第1章　无知的暴虐

公元527年，弗雷维厄斯·阿尼西厄斯·查士丁尼成为东罗马帝国的统治者。

这个塞尔维亚农夫（他来自尤斯库布，这是第一次世界大战中引起激烈争夺的铁路枢纽）对书本知识一窍不通。正是因为他的命令，古代雅典的哲学学派才被最后压制下去。也正是他，关闭了唯一一座埃及神庙。自从信仰新基督教的信徒侵入尼罗河谷之后，这座神庙就一直延续香火，已有几百年了。

这座神庙位于菲莱小岛，离尼罗河第一瀑布不远。自从人类有史记载以来，这个地方就是朝拜伊希斯[1]的圣地；不知为什么，在非洲、希腊和罗马诸神早已悲惨地销声匿迹之后，这个女神还受人尊奉。直到公元6世纪，这个岛一直是理解古老而神圣的象形文字的唯一场所。在这里，一小部分教士继续从事着在其他地方已被遗忘的工作。

现在，因为一个文盲农夫（他被称为“皇帝陛下”）的命令，神庙和毗邻的学校变成了国家财产，神像和塑像被送到君士坦丁堡的博物馆里，教士和象形文字专家被投入大牢。当他们中的最后一个人因饥饿孤独而死去时，历史悠久的象形文字

All this was a great pity.

If Justinian（a plague upon his head!）had been a little less thorough and had saved just a few of those old picture experts in a sort of literary Noah's Ark, he would have made the task of the historian a great deal easier. For while（owing to the genius of Champollion）we can once more spell out the strange Egyptian words, it remains exceedingly difficult for us to understand the inner meaning of their message to posterity.

And the same holds true for all other nations of the ancient world.

What did those strangely bearded Babylonians, who left us whole brickyards full of religious tracts, have in mind when they exclaimed piously, “who shall ever be able to understand the counsel of the Gods in Heaven?” How did they feel towards those divine spirits which they invoked so continually, whose laws they endeavored to interpret, whose commands they engraved upon the granite shafts of their most holy city? Why were they at once the most tolerant of men, encouraging their priests to study the high heavens, and to explore the land and the sea, and at the same time the most cruel of executioners, inflicting hideous punishments upon those of their neighbors who had committed some breach of divine etiquette which today would pass unnoticed?

Until recently we did not know.

We sent expeditions to Nineveh, we dug holes in the sand of Sinai and deciphered miles of cuneiform tablets. And everywhere in Mesopotamia and Egypt we did our best to find the key that should unlock the front door of this mysterious store-house of wisdom.

工艺就成了一种消失的艺术。

这一切太遗憾了！

假如查士丁尼（这该死的家伙！）不做得那么决绝，把一些老象形文字专家抢救到一个类似“挪亚方舟”的安全地方，就会使历史学家的工作容易得多。虽然我们能再次拼写出奇怪的埃及文字（这全归功于商博良的天才），但要理解他们传给后代的内在含义仍然非常困难。

在古代社会的其他民族中，同样的事情太多了。

那些留着奇怪胡子的巴比伦人，给我们留下了整座整座刻满宗教文字的砖场，当他们虔诚地疾呼“将来谁能理解天国上帝的忠告”时，他们脑子里是如何想的？他们不断祈求圣灵的庇护，力图解释这些圣灵的律法，把这些圣灵的旨意刻在城市最神圣的大理石柱上，他们又是如何看待这些圣灵的？为什么他们会突然极其宽容，鼓励教士研究高高在上的天国，探索陆地和海洋，突然又变成残酷的刽子手，当他们的邻居对如今已无人在意的宗教礼节稍有疏忽时，就施以骇人听闻的惩罚呢？

我们至今尚未弄清楚。

我们派了探险队去尼尼微，在西奈沙漠中发掘古迹，解释了几英里（1英里=1.829米）长的楔形文字书板。在美索不达米亚和埃及各地，我们都尽了最大努力去寻找打开藏有神秘智慧的宝库大门的钥匙。

And then, suddenly and almost by accident, we discovered that the back door had been wide open all the time and that we could enter the premises at will.

