First and Last Men, in which he looked millions of years ahead. He told of different men and of strange civilizations (文明), broken up by long "dark ages" in between. In his view, what is called the present time is no more than a moment in human history and we are just the First Men. In 2 000 million years from now there will be the Eighteenth or Last Men.

　　However, most of our ideas about the future are really very short-sighted. Perhaps we can see some possibilities for the next fifty years. But the next hundred? The next thousand? The next million? That's much more difficult.

　　When men and women lived by hunting 50 000 years ago, how could they even begin to picture modern life? Yet to men of 50 000 years from now, we may seem as primitive (原始的) in our ideas as the Stone-Age hunters do to us, Perhaps they will spend their days

　　gollocking to make new

　　spundels, or struggling with their

　　ballalators through the

　　cribe. These words, which I have just made up, have to stand for things and ideas that we simply can't think of.

　　So why bother even to try imagining life far in the future? Here are two reasons. First, unless we remember how short our own lives are compared with the whole human history, we are likely to think our own interests are much more important than they really are. If we make the earth a poor plate to live on because we are careless or greedy (贪婪) or quarrelsome, our grandchildren will not bother to think of excuses for us.

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