晨读英语美文100篇 Passage 21. Two Ways of Thinking of History
 音频下载[点击右键另存为][00:00.00]Passage 21. Two Ways of Thinking of History[00:06.34]There are two ways of thinking of history. [00:10.60]There is, first, history regarded as a way of looking at other things, [00:16.19]really the temporal aspect of anything, [00:19.03]from the universe to this nib with which I am writing. [00:22.88]Everything has its history. [00:25.07]There is the history of the universe,if only we knew it [00:28.78]—and we know something of it, if we do not know much. [00:32.94]Nor is the contrast so great,when you come to think of it, [00:37.64]between the universe and this pen-nib. [00:40.71]A mere pen-nib has quite a considerable history. [00:44.87]There is, to begin with, what has been written with it, [00:49.14]and that might be something quite important. [00:52.20]After all it was probably only one quill-pen or a couple that wrote Hamlet. [00:59.09]Whatever has been written with the pen-nib is part of its History. [01:03.79]In addition to that there is the history of its manufacture: [01:08.28]this particular nib is a “Relief” nib, No. 314, [01:13.64]made by R. Esterbrook and Co. in England, [01:18.13]who supply the Midland Bank with pen-nibs, from whom I got it—a gift, I may say. [01:24.37]But behind this nib there is the whole process of manufacture.... [01:29.40]In fact a pen nib implies universe,and the history of it implies its history. [01:36.30]We may regard this way of looking at it—history—as the time-aspect of all things: [01:42.85]a pen-nib, the universe,the fiddle before me as I write, [01:47.23]as a relative conception of history. [01:50.19]There is, secondly, what we might call a substantive conception of history, [01:55.33]what we usually mean by it, history proper as a subject of study in itself. |