But that convenient little gate was not situated in the neighborhood of Akkad or Memphis.

It stood in the very heart of the jungle.

And it was almost hidden by the wooden pillars of a pagan temple.

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Our ancestors, in search of easy plunder, had come in contact with what they were pleased to call “wild men” or “savages.”

The meeting had not been a pleasant one.

The poor heathen, misunderstanding the intentions of the white men, had welcomed them with a salvo of spears and arrows.

The visitors had retaliated with their blunderbusses.

After that there had been little chance for a quiet and unprejudiced exchange of ideas.

The savage was invariably depicted as a dirty, lazy, good-for-nothing loafer who worshiped crocodiles and dead trees and deserved all that was coming to him.

Then came the reaction of the eighteenth century. Jean Jacques Rousseau began to contemplate the world through a haze of sentimental tears. His contemporaries, much impressed by his ideas, pulled out their handkerchiefs and joined in the weeping.

The benighted heathen was one of their most favorite subjects. In their hands（although they had never seen one）he became the unfortunate victim of circumstances and the true representative of all those manifold virtues of which the human race had been deprived by three thousand years of a corrupt system of civilization.

Today, at least in this particular field of investigation, we know better.

然后，突然，几乎是偶然的机会，我们发现宝库的后门一直敞开着，我们随时都可以进去。

然而，这扇方便的小门并不在阿卡德或孟菲斯附近。

它位于丛林深处。

它几乎被异教徒所修神庙的木柱遮挡住了。

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我们的祖先在寻找易于抢掠的对象时，接触到了他们乐于称之为“野蛮人”的人。

这种相遇并不愉快。

可怜的野蛮人误解了白人的用心，以投掷长矛、张弓射箭的方式欢迎他们。

来访者则用他们的大口径短枪回敬。

从那以后，平静而不带偏见的思想交流的机会就很渺茫了。

野蛮人总是被描写成肮脏懒惰的废物，他们信仰鳄鱼和枯树，任何灾难都是他们所应得的报应。

然后是18世纪的变化。让·雅克·卢梭开始透过朦胧的伤感泪水观察这个世界。同时代的人被他的思想所打动，也掏出手帕，加入到流泪的行列中来。

愚昧的野蛮人成为他们喜欢的话题之一。在他们看来（尽管他们从未见过一个野蛮人），野蛮人是环境的不幸牺牲品，是人类各种美德的真正体现，而3000年的腐败文明制度已经使人类丧失了这些美德。

We study primitive man as we study the higher domesticated animals, from which as a rule he is not so very far removed.

In most instances we are fully repaid for our trouble. The savage, but for the grace of God, is our own self under much less favorable conditions. By examining him carefully we begin to understand the early society of the valley of the Nile and of the peninsula of Mesopotamia and by knowing him thoroughly we get a glimpse of many of those strange hidden instincts which lie buried deep down beneath the thin crust of manners and customs which our own species of mammal has acquired during the last five thousand years.

This encounter is not always flattering to our pride. On the other hand a realization of the conditions from which we have escaped, together with an appreciation of the many things that have actually been accomplished, can only tend to give us new courage for the work in hand and if anything it will make us a little more tolerant towards those among our distant: cousins who have failed to keep up the pace.

This is not a handbook of anthropology.

It is a volume dedicated to the subject of tolerance.

But tolerance is a very broad theme.

The temptation to wander will be great. And once we leave the beaten track, Heaven alone knows where we will land.

I therefore suggest that I be given half a page to state exactly and specifically what I mean by tolerance.

Language is one of the most deceptive inventions of the human race and all definitions are bound to be arbitrary. It therefore behooves an humble student to go to that authority which is accepted as final by the largest number of those who speak the language in which this book is written.

