History offered a feeble and delusive smile at the sound of the word; evolutionists and ethnologists disputed its very existence; no one knew what to make of it; yet, without the clue, history was a nursery tale.

听到这词，历史露出了微弱而虚幻的微笑；者和民族学家争它的存在；没有人知道该么做；然而，如果没有线索，历史就是童话故事。

There was a constant jarring of literary formulas, Dyson exalting the claims of the pure imagination, while Phillipps, who was a student of physical science and something of an ethnologist, insisted that all literature ought to have a scientific basis.

文学公式一直存在冲突，戴森推崇纯粹想象力的主张，而物理科学专业的学生和民族学家菲利普斯坚持认为所有文学都应该有科学依据。