Passage 19
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Most of the people who
appear most often in the history books are great conquerors
(征服者)
and generals and soldiers, while the people who really helped
civilization (文明)
forward are often never mentioned at all.
We do not know who first
set a broken leg, or made a seaworthy boat, or calculated
(计算)
the length of the year, but we know all about the killers and
destroyers. people think a great deal of them, so much so that on
all the highest pillars (柱子)
in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conquer
or a general of a soldier. And I think most people believe that
the greatest countries are those that have beaten in the 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. Animals fight; so do
savages (野蛮人);
so 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. 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. People fight to settle
quarrels. Fighting means killing, and civilized people ought to be
able to find some way of settling their quarrels rather than by seeing
which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then
saying that the side which has killed most has won, and not only has
won, but, because it has won, has been in the right. For that is
what is going to mean in a war, it means saying that might is right.