《大学英语第四册精读第八单元MP3及文本》.docVIP

Unit Eight 　 　 Click the button to listen to the text 　 　 Would you choose to live underground if you could gain many advantages from doing so? Weather would no longer trouble you. Temperature would re- main the same all the year round. Artificial lighting could make the rhythm of our life uniform every- where. And the ecology of the natural world above ground would be greatly improved. Still, the prospect of moving underground may not be appealing to many people. 　 　 THE NEW CAVES 　 Isaac Asimov 　 During the ice ages, human beings exposed to the colder temperatures of the time would often make their homes in caves. There they found greater comfort and security than they would have in the open. We still live in caves called houses, again for comfort and security. Virtually no one would willingly sleep on the ground under the stars. Is it possible that someday we may seek to add further to our comfort and securi- ty by building our houses underground -- in new, manmade caves? It may not seem a palatable suggestion, at first thought. We have so many evil associations with the underground. In our myths and legends, the underground is the realm of evil spirits and of the dead, and is often the location of an afterlife of torment. (This may be because dead bodies are buried underground, and because volcanic eruptions make the underground appear to be a hellish place of fire and noxious gases. ) Yet there are advantages to underground life, too, and something to be said for imagining whole cities, even mankind generally, moving downward; of having the outermost mile of the Earths crust honeycombed with passages and structures, like a gigantic ant hill. First, weather would no longer be important, since it is primarily a phenomenon of the atmosphere. Rain, snow, sleet, fog would not trouble the undergrou