英语专业晨读美文-哲理篇 4 Shall We Choose Death

[00:00.63]Shall We Choose Death?

[00:04.25]I am speaking not as a Briton, not as a European,

[00:09.71] not as a member of a western democracy,

[00:12.56]but as a human being, a member of the species Man,

[00:17.48]whose continued existence is in doubt.

[00:20.76]The world is full of conflicts: Jews and Arabs;

[00:24.81]Indians and Pakistanis; white men and Negroes in Africa;

[00:29.29] and, overshadowing all minor 1 conflicts.

[00:32.24]As geological time is reckoned,

[00:34.76]Man has so far existed only for a very short period one million years at the most.

[00:41.54]What he has achieved,

[00:42.65]especially during the last 6 000 years,

[00:45.50]is something utterly 2 new in the history of the Cosmos 3,

[00:48.77]so far at least as we are acquainted with it.

[00:51.51] For countless 4 ages the sun rose and set,

[00:55.23]the moon waxed and waned 5, the stars shone in the night,

[00:59.71] but it was only with the coming of Man

[01:01.90]that these things were understood.

[01:04.20]In the great world of astronomy and in the little world of the atom,

[01:08.46]Man has unveiled secrets which might have been thought undiscoverable.

[01:13.50]In art and literature and religion,

[01:16.23]some men have shown a sublimity 6 of feeling

[01:19.07]which makes the species worth preserving.

[01:21.59]Is all this to end in trivial horror

[01:24.10]because so few are able to think of Man

[01:26.40]rather than of this or that group of men?

[01:29.35] Is our race so destitute 7 of wisdom,

[01:32.09]so incapable 8 of impartial 9 love,

[01:34.50]so blind even to the simplest dictates 10 of self-preservation,

[01:38.65] that the last proof of its silly cleverness

[01:41.71]is to be the extermination 11 of all life on our planet?

[01:46.96]For it will be not only men who will perish,

[01:50.02] but also the animals.

[01:51.88]I cannot believe that this is to be the end.

[01:54.40]I would have men forget their quarrels for a moment and reflect that,

[01:58.33]if they will allow themselves to survive,

[02:01.29]there is every reason to expect the triumphs of the future

[02:04.89]to exceed immeasurably the triumphs of the past.

[02:08.72]There lies before us, if we choose,

[02:12.01]continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom.

[02:16.60]Shall we, instead, choose death,

[02:19.55] because we cannot forget our quarrels?

[02:21.96]I appeal, as a human being to human beings:

[02:25.24]remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

[02:29.39]If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise;

[02:33.77]if you cannot, nothing lies before you but universal death.