新概念BookIV

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1、新概念英语1-4册 文本 中国英语学习网 -Book IV Lesson 1We can read of things that happened 5,000 years ago in the Near East, where people first learned to write.But there are some parts of the world where even now people cannot write.The only way that they can preserve their history is to recount it as sagas-legends

2、 handed down from one generation of story-tellers to another.These legends are useful because they can tell us something about migrations of people who lived long ago, but none could write down what they did.Anthropologists wondered where the remote ancestors of the Polynesian peoples now living in

3、the Pacific Islands came from.The sagas of these people explain that some of them came from Indonesia about 2,000 years ago.But the first people who were like ourselves lived so long ago that even their sagas, if they had any, are forgotten.So archaeologists have neither history nor legends to help

4、them to find out where the first modern men came from.Fortunately, however, ancient men made tools of stone, especially flint, because this is easier to shape than other kinds.They may also have used wood and skins, but these have rotted away.Stone does not decay, and so the tools of long ago have r

5、emained when even the bones of the men who made them have disappeared without trace.Book IV Lesson 2Why, you may wonder, should spiders be our friends ?Because they destroy so many insects, and insects include some of the greatest enemies of the human race.Insects would make it impossible for us to

6、live in the world; they would devour all our crops and kill our flocks and herds, if it were not for the protection we get from insect-eating animals.We owe a lot to the birds and beasts who eat insects but all of them put together kill only a fraction of the number destroyed by spiders.Moreover, un

7、like some of the other insect eaters, spiders never do the least harm to us or our belongings.Spiders are not insects, as many people think, nor even nearly related to them.One can tell the difference almost at a glance for a spider always has eight legs and an insect never more than six.How many sp

8、iders are engaged in this work on our behalf ?One authority on spiders made a census of the spiders in a grass field in the south of England, and he estimated that there were more than 2,250,000 in one acre, that is something like 6,000,000 spiders of different kinds on a football pitch.Spiders are

9、busy for at least half the year in killing insects.It is impossible to make more than the wildest guess at how many they kill, but they are hungry creatures, not content with only three meals a day.It has been estimated that the weight of all the insects destroyed by spiders in Britain in one year w

10、ould be greater than the total weight of all the human beings in the country.Book IV Lesson 3Modern alpinists try to climb mountains by a route which will give them good sport, and the more difficult it is, the more highly it is regarded.In the pioneering days, however, this was not the case at all.

11、The early climbers were looking for the easiest way to the top because the summit was the prize they sought, especially if it had never been attained before.It is true that during their explorations they often faced difficulties and dangers of the most perilous nature, equipped in a manner which wou

12、ld make a modern climber shudder at the thought, but they did not go out of their way to court such excitement.They had a single aim, a solitary goal-the top!It is hard for us to realize nowadays how difficult it was for the pioneers.Except for one or two places such as Zermatt and Chamonix, which h

13、ad rapidly become popular, Alpine villages tended to be impoverished settlements cut off from civilization by the high mountains.Such inns as there were were generally dirty and flea-ridden; the food simply local cheese accompanied by bread often twelve months old, all washed down with coarse wine.O

14、ften a valley boasted no inn at all, and climbers found shelter wherever they could-sometimes with the local priest (who was usually as poor as his parishioners), sometimes with shepherds or cheese-makers.Invariably the background was the same: dirt and poverty, and very uncomfortable.For men accust

15、omed to eating seven-course dinners and sleeping between fine linen sheets at home, the change to the Alpsmust have been very hard indeed.Book IV Lesson 4In the Soviet Union several cases have been reported recently of people who can read and detect colours with their fingers, and even see through s

16、olid doors and walls.One case concerns an eleven-year-old schoolgirl, Vera Petrova, who has normal vision but who can also perceive things with different parts of her skin, and through solid walls.This ability was first noticed by her father.One day she came into his office and happened to put her h

17、ands on the door of a locked safe.Suddenly she asked her father why he kept so many old newspapers locked away there, and even described the way they were done up in bundles.Veras curious talent was brought to the notice of a scientific research institute in the town of UIyanovsk, near where she liv

18、es, and in April she was given a series of tests by a special commission of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federal Republic.During these tests she was able to read a newspaper through an opaque screen and, stranger still, by moving her elbow over a childs game of Lotto she was able to describ

19、e the figures and colours printed on it; and, in another instance, wearing stockings and slippers, to make out with her foot the outlines and colours of a picture hidden under a carpet.Other experiments showed that her knees and shoulders had a similar sensitivity.During all these tests Vera was bli

20、ndfold; and, indeed, except when blindfold she lacked the ability to perceive things with her skin.It was also found that although she could perceive things with her fingers this ability ceased the moment her hands were wet.Book IV Lesson 5The gorilla is something of a paradox in the African scene.O

21、ne thinks one knows him very well.For a hundred years or more he has been killed, captured, and imprisoned, in zoos.His bones have been mounted in natural history museums everywhere, and he has always exerted a strong fascination upon scientists and romantics alike.He is the stereotyped monster of t

