【滴滴——新任务已发布，请宿主即时查收。】
岑越崎刚在食堂落座，便收到了系统的通知提升，他好奇地打开界面。
这是系统首次发布的强制任务，这些天他按着既定的计划缓慢推进进度，424几乎没有发挥什么作用，他以为这种状态会一直持续到考试，看来自己还是天真了。
任务一栏简洁明了，只要求阅读并翻译附件的文段，时限为23小时59分48秒。
点开附件，映入眼帘的便是密密麻麻的英文原文。近几日的高强度复习使他有些亢奋，是时候检验自己的真实水平了，他想。
匆忙地扒完几口饭，他索性找了个安静的角落坐下，打开文档，开始逐字逐句翻译。
Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age（新石器时代）, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low.
They have been subdivided（细分） in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards（对彼此的态度） one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered.
Even after enormous upheavals（巨变） and seemingly irrevocable （不可改变的）changes, the same pattern has always reasserted（重复主张） itself, just as a gyroscope（螺旋仪） will always return to equilibrium（平衡）, however far it is pushed one way or the other.
The aims of these groups are entirely irreconcilable....（不可调和的）
Winston stopped reading, chiefly（首要的） in order to appreciate the fact that he was reading, in comfort and safety.
He was alone: no telescreen, no ear at the keyhole, no nervous impulse to glance over（回头看） his shoulder or cover the page with his hand.
The sweet summer air played against his cheek.
From somewhere far away there floated the faint（微弱的） shouts of children: in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice of the clock.
He settled deeper into the arm-chair and put his feet up on the fender（脚垫）.
It was bliss（极乐）, it was eternity（永恒）.
Suddenly, as one sometimes does with a book of which one knows that one will ultimately read and re-read every word, he opened it at a different place and found himself at Chapter III.
The splitting up（分裂） of the world into three great super-states （超级大国）was an event which could be and indeed was foreseen before the middle of the twentieth century.
With the absorption （吞并）of Europe by Russia and of the British Empire by the United States, two of the three existing powers, Eurasia （欧亚大陆）and Oceania（大洋洲）, were already effectively in being.
The third, Eastasia, only emerged as a distinct unit after another decade of confused fighting.
The frontiers between the three super-states are in some places arbitrary（任意的）, and in others they fluctuate（波动） according to the fortunes of war, but in general they follow geographical lines.
Eurasia comprises（包括） the whole of the northern part of the European and Asiatic（亚洲大陆） land-mass, from Portugal （葡萄牙）to the Bering Strait（白令海峡）.
Oceania comprises the Americas, the Atlantic islands including the British Isles, Australasia, and the southern portion of Africa.
Eastasia, smaller than the others and with a less definite western frontier, comprises China and the countries to the south of it, the Japanese islands and a large but fluctuating portion of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet（西藏）.
In one combination or another, these three super-states are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years.
War, however, is no longer the desperate（绝望地）, annihilating（歼灭） struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century.
It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological（意识形态） difference.
This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing（流行的） attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty （残忍的）or more chivalrous（侠义的）.
On the contrary, war hysteria （歇斯底里）is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting（抢劫）, theslaughter of children, the reduction （减少）of whole populations to slavery,（奴隶制） and reprisals（报复） against prisoners（囚犯） which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious（值得赞扬的）.
But in a physical sense（实际意义） war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists（专家）, and causes comparatively （相对的）few casualties（伤亡）.
The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague（模糊的） frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at, or round the Floating Fortresses which guard strategic（战略上的）spots on the sea lanes（海上通道）.
In the centres of civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods, and the occasional （偶然的）crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths.
War has in fact changed its character.（性质）
More exactly（更确切地说）, the reasons for which war is waged （开始）have changed in their order of importance.
Motives which were already present to some small extent （程度）in the great wars of the early twentieth century have now become dominant and are consciously recognized and acted upon.
To understand the nature （本质）of the present war--for in spite of the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war-one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive（决定性的）.
None of the three super-states could be definitively conquered even by the other two in combination.
They are too evenly matched（势均力敌）, and their natural defences are too formidable（强大的）.
Eurasia is protected by its vast land spaces.Oceania by the width （宽度）of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity （肥沃）and industriousness（勤奋） of its inhabitants（居民）.
Secondly, there is no longer, in a material sense, anything to fight about.
With the establishment of self-contained economies, in which production and consumption are geared（准备好） to one another, the scramble（抢夺） for markets which was a main cause of previous wars has come to an end, while the competition（竞争） for raw materials is no longer a matter of life and death.
In any case each of the three super-states is so vast that it can obtain almost all the materials that it needs within its own boundaries.
In so far as the war has a direct economic purpose, it is a war for labour power.
Between the frontiers of the super-states, and not permanently in the possession of any of them, there lies a rough quadrilateral（四边形） with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hong Kong, containing within it about a fifth of the population of the earth.、
It is for the possession（财产） of these thickly-populated regions（人口密集区）, and of the northern ice-cap, that the three powers are constantly struggling.
In practice no one power ever controls the whole of the disputed area.
Portions （部分）of it are constantly changing hands, and it is the chance of seizing this or that fragment（碎片） by a sudden stroke of treachery（背叛） that dictates（导致） the endless changes of alignment（联盟）.
All of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals, and some of them yield important vegetable products such as rubber which in colder climates it is necessary to synthesize by comparatively expensive methods.
But above all they contain a bottomless（取之不尽的） reserve （储备）of cheap labour.
