Olaf Stapledon wrote a book called First and LastMen, in which he looked millions of years ahead. Hetold of different men and of strange civilizations(文明), broken up by long "dark ages" in between. In hisview, what is called the present time is no more thana moment in human history and we are just the FirstMen. In 2,000 million years from now there will bethe Eighteenth or Last Men.

　　However, most of our ideas about the future are really very short-sighted. Perhaps we can seesome possibilities for the next fifty years. But the next hundred? The next thousand? The nextmillion? That's much more difficult.

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　　When men and women lived by hunting 50,000 years ago, how could they even begin to picturemodern life? Yet to men of 50,000 years from now, we may seem as primitive(原始的) in ourideas as the Stone-Age hunters do to us. Perhaps they will spend their days gollocking to makenew spundels, or struggling with their ballalators through the cribe. These words, which I havejust made up, have to stand for things and ideas that we simply can't think of.

　　So why bother even to try imagining life far in the future? Here are two reasons. First, unlesswe remember how short our own lives are compared with the whole human history, we are likelyto think our own interests are much more important than they really are. If we make the eartha poor place to live because we are careless or greedy(贪婪) or quarrelsome, ourgrandchildren will not bother to think of excuses for us.

　　Second, by trying to escape from present interests and imagine life far in the future, we mayarrive at quite fresh ideas that we can use ourselves. For example, if we imagine that in thefuture men may give up farming, we can think of trying it now. So set you imagination freewhen you think about the future.

　　1. A particular mention made of Stapledon's book in the opening paragraph________.

　　A. serves as a description of human history

　　B. serves an introduction to the discussion

　　C. shows a disagreement of views

　　D. shows the popularity of the book

　　2. The text discusses men and women 50,000 years ago and 50,000 years from nowin order to show that ________.

　　A. human history is extremely long

　　B. life has changed a great deal

　　C. it is useless to plan for the next 50 years

　　D. it is difficult to tell what will happen in the future

　　3. Spundels and ballalators are used in the text to refer to ________.

　　A. tools used in farming

　　B. ideas about modern life

　　C. unknown things in the future

　　D. hunting skills in the Stone Age

　　4. According to the writer of the text, imagining the future will ________.

　　A. serve the interests of the present and future generations

　　B. enable us to better understand human history

　　C. help us to improve farming

　　D. make life worth living

　　答案

　　1. B。用排除法解答：先排除 A，因为这篇短文并非是对人类历史进行描述;再排除C，因为作者在此文章中并非表明对不同观点的否定;最后排除 D，因为作者并非要说明这本书的普遍意义。至于 B 项内容，正好符合这本书引导人们讨论的意图，故应选 B。

　　2. D。文中提及五万年前，处于狩猎时代的人们不可能勾勒出现代生活的画卷;也许我们将来会被认为是我们所认为的原始人，正如石器时代的狩猎者和我们相比一样，可知要预测较为遥远的未来是一件困难的事情。

　　3. C。从上下文可知，这四个词汇是作者杜撰的，用以形象地表示五万年后未知的事物和行为。

　　4. A。文中提及现在即开始对未来展开想象，是基于两点理由：人生是有限的;我们可能得到一些对我们自己切实可行的新见解。文中还提及如果我们因粗心大意和贪得无厌而把地球弄得一塌糊涂而不能居住，我们的子孙们就不难找到迁怒于我们的理由，故应选A。

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