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But if the progress of the world had been left to the serf and his feudal master, we would still be living after the fashion of the twelfth century, saying "abracadabra" when we tried to stop a tooth-ache, and feeling a deep contempt and hatred for the dentist who offered to help us with his "science", which most likely was of Mohammedan or heathenish origin and therefore both wicked and useless.
如果这个世界的进步责任是肩负在农奴和他们的封建领主肩上，那我们现在就有可能如12世纪一样，牙疼了便念一番"啊巴拉卡，达巴拉啊"，靠神秘的咒语抵御肉体的疼痛。不仅如此，如果正好有一位牙医试图用他的"科学"来帮助我们，其结果只能招来我们的憎恶。因为那些邪里邪气的东西多半是来自穆罕默德信徒与异教徒"骗术"，当然是既恶毒又无用处的。
When you grow up you will discover that many people do not believe in "progress" and they will prove to you by the terrible deeds of some of our own contemporaries that "the world does not change". But I hope that you will not pay much attention to such talk. You see, it took our ancestors almost a million years to learn how to walk on their hind legs. Other centuries had to go by before their animal-like grunts developed into an understandable language. Writing-the art of preserving our ideas for the benefit of future generations, without which no progress is possible was invented only four thousand years ago. The idea of turning the forces of nature into the obedient servants of man was quite new in the days of your own grandfather. It seems to me, therefore, that we are making progress at an unheard-of rate of speed. Perhaps we have paid a little too much attention to the mere physical comforts of life. That will change in due course of time and we shall then attack the problems which are not related to health and to wages and plumbing and machinery in general.
当你们长大之后，你们会发现身边有许多人不相信"进步"。他们都是些看上去很有思想的家伙，我担保他们能滔滔不绝地列举出一些我们时代的可怕事实，来向你证明"世界从来如此，毫无变化"。不过我倒是希望，你们不要太受这种论调的蛊惑。你看，我们遥远的先祖几乎花费了100万年，才学会用下肢直立行走。当他们终于能够把动物般的咕咕声发展成可以理解与沟通的语言，又耗费了许许多多个世纪。书写术--为着未来人类的利益而保存我们思想的技术，缺少了它人类的任何进步都是没有可能的，它的发明不过是在短暂的四千年之前。那种驯服自然力为人类服务的新奇思想，仅仅是在你们祖父的时代才出现的。因此在我看来，我们人类其实是以一种闻所未闻的飞快速度进步着。也许，我们对物质生活的舒适关注得稍微多了一些，但这种趋势在一定的时候必然会扭转。到那时，我们会集中力量去对付那些与身体健康、工资多少、城市下水管道和机械制造无关的问题。
