Would you prevent crimes, then cause the laws to be clear and simple, bring the whole force of a nation to bear on their defence, and suffer no part of it to be busied in overthrowing12 them. Make the laws to favour not so much classes of men as men themselves. Cause men to fear the laws and the laws alone. Salutary is the fear of the law, but fatal and fertile in crime is the fear of one man of another. Men as slaves are more sensual, more immoral13, more cruel than free men; and, whilst the latter give their minds to the sciences or to the interests of their country, setting great objects before them as their model, the former, contented14 with the passing day, seek in the excitement of libertinage15 a distraction16 from the nothingness of their existence, and, accustomed to an uncertainty17 of result in everything, they look upon the result of their crimes as uncertain too, and so decide in favour of the passion that tempts18 them. If uncertainty of the laws affects a nation, rendered indolent by its climate, its indolence and stupidity is thereby19 maintained and increased; if it affects a nation, which though fond of pleasure is also full of energy, it wastes that energy in a number of petty cabals20 and intrigues21, which spread distrust in every heart, and make treachery and dissimulation22 the foundation of prudence23; if, again, it affects a[245] courageous24 and brave nation, the uncertainty is ultimately destroyed, after many oscillations from liberty to servitude, and from servitude back again to liberty.
Would you prevent crimes, then see that enlightenment accompanies liberty. The evils that flow from knowledge are in inverse25 ratio to its diffusion26; the benefits directly proportioned to it. A bold impostor, who is never a commonplace man, is adored by an ignorant people, despised by an enlightened one. Knowledge, by facilitating comparisons between objects and multiplying men’s points of view, brings many different notions into contrast, causing them to modify one another, all the more easily as the same views and the same difficulties are observed in others. In the face of a widely diffused27 national enlightenment the calumnies28 of ignorance are silent, and authority, disarmed29 of pretexts30 for its manifestation31, trembles; whilst the rigorous force of the laws remains32 unshaken, no one of education having any dislike to the clear and useful public compacts which secure the common safety, when he compares the trifling33 and useless liberty sacrificed by himself with the sum-total of all the liberties sacrificed by others, who without the laws might have been hostile to himself. Whoever has a sensitive soul, when he contemplates34 a code of well-made laws, and finds that he has only lost the pernicious liberty of injuring others, will feel[246] himself constrained35 to bless the throne and the monarch36 that sits upon it.
It is not true that the sciences have always been injurious to mankind; when they were so, it was an inevitable37 evil. The multiplication38 of the human race over the face of the earth introduced war, the ruder arts, and the first laws, mere39 temporary agreements which perished with the necessity that gave rise to them. This was mankind’s primitive40 philosophy, the few elements of which were just, because the indolence and slight wisdom of their framers preserved them from error. But with the multiplication of men there went ever a multiplication of their wants. Stronger and more lasting41 impressions were, therefore, needed, in order to turn them back from repeated lapses42 to that primitive state of disunion which each return to it rendered worse. Those primitive delusions43, therefore, which peopled the earth with false divinities and created an invisible universe that governed our own, conferred a great benefit—I mean a great political benefit—upon humanity. Those men were benefactors44 of their kind, who dared to deceive them and drag them, docile45 and ignorant, to worship at the altars. By presenting to them objects that lay beyond the scope of sense and fled from their grasp the nearer they seemed to approach them—never despised, because never well understood—they concentrated their divided passions upon a single object[247] of supreme46 interest to them. These were the first steps of all the nations that formed themselves out of savage47 tribes; this was the epoch48 when larger communities were formed, and such was their necessary and perhaps their only bond. I say nothing of that chosen people of God, for whom the most extraordinary miracles and the most signal favours were a substitute for human policy. But as it is the quality of error to fall into infinite subdivisions, so the sciences that grew out of it made of mankind a blind fanatical multitude, which, shut up within a close labyrinth49, collides together in such confusion, that some sensitive and philosophical50 minds have regretted to this day the ancient savage state. That is the first epoch in which the sciences or rather opinions are injurious.
The second epoch of history consists in the hard and terrible transition from errors to truth, from the darkness of ignorance to the light. The great clash between the errors which are serviceable to a few men of power and the truths which are serviceable to the weak and the many, and the contact and fermentation of the passions at such a period aroused, are a source of infinite evils to unhappy humanity. Whoever ponders on the different histories of the world, which after certain intervals51 of time are so much alike in their principal episodes, will therein frequently observe the sacrifice of a whole generation[248] to the welfare of succeeding ones, in the painful but necessary transition from the darkness of ignorance to the light of philosophy, and from despotism to freedom, which result from the sacrifice. But when truth, whose progress at first is slow and afterwards rapid (after men’s minds have calmed down and the fire is quenched52 that purged53 a nation of the evils it suffered), sits as the companion of kings upon the throne, and is reverenced54 and worshipped in the parliaments of free governments, who will ever dare assert that the light which enlightens the people is more injurious than darkness, and that acknowledging the true and simple relations of things is pernicious to mankind?
