晨讀英語(yǔ)美文100篇六級(jí)The Modern Plato

[ti:] [ar:] [al:] [by:] [00:02.67]Passage 84. The Modern Plato [00:07.05]The modern Plato, like his ancient counterpart [00:14.05]has an unbounded contempt for politicians and statesmen and party leaders who are not university men. [00:20.61]He finds politics a dirty game, and only enters them reluctantly [00:25.10]because he knows that at the very least he and his friends are better than the present gang. [00:30.25]Brought up in the traditions of the ruling classes, [00:33.30]he has a natural pity for the common people whom he has learnt to know as servants, [00:38.33]and observed from a distance at their work in the factory, [00:41.51]at their play in the parks and holiday resorts. [00:44.58]He has never mixed with them or spoken to them on equal terms, [00:48.95]but has demanded and generally received a respect to his position and superior intelligence. [00:54.42]He knows that if they trust him, he can give them the happiness which they crave. [00:59.34]A man of culture, he genuinely despises the self-made industrialist and newspaper-king: [01:05.69]with a modest professional salary and a little private income of his own, [01:09.74]he regards money-making as vulgar and avoids all ostentation. [01:13.78]Industry and finance seem to him to be activities unworthy of gentlemen, [01:19.37]although, alas some part in them. [01:21.88]An intellectual,he gently laughs at the superstitions of most Christians, [01:27.03]but he attends church regularly because he sees the importance of organized religion [01:31.84]for the maintenance of sound morality among the lower orders, [01:35.67]and because he dislikes the skepticism and materialism of radical teachers. [01:40.37]His genuine passions are for literature and the philosophy of science [01:45.85]and he would gladly spend all his time in studying them. [01:49.12]But the plight of the world compels his unwilling attention, [01:52.52]and when he sees that human stupidity and greed are about to plunge Europe into chaos [01:57.55]and destroy the most glorious civilization which the worlds has destroyed, [02:02.48]he feels that it is high time for men of good sense and good will [02:05.65]to intervene and to take politics out of the hands of the plutocrats of the Right [02:10.14]and the woolly-minded idealists of the Left. [02:12.76]Since he and his kind are the only representatives of decency combined with intelligence, [02:17.90]they must step down into the arena and save the masses for themselves.

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