名篇背诵

Contents

1.Why Law Is Indispensable

法律为何是不可或缺的---萧伯纳

2.Why Are Beggars Despised? by George Orwell

乞丐为何会被鄙视---乔治·奥威尔（英国小说家）

3.What Is Wrong With Our System of Education? by George Bernard Shaw

我们的教育体制出了什么问题？---萧伯纳

4.Patriotism, by Alexis de Tocqueville

爱国主义---托克维尔

5.The Decay of Friendship, by Samuel Johnson

友谊的颓废塞缪尔·约翰逊

6.Advice on the Choice of a Mistress, by Benjamin Franklin

迎娶什么样的女人做妻子--- 本杰明·富兰克林

7.Slang in America, by Walt Whitman

美国俚语---沃尔特·惠特曼

8. A Defense of Slang, by Gelett Burgess

为俚语说两句话---吉利特·伯吉斯

9.On War, by James Boswell

关于战争---詹姆士·包斯威尔

10.On National Prejudices, by Oliver Goldsmith

关于国家偏见---奥立佛·高德史密斯

11. A Liberal Education, by Thomas Henry Huxley

关于通识教育---赫胥黎

Passage 1

Why Law Is Indispensable 法律为何是不可或缺的---萧伯纳

Dramatist and critic George Bernard Shaw proudly described himself as a journalist, "deliberately cutting out of my works all that is not journalism, convinced that nothing that is not journalism will live long as literature, or be of any use whilst it does live." An active socialist, Shaw believed that art should above all be useful.

In his essay "Why Law Is Indispensable" (published in this revised form in 1907), Shaw argues that laws, although necessary, are not "immutable principles of good and evil."

by George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

The truth is, laws, religions, creeds, and systems of ethics, instead of making society better than its best unit, make it worse than its average unit, because they are never up to date. You will ask me: "Why have them at all?" I will tell you. They are made necessary, though we all secretly detest them, by the fact that the number of people who can think out a line of conduct for themselves even on one point is very small, and the number who can afford the time for it still smaller. Nobody can afford the time to do it on all points. The professional thinker may on occasion make his own morality and philosophy as the cobbler may make his own boots; but the ordinary man of business must buy at the shop, so to speak, and put up with what he finds on sale there, whether it exactly suits him or not, because he can neither make a morality for himself or do without one. This typewriter with which I am writing is the best I can get; but it is by no means a perfect instrument; and I have not the smallest doubt that in fifty years time authors will wonder how men could have put up with so clumsy a contrivance. When a better one is invented I shall buy it: until then, not being myself an inventor, I must make the best of it, just as my Protestant and Roman Catholic and Agnostic friends make the best of their imperfect creeds and systems. Oh, Father Tucker, worshipper of Liberty, where shall we find a land where the thinking and moralizing can be done without division of labor?

Besides, what have deep thinking and moralizing to do with the most necessary and least questionable side of law? Just consider how much we need law in matters which have absolutely no moral bearing at all. Is there anything more aggravating than to be told, when you are socially