现代大学英语精读第二版（第四册）学习笔记（原文及全文翻译）

The Damned Human Race

Mark Twain

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals," and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals and to name it the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guessed or speculated or conjectured, but have used what is commonly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that presented itself to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result. These experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens, and covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work.

Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the course of my reading, I had come across a case where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl—that, and to provide some fresh meat for his table. They had charming sport. They killed seventy-two of those great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the seventy-one to rot. In order to determine the difference between an anaconda and an earl—if any—I caused seven young calves to be turned into the anaconda's cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The facts stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn't; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he had no use for, but the anaconda doesn't. This seemed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also seemed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a good deal in the transition.

I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever use have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignorant and the helpless out of their poor savings in order to partially appease that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter's supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by tricks. These experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals; he is avaricious and miserly, they are not.

In the course of my experiments I convinced myself that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals.

Roosters keep harems, but it is by consent of their concubines; therefore no wrong is done. Men keep harems, but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws which the other sex were allowed no hand in making. In this matter man occupies a far lower place than the rooster.

Cats are loose in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the cat, has brought the cat's looseness with him but has left the unconsciousness behind—the saving grace which excuses the cat. The cat is innocent, man is not.

Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity—these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himself. He will not even enter a drawing-room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is "The Animal that Laughs." But so does the monkey, as Mr Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No—Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it—or has occasion to.

At the head of this article we see how "three monks were burnt to death" a few days ago, and a prior "put to death with atrocious cruelty." Do we inquire into the details? No; or we should find out that the prior was subjected to unprintable mutilations. Man—when he is a North American Indian—gouges out his prisoner's eyes; when he is King John, with a nephew to render untroublesome, he uses a red-hot iron; when he is a religious zealot dealing with heretics in the Middle Ages, he skins his captive alive and scatters salt on his back; in the first Richard's time he shuts up a multitude of Jew families in a tower and sets fire to it; in Columbus's time he captures a family of Spanish Jews and—but that is not printable; in our day in England a man is fined ten shillings for beating his mother nearly to death with a chair, and another man is fined forty shillings for having four pheasant eggs in his possession without being able to satisfactorily explain how he got them. Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals. The cat plays with the frightened mouse; but she had this excuse, that she does not know that the mouse is suffering. The cat is moderate—unhumanly moderate, she only scares the mouse, she does not hurt it; she doesn't dig out its eyes, or tear off its skin, or drive splinters under its nails—man-fashion; when she is done playing with it, she makes a sudden meal of it and puts it out of its trouble. Man is the Cruel Animal. He is alone in that distinction.

The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only one that deals in the atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only animal that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and with calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out, as the Hessians did in our Revolution, and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.

Man is the only animal that robs his helpless fellow of his country—takes possession of it and drives him out of it or destroys him. Man has done this in all the ages. There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed.

Man is the only Slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man's slave for wages, and does that man's work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keeps them from grabbing slices of his and in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and—works for "the universal brotherhood of man"—with his mouth.

Man is the Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven. He was at it in the time of the Caesar's, he was at it in Mohammed's time, he was at it in the time of the Inquisition, he was at it in France for a couple of centuries, he was at it in England in Mary's day, he has been at it ever since he first saw the light. The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out, in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal. Note his history, as sketched above. It seems plain to me that whatever he is he is not a reasoning animal.

In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace, even affectionately.

Next, in another cage I confined an Irish Catholic, and then as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scotch Presbyterian. Next a Turk; a Greek Christian; a Methodist from Arkansas; a Buddhist from China. Finally, a Salvation Army Colonel from Wapping. Then I stayed away two whole days. When I came back to note results, the cage of Higher Animals was all right, but in the other there was but a chaos of gory odds and ends of turbans and plaids and bones and flesh——not a specimen left alive. These Reasoning Animals had disagreed on a theological detail and carried the matter to a Higher Court.

And so I find that we have descended and degenerated, from some far ancestor—some microscopic atom wandering at its pleasure between the mighty horizons of a drop of water perhaps—insect by insect, animal by animal, reptile by reptile, down the long highway of perfect innocence, till we have reached the bottom stage of development—namable as the Human Being. Below us—nothing.

可恶的人类

马克•吐温

我一直在研究“低级动物”的特点和性情，并将其与人的特点和性情相比较。我发现其结果令我羞愧难当，因为它迫使我宣布不再忠信达尔文“人是从低级动物进化而来”的理论，而将其更名为“人是从高级动物退化而来的”。

在得出这一令人不快的结论的过程中，我没有进行猜测、推断或者揣测，而是运用了人们通常所说的科学方法。也就是说，对于出现的每一种假设，我都通过实验进行了严格检测，并依据实验结果采纳或者否定了这一假设。这些实验都是在伦敦动物园进行的，为此我历时数月，不辞辛劳。