今天，至少在特定的考察领域里，我们知道得更多了。

我们研究原始人就像研究比较高级的家畜，他和它们的区别其实并不大。

在大多数情况下，我们总能劳有所获。野蛮人只是没有被上帝感化而已，他实际上是我们自己在恶劣环境中的自我体现。通过对野蛮人的仔细研究，我们开始了解尼罗河谷和美索不达米亚半岛的早期社会；通过对野蛮人的深入彻底认识，我们窥见了人类诸多奇怪的天性，这些天性深埋在一层薄薄的礼仪习俗的外壳之下，而这些礼仪习俗是我们人类历经5000年变迁而形成的。

这些发现并不能一直提升我们的自豪感。另一方面，了解了我们曾经摆脱的环境，欣赏了我们取得的许多业绩，会增加我们的勇气来对待手中的工作；除此之外，就是促使我们对落伍的异族兄弟保留更多的宽容。

这本书不是一本人类学手册。

这是一本奉献给“宽容”的书。

但宽容是个范围很广的命题。

偏离主题的诱惑很大。一旦离开大道，天晓得我们将在哪儿打住。

因此，还是让我用半页纸的篇幅来恰如其分地解释我所说的宽容的意义吧。

语言是人类最具欺骗性的发明之一，所有的定义都是武断的。因此，卑微的学生应该拜倒在一本权威典籍之下，因为其权威性已被大多数说这种语言的人接受了，这本书也是用这种语言写成的。

我所指的是《不列颠百科全书》。

I refer to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

There on page 1052 of volume XXVI stands written:“Tolerance（from Latin tolerare—to endure）:—The allowance of freedom of action or judgment to other people, the patient and unprejudiced endurance of dissent from one's own or the generally received course or view.”

There may be other definitions but for the purpose of this book I shall let myself be guided by the words of the Britannica.

And having committed myself（for better or worse）to a definite policy, I shall return to my savages and tell you what I have been able to discover about tolerance in the earliest forms of society of which we have any record.

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It is still generally believed that primitive society was very simple, that primitive language consisted of a few simple grunts and that primitive man possessed a degree of liberty which was lost only when the world became “complex.”

The investigations of the last fifty years made by explorers and missionaries and doctors among the aborigines of central Africa and the Polar regions and Polynesia show the exact opposite. Primitive society was exceedingly complicated, primitive language had more forms and tenses and declensions than Russian or Arabic, and primitive man was a slave not only to the present, but also to the past and to the future. in short, an abject and miserable creature who lived in fear and died in terror.

This may seem far removed from the popular picture of brave redskins merrily roaming the prairies in search of buffaloes and scalps, but it is a little nearer to the truth.

And how could it have been otherwise?

I have read the stories of many miracles.

该书第26卷1052页写道：“宽容（来源于拉丁字tolerare——容忍）：容许别人有行动或判断的自由，对有异于自己或传统观点的见解的耐心公正的容忍。”

也许还有其他定义，但就本书的目的，我不妨用《不列颠百科全书》的话来作为引导。

既然我已经（或多或少地）被束缚在某个明确的宗旨上，那么我还是从野蛮人时代开始，来向你们揭示我从人类有记载的最早期社会形态中发现的宽容是什么样的。

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人们一般都认为原始社会非常简单，原始语言由一些简单的咕哝组成，原始人拥有一定的自由，只不过在世界变得“复杂”以后就消失了。

过去50年，探险家、传教士和医生在中非、北极地区和波利尼西亚的土著居民中进行的调查表明，事实正好相反。原始社会极其复杂，原始语言的形式、时态和变格比俄语和阿拉伯语都多，原始人不仅是现实的奴隶，也是过去和未来的奴隶。简言之，他们是凄惨可怜的生灵，在畏惧中生活，在恐怖中死去。

我上面所说的和人们的通常想象——勇敢的红皮肤的人类在大草原上悠闲地漫步，寻找野牛和战利品——似乎相差甚远，但更接近事实。

事情怎么会是另外一种样子呢？

我读过许多关于描写奇迹的书。

但它们缺少一个奇迹：人类生存下来的奇迹。

But one of them was lacking: the miracle of the survival of man.

How and in what manner and why the most defenseless of all mammals should have been able to maintain himself against microbes and mastodons and ice and heat and eventually become master of all creation, is something I shall not try to solve in the present chapter.

One thing, however, is certain. He never could have accomplished all this alone.

In order to succeed he was obliged to sink his individuality in the composite character of the tribe.

