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发表于 2016-7-11 17:18:17
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【英译汉】【试题二】
We mark the passing of 800 years, and that is indeed a remarkable span for
any institution. But history is never an even-flowing stream, and the most
remarkable thing about modern Cambridge has been its enormous growth over the
past half century. Since I came up as an undergraduate in 1961 the student
population has more than doubled. More students have meant more teachers, and,
even more significantly, more scholars devoted solely to research: every
category has more than doubled in numbers. This huge increase has been partly
absorbed by an expansion of the colleges: they all have more students and more
Fellows than they did 50 years ago; and, since 1954, no fewer than 11 of the 31
colleges are either brand new foundations, or have been conjured up as new
creations from existing but quite different bodies. From being a university
primarily driven by undergraduate education, Cambridge's reputation is now
overwhelmingly tied to its research achievements, which can be simply
represented by the fact that more than three-quarters of its current annual
income is devoted to research. This has brought not just new laboratories but
new buildings to house whole faculties and departments: in the mid-20th century
few faculties had a physical manifestation beyond, perhaps, a library and a
couple of administrative offices. Cambridge attracts the best students and
academics because they find the University and the colleges stimulating and
enjoyable places in which to live and work. The students are thrown in with
similarly able minds, learning as much from each other as from their teachers;
the good senior
academics know better than to be too hierarchical or to cut themselves off
from intellectual criticism and debate. One generation dismisses another: not
even Erasmus or Newton, Darwin or Keynes stand unscathed by the passage of time;
nor can we be but humbled, especially in our day when so much information is so
easily accessible, by the vast store of knowledge which we can approach but
never really control. Our library and museum collections bring us into contact
with many lives lived in the past. They serve as symbols of the continuity of
learning, or the diversity of views, of an obligation to wrestle with fact and
argument, to come to our own conclusions, and in turn to be accountable for our
findings. The real quest is not for knowledge, but for understanding.
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