For human beings, being children, have the childish wilfulness2 and the childish secrecy3. And they never have from the beginning of the world done what the wise men have seen to be inevitable4. They stoned the false prophets, it is said; but they could have stoned true prophets with a greater and juster enjoyment5. Individually, men may present a more or less rational appearance, eating, sleeping, and scheming. But humanity as a whole is changeful, mystical, fickle6, delightful7. Men are men, but Man is a woman.
But in the beginning of the twentieth century the game of Cheat the Prophet was made far more difficult than it had ever been before. The reason was, that there were so many prophets and so many prophecies, that it was difficult to elude8 all their ingenuities9. When a man did something free and frantic10 and entirely11 his own, a horrible thought struck him afterwards; it might have been predicted. Whenever a duke climbed a lamp-post, when a dean got drunk, he could not be really happy, he could not be certain that he was not fulfilling some prophecy. In the beginning of the twentieth century you could not see the ground for clever men. They were so common that a stupid man was quite exceptional, and when they found him, they followed him in crowds down the street and treasured him up and gave him some high post in the State. And all these clever men were at work giving accounts of what would happen in the next age, all quite clear, all quite keen-sighted and ruthless, and all quite different. And it seemed that the good old game of hoodwinking your ancestors could not really be managed this time, because the ancestors neglected meat and sleep and practical politics, so that they might meditate12 day and night on what their descendants would be likely to do.
But the way the prophets of the twentieth century went to work was this. They took something or other that was certainly going on in their time, and then said that it would go on more and more until something extraordinary happened. And very often they added that in some odd place that extraordinary thing had happened, and that it showed the signs of the times.
Thus, for instance, there were Mr. H. G. Wells and others, who thought that science would take charge of the future; and just as the motor-car was quicker than the coach, so some lovely thing would be quicker than the motor-car; and so on for ever. And there arose from their ashes Dr. Quilp, who said that a man could be sent on his machine so fast round the world that he could keep up a long, chatty conversation in some old-world village by saying a word of a sentence each time he came round. And it was said that the experiment had been tried on an apoplectic13 old major, who was sent round the world so fast that there seemed to be (to the inhabitants of some other star) a continuous band round the earth of white whiskers, red complexion14 and tweeds — a thing like the ring of Saturn15.
Then there was the opposite school. There was Mr. Edward Carpenter, who thought we should in a very short time return to Nature, and live simply and slowly as the animals do. And Edward Carpenter was followed by James Pickie, D.D. (of Pocohontas College), who said that men were immensely improved by grazing, or taking their food slowly and continuously, after the manner of cows. And he said that he had, with the most encouraging results, turned city men out on all fours in a field covered with veal16 cutlets. Then Tolstoy and the Humanitarians17 said that the world was growing more merciful, and therefore no one would ever desire to kill. And Mr. Mick not only became a vegetarian18, but at length declared vegetarianism19 doomed20 (“shedding,” as he called it finely, “the green blood of the silent animals”), and predicted that men in a better age would live on nothing but salt. And then came the pamphlet from Oregon (where the thing was tried), the pamphlet called “Why should Salt suffer?” and there was more trouble.
And on the other hand, some people were predicting that the lines of kinship would become narrower and sterner. There was Mr. Cecil Rhodes, who thought that the one thing of the future was the British Empire, and that there would be a gulf21 between those who were of the Empire and those who were not, between the Chinaman in Hong Kong and the Chinaman outside, between the Spaniard on the Rock of Gibraltar and the Spaniard off it, similar to the gulf between man and the lower animals. And in the same way his impetuous friend, Dr. Zoppi (“the Paul of Anglo-Saxonism”), carried it yet further, and held that, as a result of this view, cannibalism22 should be held to mean eating a member of the Empire, not eating one of the subject peoples, who should, he said, be killed without needless pain. His horror at the idea of eating a man in British Guiana showed how they misunderstood his stoicism who thought him devoid23 of feeling. He was, however, in a hard position; as it was said that he had attempted the experiment, and, living in London, had to subsist24 entirely on Italian organ-grinders. And his end was terrible, for just when he had begun, Sir Paul Swiller25 read his great paper at the Royal Society, proving that the savages26 were not only quite right in eating their enemies, but right on moral and hygienic grounds, since it was true that the qualities of the enemy, when eaten, passed into the eater. The notion that the nature of an Italian organ-man was irrevocably growing and burgeoning27 inside him was almost more than the kindly28 old professor could bear.
There was Mr. Benjamin Kidd, who said that the growing note of our race would be the care for and knowledge of the future. His idea was developed more powerfully by William Borker, who wrote that passage which every schoolboy knows by heart, about men in future ages weeping by the graves of their descendants, and tourists being shown over the scene of the historic battle which was to take place some centuries afterwards.
And Mr. Stead, too, was prominent, who thought that England would in the twentieth century be united to America; and his young lieutenant29, Graham Podge, who included the states of France, Germany, and Russia in the American union, the State of Russia being abbreviated30 to Ra.