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Primitive society therefore was dominated by a single idea, an all-overpowering desire to survive.

This was very difficult.

And as a result all other considerations were sacrificed to the one supreme demand—to live.

The individual counted for nothing, the community at large counted for everything, and the tribe became a roaming fortress which lived by itself and for itself and of itself and found safety only in exclusiveness.

But the problem was even more complicated than at first appears. What I have just said held good only for the visible world, and the visible world in those early times was a negligible quantity compared to the realm of the invisible.

In order to understand this fully we must remember that primitive people are different from ourselves. They are not familiar

with the law of cause and effect.

If I sit me down among the poison

这些毫无防范能力的哺乳动物到底是如何抵挡住细菌、柱牙象、冰雪和灼热的侵袭，并最后成为所有生灵的主宰的，我在这一章就不多谈了。

但有一件事情是肯定的：一个人绝不可能独自完成这些。

为了获得成功，原始人必须把自己的个性融入复杂的独具特色的部落中。

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统治原始社会的只有一个信条——至高无上的求生欲。

做到这一点太难了。

因此，所有其他欲望都服从于这一最高要求——活下去。

个人算不了什么，集体高于一切。部落成了一个活动的堡垒，它要自己求生存，一切为了部落，一切归部落所有，只有排斥一切外来物才能获得安全的保障。

但问题比刚才说的还要复杂。我刚才说的只适合于能看见的世界；在人类历史初期，可预见世界与不可预见世界相比微不足道。

为了充分理解这一点，我们必须记住，原始人与我们不同。他们不知道因果法则。

ivy, I curse my negligence, send for the doctor and tell my young son to get rid of the stuff as soon as he can. My ability to recognize cause and effect tells me that the poison ivy has caused the rash, that the doctor will be able to give me something that will make the itch stop and that the removal of the vine will prevent a repetition of this painful experience.

The true savage would act quite differently. He would not connect the rash with the poison ivy at all. He lives in a world in which past, present and future are inextricably interwoven. All his dead leaders survive as Gods and his dead neighbors survive as spirits and they all continue to be invisible members of the clan and they accompany each individual member wherever he goes. They eat with him and sleep with him and they stand watch over his door. It is his business to keep them at arm's length or gain their friendship. If ever he fail to do this he will be immediately punished and as he cannot possibly know how to please all those spirits all the time, he is in constant fear of that misfortune which comes as the revenge of the Gods.

He therefore reduces every event that is at all out of the ordinary not to a primary cause but to interference on the part of an invisible spirit and when he notices a rash on his arms he does not say, “Damn that poison ivy!” but he mumbles, “I have offended a God. The God has punished me,” and he runs to the medicine-man, not however to get a lotion to counteract the poison of the ivy but to get a “charm” that shall prove stronger than the charm which the irate God（and not the ivy）has thrown upon him.

As for the ivy, the primary cause of all his suffering, he lets it grow right there where it has always grown. And if perchance the white man comes with a can of kerosene and burns the shrub down, he will curse him for his trouble.

It follows that a society in which everything happens as the result of the direct personal interference on the part of an invisible being must depend for its continued existence upon a strict obedience of such laws as seem to appease the wrath of the Gods.

如果我坐在有毒的常春藤上，我会责怪自己的粗心大意，派人去请医生，让我小儿子尽快铲掉那些东西。认识因果的能力告诉我，有毒的常春藤会引起皮疹，医生会给我一些能止痒的药，铲掉常春藤可以避免再次发生痛苦的事情。

真正的野蛮人反应会截然不同。他根本不会把皮疹和有毒的常春藤联系起来。他生活在一个过去、现在和将来盘根错节、纠缠不清的世界。所有死去的首领都变成了神灵，死去的邻居变成了精灵，他们仍然是家族中看不见的成员，一步不离地陪着每个活着的人。他们和他同吃同睡，站着看守大门。活人应考虑的问题，就是与他们保持一定距离或得到他们的友情。如果他做不到这一点，就会立即遭到惩罚。由于活人不可能知道如何一直取悦所有的精灵，因此他总是害怕神灵将不幸作为报复降临到自己头上。

