Part C
Directions:
Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined
segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (10 points)
In his autobiography, Darwin himself speaks of his intellectual
powers with extraordinary modesty. He points out that he always experienced
much difficulty in expressing himself clearly and concisely, but (46) he believes that this very difficulty may have had
the compensating advantage of forcing him to think long and intently about
every sentence, and thus enabling him to detect errors in reasoning and in his
own observations. He disclaimed the possession of any great quickness of
apprehension or wit, such as distinguished Huxley. (47) He asserted, also, that his power to follow a long and purely abstract
train of thought was very limited, for which reason he felt certain that he
never could have succeeded with mathematics. His memory, too, he described
as extensive, but hazy. So poor in one sense was it that he never could
remember for more than a few days a single date or a line of poetry. (48) On the other hand, he did not accept as well
founded the charge made by some of his critics that, while he was a good
observer, he had no power of reasoning. This, he thought, could not be
true, because the “Origin of Species” is one long argument from the beginning
to the end, and has convinced many able men. No one, he submits, could have
written it without possessing some power of reasoning. He was willing to assert
that “I have a fair share of invention, and of common sense or judgment, such
as every fairly successful lawyer or doctor must have, but not, I believe, in
any higher degree.” (49) He adds humbly that
perhaps he was “superior to the common run of men in noticing things which
easily escape attention, and in observing them carefully.”
Writing in the last year of his life, he expressed the opinion
that in two or three respects his mind had changed during the preceding twenty
or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty or beyond it poetry of many kinds gave
him great pleasure. Formerly, too, pictures had given him considerable, and
music very great, delight. In 1881, however, he said: “Now for many years I cannot
endure to read a line of poetry. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures
or music.” (50) Darwin was convinced that the
loss of these tastes was not only a loss of happiness, but might possibly be
injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character.
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