山大英语专升本三(2).doc

And I think most people believe that the greatest countries ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized. Animals fight; so do savages; hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal ora savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Even being good at getting other people to fight for you and telling them how to do it most efficiently — this, after all, is what conquerors and generals have done — is not being civilized. People fight to settle quarrels. Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their disputes other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has won. And not only has it won, but, because it has won, it has been in the right. For that is what going to war means; it means saying that might is right. That is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history, in which millions of people were killed or mutilated. And while today it is true that people do not fight and kill each other in the streets — while, that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life — nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave lik