If blind ignorance is less pernicious than confused half-knowledge, since the latter adds to the evils of ignorance those of error, which is unavoidable in a narrow view of the limits of truth, the most precious gift that a sovereign can make to himself or to his people is an enlightened man as the trustee and guardian55 of the sacred laws. Accustomed to see the truth and not to fear it; independent for the most part of the demands of reputation, which are never completely satisfied and put most men’s virtue to a trial; used to consider humanity from higher points of view; such a man regards his own nation as a family of men and of brothers, and the distance between the nobles and the people seems to him so[249] much the less as he has before his mind the larger total of the whole human species. Philosophers acquire wants and interests unknown to the generality of men, but that one above all others, of not belying56 in public the principles they have taught in obscurity, and they gain the habit of loving the truth for its own sake. A selection of such men makes the happiness of a people, but a happiness which is only transitory, unless good laws so increase their number as to lessen57 the probability, always considerable, of an unfortunate choice.
Another way of preventing crimes is to interest the magistrates58 who carry out the laws in seeking rather to preserve than to corrupt59 them. The greater the number of men who compose the magistracy, the less danger will there be of their exercising any undue60 power over the laws; for venality61 is more difficult among men who are under the close observation of one another, and their inducement to increase their individual authority diminishes in proportion to the smallness of the share of it that can fall to each of them, especially when they compare it with the risk of the attempt. If the sovereign accustoms62 his subjects, by formalities and pomp, by severe edicts, and by refusal to hear the grievances63, whether just or unjust, of the man who thinks himself oppressed, to fear rather the magistrates than the[250] laws, it will be more to the profit of the magistrates than to the gain of private and public security.
Another way to prevent crimes is to reward virtue. On this head I notice a general silence in the laws of all nations to this day. If prizes offered by academies to the discoverers of useful truths have caused the multiplication of knowledge and of good books, why should not virtuous64 actions also be multiplied, by prizes distributed from the munificence65 of the sovereign? The money of honour ever remains unexhausted and fruitful in the hands of the legislator who wisely distributes it.
Lastly, the surest but most difficult means of preventing crimes is to improve education—a subject too vast for present discussion, and lying beyond the limits of my treatise66; a subject, I will also say, too intimately connected with the nature of government for it ever to be aught but a barren field, only cultivated here and there by a few philosophers, down to the remotest ages of public prosperity. A great man, who enlightens the humanity that persecutes67 him, has shown in detail the chief educational maxims68 of real utility to mankind; namely, that it consists less in a barren multiplicity of subjects than in their choice selection; in substituting originals for copies in the moral as in the physical phenomena69 presented by chance or intention to the fresh minds of youth; in inclining them to virtue by the easy path of feeling;[251] and in deterring70 them from evil by the sure path of necessity and disadvantage, not by the uncertain method of command, which never obtains more than a simulated and transitory obedience71.
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1 aberrations | |
n.偏差( aberration的名词复数 );差错;脱离常规;心理失常 | |
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2 contradictory | |
adj.反驳的,反对的,抗辩的;n.正反对,矛盾对立 | |
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3 disturbances | |
n.骚乱( disturbance的名词复数 );打扰;困扰;障碍 | |
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4 disorder | |
n.紊乱,混乱;骚动,骚乱;疾病,失调 | |
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5 chimera | |
n.神话怪物;梦幻 | |
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6 virtue | |
n.德行,美德;贞操;优点;功效,效力 | |
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7 vice | |
n.坏事;恶习;[pl.]台钳,老虎钳;adj.副的 | |
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8 immutable | |
adj.不可改变的,永恒的 | |
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9 tempt | |
vt.引诱,勾引,吸引,引起…的兴趣 | |
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10 motive | |
n.动机,目的;adv.发动的,运动的 | |
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11 motives | |
n.动机,目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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12 overthrowing | |
v.打倒,推翻( overthrow的现在分词 );使终止 | |
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13 immoral | |
adj.不道德的,淫荡的,荒淫的,有伤风化的 | |
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14 contented | |
adj.满意的,安心的,知足的 | |
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15 libertinage | |
n.放荡,自由观点 | |
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16 distraction | |
n.精神涣散,精神不集中,消遣,娱乐 | |
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17 uncertainty | |
n.易变,靠不住,不确知,不确定的事物 | |
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18 tempts | |