Whichever power controls equatorial Africa, or the countries of the Middle East, or Southern India, or the Indonesian Archipelago（印度尼西亚群岛）, disposes （处理）also of the bodies of scores or hundreds of millions of ill-paid（有病的） and hard-working coolies（苦力）.
The inhabitants（居民） of these areas, reduced more or less openly to the status of slaves, pass continually from conqueror （征服者）to conqueror, and are expended like so much coal or oil in the race to turn out more armaments（武器）, to capture（俘获） more territory（领土）, to control more labour power, to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, and so on indefinitely（无期限的）.
It should be noted that the fighting never really moves beyond the edges of the disputed areas.
The frontiers of Eurasia flow back and forth between the basin of the Congo and the northern shore of the Mediterranean; the islands of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific are constantly being captured （俘获）and recaptured by Oceania or by Eastasia;in Mongolia the dividing line between Eurasia and Eastasia is never stable; round the Pole all three powers lay claim to enormous territories （地区）which in fact are largely unihabited and unexplored: but the balance of power always remains roughly even（相等）, and the territory which forms the heartland of each super-state always remains inviolate（未侵犯）.
Moreover, the labour of the exploited peoples round the Equator is not really necessary to the world's economy.
They add nothing to the wealth of the world, since whatever they produce is used for purposes of war, and the object of waging（开展） a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.
By their labour the slave populations allow the tempo（速度） of continuous warfare to be speeded up.
But if they did not exist, the structure of world society, and the process by which it maintains itself, would not be essentially different.
The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously （同时）recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.
Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus（剩余） of consumption goods has been latent（潜在的） in industrial society.
At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work.
The world of today is a bare, hungry, dilapidated（荒废的） place compared with the world that existed before 1914, and still more so if compared with the imaginary（虚构的） future to which the people of that period looked forward.
In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured（从容地）, orderly（有序的）, and efficient--a glittering （闪闪发光的）antiseptic（很整洁的） world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete--was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person.
Science and technology were developing at a prodigious（惊人的） speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing.
This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment（贫穷） caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical （经验主义的）habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented （受管制的）society.
As a whole the world is more primitive （原始）today than it was fifty years ago.
Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage（间谍）, have been developed, but experiment （实验）and invention have largely stopped, and the ravages （破坏）of the atomic war of the nineteen-fifties have never been fully repaired. Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there.
From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery（苦差事）, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared.
If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated（消除） within a few generations.
And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process--by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute-the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.
But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction——indeed, in some sense was the destruction——of a hierarchical（等级） society.
In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refr- igerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality（不平等） would already have disappeared.
If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction.
It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste.
But in practice such a society could not long remain stable.
For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied（目瞪口呆） by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away.
In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
To return to the agricultural past（农业时代）, as some thinkers about the beginning of the twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not a practicable solution.
It conflicted with the tendency towards mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive （类似）throughout almost the whole world, and moreover, any country which remained industrially backward was helpless in a military （军队）sense and was bound to be dominated, directly or indirectly, by its more advanced rivals（对手）.
Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting the output（输出） of goods.
This happened to a great extent during the final phase of capitalism（资本主义）, roughly between 1920 and 1940.
The economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate（停滞）, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity.
But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations（贫穷） it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable（不可避免的）.
The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed.
And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour.
War is a way of shattering（破碎的） to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere（平流层）, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence（此后）, in the long run, too intelligent.
Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed.
A Floating Fortress（堡垒）, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships.
Ultimately it is scrapped（废弃） as obsolete（淘汰）, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built.
In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs（盈余） of the population.
In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic （长期）shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage.
It is deliberate（深思熟虑法） policy to keep even the favoured（特权的） groups somewhere near the brink（边缘） of hardship（苦难）, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies（放大） the distinction between one group and another.
By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party （核心党员）lives an austere（艰苦的）, laborious kind of life.
Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed（设备齐全的） flat, the better texture（质地） of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter- --set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a simil- ar advantage in comparison with the submerged（底层群众） masses whom we call'the proles'（无产者） .
The social atmosphere is that of a besieged（背包味道） city, where the possession of a lump （块）of horseflesh（马肉） makes the difference between wealth and poverty.
And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over （移交）of all power to a small caste（种姓） seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.
War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way.
In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them.
But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society.
What is concerned here is not the morale（士气） of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadi- ly at work, but the morale of the Party itself.
Even the humblest（最卑微的） Party member is expected to be competent（能干的）, industrious（勤勉的）, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous（轻信的） and ignorant fanatic （狂热的）whose prevailing （流行的）moods are fear, hatred（憎恨）, adulation,（奉承） and orgiastic（狂欢） triumph（胜利）.
In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality（心态） appropriate to a state of war.
It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly.
All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.
………
时间悄然流逝，食堂不知从何时起已人影寥落，只有碗筷碰撞和水流的哗哗声在寂静中格外清晰。
进度尚未过半，岑越崎已倒吸一口冷气，叹服于这篇文章所传达的思想。
一个他从未设想过的全新角度、全新理解，此刻如一扇隐秘的门在他眼前缓缓开启，。
按捺住内心的震撼，岑越崎决定再回去仔细研读一番。
关掉文档，岑越崎轻声离开。
注：文段摘自乔治·奥威尔的《一九八四》。
梦远书城已将原网页转码以便移动设备浏览
本站仅提供资源搜索服务，不存放任何实质内容。如有侵权内容请联系搜狗，源资源删除后本站的链接将自动失效。
推荐阅读