英语泛读教程第三版3(主编刘乃银)Extra Passage 4

英语泛读教程第三版3（主编刘乃银）Extra Passage 4 Let us out from a fact. The same type of civilizations, or to use a more exact ,although more extended expression , the same society, has hot always inhabited the earth. The human race as a whole has grown, has developed, has matured, like one of ourselves. It was once a child, it was once man; we are now looking on at its impressive old age. Before the epoch which modern society has dubbed “ancient”there was another epoch which the ancient called “fabulous” but which it would be more accurate to call “primitive”. Observe then three great successive orders of things in civilization, from its origin down to our days. Now, as poetry is always superposed upon society, we propose to try to demonstrate, from the from of its society, what the character of the poetry must have been in those three great ages of the would primitive times, ancient times, modern times.

In primitive times, when man awakes in a world that is newly created, poetry awakes with him. In the face of the marvelous things that dazzle him, his first speech is a hymn simply. He is still, so close to God that all his thoughts are joyful, all his dreams are visions. The earth is still almost deserted. There are families, but no nations; patriarchs, but no kings. Each race exist at its own pleasure; no property, no laws, no conventions, no wars. Everything belongs to each and to all. Society is community. Man is restrained in nought. He leads that nomadic pastoral life with which all civilization begin, and which is so well adapted to solitary contemplation, to fanciful reverie. He follows every suggestion, he goes hither and thither, at random. His thought, like his life, resembles a cloud that changes its shape and its direction according to the wind that drives it. Such is the first man, such is the first port. He is young; he is cynical. Prayer is his sole religion, the ode is his only form of poetry.

This ode, this poem of primitive times, is Genesis.

By slow degrees, however, this youth of the world pass away. All the spheres progress; the tribe becomes a nation. Each of these groups of men camps about a common center, ang kingdoms appear. The social instinct succeeds the nomadic instinct. The camp gives place these states of nations; the pastoral staff has already assumed the shape of a scepter. Everything tends to become stationary and fixed. Religion takes on a definite shape; prayer is governed by rites; dogma sets bunds to worship. Thus the priest and king share the paternity of the people; thus theocratic society succeeds the patriarchal community.

Meanwhile the nations are beginning to be packed too closely on the earth’s surface. They annoy and jostle one another; hence the clash of empires-war. They overflow upon another; hence the migrations of nations-voyages. Poetry reflects these momentous events; from ideas it proceeds to things. It sing of ages, of nations of empires…