Beauty and the Beast 美女与野兽 童话 英文版

2021年1月26日发(作者：manage是什么意思)

Integrated English Course for postgraduates


Unit One:
Beauty and the Beast

Introduction to the author and the article
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1935, Phil Donahue has worked at numerous radio and
television stations across America. In 1963 he became the co-author of a popular phone-in
radio talk show, which led to an offer to host a television show of similar format in 1967.
The show, now called
“Donahue”
, focused on one guest or controversial topic each week
and became a forum for discussion of changing values in America. He has won several

Emmy

awards
as
host
of
this
sometimes
controversial
show.
He
ardently
supports
the
civil-rights
and
feminist
movements
and
is
a
member
of
the
National
Organization
for
Women
(NOW).
His
autobiography,
Donahue:
My
Own
Story

(1980),
includes
observations about contemporary life in the United States.
This essay is taken from Phil Donahue’s
The Human Animal
(1985). Comparing the
two sides of human nature
—

noble and petty, sublime and savage, beauty and beast
—

Donahue raises questions about contemporary attitudes toward the dark side of the human
animal.

Beauty and the Beast

Phil Donahue

Compared to the animals around us, there’s no doubt we are a remarkable phenomenon.
Someone referred to us as the “superdeluxe model”:
we walk, we talk, we smell, we taste,
we touch, we think. All this in a relatively small and attractive package. We’re also very
good with our hands. In the comparatively brief time we’ve been available in the current
form
—

about
50,000
years
—

we’ve
inv
ented
the
wheel,
the
alphabet,
the
clock,
the
reciprocating machine, the cyclotron, and everything in between. When we weren’t busy
making
progress,
we
invented
more
playful
things
like
music,
art,
baseball,
and
bridge.
Over the years, we’ve demonstrated a
n admirable willingness to cooperate with each other.
We assemble in big groups to form towns and cities; we get together in twos to discover
love.
We’ve
also
shown
a
lot
of
individual
spunk.
The
wheel
wasn’t
invented
by
a
committee,
and
Albert
Einstein,
by
himself,
revolutionized
our
understanding
of
the
universe.
Of course, most of our uniquely human accomplishments are the result of a combination
of a cooperation and individual achievement. Even Charles Lindbergh had a ground crew.
Beethoven
composed
the
Ninth
Symphony
in
the
solitude
of
deafness,
but
scores
of
musicians are needed to bring it to life. Neil Armstrong had to have personal courage to
step
out
on
the
surface
of
the
moon,
knowing
that
he
might
sink
into
15
feet
of
“moondust,” but he had an ar
my of people to help him there and bring him back.
We can only imagine what it must have felt like to stand on the moon; look back at the
earth,
suspended
like
a
blue-and-white
marble
in
space;
and
think
how
far
we
humans
have
come
in
such
a
short
time.
That
feeling
itself
—

the
tightening
in
the
throat,
the

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tingle up the spine, the tear of pride
—

is unique to the human animal. Throughout most
of
our
history,
that
feeling
belonged
exclusively
to
religion.
When
most
people’s
lives
were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” religion was the only thing that made them
feel dignified, special, proud of being human.
The peasants who gazed for the first time at the stained glass in the cathedral at Chartres
undoubtedly
experienced
that
same
feeling
—

the
most
human
of
emotions
—

wonder.
Most of them had never been inside anything bigger than a thatched hut and never seen
anything
more
colorful
than
a
piece
of
dyed
cloth.
Even
today,
the
sight
of
this
huge,
arched
space
with
those
luminous
windows
suspended
high
in
the
darkness
is
almost
enough
to
make
a
believer
of
even
the
most
skeptical.
In
1260,
when
the
church
was
consecrated, the peasants who shuffled through those doors must have thought they had
died and gone to heaven.
In fact, Chartres cathedral, like dozens of other cathedrals built in the same period, is the
medieval equivalent of the modern effort to put a man on the moon. Both represent the
perfect
combination
of
individual
achievement
and
group
cooperation
in
the
pursuit
of
something
beautiful
and
lasting.
The
space
program
would
never
have
gotten
off
the
ground if Wernher von Braun hadn’t made his discoveries in the field of jet propulsion,
and
the
arches
of
Chartres
would
never
have
soared
if
an
anonymous
French
architect
hadn’t devised a system
of buttresses to support a two-ton block of stone 120 feet in the
air and keep it there for a thousand years. But there would have been no stones to support
if
the
wealthier
townspeople
hadn’t
dug
deep
into
their
pockets
and
come
up
with
the
money
needed
for
construction.
The
glass
in
the
openings
would
be
clear
instead
of
stained
if
merchant
guilds,
members
of
the
nobility,
and
even
the
French
king
hadn’t
contributed
money
for
the
windows.
And
all
the
money
would
have
been
worthless
if
legions
of
craftsme
n
hadn’t
been
willing
to
dedicate
their
skills
and
often
their
lives
to
making this not just another building, but a monument to human achievement.
Bees get together and build hives, termites build mounds, beavers build dams, and spiders
spin webs, but what other animal can change stone and glass into poetry? Other animals
can alter their environment at the margins, but only we can transform our environment so
completely that we reshape our destiny. Alone in the animal kingdom, we can set goals for
ourselves and then pursue them. The dream of the medieval craftsmen who built Chartres
was to secure a place for themselves in heaven. By lavishing love on this stone and glass,
they
glorified
God
and
hoped
to
be
rewarded
in
the
next
life.
But
in
the
process,
they
changed this life, made it more beautiful and more worth living.
A place like Chartres makes us proud to be human. We can stand tall and hold our heads
high.
Certainly
no
other
creature
could
conceive
and
create
something
of
such
sublime
beauty.
Case
closed?
Hardly.
There
is,
unfortunately,
another
side
to
the
human
animal
that’s
nothing
to
be
proud
of.
At
places
like
Chartres,
it’s
easy
—

and
tempting
—

to
overlook this other side, the ugly side, of our nature. But we can’t begin to understand the
human a
nimal without it. Surely there’s beauty inside us —

but there’s also a beast, a part
of us that we’d like to deny but can’t, a part that gives us a knot in the stomach instead of
a lump in the throat.
Even
the
God-loving
people
who
fashioned
the
soaring
vaults
and
delicate
windows
of
Chartres had murder on their minds. Some of the workers may well have been veterans of

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