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We need especially to be on our guard when we come across propositions which seem to be "obviously"true.
当遇到某些看似“显而易见”正确的观点时，我们需要格外替觉。
When we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about which there is a feeling that even to enquire into it would be absurd, unnecessary, undesirable, or wicked—we may know that that opinion is a non-rational one.
当我们发觉自己持有一种观点，并且认为对它的任何探究都显得荒谬、多余、不受欢迎或者恶毒时--我们就可以说这种观点是非理性的。
When we are tempted to say that any general truth is so "obvious" that it would be absurd even to question it, we should remember that the whole history of the development of human thought has been full of cases of such "obvious truths" breaking down when examined in the light of increasing knowledge and reason. For instance, for ages nothing could have seemed more obvious, more utterly beyond question than the proposition that slavery was natural, reasonable, necessary, and right. Some kinds of men were "obviously" "slaves by nature." To doubt it was impossible.
当我们想说任何普遍真理都是“显而易见”的，以致甚至对其提出质疑都是荒谬的时候，我们应该记住，在人类思想的整个发展历史过程中都充满了这种“显而易见的真理”现象，经过人类不断增长的知识与理性的检验，而不攻自破的情况。例如，很多年以来人们认为奴隶制是很自然、合理、必要而且正确的，似乎没有什么比这更显而易见、更不容置疑的观点。某些人“显然”是“天生的奴隶”。那时质疑这种观点是不可能的。
Again for more than two thousand years, it was "impossible to conceive" the planets as moving in paths other than circles. The circle was "obviously" the perfect figure; and so it was "natural" and "inevitable" to suppose that the planets moved in circles. The age-long struggle of the greatest intellects in the world to shake off that assumption is one of the marvels of history.
同样，两千多年来人们“不可能想象”行星是以轨道而非圆周的形式运行的。而圆形“显然”是最完美的图形；因此设想行星按圆周的轨道运行是“很自然的”而且“不可避免的”。世界上最伟大的智者们经过长期斗争推翻了这一设想，这成为历史上的一大奇迹。
