晨读英语美文100篇 Passage 84. The Modern Plato

[00:00.67]Passage 84. The Modern Plato

[00:05.05]The modern Plato, like his ancient counterpart

[00:12.05]has an unbounded contempt for politicians and statesmen and party leaders who are not university men.

[00:18.61]He finds politics a dirty game, and only enters them reluctantly

[00:23.10]because he knows that at the very least he and his friends are better than the present gang.

[00:28.25]Brought up in the traditions of the ruling classes,

[00:31.30]he has a natural pity for the common people whom he has learnt to know as servants,

[00:36.33]and observed from a distance at their work in the factory,

[00:39.51]at their play in the parks and holiday resorts.

[00:42.58]He has never mixed with them or spoken to them on equal terms,

[00:46.95]but has demanded and generally received a respect to his position and superior intelligence.

[00:52.42]He knows that if they trust him, he can give them the happiness which they crave.

[00:57.34]A man of culture, he genuinely despises the self-made industrialist and newspaper-king:

[01:03.69]with a modest professional salary and a little private income of his own,

[01:07.74]he regards money-making as vulgar and avoids all ostentation.

[01:11.78]Industry and finance seem to him to be activities unworthy of gentlemen,

[01:17.37]although, alas some part in them.

[01:19.88]An intellectual,he gently laughs at the superstitions of most Christians,

[01:25.03]but he attends church regularly because he sees the importance of organized religion

[01:29.84]for the maintenance of sound morality among the lower orders,

[01:33.67]and because he dislikes the skepticism and materialism of radical teachers.

[01:38.37]His genuine passions are for literature and the philosophy of science

[01:43.85]and he would gladly spend all his time in studying them.

[01:47.12]But the plight of the world compels his unwilling attention,

[01:50.52]and when he sees that human stupidity and greed are about to plunge Europe into chaos

[01:55.55]and destroy the most glorious civilization which the worlds has destroyed,

[02:00.48]he feels that it is high time for men of good sense and good will

[02:03.65]to intervene and to take politics out of the hands of the plutocrats of the Right

[02:08.14]and the woolly-minded idealists of the Left.

[02:10.76]Since he and his kind are the only representatives of decency combined with intelligence,

[02:15.90]they must step down into the arena and save the masses for themselves.