所以，他不会把每件异常的事情归结于最初的原因，而是归结于看不见的精灵的干涉。当他发现胳膊上有皮疹时，他不是说：“该死的毒藤！”而是小声嘟囔道：“我得罪了神灵，他来惩罚我了。”他会跑到医生那里，不是要消除常春藤毒的药，而是要一道比愤怒的神灵（而不是常春藤）扔给他的符更加灵验的符。

至于常春藤这一造成他所有痛苦的根源，他却不理不睬，任其像往常一样生长。如果白人偶尔带来一桶煤油把它烧了，他还会骂白人招惹是非。

因此，一个所有事情都被认为是由看不见的生灵操纵的社会要想持续生存，必须有赖于人们严格服从能平息神灵怒火的律法。

Such a law, according to the opinion of a savage, existed. His ancestors had devised it and had bestowed it upon him and it was his most sacred duty to keep that law intact and hand it over in its present and perfect form to his own children.

This, of course, seems absurd to us. We firmly believe in progress, in growth, in constant and uninterrupted improvement.

But “progress” is an expression that was coined only year before last, and it is typical of all low forms of society that the people see no possible reason why they should improve what（to them）is the best of all possible worlds because they never knew any other.

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Granted that all this be true, then how does one prevent a change in the laws and in the established forms of society?

The answer is simple.

By the immediate punishment of those who refuse to regard common police regulations as an expression of the divine will, or in plain language, by a rigid system of intolerance.

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If I hereby state that the savage was the most intolerant of human beings, I do not mean to insult him, for I hasten to add that given the circumstances under which he lived, it was his duty to be intolerant. Had he allowed any one to interfere with the thousand and one rules upon which his tribe depended for its continued safety and peace of mind, the life of the tribe would have been put in jeopardy and that would have been the greatest of all possible crimes.

But（and the question is worth asking）how could a group of people, relatively limited in number, protect a most complex system of verbal regulations when we in our own day with millions of soldiers and thousands of policemen find it difficult to enforce a few plain laws?

在野蛮人看来，这种律法的确存在。他的祖先创立了律法，把它传授给了他，他最神圣的职责就是保持律法不受侵犯，并将它完美无缺地传给他的孩子。

这在我们看来似乎有些荒谬。我们坚信进步、发展和持续不断地改进。

但“进步”是近年才形成的概念，而所有低级社会形态的特点是，由于人们从不知道别的世界，因此他们认为现状已经完美无瑕，没有理由再做改进了。

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假设上面说的是真的，那么怎样才能防止律法和依此建立的社会形态发生改变呢？

答案很简单。

即刻惩罚那些拒绝将公共条例看作上天旨意的人；说得浅显一些，就是靠刻板的专制制度。

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如果我据此说野蛮人是最不宽容的人，并没有侮辱他的意思，因为我马上要补充说明的是，在他生存的环境中，专制是理所当然的。如果一味地容忍，那么他的部落赖以保护人身安全及保持头脑冷静的律法就会遭到践踏，部落生活便会遭受威胁，这是最大的罪过。

但是（这个问题值得探讨），相对有限的几个人又是如何保护一整套口口相传的律法条例的呢？我们今天拥有几百万军队和成千上万名警察，可是连推行一些普

Again the answer is simple.

The savage was a great deal cleverer than we are. He accomplished by shrewd calculation what he could not do by force.

He invented the idea of “taboo.”

Perhaps the word “invented” is not the right expression. Such things are rarely the product of a sudden inspiration. They are the result of long years of growth and experiment. Let that be as it may, the wild men of Africa and Polynesia devised the taboo, and thereby saved themselves a great deal of trouble.

The word taboo is of Australian origin. We all know more or less what it means. Our own world is full of taboos, things we simply must not do or say, like mentioning our latest operation at the dinner table, or leaving our spoon in our cup of coffee. But our taboos are never of a very serious nature. They are part of the handbook of etiquette and rarely interfere with our own personal happiness.

To primitive man, on the other hand, the taboo was of the utmost importance.

