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Some supposed sources of progress now appear almost quaint.
有些曾经被认为是进步的动因的东西，现在看来似乎都有点古怪了。
Take language: many 18th-century thinkers believed that superstitions and past errors were imprinted in words...
以语言为例：很多18 世纪的思想家认为，迷信和过去的众多错误都印刻在文字里……
Purge the language of rotten thinking, they believed, and truth and reason would prevail.
他们相信，只要从文字中清除掉腐败的思想，真理和理智就能胜利。
The impulse survives, much diminished, in the vocabulary of political correctness.
这种冲动，尽管已经大大减少了，但仍然还残存在政治上正确的词汇里。
But these days few people believe in language as an agent of social change.
然而，现在已经很少有人相信语言是社会变革的动因了。
Other sources of progress are clothed in tragedy.
其他进步的动因笼罩在悲剧当中。
The Germanic thought that individual progress should be subsumed into the shared destiny of a nation is fatally associated with Hitler.
日耳曼人认为个人的进步应该从属于国家的整体命运，这种想法致命地和希特勒联系在一起。
Whenever nationalism becomes the chief organizing principle of society, state violence is not far behind.
民族主义一旦成为一个社会的指导思想，距离国家暴力就不远了。
Likewise, unspeakable crimes were committed by the ruling elite in the pursuit of progress, rather as they had been in the name of God in earlier centuries.
同样，统治精英在追求进步的过程中也会犯下恶劣的罪行，就如同此前几个世纪里以上帝的名义犯下的罪行那样。
