高级英语新思维讲义-3.pdfVIP

1 Passage 3 The Damned Human Race 【摘自现代大学英语精读第四册Lesson Fifteen Text A 】 I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the lower animals, and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals and to name it the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals. In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is commonly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result. These experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens and covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work. Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading, I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl--that, and to provide some fresh meat for his table. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the difference between an anaconda and an earl--if any--I caused seven young calves to be turned into the anacondas cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The facts stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cru