Section A Translate the underlined sentences in
the following passage into Chinese. Remember to write the answers on the
answer sheet.
There is probably no limit to what science can do in the way
of increasing positive excellence. (81) Health has already been greatly
improved; in spite of the lamentations of those who idealize the past, we live
longer and have fewer illnesses than any class or nation in the eighteenth
century. With a little more application of the knowledge we already possess,
we might be much healthier than we are, and future discoveries are likely to
accelerate this process enormously. So far, it has been physical
science that has had the most effect upon our lives, but in the future
physiology and psychology are likely to be far more potent. (82)When we have
discovered how character depends upon physiological conditions, we shall be
able, if we choose, to produce far more of the type of human beings that we
admire. Intelligence, artistic capacity, benevolence--all these things no
doubt could be increased by science. There seems scarcely any limit to what
could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use
science wisely. (83) There is a certain attitude about the
application of science to human life with which I have some sympathy, though I
do not, in the last analysis, agree with it. It is the attitude of those who
dread what is "unnatural". Rousseau is, of course, the great protagonist of
the view in Europe. In Asia, Lao-Tze has set it forth even more persuasively,
and 2,400 years sooner. (84)I think there is a mixture of truth and falsehood
in the admiration of "nature", which it is important to disentangle. To begin
with, what is "natural’’ Roughly speaking, anything to which the speaker was
accustomed in childhood. Lao-Tze objects to roads and carriages and boats,
all of which were probably unknown in the village where he was born. Rousseau
has got used to these things, and does not regard them as against nature. But he
would no doubt have thundered against railways if he had lived to see them.
Clothes and cooking are too ancient to be denounced by most of the apostles of
nature, though they all object to new fashions in either. Birth control is
thought wicked by people who tolerate celibacy, because the former is a new
violation of’ nature and the latter an ancient one. (85) In these ways those
who preach "nature" are inconsistent, and one is tempted to regard them as mere
conservatives.