IV. Try to Change the World Gradually, One Clod at a Time
    11. At first glance, this course is far from inviting. It lacks glamour. It promises no quick results. It depends on the exasperating and uncertain instruments of persuasion and democratic decision making. It demands patience, always in short supply. About all that can be said for it is that it sometimes works -- that in this particular time and place it offers a better chance for remedying some of the world's outrages than any other available strategy.
四、力图逐渐改变世界，一次改一点：
    11)初看起来，这一途径远无吸引力，它缺乏魅力，没有收到速效的希望，依靠的工具是恼人的、不可靠的说服和民主决策。它需要耐心，而人们却总是缺乏这东西。它唯一的长处是有时候这法子行得通——在这个特定的时间和地方，它比任何别的能有的战略提供了较好的克服世界上某些倒行逆施的机会。


    12. So at least the historical evidence seems to suggest. When I was graduating from college, my generation also found the world in a mess. The economic machinery had broken down almost everywhere: In this country nearly a quarter of the population was out of work. A major war seemed all too likely. As a college newspaper editor at that time, I protested against this just as vehemently as student activists are protesting today.
    12)至少历史的证据似乎表明了这一点。我大学毕业的时候，我们这一代人也发现世界是一团糟，几乎在所有的地方经济机器都已崩溃，在美国几乎四分之一的人失业，一场大战似乎在所难免。当时我作为大学报纸的编辑对这一切表示抗议，和今天的学生积极分子的抗议一样猛烈。

    13. At the same time, my generation was discovering that reforming the world is a little like fighting a military campaign in the Apennines, as soon as you capture one mountain range, another one looms just ahead. As the big problems of the thirties were brought under some kind of rough control, new problems took their place -- the unprecedented problems of an affluent society, of racial justice, of keeping our cities from becoming uninhabitable, of coping with war in unfamiliar guises. Most disturbing of all was our discovery of the population explosion. It dawned on us rather suddenly that the number of passengers on the small spaceship we inhabit is doubling about every forty years. So long as the earth's population keeps growing at this cancerous rate, all of the other problems appear virtually insoluble. Our cities will continue to become more crowded and noisome. The landscape will get more cluttered, the air and water even dirtier. The quality of life is likely to become steadily worse for everybody. And warfare on a rising scale seems inevitable if too many bodies have to struggle for ever-dwindling shares of food and living space.
    13)同时，我们这一代人逐渐发现，改造世界就有点像在亚平宁山区打仗，你刚占领一条山脉，另一条山脉又逼在面前。正当30年代的大问题好歹地有所控制时，新的问题又取而代之：富足社会中出现的崭新的问题，种族公正、保持城市适于居住、对付在陌生的伪装下的战争等问题。最令人不安的是我们发现了人口爆炸的问题。突然我们领悟到在我们这艘小小的载人宇宙飞船上．乘客数目大约每40年翻一番。只要地球人口不停地以这种癌增生的速度增长，其它一切问题便显得几乎是无法解决的。城市将继续变得更为拥挤喧器，景色将更为杂乱，空气和水更脏。对每个人来说，生活质量都可能会不断恶化。而如果过多的人不得不为不停地减少着的食物份额与生存空间斗争的话，战争的升级看来是不可避免的。

    14. So Jim Binns' generation has a formidable job on its hands. But not, I think, an insuperable one. On the evidence of the past, it can be handled in the same way that hard problems have been coped
with before -- piecemeal, pragmatically, by the dogged efforts of many people.
14)因而吉姆·宾斯这代人手中有着极其艰巨的任务，但我认为这并不是无法克服的困难。过去的事实证明，可以用以前对付困难问题的同样方法来加以处理——通过许多人不懈的努力，一点一点地、从实际效果出发地加以解决。