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  3. Darwin and Lincoln Are Strangely Fit Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12

Darwin and Lincoln Are Strangely Fit Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12

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问题                     Darwin and Lincoln Are Strangely Fit
    Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born in the same year, on the same day: Feb. 12, 1809. How’s this for a coincidence? Instinctively, we want to say that they belong together. It’s not just because they were both great men, and not because they happen to be exactly at the same age. Rather, it’s because the scientist and the politician each touched off a revolution that changed the world.
    Lincoln and Darwin were both revolutionaries, in the sense that both men upended realities that prevailed when they were born.They seen—and sound—modern to us, because the world they left behind them is more or less the one we still live in. So, considering the joint magnitude of their contributions—and the coincidence of their conjoined birthdays—it is hard not to wonder: who was the greater man? It’s an apples and oranges—or Superman vs Santa—comparison. But if you limit the question to influence, it bears pondering, all the more if you turn the question around and ask, what might have happened if one of these men had not been born? Very quickly the balance tips in Lincoln’s favor. Great as Darvin’s book on evolution is, it does no harm to remember that he hurried to publish "The Origin of Species" because he thought he was about to be scooped (抢先) by his fellow naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently come up with much the same idea of evolution through natural selection. In other words, there was a certain inevitability to Darwin’s theory. Ideas about evolution surfaced thoroughout the first part of the 19th century, and while none of them was as conclusive as Darwin’s, it was not as though he was the only man who had the idea.
    Lincoln, in contrast, is unique. Take him out of the picture, and there is no telling what might have happened to the country. True, his election to the presidency did provoke secession and, in turn, the war itself, but that war seems inevitable—not a question of if but when. If Darwin were not so irreplaceable as Lincoln, that should not deny his accomplishment. No one could have formulated his theory any more elegantly—or anguished more over its implications. Like Lincoln, Darwin was brave. He risked his health and his reputation to advance the idea that we are not over nature but a part of it. Lincoln prosecuted a war—and became its ultimate casualty—to ensure that no man should have dominion over another. Their identical birthdays afford us a superb opportunity to observe these men in the shared context of their time—how each was shaped by his circumstances, how each reacted to the beliefs that steered the world into which he was born and ultimately how each reshaped his corner of that world and left it irrevocably changed.
What does the author think of the role Lincoln played in America history?
选项 A、Lincoln is famous for his belief that human is a part of nature.
B、Without Lincoln the American Civil War wouldn’t have broken out.
C、Without Lincoln the American history might have been rewritten.
D、Lincoln solved the problem of racial equality in America completely.
答案C
解析 观点态度题。本题考查林肯的历史角色。原文在第三段对二人的历史角色进行了对比。由原文第三段第二句Take him out of the picture，and there is no telling what might have happened to the country．可知，如果将林肯从历史中抹去，谁都将无法预料美国的命运。由此推断，如果没有林肯，美国的历史可能重写，故选[C]项。[A]项“林肯以‘人是自然的一部分’这一信念著称”，[B]项“如果没有林肯，美国不会爆发内战”和D项“林肯完全解决了美国的种族平等问题”，均不正确。
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