There was Mr. Sidney Webb, also, who said that the future would see a continuously increasing order and neatness in the life of the people, and his poor friend Fipps, who went mad and ran about the country with an axe31, hacking32 branches off the trees whenever there were not the same number on both sides.
All these clever men were prophesying33 with every variety of ingenuity34 what would happen soon, and they all did it in the same way, by taking something they saw “going strong,” as the saying is, and carrying it as far as ever their imagination could stretch. This, they said, was the true and simple way of anticipating the future. “Just as,” said Dr. Pellkins, in a fine passage — “just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the other pigs, we know that by an unalterable law of the Inscrutable it will some day be larger than an elephant — just as we know, when we see weeds and dandelions growing more and more thickly in a garden, that they must, in spite of all our efforts, grow taller than the chimney-pots and swallow the house from sight, so we know and reverently35 acknowledge, that when any power in human politics has shown for any period of time any considerable activity, it will go on until it reaches to the sky.”
And it did certainly appear that the prophets had put the people (engaged in the old game of Cheat the Prophet) in a quite unprecedented36 difficulty. It seemed really hard to do anything without fulfilling some of their prophecies.
But there was, nevertheless, in the eyes of labourers in the streets, of peasants in the fields, of sailors and children, and especially women, a strange look that kept the wise men in a perfect fever of doubt. They could not fathom37 the motionless mirth in their eyes. They still had something up their sleeve; they were still playing the game of Cheat the Prophet.
Then the wise men grew like wild things, and swayed hither and thither38, crying, “What can it be? What can it be? What will London be like a century hence? Is there anything we have not thought of? Houses upside down — more hygienic, perhaps? Men walking on hands — make feet flexible, don’t you know? Moon . . . motor-cars . . . no heads. . . . ” And so they swayed and wondered until they died and were buried nicely.
Then the people went and did what they liked. Let me no longer conceal39 the painful truth. The people had cheated the prophets of the twentieth century. When the curtain goes up on this story, eighty years after the present date, London is almost exactly like what it is now.
点击收听单词发音
1 rustics | |
n.有农村或村民特色的( rustic的名词复数 );粗野的;不雅的;用粗糙的木材或树枝制作的 | |
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2 wilfulness | |
任性;倔强 | |
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3 secrecy | |
n.秘密,保密,隐蔽 | |
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4 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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5 enjoyment | |
n.乐趣;享有;享用 | |
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6 fickle | |
adj.(爱情或友谊上)易变的,不坚定的 | |
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7 delightful | |
adj.令人高兴的,使人快乐的 | |
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8 elude | |
v.躲避,困惑 | |
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9 ingenuities | |
足智多谋,心灵手巧( ingenuity的名词复数 ) | |
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10 frantic | |
adj.狂乱的,错乱的,激昂的 | |
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11 entirely | |
ad.全部地,完整地;完全地,彻底地 | |
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12 meditate | |
v.想,考虑,(尤指宗教上的)沉思,冥想 | |
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13 apoplectic | |
adj.中风的;愤怒的;n.中风患者 | |
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14 complexion | |
n.肤色;情况,局面;气质,性格 | |
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15 Saturn | |
n.农神,土星 | |
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16 veal | |
n.小牛肉 | |
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17 humanitarians | |
n.慈善家( humanitarian的名词复数 ) | |
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18 vegetarian | |
n.素食者;adj.素食的 | |
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19 vegetarianism | |
n.素食,素食主义 | |
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20 doomed | |
命定的 | |
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21 gulf | |
n.海湾;深渊,鸿沟;分歧,隔阂 | |
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22 cannibalism | |
n.同类相食;吃人肉 | |
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23 devoid | |
adj.全无的,缺乏的 | |
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24 subsist | |
vi.生存,存在,供养 | |
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25 swiller | |
溶胀剂,膨胀剂 | |
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26 savages | |
未开化的人,野蛮人( savage的名词复数 ) | |
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27 burgeoning | |
adj.迅速成长的,迅速发展的v.发芽,抽枝( burgeon的现在分词 );迅速发展;发(芽),抽(枝) | |
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28 kindly | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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29 lieutenant | |
n.陆军中尉,海军上尉;代理官员,副职官员 | |
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30 abbreviated | |
adj. 简短的,省略的 动词abbreviate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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31 axe | |
n.斧子;v.用斧头砍,削减 | |
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32 hacking | |
n.非法访问计算机系统和数据库的活动 | |
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33 prophesying | |
v.预告,预言( prophesy的现在分词 ) | |
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34 ingenuity | |
n.别出心裁;善于发明创造 | |
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35 reverently | |
adv.虔诚地 | |
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36 unprecedented | |
adj.无前例的,新奇的 | |
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37 fathom | |
v.领悟,彻底了解 | |
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38 thither | |
adv.向那里;adj.在那边的,对岸的 | |
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39 conceal | |
v.隐藏,隐瞒,隐蔽 | |
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