在人类的早期，与其他生物的竞争必定曾是至关重要的。
In man's early days, competition with other creatures must have been critical.
但这一发展阶段如今已经结束了。
But this phase of our development is now finished.
事实上，如今我们已缺乏应对原始条件的实践与经验了。
Indeed, we lack practice and experience nowadays in dealing with primitive conditions.
我确信，如果没有现代武器，我若要与一头熊争夺一处山洞的所有权，表现将会极为狼狈；在这一点上，我认为自己并不孤单。
I am sure that, without modern weapons, I would make a very poor show of disputing the ownership of a cave with a bear, and in this I do not think that I stand alone.
最后一种与人类竞争的生物是蚊子。
The last creature to compete with man was the mosquito.
但就连蚊子也已被对排水系统的重视和化学喷雾所征服。
But even the mosquito has been subdued by attention to drainage and by chemical sprays.
然而，我们人类内部的竞争——人与人之间、社群与社群之间——依然持续，而且它曾经有多激烈，如今仍有多激烈。
Competition between ourselves, person against person, community against community, still persists, however; and it is as fierce as it ever was.
但人与人之间的竞争，并非生物学所设想的那种简单过程。
But the competition of man against man is not the simple process envisioned in biology.
它并非对由物理环境决定的固定食物量的简单争夺，因为决定我们演化的环境已不再本质上是物理性的。
It is not a simple competition for a fixed amount of food determined by the physical environment, because the environment that determines our evolution is no longer essentially physical.
我们的环境主要是由我们所相信的事物所塑造的。
Our environment is chiefly conditioned by the things we believe.
摩洛哥和加利福尼亚都是地球上纬度极为相近的地块，同在大陆西海岸，气候相似，自然资源也大概相近。
Morocco and California are bits of the Earth in very similar latitudes, both on the west coasts of continents with similar climates, and probably with rather similar natural resources.
然而，它们目前的发展状况却截然不同——这与其说是因为人口不同，还不如说是因为生活在这两地的居民心中存在着不同的思想。
Yet their present development is wholly different, not so much because of different people even, but because of the different thoughts that exist in the minds of their inhabitants.
这正是我希望强调的观点。
This is the point I wish to emphasize.
我们环境中最重要的因素，是我们自身思想的状态。
The most important factor in our environment is the state of our own minds.
众所周知，当白人入侵一种原始文化时，最具破坏性的影响来自的不是物质武器，而是观念。
It is well known that where the white man has invaded a primitive culture, the most destructive effects have come not from physical weapons but from ideas.
观念是危险的。
Ideas are dangerous.
宗教裁判所在昔日造成异端者被焚烧时，对此心知肚明。
The Holy Office knew this full well when it caused heretics to be burned in days gone by.
事实上，自由言论这一概念之所以仅存在于我们的现代社会，是因为当你身处一个社群内部时，你已被该社群的种种惯例塑造到如此程度，以至于极难构想出任何真正具有破坏性的东西。
Indeed, the concept of free speech only exists in our modern society because when you are inside a community, you are conditioned by the conventions of the community to such a degree that it is very difficult to conceive of anything really destructive.
只有从外部旁观的人，才能注入那些危险的思想。
It is only someone looking on from outside that can inject the dangerous thoughts.
我毫不怀疑，将某些观念注入现代世界从而彻底毁灭我们，这在理论上是可能的。
I do not doubt that it would be possible to inject ideas into the modern world that would utterly destroy us.
我本想举一个例子，但幸运的是，我无法这样做。
I would like to give you an example, but fortunately I cannot do so.
也许，提及核弹就已足够了。
Perhaps it will suffice to mention the nuclear bomb.
请设想一下：将某个尚不拥有核弹的、相当先进的技术社会，使其意识到这种可能性、并向其提供足以令核弹被制造出来的足够细节——这一行为所产生的影响。
Imagine the effect on a reasonably advanced technological society, one that still does not possess the bomb, of making it aware of the possibility, of supplying sufficient details to enable the thing to be constructed.
二三十页的信息，若在1925年前后交给任何一个世界主要大国，本就足以改变世界历史的进程。
20 or 30 pages of information handed to any of the major world powers around the year 1925, would have been sufficient to change the course of world history.
这是一个奇特的想法，但我相信这是一个正确的想法——二三十页的观念与信息，有可能将当今世界颠覆，甚至将其摧毁。
It is a strange thought, but I believe a correct one, that twenty or thirty pages of ideas and information would be capable of turning the present-day world upside down, or even destroying it.
我曾多次试图构想那些页面可能包含什么，但当然，我做不到，因为我是现在这个世界的囚徒，正如你们所有人一样。
I have often tried to conceive of what those pages might contain, but of course I cannot do so because I am a prisoner of the present-day world, just as all of you are.
我们无法在我们大脑所习惯的特定思维模式之外进行思考；或者，说得更准确些，我们只能在模式之外思考极小的一步，而且只有在我们非常有创造力的情况下才能做到。
We cannot think outside the particular patterns that our brains are conditioned to, or, to be more accurate we can think only a very little way outside and then only if we are very original.