新概念英语（第四册，旧版）复习（原文及全文翻译）——Lesson 30 - Adventures of Ideas（思想冒险）

Lesson 30 - Adventures of Ideas

Each civilization is born, it culminates, and it decays. There is a widespread testimony that this ominous fact is due to inherent biological defects in the crowded life of cities. Now, slowly and at first faintly, an opposite tendency is showing itself. Better roads and better vehicles at first induced the wealthier classes to live on the outskirts of the cities. The urgent need for defence had also vanished. This tendency is now spreading rapidly downwards. But a new set of conditions is just showing itself. Up to the present time, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this new tendency placed the home in the immediate suburbs, but concentrated manufacturing activity, business relations, government, and pleasure in the centres of the cities. Apart from the care of children and periods of sheer rest, the active lives were spent in the cities. In some ways the concentration of such activities was even more emphasized, and the homes were pushed outwards even at the cost of the discomfort of commuting. But, if we examine the trend of technology during the past generation, the reasons for this concentration are largely disappearing. Still more, the reasons for the choice of sites for cities are also altering. Mechanical power can be transmitted for hundreds of miles, men can communicate almost instantaneously by telephone, the chiefs of great organizations can be transported by airplanes, the cinemas can produce plays in every village, music, speeches, and sermons can be broadcast. Almost every reason for the growth of the cities, concurrently with the growth of civilization has been profoundly modified.

A. N. Whitehead Adventures of Ideas

参考译文——思想冒险

每一种文明都会经历诞生、达到顶峰、衰退的过程。很多证据表明，这一事实是由于城市拥挤生活中固有的生物缺陷造成的。现在，一种相反的趋势隐约开始出现了。更好的道路和更好的车辆开始吸引富裕阶层居住在城市的郊区。防卫的迫切需要也消失了。这一趋势正在迅速扩大。但一些新情况开始显现。直到现在，在整个十八和十九世纪，住宅开始被安置在近郊，而制造活动、商业关系、政府和娱乐开始在城市中心集中。除了照顾孩子和休息外，他们的生活基本都是在城市里度过的。在某些方面，这类活动的集中程度更为突出，人们不得不忍受远距离通勤之苦。但是，如果我们审视过去一代人的技术趋势，这种过度集中的原因基本上正在消失。此外，城市选址的方法也在改变。机械动力可以传输数百英里，人们几乎可以通过电话在瞬间进行交流，大型组织的首脑可乘坐飞机出行，电影可以在每个村庄放映，音乐、演讲和布道可以轻松传播。随着文明程度的提高，城市集中发展的几乎每一个原因都被深刻地改变了。

注：博主基于百度翻译校译而成

参考资料：

http://tienganh.net/showthread.php?t=1843