In his classic novel, The Pioneers , James Fenimore Cooper has his hero, a land developer, take his cousin on a tour of the city he is building: He describes the broad streets, rows of houses, a teeming metropolis. But his cousin looks around bewildered. All she sees is a forest. Where are the beauties and improvements which you were to show me she asks. He’s astonished she can’t see them. Where Why everywhere, he replies. For though they are not yet built on earth, he has built them in his mind, and they are as concrete to him as if they were already constructed and finished. Cooper was illustrating a distinctly American trait, future-mindedness: the ability to see the present from the vantage point of the future; the freedom to feel unencumbered by the past and more emotionally attracted to things to come. As Albert Einstein once said, Life for the American is always becoming, never being. 点击查看答案&解析

在西方国家，特别是在美国，人们往往认为时间是和大自然混成一体的，是一件人们逃脱不了的东西．通常，美国人把时间看作是一条大道，或者像一条丝带，向前伸展，通向未来，人们沿着这条时间的大道向前迈进．这条大道又分成很多支道，各管各的事，叫做“在一个时间做一个事情”．人们对不会计划时间的人评价是不高的． 点击查看答案&解析