新概念英语（第四册，旧版）复习（原文及全文翻译）——Lesson 60 - On Moral Courage（论道德勇气）

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Lesson 60 – On Moral Courage

Although truth and justice may be the most powerful impulses to show moral courage, there are others. Compassion is one of these. Tentatively it can be suggested that this is the main influence upon those who urge the abolition of capital punishment. It is recognition of compassion's part that leads the upholders of capital punishment to accuse the abolitionists of sentimentality in being more sorry for the murderer than for his victim. This is nonsense but with it some organs of the popular Press played upon the emotions of their readers so successfully that many candidates for Parliament were afraid to support abolition for fear of losing votes and the result was the muddle-headed Homicide Act of 1957 which made murder with robbery a capital crime and allowed the poisoner to escape the gallows.

That illogical qualification shows how flimsy is the argument that capital punishment is a deterrent to murder. The poisoner always works on a calculated plan of action and therefore is able to consider whether or not his taking another's life is worth the risk of his own; the violent thief is usually at the mercy of an instant emotion. The only arguable plea for capital punishment is the right of society to retribution in this world with the prospect of life in another, but since what used to seem to the great majority of civilized humanity the assurance of another life beyond the grave has come to seem to more and more people less certain, a feeling for the value of human life has become deeper and more widespread.

This may seem a paradoxical claim to make at a time when mankind is so much preoccupied with weapons of destruction. Nevertheless, it is a claim that can be sustained and if compassion animates those who urge the abolition of the death penalty, it is not a sentimental compassion for the mental agony inflicted upon a condemned man but a dread of destroying the miracle of life. When in the eighteenth century offences against the law that today would no earn a month in prison were punished with the death penalty, the severity of the penal code had no serious effect on the prevalence of crime. When it made no difference to the fate of a highwayman whether he had killed his victim or merely robbed him of a few pieces of silver, there were no more murders then than there were when men like Sir Franicis Burdett succeeded in lightening the excessive severity of the penal laws.

In those days the sacredness of life on earth was not greatly regarded because a life in the world to come was taken for granted except by a comparatively small minority of philosophers. Nor was the long-drawn ordeal of the condemned cell inflicted either upon the condemned man or his gaolers once upon a time. Those who believe in capital punishment may have arguments for its retention, but surely no reasonable argument can be found for retention of the sickening mumbo-jumbo that accompanies it from the moment that the judge dons the black cap with what looks like a pen-wiper balanced on the top of his wig, to the reading of the burial service over the condemned man before he is dead. Moreover, it was more merciful to launch the condemned man into eternity twenty-four hours after he was sentenced than to keep him shivering on the brink of that dread gulf for nearly three weeks. Hanging is an atrociously archaic way of killing a human being and the self-satisfied modernity of the electric chair is just as atrocious. The administration of a strong sleeping draught to the condemned man every night from which one night he does hot awake, seems a more civilized alternative to our present barbarous procedure, if capital punishment through the influence of backward minds be retained.

参考译文——论道德勇气

尽管真理和正义可能是显示道德勇气的最有力的推动力，但也有其他推动力。同情就是其中之一。暂且让我们认为，同情是那些敦促废除死刑者的主要驱动力。正是对同情心的认可，导致死刑拥护者指责废除死刑的人多愁善感，对杀人犯的同情多于对受害者的同情。这是胡说八道，但一些大众媒体成功利用了读者的情绪，使得许多竞选议员者担心失去选票而不敢支持废除死刑。其结果是1957年通过了糊涂的凶杀法案。该法案将抢劫杀人定为死罪，却容忍投毒杀人者免于绞刑。

这一不合逻辑的法律条文表明，死刑对谋杀具有威慑作用的论点是多么站不住脚。投毒者总是基于蓄谋已久的计划而行动，他有充足的时间考虑冒险去谋害一个人是否值得，而小偷通常是在突发情绪的支配下才变得残暴。支持死刑的唯一争议是社会有权严惩罪犯，来表明对受害者生命的尊重，但在绝大多数文明人看来，对坟墓之外的另一个生命的保证似乎变得越来越不确定，对人的生命价值的感受越来越深刻和广泛。

在人类如此沉迷于毁灭性武器的时候，这似乎是一种自相矛盾的说法。然而，这一主张是可以维持的。如果同情激发了那些敦促废除死刑的人，这种同情不是出于审视罪犯而遭受的精神痛苦，而是出于对终结罪犯生命的恐惧。在十八世纪，一些在今天只会被判处监禁1个月的违法行为会被判处死刑，但如此严苛的刑法并没有遏制住横行的犯罪。那时，不区分拦路强盗是杀死了受害者还是只抢去几枚银币，都一样判刑，后来弗朗西斯·巴迪特爵士这些人成功地减轻了过重的量刑，可凶杀也不见得就增多了。

那时，生命的神圣性没有受到重视，因为生命被认为是理所当然的，只有少数哲学家不这样认为。同样，死囚和看守在死牢所受的长期折磨也没有受到重视。那些支持死刑者可能有保留死刑的理由，但是肯定找不到合理的说法来保留那令人厌恶的繁文缛节。这一套繁文缛节从法官在假发上戴上擦笔布似的黑帽子宣判死刑之时开始，直到在死囚毙命前为期诵读葬礼祷文为止。把死囚在宣判24小时之后处决，比使他在恐惧深渊的边缘颤抖将近3个星期要更为仁慈些。绞刑是一种残暴古老的杀人方式，而自鸣得意的现代电椅也同样残暴。如果受保守思想影响一定要保留死刑，那么每晚让死囚服一剂强效安眠药，直到有一天他不再醒来，似乎比我们现在的野蛮程序更为文明。

注：博主基于百度翻译校译而成

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