the diamond human race原文
Mark Twainhawa
I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals," and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals and to name it the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.
In proceeding toward this unpleasant conclusion I have not guesd or speculated or conjectured, but have ud what is commonly called the scientific method. That is to say, I have subjected every postulate that prented itlf to the crucial test of actual experiment, and have adopted it or rejected it according to the result. The experiments were made in the London Zoological Gardens, and covered many months of painstaking and fatiguing work.
update是什么意思Some of my experiments were quite curious. In the cour of my reading, I had come acros
s a ca where, many years ago, some hunters on our Great Plains organized a buffalo hunt for the entertainment of an English earl—that, and to provide some fresh meat for his table. They had charming sport. They killed venty-two of tho great animals; and ate part of one of them and left the venty-one to rot. In order to determine the difference between an anaconda and an earl—if any—I caud ven young calves to be turned into the anaconda's cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed one of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied. It showed no further interest in the calves and no disposition to harm them. I tried this experiment with other anacondas; always with the same result. The facts stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn't; and that the earl wantonly destroys what he had no u for, but the anaconda doesn't. This emed to suggest that the anaconda was not descended from the earl. It also emed to suggest that the earl was descended from the anaconda, and had lost a good deal in the transition.adventures
I was aware that many men who have accumulated more millions of money than they can ever u have shown a rabid hunger for more, and have not scrupled to cheat the ignora
nt and the helpless out of their poor savings in order to partially appea that appetite. I furnished a hundred different kinds of wild and tame animals the opportunity to accumulate vast stores of food, but none of them would do it. The squirrels and bees and certain birds made accumulations, but stopped when they had gathered a winter's supply, and could not be persuaded to add to it either honestly or by tricks. The experiments convinced me that there is this difference between man and the higher animals; he is avaricious and mirly, they are not.
In the cour of my experiments I convinced mylf that among the animals man is the only one that harbors insults and injuries, broods over them, waits till a chance offers, then takes revenge. The passion of revenge is unknown to the higher animals.
Roosters keep harems, but it is by connt of their concubines; therefore no wrong is done. Men keep harems, but it is by brute force, privileged by atrocious laws which the other x were allowed no hand in making. In this matter man occupies a far lower place than the rooster.
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Cats are loo in their morals, but not consciously so. Man, in his descent from the cat, has brought the cat's looness with him but has left the unconsciousness behind—the saving grace which excus the cat. The cat is innocent, man is not.
Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity—the are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. They hide nothing; they are not ashamed. Man, with his soiled mind, covers himlf. He will not even enter a drawing-room with his breast and back naked, so alive are he and his mates to indecent suggestion. Man is "The Animal that Laughs." But so does the monkey, as Mr Darwin pointed out; and so does the Australian bird that is called the laughing jackass. No—Man is the Animal that Blushes. He is the only one that does it—or has occasion to.
horasAt the head of this article we e how "three monks were burnt to death" a few days ago, and a prior "put to death with atrocious cruelty." Do we inquire into the details? No; or we should find out that the prior was subjected to unprintable mutilations. Man—when he is a North American Indian—gouges out his prisoner's eyes; when he is King John, with a nep
hew to render untroublesome, he us a red-hot iron; when he is a religious zealot dealing with heretics in the Middle Ages, he skins his captive alive and scatters salt on his back; in the first Richard's time he shuts up a multitude of Jew families in a tower and ts fire to it; in Columbus's time he captures a family of Spanish Jews and—but that is not printable; in our day in England a man is fined ten shillings for beating his mother nearly to death with a chair, and another man is fined forty shillings for having four pheasant eggs in his posssion without being able to satisfactorily explain how he got them. Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is a trait that is not known to the higher animals. The cat plays with the frightened mou; but she had this excu, that she does not know that the mou is suffering. The cat is moderate—unhumanly moderate, she only scares the mou, she does not hurt it; she doesn't dig out its eyes, or tear off its skin, or drive splinters under its nails—man-fashion; when she is done playing with it, she makes a sudden meal of it and puts it out of its trouble. Man is the Cruel Animal. He is alone in that distinction.
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