区(性)的 | |
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114 disastrously | |
ad.灾难性地 | |
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115 prolific | |
adj.丰富的,大量的;多产的,富有创造力的 | |
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116 dwindle | |
v.逐渐变小(或减少) | |
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117 unstable | |
adj.不稳定的,易变的 | |
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118 equilibrium | |
n.平衡,均衡,相称,均势,平静 | |
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119 hostility | |
n.敌对,敌意;抵制[pl.]交战,战争 | |
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120 noted | |
adj.著名的,知名的 | |
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121 determined | |
adj.坚定的;有决心的 | |
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122 distinctive | |
adj.特别的,有特色的,与众不同的 | |
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123 aggregate | |
adj.总计的,集合的;n.总数;v.合计;集合 | |
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124 flexibility | |
n.柔韧性,弹性,(光的)折射性,灵活性 | |
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125 inflexibly | |
adv.不屈曲地,不屈地 | |
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126 haughty | |
adj.傲慢的,高傲的 | |
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127 regiments | |
(军队的)团( regiment的名词复数 ); 大量的人或物 | |
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128 futile | |
adj.无效的,无用的,无希望的 | |
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129 attained | |
(通常经过努力)实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 ); 达到; 获得; 达到(某年龄、水平、状况) | |
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130 attain | |
vt.达到,获得,完成 | |
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131 cataclysms | |
n.(突然降临的)大灾难( cataclysm的名词复数 ) | |
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132 expressive | |
adj.表现的,表达…的,富于表情的 | |
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133 purely | |
adv.纯粹地,完全地 | |
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134 scattering | |
n.[物]散射;散乱,分散;在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的;分散在不同范围的;广泛扩散的;(选票)数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式);散布;驱散 | |
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135 temperate | |
adj.温和的,温带的,自我克制的,不过分的 | |
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136 eminent | |
adj.显赫的,杰出的,有名的,优良的 | |
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137 mammoth | |
n.长毛象;adj.长毛象似的,巨大的 | |
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138 dispersed | |
adj. 被驱散的, 被分散的, 散布的 | |
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139 entangled | |
adj.卷入的;陷入的;被缠住的;缠在一起的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的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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140 antagonism | |
n.对抗,敌对,对立 | |
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141 extraordinarily | |
adv.格外地;极端地 | |
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142 sprawl | |
vi.躺卧,扩张,蔓延;vt.使蔓延;n.躺卧,蔓延 | |
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143 entanglements | |
n.瓜葛( entanglement的名词复数 );牵连;纠缠;缠住 | |
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144 adventurous | |
adj.爱冒险的;惊心动魄的,惊险的,刺激的 | |
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145 perilous | |
adj.危险的,冒险的 | |
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146 proprietorship | |
n.所有(权);所有权 | |
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147 restively | |
adv.倔强地,难以驾御地 | |
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148 contrive | |
vt.谋划,策划;设法做到;设计,想出 | |
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149 infinitely | |
adv.无限地,无穷地 | |
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150 participation | |
n.参与,参加,分享 | |
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151 justifiable | |
adj.有理由的,无可非议的 | |
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153 patriotic | |
adj.爱国的,有爱国心的 | |
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154 solicitude | |
n.焦虑 | |
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155 obstinately | |
ad.固执地,顽固地 | |
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156 remarkable | |
adj.显著的,异常的,非凡的,值得注意的 | |
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157 anarchy | |
n.无政府状态;社会秩序混乱,无秩序 | |
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158 anarchists | |
无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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159 mingle | |
vt.使混合,使相混;vi.混合起来;相交往 | |
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160 manifestation | |
n.表现形式;表明;现象 | |
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