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I believe that both these feelings do equal harm: the feeling of marvel as much as the fear. Because they have this in common, that they both want to persuade the layman that there is nothing he can do for himself. Science is the new magic, they whisper; it is out ofyour hands; for good or ill, your salvation or your doom is the business of others.
我认为惊叹与恐惧这两种感觉会造成同样的危害，因为它们有个共同之处，那就是，两者都想使门外汉相信他自己是无能为力的。它们悄声说：科学是新魔法，你无法控制它;你获救也罢，遭殃也罢，好歹都由别人决定。
That is why I have attacked the magic before the fear: because the marvel lies below the fear. In the minds of most people today, the fear is plainly uppermost. They are afraid ofthe future; and if you ask them why, they conveniently blame the atomic bomb. But the atomic bomb is only the scapegoat for our fears. We are not afraid of the future because of a bomb. We are afraid of bombs because we have no faith in the future. We no longer havefaith in our ability, as individuals or as nations, to control our own future. That loss of confidence has not sprung overnight from the invention of a weapon. The atomic bomb has merely brought home to us, harshly, as a matter of life and death, what has long been growing: our failure to face, our refusal to face, as individuals and as nations, the place of science in our world.
这就是我在批评恐惧心理之前首先抨击魔法一说的缘故：惊叹是产生恐惧的根子。如今在多数人脑海里，恐惧显然最为突出。他们害怕未来;如果你问他们为什么要怕，他们会随口责怪原子弹。但原子弹不过是为我们的恐惧承担责任的替罪羊。我们并不是因为炸弹而害怕未来，我们是因为对未来丧失信心而害怕炸弹。作为个人也好，作为民族也好，我们对自己驾驭未来的能力已不再抱有信心。这种信心不是由于发明了一样武器而突然丧失的，原子弹作为关联生死存亡的大事，只不过是无情地使我们彻底认识到一个由来已久的问题：作为个人，作为民族，我们都未能正视、或拒绝正视科学在世界上的地位。
There is the taproot of our fears. In our hearts, of course, we know that the future belongs to science; we do not deceive ourselves about that. But we do not want to have to think like scientists. We want to cling to the doctrines and prejudices which we imagine, quite wrongly, made the world snug seventy years ago. We do not care about the future; we just want that world to last our time. Because we do not feel equal to the new ideas; we have been told that science is mysterious and difficult. And so we let the exciting new knowledge slip from us, a little further every day, and our confidence with it; and then, face to face with the sense of our helplessness, we pretend that it is all a conspiracy among nuclear physicists.
我们之所以会产生恐惧，根源即在于此。当然，在内心深处我们知道未来属于科学，对此我们并不欺骗自己。但是我们不愿意像科学家那样去思考问题。我们想死抱住过去的教条与偏见不放，十分错误地认为，它们在七十年前曾使我们这个世界温馨宜人。我们并不把未来放在心上，我们只要求在有生之年能生活在那样一个世界，因为我们适应不了新思想，还听人说科学这东西非常神秘，很难掌握。所以我们听任振奋人心的新知识从我们身边悄悄溜走，过一天溜得远一点，信心也随之离我们而去。到头来，我们意识到自己无可奈何，便佯称这一切全是核物理学家搞的阴谋。