22、he horror films and the adventure books, and an obvious (though not perhaps strictly scientific) linkwith our ancestral past.Yet the fact is we know very little about gorillas.No really satisfactory photograph has ever been taken of one in a wild state, no zoologist, however intrepid, has been able

23、to keep the animal under close and constant observation in the dark jungles in which he lives.Carl Akeley, the American naturalist, led two expeditions in the nineteen-twenties, and now lies buried among the animals heloved so well.But even he was unable to discover how long the gorilla lives, or ho

24、w or why it dies, nor was he able to define the exact social pattern of the family groups, or indicate the final extent of their intelligence.All this and many other things remain almost as much a mystery as they were when the French explorer Du Chaillu first described the animal to the civilized wo

25、rld a century ago.The Abominable Snowman who haunts the imagination of climbers in the Himalayas is hardly more elusive.Book IV Lesson 6People are always talking about the problem of youth .If there is one-which I take leave to doubt-then it is older people who create it, not the young themselves.Le

26、t us get down to fundamentals and agree that the young are after all human beings-people just like their elders.There is only one difference between an old man and a young one: the young man has a glorious future before him and the old one has a splendid future behind him: and maybe that is where th

27、e rub is.When I was a teenager, I felt that I was just young and uncertain-that I was a new boy in a huge school, and I would have been very pleased to be regarded as something so interesting as a problem.For one thing, being a problem gives you a certain identity, and that is one of the things the

28、young are busily engaged in seeking.I find young people exciting.They have an air of freedom, and they have not a dreary commitment to mean ambitions or love of comfort.They are not anxious social climbers, and they have no devotion to material things.All this seems to me to link them with life, and

29、 the origins of things.Its as if they were in some sense cosmic beings in violent an lovely contrast with us suburban creatures.All that is in my mind when I meet a young person.He may be conceited, ill- mannered, presumptuous of fatuous, but I do not turn for protection to dreary cliches about resp

30、ect for elders-as if mere age were a reason for respect.I accept that we are equals, and I will argue with him, as an equal, if I think he is wrong.Book IV Lesson 7I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the

31、 world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield.Even if one didnt know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general princip

32、les.Nearly all the sports practised nowadays are competitive.You play to win, and the game has little meaning unless you do your utmost to win.On the village green, where you pick up sides and no feeling of local patriotism is involved, it is possible to play simply for the fun and exercise: but as

33、soon as the question of prestige arises, as soon as you feel that you and some larger unit will be disgraced if you lose, the most savage combative instincts are aroused.Anyone who has played even in a school football match knows this.At the international level sport is frankly mimic warfare.But the

34、 significant thing is not the behaviour of the players but the attitude of the spectators: and, behind the spectators, of the nations.who work themselves into furies over these absurd contests, and seriously believe-at any rate for short periods-that running, jumping and kicking a ball are tests of

35、national virtue.Book IV Lesson 8Parents have to do much less for their children today than they used to do, and home has become much less of a workshop.Clothes can be bought ready made, washing can go to the laundry, food can be bought cooked, canned or preserved, bread is baked and delivered by the

36、 baker, milk arrives on the doorstep, meals can be had at the restaurant, the works canteen, and the school dining-room.It is unusual now for father to pursue his trade or other employment at home, and his children rarely, if ever, see him at his place of work.Boys are therefore seldom trained to fo

37、llow their fathers occupation, and in many towns they have a fairly wide choice of employment and so do girls.The young wage-earner often earns good money, and soon acquires a feeling of economic independence.In textile areas it has long been customary for mothers to go out to work, but thispractice

38、 has become so widespread that the working mother is now a not unusual factor in a childs home life, the number of married women in employment having more than doubled in the last twenty-five years.With mother earning and his older children drawing substantial wages father is seldom the dominant fig

39、ure that he still was at the beginning of the century.When mother workseconomic advantages accrue, but children lose something of great value if mothers employment prevents her from being home to greet them when they return from school.Book IV Lesson 9Not all sounds made by animals serve as language

40、, and we have only to turn to that extraordinary discovery of echo-location in bats to see a case in which the voice plays a strictly utilitarian role.To get a full appreciation of what this means we must turn first to some recent human inventions.Everyone knows that if he shouts in the vicinity of

41、a wall or a mountainside, an echo will come back.The further off this solid obstruction the longer time will elapse for the return of the echo.A sound made by tapping on the hull of a ship will be reflected from the sea bottom, and by measuring the time interval between the taps and the receipt of t

42、he echoes the depth of the sea at that point can be calculated.So was born the echo-sounding apparatus, now in general use in ships.Every solid object will reflect a sound, varying ac- cording to the size and nature of the object.A shoal of fish will do this.So it is a comparatively simple step from

43、 locating the sea bottom to locating a shoal of fish.With experience, and with improved apparatus, it is now possible not only to locate a shoal but to tell if it is herring, cod, or other well-known fish, by the pattern of its echo .A few years ago it was found that certain bats emit squeaks and by

44、 receiving the echoes they could locate and steer clear of obstacles-or locate flying insects on which they feed.This echo-location in bats is often compared with radar, the principle of which is similar.Book IV Lesson 10In our new society there is a growing dislike of original, creative men.The man

45、ipulated do not understand them; the manipulators fear them.The tidy committee men regard them with horror, knowing that no pigeonholes can be found for them.We could do with a few original, creative men in our political life-if only to create some enthusiasm, release some energy-but where are they?

