中英对照文本
According to folklore, Mahatma Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western Civilization. He replied that he thought it would be a good idea.
根据坊间传闻，圣雄甘地曾被问到他对西方文明的看法。他回答说，他认为它会是个好主意。
This was supposed to be a joke, but forgive me for taking the other side. I think Western Civilization was—and is—a good idea.
这应该是个玩笑，但原谅我有相反的看法。我认为西方文明曾经是——也仍然是——一个好主意。
This is the nearest thing to heresy that exists in modern academic life.
这一看法在现代学术界几近异端。
At most universities in the English-speaking world, there are demands to “decolonize the curriculum.” As a result, fewer and fewer students now graduate with any understanding of what has differentiated the West from the rest of the world. They leave with the misleading view that the defining features of Western Civilization are slavery, imperialism and war.
在英语国家的大多数大学中，都有要求「课程去殖民化」。结果是，越来越少学生毕业时能理解是什么让西方和世界上其他地方不一样。他们带着误解离开，以为西方文明的本质特征是奴役，帝国主义和战争。
No one would deny that, after they began to expand overseas in the late 1400s, the peoples of western Europe engaged in all of those things. But the point is that these were the least original things they did. Prior to that time, nearly all major civilizations enslaved people, built empires and made war. In many of the places that Europeans went—South America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and East Asia—they encountered empires.
没有人会否认，在 1400 年代末他们开始海外扩张后，西欧人确实做过所有这些事情。但关键在于他们所做的这些事一点也不新奇。在那个时代以前，几乎所有大型文明都奴役过人，建立帝国和发动战争。在许多欧洲人去过的地方——南美洲，非洲，中东，南亚和东亚——他们都遭遇过帝国。
The West first surged ahead of the rest thanks to a series of institutional innovations that I call the “killer applications”:
西方首度赶超其他国家是得益于一系列的制度创新，我称它们为「杀手级应用」。
1. Economic and political competition. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe was politically fragmented into multiple monarchies and republics. These in turn were internally divided into competing corporate entities, among them the ancestors of modern business corporations. The Medici Bank in Renaissance Florence is a good example.
1. 经济和政治竞争。罗马帝国衰落后，欧洲在政治上分裂成了多个君主国和共和国。它们进而又内部分化出相互竞争的法人实体，其中不乏现代商业公司的前身。文艺复兴时期弗罗伦萨的美第奇银行即是个好例子。
2. The Scientific Revolution. All the major 17th-century breakthroughs in mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, and biology happened in Western Europe. The difference with earlier advances in science was the realization that through experiment and measurement, nature could not only be understood, but manipulated and even mastered.
2. 科学革命。17 世纪在数学，天文学，物理学，化学和生物学上的所有重大突破都发生在西欧。与早期科学发展的不同在于（人们）意识到通过实验和测量，自然不仅可以被理解，还能操纵甚至掌握。
3. The rule of law and representative government. An optimal system of social and political order emerged in the English-speaking world, based on private property rights and the representation of property owners in elected legislatures. This was quite different from the systems of law that had evolved elsewhere, in which individual rights were given short shrift.
3. 法治和代议制政府。一种理想的社会与政治秩序制度出现在了英语国家，它基于私有产权和财产所有者在经选举产生的立法机关中的代表制。这截然不同于其他地方演化出的法律系统，在那些法律系统中，个人权利受到忽视。
4. Modern medicine. Nearly all the major 19th- and 20th-century breakthroughs in health care were made by Western Europeans and North Americans. Ironically, it was European researchers working in colonies who found cures for some of the most lethal tropical diseases—such as yellow fever.
4. 现代医学。19 到 20 世纪在医疗保健上几乎所有的重大突破都是由西欧人和北美人做出的。讽刺的是，正是在殖民地工作的欧洲研究者发现了治疗某些最致命的热带疾病（例如黄热病）的方法。
5. The consumer society. The Industrial Revolution took place where there was both a supply of productivity-enhancing technologies and a demand for more, better, and cheaper goods. Without elastic demand for manufactured cloth, for example, there would have been little point in driving down its price.
5. 消费社会。工业革命的发生既靠提高生产率的技术的供给，也靠对更多、更好、更便宜的商品的需求。比如，没有对加工布料的弹性需求，也就没什么压低价格的必要了。
6. The work ethic. Westerners worked longer, worked harder, and saved more of what they earned. This led to unprecedented capital accumulation, which in turn led to investment in the wonders of modern technology.
6. 工作道德。西方人工作更久，更努力，对他们所挣也存下更多。这导致了前所未有的资本积累，进而导致了对现代技术奇迹的投资。
For hundreds of years, these killer apps were essentially monopolized by West Europeans and their cousins who settled in North America and Australasia. They are the best explanation for what economic historians call “the great divergence”: the astonishing gap that arose between Western standards of living and those in the rest of the world.
数百年来，这些杀手级应用基本为西欧人和他们定居在北美和澳大拉西亚的表亲们所垄断。他们最好地解释了经济史学家所称的「大分流」：西方人生活水平和世界其他地方人们生活水平之间出现的惊人差距。
Yes, Western Civilization did empire. It did war. It did slavery. But these were not the things that led to the great divergence and the period of Western dominance of the world. It was the six killer applications that were crucial.
没错，西方文明建立过帝国。发动过战争。实行过奴隶制。但不是这些东西导致了大分流和西方称霸世界的时期。至为关键的是六样杀手级应用。
And this Western bundle of institutions still seems to offer humanity the best hope of solving the problems we face in the 21st century.
而这堆西方制度似乎仍然为人类提供了解决我们在 21 世纪面临的问题的最大希望。
Maybe the biggest of these problems is not the rise of China, radical Islam or carbon dioxide emissions, but our own loss of faith in the civilization we inherited from our ancestors.
或许其中最大的问题不是中国的崛起，激进伊斯兰或二氧化碳排放，而是我们自己对从祖先那继承下来的文明失去了信心。
Winston Churchill was no friend of Gandhi. In 1938, Churchill defined the “central principle of [Western] Civilization” as “the subordination of the ruling class to...the people and to their will as expressed in [a] Constitution.” Maybe you know of another civilization that came up with that simple but uniquely powerful idea.
温斯顿·丘吉尔不认同甘地。在 1938 年，丘吉尔定义「西方文明的中心原则」为「统治阶级服从于人民和他们表现在宪法中的意愿。」或许你还知道其他文明提出了这一简单而特别有力的理念。
I don’t.
我不知道。
I’m Niall Ferguson, fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, for Prager University.
我是尼尔·弗格森，斯坦福大学胡佛研究所的研究员，为 PragerU 制作。
译校：FungChuh
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