我的某些实验着实奇怪。我在查阅资料时碰到一个案例——许多年前，一些猎人为了招待一位英国的伯爵，在北美大平原上组织了一次水牛狩猎——同时为了在他的餐桌上添些新鲜的肉食。他们玩得很尽兴，猎杀了 72头水牛，然而他们只吃了其中一头的一部分，把其余的71头扔在那里任其腐烂。为了确定蟒蛇与伯爵有何区别——如果说真的存在区别的话—— 我让人把7头小牛赶进一条蟒蛇的笼子里。那只满怀感激的爬行动物立即缠住一头牛犊，把它吞到腹中，然后就心满意足地趴在那里。它对其他牛犊不再感兴趣，也没有表现出要伤害它们的样子。我用其他蟒蛇做了同样的实验，结果总是如此。这些事实已经证明，蟒蛇和伯爵之间的区别在于：伯爵是残忍的，而蟒蛇不是；伯爵肆意破坏他并不需要的东西，而蟒蛇没有。这似乎表明，蟒蛇不是由伯爵退化而来的，而且似乎表明，伯爵是由蟒蛇退化而来的。只是在退化的过程中伯爵丧失了蟒蛇的优点。

我意识到，许多人虽然聚敛了不计其数的财富，然而他们仍然渴望更多，并且肆无忌惮地骗取那些无知无助的人那点儿可怜的积蓄，以此来部分地满足自己的欲望。我向100 种不同的野生动物和家畜提供了储存大量食物的机会，但是没有一种动物试图屯积食物。松鼠、蜜蜂和某些鸟类虽然也进行积累，但当它们积累了足够过冬的食物后，也就停了下来，无论你直言相劝还是玩弄花招都无法说服它们再多屯积一点儿。这些实验让我相信，人和高级动物间的区别：人贪得无厌又爱财如命，这些高级动物却不是如此。

在实验中，我确信在所有的动物中，人是唯一将侮辱和伤害深记于心，耿耿于怀， 伺机报复的动物。强烈的报复欲望在高级动物中是罕见的。

公鸡家里母鸡成群，但得到了其他母鸡的认可，因此公鸡没有过失。人妻妾成群，只是依靠暴力，由残暴的法律来授予特权，然而女性是无权参与制定这些法律的。在这个问题上，人的境界远不如公鸡。

猫在道德方面放荡不羁，但并非有意识这样做。人从猫退化而来，继承了猫的放荡作风，却把无意识丢到了背后——这个使猫得到宽恕的唯一可取之处。猫是无辜的，而人不是。

粗俗、下流、淫秽——这些是只有人类才具有的特点。人首创了这些特点，而在高级动物中没有这些特点的痕迹。高级动物不隐藏任何东西，无所谓羞愧。人因为有肮脏的思想，于是把自己包装了起来。他甚至不会袒胸露背走进客厅，但他和他的配偶对下流的暗示又十分敏感。人是“会笑的动物”，但正如达尔文先生所指出的那样,猴子也会笑；而叫做笑翠鸟的澳大利亚鸟也会笑。不——人是会脸红的动物，是唯一会脸红的动物——或者说是唯一有理由脸红的动物。

在这篇文章的开头，我们看到几天前“三个僧人被烧死”是如何发生的，一个修道院院长是如何“被用极其残忍的手段杀害”的。我们调查过细节吗？没有，否则我们会发现这位修道院院长遭到肢解，其惨状笔墨无法描述。人——当他是北美印第安人时——挖出了俘虏的眼睛；当他是约翰王时，为了除掉侄子，他会用烙铁来折磨他；当他是中世纪一个对付异教徒的宗教狂时，他活活剥下俘虏的皮，还在背上撒盐；在理查一世时代，他把一大群犹太人全家关进钟楼里，放火焚烧；在哥伦布时代，他抓获一个西班牙裔的犹太家庭，然后——不过下面的事情也不宜刊印；在我们同时代的英国，一个人因为差点用椅子把他母亲打死被罚款10 先令，另一个人由于拥有4个野鸡蛋，但对其来历无法做出令人满意的解释而被罚款40先令。在所有动物中，人是唯一残忍的动物，是唯一拿别人的痛苦取乐的动物，这是一种高级动物闻所未闻的特点。猫戏弄吓坏了的老鼠，但它有理由，它不知道老鼠在遭受着痛苦。猫懂得适可而止——一种人不具有的适可而止，它只是在吓唬老鼠，并不去伤害它。它不去挖老鼠的眼睛，剥它的皮，或者把尖刺插进他的指甲里——像人那样。在它戏弄完老鼠后，便突然把它当饭吃了，使它脱离痛苦。人是残忍的动物，他在这方面是独一无二的。

高级动物进行个体争斗，但从不组织大规模战斗。人是唯一从事战争这一残暴至极的行为的动物，他是唯一能把同胞聚集在周围，残忍地发动战争，平静地消灭其同类的动物。人是唯一能为了肮脏的军饷出发征战的动物，就像黑森雇佣兵在我国独立战争中那样，助纣为虐，屠杀那些素不相识、未曾伤害过他、也没有与他发生过争执的同类。

人是唯一抢掠无助同类的国家的动物——侵占同类的土地，把他们赶走，或者除掉。从古至今人一直在这样做。地球上没有哪一英亩土地归属于它真正的合法拥有者，无不是被用武力和杀戮从一个又一个拥有者手里夺走，一次又一次轮换着主人。

