[单项选择]It is curious to note how slowly the mechanism of the intellectual life improves. Contrast the ordinary library facilities of a middle-class English home, such as the present writer is now working in, with the inconvenience and deficiencies of the equipment of an Alexandrian writer, and one realizes the enormous waste of time, physical exertion, and attention that went on through all the centuries during which the library flourished. Before the present writer lies half a dozen books, and there are good indices to three of them. He can pick up any one of these six books, refer quickly to a statement, verify a quotation, and go on writing. Contrast with that the tedious unfolding of a rolled manuscript. Close at hand are two encyclopedias, a dictionary, an atlas of the world, a biographical dictionary, and other books of reference. They have no marginal indices, it is true; but that, perhaps, is asking too much at present. There were no such resources in the world in 300 B.C. Alexandr
A. wants to share his interests in his discoveries about the intellectual life with his reader
B. gloats over the difficulties of ancient writers
C. slyly introduces the fact that he is economically secure
D. is a practical historian who sticks to established facts