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锡林郭勒

29. Civilization and History 文明和历史

1. Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors  and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. 历史书上最常见的最风光的人物大多为伟大的征服者、将军和士兵，而真正推动历史前景的人却常常只字未提。  

We do not know who first set a broken leg, or launched  a seaworthy boat, or calculated the length of the year, or manured a field; 我们不知道是谁第一次治疗好了一条断腿，是谁把一个可以在海上航行的船送下水，是谁第一次计算出了一年的长度，又是谁首次在田野中施肥。  

but we know all about the killers and destroyers. 但是我们对那些杀人者和毁灭者的所有情况了如指掌。

People think a great deal of them, so much so that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. 人们对他们如此敬重，以致在世界上一些大城市里的所有最高的柱石上，你都会发现一些征服者，或一位将军，或一位军人的雕像。  

And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are those that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over  them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized. 我想，大多数人都会认为，最强大的国家是那些在战斗中打败其他国家最多，并作为征服者统治他们的国家，他们很可能是强人的，然而他们并不是最文明的。  

Animals fight, so do savages ; hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. 动物搏斗，野蛮人也搏斗；因而善于搏斗仅是动物或野蛮人择优的标准，但绝非文明的表现。  

Even being good at getting other people to fight for you and telling them how to do it most efficiently ---this, after all, is what conquerors and generals have done --- is not being civilized. 即使善于驱使别人为自己打仗，并且告诉他们怎样打才最有效 ------- 这毕竟是征服者和将军们干过的事 ------- 也称不上是文明的作为。  

People fight to settle quarrels . 人们为了解决争执的打仗。    

Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling  their disputes  other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has won. 打仗意味着残杀，文明的民族应当能够找到某种解决争端的办法，而不是看哪一方能消灭另一方更多的人，而后说杀人最多的一方获胜。  

And not only has won, but, because it has won, has been in the right. 胜者不仅胜了，而且还因为胜而有了理。

For that is what going to war means; it means saying that might is right. 这就是进行战争的意义，它意味着宣扬强权就是公理。  

2. That is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. 人类的经历大体上就是如此。

Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history, in which millions of people were killed or mutilated. 甚至在文明这个时代也打了两次历史上规模最大的战争，在那两次大战中千百万人惨遭屠杀或致残。  

And while today it is true that people do not fight and kill each other in the streets --- while, that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life --- nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave like savages. 尽管今天人们确实不在街上打仗并相互残杀了，也就是说，我们在日常生活中已经做到循规蹈矩，举止有仪，然而民族和国家还没有学会这一点，仍然表现得像野蛮人一样。  

3. But we must not expect too much. After all, the race of men has only just started. 可是我们不应该期望过高，人类的出现毕竟还不久。  

From the point of view of evolution, human beings are very young children indeed, babies, in fact, of a few months old. 从进化论的观点来看，人类的确还是非常年幼的孩子，实事上，是只有几个月的婴儿。    

Scientists reckon that there has been life of some sort on the earth in the form of jellyfish and that kind of creature for about twelve hundred million years; 科学家们推断，地球上存在着某种水母类的生物，这种生物已经存在 12 亿年了；  

but there have been men for only one million years, and there have been civilized men for about eight thousand years at the outside. 而人类仅仅存在一百多万年，开化的人也仅存在充其量不过八千来年。    

These figures are difficult to grasp; so let us scale them down. 这些数字难以掌握，还是让我们把这些数字按比例缩小吧。  

Suppose that we reckon the whole past of living creatures on the earth as one hundred years; then the whole past of man works out at about one month, and during that month there have been civilizations for between seven and eight hours. 我们姑且把地球上生物生存的历史算作一百年吧，那么我们人类生存的历史可算出大约为一个月，而在这一个月中，文明的历史则为七到八个小时。  

So you see there has been little time to learn in, but there will be oceans of time in which to learn better. 你瞧，我们几乎没有多少时间用来学习，但是，来日方长，我们有机会学的更好些。  

Taking man's civilized past at about seven or eight hours, we may estimate his future, 假定把人类文明的历史看作七八个小时，我们可以由此来预计人类的未来，    

that is to say, the whole period between now and when the sun grows too cold to maintain life any longer on the earth, at about one hundred thousand years. 也就是说，从现在到太阳变得非常之冷，以致地球上不再有生命的这段时期大概是十万年左右。  

Thus mankind is only at the beginning of its civilized life, and as I say, we must not expect too much. 这样来说，人类还处于文明生活的起步阶段，像我所说的，我们不应期望过高。  

The past of man has been on the whole a pretty beastly business, a business of fighting and bullying and gorging and grabbing and hurting. 人类的过去总的来说是一段相当野蛮的经历：厮杀角逐，恃强凌弱，吞并掠夺，蹂躏作践。  

We must not expect even civilized peoples not to have done these things. 即使是对于文明的民族，我们也不能苛求他们没有干过这样残酷的事情，

All we can ask is that they will sometimes have done something else. 我们能做的，仅仅是希望他们将来会做些与此不同的事情。