46、We are asked to choose between various shades of the negative.The engine is falling to pieces while the joint owners of the car argue whether the footbrake or the handbrake should be applied.Notice how the cold, colourless men, without ideas and with no other passion but a craving for success, get o

47、n in this society, capturing one plum after another and taking the juice and taste out of them.Sometimes you might think the machines we worship make all the chief appointments, promoting the human beings who seem closest to them.Between mid-night and dawn, when sleep will not come and all the old w

48、ounds begin to ache, I often have a nightmare vision of a future world in which there are billions of people, all numbered and registered, with not a gleam of genius anywhere, not an original mind, a rich personality, on the whole packed globe.The twin ideals of our time, organization and quantity,

49、will have won for ever.Book IV Lesson 11Alfred the Great acted as his own spy, visiting Danish camps disguised as a minstrel.In those days wandering minstrels were welcome everywhere.They were not fighting men, and their harp was their passport.Alfred had learned many of their ballads in his youth,

50、and could vary his programme with acrobatic tricks and simple conjuring.While Alfreds little army slowly began to gather at Athelney, the king himself set out to penetrate the camp of Guthrum, the commander of the Danish invaders.These had settled down for the winter at Chippenham: thither Alfred we

51、nt.He noticed at once that discipline was slack: the Danes had the self-confidence of conquerors, and their security precautions were casual.They lived well, on the proceeds of raids on neighbouring regions.There they collected women as well as food and drink, and a life of ease had made them soft.A

52、lfred stayed in the camp a week before he returned to Athelney.The force there assembled was trivial compared with the Danish horde.But Alfred had deduced that the Danes were no longer fit for prolonged battle: and that their commissariat had no organization, but depended on irregular raids.So, face

53、d with the Danish advance, Alfred did not risk open battle but harried the enemy.He was constantly on the move, drawing the Danes after him.His patrols halted the raiding parties: hunger assailed the Danish army.Now Alfred began a long series of skirmishes-and within a month the Danes had surrendere

54、d.The episode could reasonably serve as a unique epic of royal espionage!Book IV Lesson 12What characterizes almost all Hollywood pictures is their inner emptiness.This is compensated for by an outer impressiveness.Such impressiveness usually takes the form of truly grandiose realism.Nothing is spar

55、ed to make the setting, the costumes, all of the surface details correct.These efforts help to mask the essential emptiness of the characterization, and the absurdities and trivialities of the plots.The houses look like houses, the streets look like streets; the people look and talk like people; but

56、 they are empty of humanity, credibility, and motivation.Needless to say, the disgraceful censorship code is an important factor in predetermining the content of these pictures.But the code does not disturb the profits, nor the entertainment value of the films; it merely helps to prevent them from b

57、eing credible.It isnt too heavy a burden for the industry to bear.In addition to the impressiveness of the settings, there is a use of the camera, which at times seems magical.But of what human import is all this skill, all this effort, all this energy in the production of effects, when the story, t

58、he representation of life is hollow, stupid, banal, childish ?Book IV Lesson 13Oxford has been ruined by the motor industry.The peace which Oxford once knew, and which a great university city should always have, has been swept ruthlessly away; and no benefactions and research endowments can make up

59、for the change in character which the city has suffered.At six in the morning the old courts shake to the roar of buses taking the next shift to Cowley and Pressed Steel, great lorries with a double deck cargo of cars for export lumber past Magdalen and the University Church.Loads of motor-engines a

60、re hurried hither and thither and the streets are thronged with a population which has no interest in learning and knows no studies beyond servo-systems and distributors, compression ratios and camshafts.Theoretically the marriage of an old seat of learning and tradition with a new and wealthy indus

61、try might be expected to produce some interesting children.It might have been thought that the culture of the university would radiate out and transform the lives of the workers.That this has not happened may be the fault of the university, for at both Oxford and Cambridge the colleges tend tolive i

62、n an era which is certainly not of the twentieth century, and upon a planet which bears little resemblance to the war-torn Earth.Wherever the fault may lie the fact remains that it is the theatre at Oxford and not at Cambridge which is on the verge of extinction, and the only fruit of the combinatio

63、n of industry and the rarefied atmosphere of learning is the dust in the streets, and a pathetic sense of being lost which hangs over some of the colleges.Book IV Lesson 14Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death.In the young there is a justification for this feeling.Young men who have rea

64、son to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer.But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat ab

65、ject and ignoble.The best way to overcome it- so at least it seems to me-is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.An individual human existence should be like a river-small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rush