It meant that certain persons or inanimate objects had been “set apart” from the rest of the world, that they（to use the Hebrew equivalent）were “holy” and must not be discussed or touched on pain of instant death and everlasting torture. A fairly large order but woe unto him or her who dared to disobey the will of the spirit-ancestors.

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Whether the taboo was an invention of the priests or the priesthood was created to maintain the taboo is a problem which had not yet been solved. As tradition is much older than religion, it seems more than likely that taboos existed long before the world had heard of sorcerers and witch doctors. But as soon as the latter had made their appearance, they became the staunch supporters of the idea of taboo and used it with such great virtuosity

通法律都很难。

答案同样简单。

野蛮人比我们聪明得多。他们精确地估算出了无法用武力推行的方法。

他发明了“忌讳”（taboo）的概念。

也许“发明”这个词文不达意。这种事情很少是灵光突现的产物。它们是长期实践和积累的结果。不管怎样，非洲和波利尼西亚的野蛮人创造了“忌讳”的概念，因此省去了许多麻烦。

“忌讳”这个词起源于澳大利亚。我们都或多或少地知道它的含义。我们自己的世界也充满了忌讳，也就是不能做的事或不能说的话，例如吃饭时提到我们刚做完的一个手术，或把小勺放在咖啡杯里不拿出来。但我们的忌讳绝不会那么严重，它们只是礼节的一部分，而且很少会干扰我们的幸福感。

但对原始人而言，忌讳极其重要。

它意味着某些人或没有生命的物体是超然于这个世界的，它们（用希伯来语说）是“神圣”的，人们绝不能冒即刻死去的痛苦危险或付出永恒磨难的代价去谈论或涉及它们。对于胆敢违抗祖先意志的人，可以痛斥。

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究竟是教士发明了忌讳，还是为维护忌讳才产生了教士这个职业，这还是一个未解之谜。也许早在男巫师和女巫婆出现之前就存在忌讳了。后来，宗教刚刚出现，他们就成为忌讳的顽固支持者，并以非常巧妙的手法滥用这个概念，从而使忌

that the taboo became the “verboten” sign of prehistoric ages.

When first we hear the names of Babylon and Egypt, those countries were still in a state of development in which the taboo counted for a great deal. Not a taboo in the crude and primitive form as it was afterwards found in New Zealand, but solemnly transformed into negative rules of conduct, the sort of “thou-shalt-not” decrees with which we are all familiar through six of our Ten Commandments.

Needless to add that the idea of tolerance was entirely unknown in those lands at that early age.

What we sometimes mistake for tolerance was merely indifference caused by ignorance.

But we can find no trace of any willingness（however vague）on the part of either kings or priests to allow others to exercise that “freedom of action or judgment” or of that “patient and unprejudiced endurance of dissent from the generally received cause or view” which has become the ideal of our modern age.

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Therefore, except in a very negative way, this book is not interested in prehistoric history or what is commonly called “ancient history.”

The struggle for tolerance did not begin until after the discovery of the individual.

And the credit for this, the greatest of all modern revelations, belongs to the Greeks.

讳被推而广之，成为史前时代的“禁物”象征。

在我们第一次了解巴比伦和埃及时，那些国家仍把忌讳置于重要位置。没有一条原始的忌讳粗糙像后来在新西兰发现的那样，而是被严肃庄重地改造成了约束人类行为的否定准则，以“你不能”之类的法律形式出现，就像我们都熟悉的基督教《摩西十诫》中的六条一样。

不用说，在那些国家的早期历史中，宽容的概念根本无人知晓。

我们有时看到的宽容，不过是由于无知而表现出来的漠不关心而已。

我们从未发现国王或教士有一丝诚意（哪怕微不足道），来允许别人履行“行动或判断的自由”，或“对不同于自己或传统观点的见解的耐心公正的容忍”，而这一点已成为现代社会的理想。

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因此，除非以一种非常消极的方式，否则本书不会让研究史前史或通常所说的“古代史”的人产生兴趣。

为宽容而战，是在个性被认可以后才开始的。

在现代最伟大的发现中，个性发现的荣誉应归于希腊人。