In 1818 Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, the story of a scientist who tries to create a superior, being and instead creates a monster. In the last two centuries, this story     1     (tell) over and over again in countless variations. At first sight, the Frankenstein story appears to warn us that if we try to play God and engineer life we will be punished severely. Yet the story has a     2     (deep) meaning.

The Frankenstein myth confronts. Homo sapiens (智人) with the fact that the last days are fast approaching.     3     some nuclear or ecological disaster strikes, the pace of technological development will soon lead to the replacement of Homo sapiens by completely different beings who possess not only different physiques, but also very different cognitive and emotional worlds. This is something most Sapiens find extremely worrying. We like to believe that in the future people just     4     us will travel from planet to planet in fast spaceships. We don’t like to think about the     5     (possible) that in the future, beings with emotions and identities like ours will no longer exist, and our place will be taken by alien life forms     6     abilities beat our own.

We seek comfort in the fantasy that Dr. Frankenstein can create only terrible monsters, whom we would have to destroy in order to save the world. We like to tell the story that way because it implies that we are     7     best of all beings, that there never was and never will be anything better than us. Any attempt     8     (improve) us will inevitably fail, because even if our bodies might be improved, you cannot touch the human spirit.

We would have a hard time     9     (accept) the fact that scientists could engineer spirits as well as bodies, and that future Dr. Frankenstein could therefore create something     10     (true) superior to us, something that will look at us as condescendingly (居高临下地) as we look at the Neanderthals (穴居人).