v.引诱或怂恿(某人)干不正当的事( tempt的第三人称单数 );使想要 | |
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19 thereby | |
adv.因此,从而 | |
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20 cabals | |
n.(政治)阴谋小集团,(尤指政治上的)阴谋( cabal的名词复数 ) | |
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21 intrigues | |
n.密谋策划( intrigue的名词复数 );神秘气氛;引人入胜的复杂情节v.搞阴谋诡计( intrigue的第三人称单数 );激起…的好奇心 | |
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22 dissimulation | |
n.掩饰,虚伪,装糊涂 | |
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23 prudence | |
n.谨慎,精明,节俭 | |
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24 courageous | |
adj.勇敢的,有胆量的 | |
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25 inverse | |
adj.相反的,倒转的,反转的;n.相反之物;v.倒转 | |
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26 diffusion | |
n.流布;普及;散漫 | |
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27 diffused | |
散布的,普及的,扩散的 | |
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28 calumnies | |
n.诬蔑,诽谤,中伤(的话)( calumny的名词复数 ) | |
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29 disarmed | |
v.裁军( disarm的过去式和过去分词 );使息怒 | |
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30 pretexts | |
n.借口,托辞( pretext的名词复数 ) | |
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31 manifestation | |
n.表现形式;表明;现象 | |
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32 remains | |
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹 | |
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33 trifling | |
adj.微不足道的;没什么价值的 | |
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34 contemplates | |
深思,细想,仔细考虑( contemplate的第三人称单数 ); 注视,凝视; 考虑接受(发生某事的可能性); 深思熟虑,沉思,苦思冥想 | |
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35 constrained | |
adj.束缚的,节制的 | |
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36 monarch | |
n.帝王,君主,最高统治者 | |
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37 inevitable | |
adj.不可避免的,必然发生的 | |
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38 multiplication | |
n.增加,增多,倍增;增殖,繁殖;乘法 | |
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39 mere | |
adj.纯粹的;仅仅,只不过 | |
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40 primitive | |
adj.原始的;简单的;n.原(始)人,原始事物 | |
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41 lasting | |
adj.永久的,永恒的;vbl.持续,维持 | |
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42 lapses | |
n.失误,过失( lapse的名词复数 );小毛病;行为失检;偏离正道v.退步( lapse的第三人称单数 );陷入;倒退;丧失 | |
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43 delusions | |
n.欺骗( delusion的名词复数 );谬见;错觉;妄想 | |
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44 benefactors | |
n.捐助者,施主( benefactor的名词复数 );恩人 | |
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45 docile | |
adj.驯服的,易控制的,容易教的 | |
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46 supreme | |
adj.极度的,最重要的;至高的,最高的 | |
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47 savage | |
adj.野蛮的;凶恶的,残暴的;n.未开化的人 | |
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48 epoch | |
n.(新)时代;历元 | |
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49 labyrinth | |
n.迷宫;难解的事物;迷路 | |
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50 philosophical | |
adj.哲学家的,哲学上的,达观的 | |
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51 intervals | |
n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 );间隔时间;[数学]区间;(戏剧、电影或音乐会的)幕间休息 | |
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52 quenched | |
解(渴)( quench的过去式和过去分词 ); 终止(某事物); (用水)扑灭(火焰等); 将(热物体)放入水中急速冷却 | |
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53 purged | |
清除(政敌等)( purge的过去式和过去分词 ); 涤除(罪恶等); 净化(心灵、风气等); 消除(错事等)的不良影响 | |
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54 reverenced | |
v.尊敬,崇敬( reverence的过去式和过去分词 );敬礼 | |
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55 guardian | |
n.监护人;守卫者,保护者 | |
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56 belying | |
v.掩饰,与…不符,使…失望;掩饰( belie的现在分词 );证明(或显示)…为虚假;辜负;就…扯谎 | |
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57 lessen | |
vt.减少,减轻;缩小 | |
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58 magistrates | |
地方法官,治安官( magistrate的名词复数 ) | |
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59 corrupt | |
v.贿赂,收买;adj.腐败的,贪污的 | |
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60 undue | |
adj.过分的;不适当的;未到期的 | |
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61 venality | |
n.贪赃枉法,腐败 | |
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62 accustoms | |
v.(使)习惯于( accustom的第三人称单数 ) | |
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63 grievances | |
n.委屈( grievance的名词复数 );苦衷;不满;牢骚 | |
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64 virtuous | |
adj.有品德的,善良的,贞洁的,有效力的 | |
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65 munificence | |
n.宽宏大量,慷慨给与 | |
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66 treatise | |
n.专著;(专题)论文 | |
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67 persecutes | |
(尤指宗教或政治信仰的)迫害(~sb. for sth.)( persecute的第三人称单数 ); 烦扰,困扰或骚扰某人 | |
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68 maxims | |
n.格言,座右铭( maxim的名词复数 ) | |
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69 phenomena | |
n.现象 | |
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70 deterring | |
v.阻止,制止( deter的现在分词 ) | |
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71 obedience | |
n.服从,顺从 | |
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