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There is really only one question you ever need to direct at someone to work out whether or not they are a good person - and that is, with deliberate simplicity: Do you think you are a good person?
要想判断一个人是否是好人，你只需要问他一个问题——那就是，故意地简单地问:你认为你是好人吗?
And to this there is only one acceptable answer.
对于这一点，只有一个可以接受的答案。
People who are genuinely good, people who know about kindness, patience, forgiveness, compromise, apology and gentleness always, always answer no.
真正善良的人以及懂得善良、耐心、宽恕、妥协、道歉和温柔的人总是回答不是。
One cannot both be a good person and at the same time feel either blameless or pure inside.
一个人不可能既是一个好人，同时又感到内心无可指责或纯洁无瑕。
Goodness is, one might say, the unique consequence of a keen and ongoing awareness of one’s capacity to be bad,
有人可能会说，善良是一种独特的结果，这种结果是人们持续强烈地意识到自己有能力做坏事，
that is, to be thoughtless, cruel, self-righteous and deaf to the legitimate needs of others.
也就是说，人们会变得轻率、残忍、自以为是，对他人的正当需求充耳不闻。
Only on the basis of a perpetual vigilant impression that one hasn’t got the right to judge oneself above suspicion, does one come anywhere near the ethical high standard that merits the title of ‘good’ (a word one can still never use of oneself).
一个人只有永远保持警惕，认为自己没有权利不受怀疑地评判自己，才能达到称得上“好”(一个永远不能用来形容自己的词)的道德高标准。
The price of being genuinely good has to be a constant suspicion that one might be a monster - combined with a fundamental hesitation about labelling anyone else monstrous.
成为真正的好人的代价必须是不断怀疑一个人可能是怪物-再加上对给其他任何人贴上怪物标签的根本犹豫不决。
A guilty conscience is the bedrock of virtue.
问心有愧是美德的基石。
Correspondingly, only properly bad people don’t lie awake at night worrying about their characters.
相应地，只有真正的坏人才不会夜不能寐地担心自己的性格。
It has generally never occurred to the most difficult or dangerous people on the planet that they might be lacking.
这个星球上最难处或最危险的人通常从来没有想到过他们可能缺少什么。
Their sickness is to locate evil always firmly outside of themselves:
他们的弊病是把邪恶牢牢地定位在自己之外:
it’s by definition invariably the others who are to blame, the others who are cruel, sinful, lacking in judgement and mistaken.
从定义上看，他人应该受到责备，他人是残忍、罪恶、缺乏判断力和错误的。
And their job is to take these impure people down and correct their evils in the fire of their own righteousness.
他们的工作就是打倒这些道德败坏的人，用他们自己的正义之火纠正他们的罪恶。
It is a grim paradox that the worst deeds that humans have ever been guilty of have been carried out by people with an easy conscience,
这是一个可怕的悖论，人类所犯下的最坏的罪行都是由那些心安理得的人犯下的，
people who felt they were definitely on the side of angels, people who were entirely sure that they had justice in hand.
他们认为自己肯定站在天使一边，完全确定自己掌握了正义。
What unites the people who report their neighbours to the secret police, the crowds who burn their victims at stakes while dancing around their agonised bodies, the government officials who set up purification camps and the nations that wipe out their enemies with special barbarism.
是什么把那些向秘密警察举报邻居的人、那些用木桩烧死受害者、围着受害者痛苦的身体跳舞的人、那些建立净化营的政府官员以及那些用特殊的野蛮方式消灭敌人的国家联系在一起?
What unites all these is consistent and overwhelming sense that they are doing the right thing - in the eyes of god, history or Truth.
将所有这些联系在一起的是一致的和压倒性的感觉，他们正在做正确的事情——在上帝、历史或真理的眼中。
When trying to understand why people do evil things, never start from the position of imagining that they understood them as evil;
当试图理解人们为什么做坏事时，不要想象他们把他人理解为邪恶的角度出发;
remember that they would have carried out their nastiness cocksure that they were paragons.
记住，他们会以公鸡般的自信来执行他们的肮脏行为，因为他们是模范。
An impassioned feeling of being the instrument of justice has been at the heart of humanity’s most appallingly unkind moments.
一种作为正义工具的强烈感觉一直是人类最可怕的不友善时刻的核心。
It is a hallmark of all the cruellest ages of history that certain groups decide that they have landed on a cause that gives them a monopoly on justice:
这是历史上所有最残酷时代的一个标志，某些群体决定他们已经踏上了一个事业，让他们垄断了正义:
that a particular god has given them a special mission to eradicate sin or when their study of economics or biology have shown them one true path to an upright future
一位特殊的上帝赋予他们铲除罪恶的特殊使命，或者当他们对经济学或生物学的研究为他们指明了一条通往正直未来的真正道路
- at which point there is no limit to the number of eggs that can be broken to concoct the righteous omelette.
在这种情况下，可以打破的鸡蛋的数量是没有限制的，以做出正义的煎蛋卷。
And by implication, the kindest stretches of history are those when a majority daily awake wondering how they might go easy on others because they are so flawed themselves,
从隐含意义上讲，历史上最仁慈的一段时期是，大多数人每天醒着的时候都在想，他们可以如何对别人宽容，因为他们自己就有这样的缺陷，
when a sense of scepticism and apology dominates every social exchange, when one is constantly charitable in word and deed from a sense of impeachability
当怀疑和道歉意识主导着每一种社会交往，当一个人出于一种可被弹劾的感觉，在言行上总是仁慈的时候
- and when people can always readily forgive because they know how much in them needs to be forgiven.
——当人们总是很容易地原谅别人，因为他们知道自己有多需要被原谅的时候。
