问答题 Practice 4 　　In like manner we cannot refer the whole phenomena of the Renaissance to any one cause or circumstance, or limit them within the field of any one department of human knowledge. If we ask the students of art what they mean by the Renaissance, they will reply that it was the revolution effected in architecture, painting, and sculpture by the recovery of antique monuments. Students of literature, philosophy, and theology see in the Renaissance that discovery of manuscripts, that passion for antiquity, that progress in philology and criticism, which led to a correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the Lutheran schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science will discourse about the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and Harvey’s theory of the circulation of the blood. The origination of a truly scientific method is the point which interests them most in the Renaissance. The political historian, again, has his own answer to the question. The externalities of Europe, the growth of monarchy, the limitation of the ecclesiastical authority and the erection of the Papacy into an Italian kingdom, and in the last place the gradual emergence of that sense of popular freedom which exploded in the Revolution.

问答题 Practice 3 　　In men, good looks is a whole, something taken in at a glance. It does not need to be confirmed by giving measurements of different regions of the body; nobody encourages a man to dissect his appearance, feature by feature. As for perfection, that is considered trivial—almost unmanly. Indeed, in the ideally good-looking man a small imperfection or blemish is considered positively desirable. 　　To preen, for a woman, can never be just a pleasure. It is also a duty. It is her work. If a woman does real work—and even if she has clambered up to a leading position in politics, law, medicine, business, or whatever—she is always under pressure to confess that she still works at being attractive. But in so far as she is keeping up as one of the Fair Sex, she brings under suspicion her very capacity to be objective, professional, authoritative, thoughtful. Damned if they do—women are. And damned if they don’t. 　　How easy it is to start off by defining women as caretakers of their surfaces, and then to disparage them (or find them adorable) for being “superficial”. It is a crude trap, and it has worked for too long. But to get out of the trap requires that women get some critical distance from the excellence and privilege which is beauty, enough distance to see how much beauty itself has been abridged in order to prop up the mythology of the “feminine”. There should be a way of saving beauty from women—and for them.

问答题 Practice 2 　　Talk about fanciful thinking. One might as well ask if there will be a war that will end all wars, or a pill that will make us all good-looking. It is also a perfectly understandable question, given that half a million Americans will die this year of a disorder that is often discussed in terms that make it seem less like a disease than an unconquerable enemy. 　　What tuberculosis was to the 19th century, cancer is to the 20th: an malevolent force that frightens people beyond all reason far more than, say, diabetes or high blood pressure. The welcome boom in cancer drugs owes its beginning to one of the 20th century’s greatest scientific insights: that cancer is caused not by depression or deteriorating environment or sexual repression, but by faulty genes. Every tumor begins with just one errant cell that has been unlucky enough to suffer at least two, but sometimes several, genetic mutations. Those mutations cause the cell to replicate wildly, allowing it to escape the control that genes normally maintain over the growth of new tissue. This realization has transformed cancer, in little more than a decade, from an utterly mysterious disease into a disorder whose molecular machinery is largely understood. This new view has sparked innovations that will manage the process and keep it from killing large numbers of people.

问答题 Practice 2 　　This portrait-gallery of old Etonians is very select: preeminent distinction of birth or merit may win you a place there, or again official connection with the school, which rightly loves to keep up an unbroken panorama of its teachers, and to vivify its annals with the faces and figures of the personalities who carried on its traditions. But how came Dolben there? It was because he was a poet, — that I knew; — and yet his poems were not known; they were jealously guarded by his family and a few friends: indeed such of his poems as could have come to the eyes of the authorities who sanctioned this memorial would not justify it. There was another reason; and the portrait bears its own credentials; for though you might not perhaps divine the poet in it, you can see the saint, the soul rapt in contemplation, the habit of stainless life, of devotion, of enthusiasm for high ideals. Such a being must have stood out conspicuously among his fellows; the facts of his life would have been the ground of the faith in his genius; and when his early death endeared and sanctified his memory, loving grief would generously grant him the laurels which he had never worn. (Robert Bridges: A School Portrait)

问答题 Practice 2 　　The destiny of wild places in the 21 century can be read in the numbers. The pressure to exploit the world’ s remaining wilderness for natural resources, food and human habitation will become overwhelming. But bulldozers and chain saws aren’t the only threats. A new menace has emerged from the least likely quarter; in many cases, the very people who care most passionately about empty places are hastening their demise. 　　Backcountry activities have become extremely trendy in the U. S., a fad that has been eagerly abetted by Madison Avenue. These days it’s impossible to turn on a television or open a magazine without being assaulted by a barrage of ads that use skillfully packaged images of wilderness activities to rev the engine of consumerism. Disconcerting though this development may be, it happens to come with a substantial upside; because wilderness is now esteemed as something precious and/or fashionable, wild places are more often being rescued from commercial exploitation. But if the wilderness fad has made it easier to protect wild country from development, it has made it harder to protect wild country from the exploding ranks of wilderness enthusiasts. Increasingly, places once considered enduringly back of beyond are now crowded with solitude seekers. As wilderness dwindles and disappears, more is at stake than the fate of endangered species. Other, less tangible things stand to be lost as well. Empty places have long served as a repository for a host of complicated yearnings and desires. As an antidote to the alienation and pervasive softness that plague modern society, there is no substitute for a trip to an untrammeled patch of backcountry, with its attendant wonders, privation and physical trials.

