评论
打印
As long as I kept my daily tour to the hill, to look out, so long also I kept up the vigour of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the while in a suitable frame for so outrageous an execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked savages,
每天到小山巡视期间，我始终精神抖擞，情绪高涨，决心实现计划。我似乎随时都可以干出惊人的壮举，一口气杀掉二三十个赤身裸体的野人。
for an offence which I had not at all entered into any discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom of the people of that country,
至于他们究竟犯了什么滔天大罪，我却从未认真考虑，只是当初看到这些土人伤天害理的习俗，从心底里本能地感到厌恶和愤怒罢了。
who, it seems, had been suffered by Providence, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions;
造物主治理世界，当然是英明无比的，但他似乎已经弃绝了这些土人。
and consequently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act such horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature, entirely abandoned by Heaven, and actuated by some hellish degeneracy, could have run them into.
任他们按照自己令人憎恶的、腐败堕落的冲动去行事，任他们几世纪以来干着这种骇人听闻的勾当，形成这种可怕的风俗习惯。要是他们不是被上天所遗弃，要是他们没有堕落到如此毫无人性的地步，他们是决不会落到现在这种境地的。
But now, when, as I have said, I began to be weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long and so far every morning in vain, so my opinion of the action itself began to alter; and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to consider what I was going to engage in;
但是，前面提到，一连两三个月，我每天上午都外出巡视，却始终毫无结果。我开始感到厌倦了。于是，我对自己的计划也改变了看法，并开始冷静地考虑我自己的行动。
what authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer unpunished to go on, and to be as it were the executioners of His judgments one upon another;
这么多世纪以来，上天都容许这些人不断互相残杀而不惩罚他们，那我有什么权力和责任擅自将他们判罪处死，代替上天执行判决呢？
how far these people were offenders against me, and what right I had to engage in the quarrel of that blood which they shed promiscuously upon one another.
这些人对我又究竟犯了什么滔天大罪呢？我又有什么权力参与他们的自相残杀呢？
I debated this very often with myself thus: "How do I know what God Himself judges in this particular case?
我经常同自己进行辩论：“我怎么知道上帝对于这件公案是怎样判断的呢？
It is certain these people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own consciences reproving, or their light reproaching them;
毫无疑问，这些人并不知道互相吞食是犯罪行为；他们那样做并不违反他们的良心，因而也不会受到良心的谴责。
they do not know it to be an offence, and then commit it in defiance of divine justice, as we do in almost all the sins we commit.
他们并不知道食人是违背天理的罪行而故意去犯罪，就像我们大多数人犯罪时一样。
They think it no more a crime to kill a captive taken in war than we do to kill an ox; or to eat human flesh than we do to eat mutton."
他们并不认为杀死战俘是犯罪行为，正如我们并不认为杀牛是犯罪行为；他们也不认为吃人肉是犯罪行为，正如我们并不认为吃羊肉是犯罪行为。”
When I considered this a little, it followed necessarily that I was certainly in the wrong;
我稍稍从这方面考虑了一下，就觉得自己不对了。
that these people were not murderers, in the sense that I had before condemned them in my thoughts, any more than those Christians were murderers who often put to death the prisoners taken in battle;
他们并不是我过去心目中所谴责的杀人犯。有些基督徒在战斗中常常处死战俘，
or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw down their arms and submitted.
甚至在敌人已经丢盔弃甲投降后，还把成队的敌人毫无人道地杀个精光。从这方面来看，那些土人与战斗中残杀俘虏的基督徒岂不一样！
In the next place, it occurred to me that although the usage they gave one another was thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me: these people had done me no injury:
其次，我又想到：尽管他们用如此残暴不仁的手段互相残杀，于我却毫无干系。他们并没有伤害我。
that if they attempted, or I saw it necessary, for my immediate preservation, to fall upon them, something might be said for it:
如果他们想害我，我为了自卫攻击他们，那还说得过去。
but that Iwas yet out of their power, and they really had no knowledge of me, and consequently no design upon me; and therefore it could not be just for me to fall upon them;
可现在我并没有落到他们手里，他们也根本不知道我的存在，因而也不可能谋害我。在这种情况下，我若主动攻击他们，那就没有道理了。
that this would justify the conduct of the Spaniards in all their barbarities practised in America, where they destroyed millions of these people;
我若这样做，无异于承认那些西班牙人在美洲的暴行是正当的。大家都知道，西班牙人在美洲屠杀了成千上万的当地土人。
who, however they were idolators and barbarians, and had several bloody and barbarous rites in their customs, such as sacrificing human bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Spaniards, very innocent people;
这些土著民族崇拜偶像，确实是野蛮民族；在他们的风俗中，有些仪式残忍野蛮，如用活人祭祀等等。可是，对西班牙人而言，他们都是无辜的。
and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation by even the Spaniards themselves at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man;
西班牙人这种杀人灭种的行为，无论在西班牙人看来，还是在欧洲各基督教国家中谈论起来，都引起极端的憎恶和痛恨，都认为这是一种兽性的屠杀，一种人神共愤的暴行。
and for which the very name of a Spaniard is reckoned to be frightful and terrible, to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion;
“西班牙人”这个名词，在一切具有人道主义思想和基督徒同情心的人们心中，成了一个可怕的字眼，
as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the mind.
就仿佛只有西班牙这个国家才会有这样的人：他们残酷不仁，对不幸的人毫无怜悯之心，而同情和怜悯正是仁义的标志。