人是唯一的奴隶，也是唯一能奴役他人的动物。他一直以某种方式充当奴隶，同时又总是以某种方式去奴役他人。在我们这个时代，他一直为了挣工资而做别人的奴隶，为别人打工，而这个奴隶又管辖其他工资更加微薄的奴隶，这些奴隶再为他做工。高级动物是唯一只干自己的活，自食其力的动物。

人是唯一的爱国者。他在自己的国家中自诩与众不同，独树一帜，嘲笑其他的国家。他不惜花费重金，屯兵无数，就是为了侵占他国的土地，防止他人抢夺自己国家的土地。在征战扩张之余，他洗去沾满鲜血的双手，大肆宣扬“全世界人类的同胞之情”——当然只是在口头上罢了。

人是信仰宗教的动物，是唯一信仰宗教的动物。他是唯一有正统宗教的动物，正统宗教有若干。他也是唯一爱邻居如同爱自己，但如果邻居的宗教理论不正统，他就会割断邻居的喉咙的动物。为了竭尽所能为他的兄弟铺平通向幸福和天堂的道路，他把整个地球变成了一个墓地。他早在恺撒大帝时代就积极从事这项活动了。在穆罕默德时代也是这样，在中世纪的宗教法庭上审判异教徒时也是这样，在几个世纪以来的法国也是这样大开杀戒，在英国玛丽一世时代，他血腥地镇压清教徒，他从出生那天起就一直在这么干。高级动物没有宗教信仰。我们被告知，它们死后将被拒于天堂以外。我不明白这是为什么？看来这种选择标准值得怀疑。

人是理性的动物，据说是这样。我认为，在这一点上还有待讨论。我的实验的确证明人是非理性的动物。请注意一下上面简述的历史。在我看来，事实很清楚，不论他是什么，他绝不是理性的动物。

事实上，人是不可救药的傻瓜，他无法学会其他动物很容易掌握的简单事情。在我的实验中有这样一个例子，我用一个小时的时间教会了一只猫和一只狗友好相处。我把它们放进一只笼子。我又用一个小时教会了它们和一只兔子和谐相处。在两天的时间里，我成功加进去一只狐狸、一只鹅、一只松鼠和几只鸽子，最后我又关进去一只猴子。它们共同生活，相安无事，甚至感情融洽。

然后，我在另一只笼子里关了一个爱尔兰天主教徒，在他似乎驯服时又关进了一个苏格兰长老会教友，接着又加进了一个土耳其穆斯林，一个希腊正教教徒，一个来自阿肯色州的循道宗教徒，一个来自中国的佛教徒，最后关进一个来自沃平的救世军上校。随后，我离开两天。等我回来记录结果时，关着高级动物的笼子里平安无事，可是另一个笼子里却是一片恐怖的狼藉，骨肉四散，只剩下沾满血污的穆斯林头巾和苏格兰人的彩格呢披风等碎物——没有一个实验对象还活着这些理性动物就某一宗教理论的细节而纠缠不休，一直争执到了天上的法庭。

因此，我发现我们的远古祖先也许最初是某个小小的原子，怡然自得地漫游在一滴水构成的广袤空间里，然后逐步退化、堕落，由一种昆虫到另一种昆虫，一种动物到另一种动物，一种爬行动物到另一种爬行动物，经过漫长的道路，最后不知不觉地到了动物演变的最低阶段——被称作人类的阶段，而在我们之下，别无他物。

Key Words:

allegiance      [ə'li:dʒəns]     

n. 忠诚

ascent     [ə'sent]   

n. 上升，上坡路，晋升，提升，追溯

painstaking    ['peinz.teikiŋ] 

adj. 辛苦的，勤勉的 n. 辛苦，苦心，工夫

disposition     [.dispə'ziʃən]  

n. 性情，倾向，安排，处置，控制

tame       [teim]     

adj. 驯服的，柔顺的，乏味的

cruelty    ['kru:əlti] 

n. 残酷，残忍，残酷的行为，虐待

zealot     ['zelət]    

n. 热心者，狂热者 Zealot: 犹太教的狂热信徒

sordid     ['sɔ:did]  

adj. 肮脏的，破烂的，利欲薰心的，色彩暗淡的

atrocity   [ə'trɔsiti] 

n. 暴行

exterminate    [eks'tə:mineit]

vt. 扑灭，消灭，根绝

bondage ['bɔndidʒ]      

n. 奴役，束缚

inquisition      [.inkwi'ziʃən]  

n. 调查，询问，(罗马天主教的)宗教法庭

microscopic   ['maikrə'skɔpik]    

adj. 显微镜的，极小的，微观的

tame       [teim]     

adj. 驯服的，柔顺的，乏味的

vt. 驯养

mighty    ['maiti]   

adj. 强有力的，强大的，巨大的

scotch     [skɔtʃ]    

n. 伤口，刻痕 v. 粉碎，消灭，阻止 v. 弄伤，刻

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