问答题 Practice 1 　　Our feverish planet badly needs a cure. It was probably always too much to believe that human beings would be responsible stewards of the planet. Yet make a mess we have. If droughts and wildfires, floods and crop failures, collapsing climate-sensitive species and the images of drowning polar bears didn’t quiet most of the remaining global-warming doubters, the hurricane-driven destruction of New Orleans did. This past year was the hottest on record in the US. The deceptively normal average temperature this winter masked record-breaking highs in December and record-breaking lows in February. That’s the sign not of a planet keeping an even strain but of one thrashing through the alternating chills and night sweats of a serious illness. 　　A crisis of this magnitude clearly calls for action that is both bottom-up and top-down. Though there is some debate about how much difference individuals can make, there is little question that the most powerful players— government and industry—have to take the lead. Still, individuals too can move the carbon needle. Cleaning up the wreckage left by our 250-year industrial bacchanal will require fundamental changes in a society hooked on its fossil fuels. Beneath the grass-roots action, larger tectonic plates are shifting. Science is attacking the problem more aggressively than ever. So is industry. So are architects and lawmakers and urban planners. The world is awakened to the problem in a way it never has been before.

问答题 Practice 2 　　Until early in this century, the isolationist tendency prevailed in American foreign policy. Then two factors projected America into world affairs: its rapidly expanding power, and the gradual collapse of the international system centered on Europe, the watershed presidencies marked this progression: Theodore Roosevelt’s and Woodrow Wilson’s. These men held the reins of government when world affairs were drawing a reluctant nation into their vortex. Both recognized that America had a crucial role to play in world affairs though they justified its emergence from isolation with opposite philosophies. 　　Roosevelt was a sophisticated analyst of the balance of power. He insisted on an international role for America because its national interest demanded it, and because a global balance of power was inconceivable to him without American participation. For Wilson, the justification of America’s international role was messianic: America had an obligation, not to the balance of power, but to spread its principles throughout the world. During the Wilson’s Administration, America emerged as a key player in world affairs, proclaiming principles which, while reflecting the truisms of American though, nevertheless marked a revolutionary departure for Old World diplomats. These principles held that peace depends on the spread of democracy, that states should be judged by the same ethical criteria as individuals, and that the national interest consists of adhering to a universal system of law.

问答题 Practice 4 　　I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” 　　We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.” (Sir Winston Churchill)

问答题 Practice 4 　　The line of demarcation between the adult and the child world is drawn in many ways. For instance, many American parents may be totally divorced from the church, or entertain grave doubts about the existence of God, but they send their children to Sunday school and help them to pray. American parents struggle in a competitive world where sheer cunning and falsehood are often rewarded and respected, but they feed their children with nursery tales in which the morally good is pitted against the bad, and in the end the good inevitably is successful and the bad inevitably punished. When American parents are in serious domestic trouble, they maintain a front of sweetness and light before their children. Even if American parents suffer a major business or personal catastrophe, they feel obliged to turn to their children and say, “Honey, everything is going to be all right.” This American desire to keep the children’ s world separate from that of the adult is exemplified also by the practice of delaying transmission of the news to children when their parents have been killed in an accident. Thus, in summary, American parents face a world of reality while many of their children live in a near-ideal unreal realm where the rules of the parental world do not apply, are watered down, or are even reversed.

问答题 Practice 2 　　At a time when the public is being assaulted with unsolicited e-mail ads, Califomia is about to launch the toughest counterattack in the nation. A law that goes into effect on Jan. 1 allows computer users in the state to refuse unwanted solicitations en masse and sue spammers who violate their wishes for as much as $1 million. 　　Those potent weapons for deflecting pitches that offer everything from bigger body parts to lower mortgage rates have attracted the ire of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and mass marketers. Fearing the law will curtail advertising on the Internet, they are pushing for a far weaker national solution that would undercut the tough tactics in California and other states that are going the same route. 　　But such self-interest is hardly enlightened. The growing flood of messages not only annoys PC users, it also slows the transmission of wanted e-mail and forces businesses to spend billions to combat spam. 　　In fact, a survey released Oct. 22 suggests the proliferation of pitches could hurt the very e-commerce these business groups say they want to preserve. The survey of computer users, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a non-profit group that studies public issues, found 25% use e-mail less because of spare. And 75 % were reluctant to give out e-mail addresses, even to online retailers.