Common Sense

Thomas Paine

1. The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a country, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent--of at least one eighth part of the habitable globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected, even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed time of continental union, faith and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a yound oak; The wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.

没有比这更伟大的事业了。这不是一座城，一个国家或者一个王国的事，而是关乎整个大陆。这个大陆占了世界居住面积的八分之一。这不是一天，一年或者一个时代就能解决的问题。我们的子孙后代也无法置身事外，最终多多少少都受到了这一系列事件的影响。现在正是大陆团结一致，保持信念和维护荣耀的时刻。哪怕最细微的分裂痕迹，也犹如用针尖在橡树的嫩枝上刻下的名字。伤口会随着橡树的成长而扩大，我们的子孙后代会从中知晓一切。

2. I have heard it asserted by some, that as America hath flourished under her former connection with Great Britain, that the same connection is necessary towards her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert, that because a child has thrived upone milk, that it is never to have meat; or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true, for I answer roundly, that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power had any thing to do with her. The commerce, by which she hath enriched herself, are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.

我听到有些人声称，得益于与英国的关联，美国才繁荣起来，未来的发展也需要依靠英国才能有保障。这是最大的谎言。按这种说法，我们也可以宣称，一个靠喝牛奶长大的小孩，永远不会吃肉；我们生命中的头二十年是怎样的，后二十年也是怎样的。实话实说，我可以肯定，如果没有欧洲的压迫干扰，如今的美国会更加兴盛。美国是靠做生活必需品贸易发家的，只要欧洲人还要吃饭，就一直会有贸易市场。

3. Whether that state that is proudly, perhaps erroneously, called civilization, has most promoted or most injured the general happiness of man, is a question that may be strongly contested. On one side, the spectator is dazzled by splendid appearances; on the other, he is shocked by extremes of wretchedness; both of which it has erected. The most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized.

我们骄傲地认其为文明社会，这种判断也许是错的。究竟文明社会对人类的幸福而言是最大的福利还是最大的阻碍，这是需要激烈讨论的问题。一方面，旁人会叹服于文明社会的花哨外表；另一方面，又会对极其悲惨的场景感到震惊。文明社会造成了两种局面，这里同时出现了最幸福和最可怜的人。

4. To understand what the state of society ought to be, it is necessary to have some idea of the natural and primitive state of man; such as it is at this day among the Indians of North America. There is not, in that state, any of those spectacles of human misery which proverty and want present to our eyes in all the towns and streets in Europe.

要理解社会的性质，我们需要大概知道自然状态下，原始社会的人类是怎样一番模样。原始社会的人类，就好比今天北美大陆的印第安人。在欧洲的大街小巷到处都可以看到因为贫困而造成的悲惨境况，原始社会根本不存在那样的悲剧。

5. Proverty, therefore, is a thing created by that which is called civilized life. It exists not in the natural state. On the other hand, the natural state is without those advantages which flow from agriculture, arts, science and manufacturers.

所以，贫困是文明社会的产物，不存在于自然社会。但是另一方面，自然社会无法从农业，艺术，科学和工业中受益。

6. It it a position not to be controverted that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race. In that state every man would have been born to property. He would have been a joint life proprietor with the rest in the property of the soil, and in all its natural productions, vegetable and animal. 

But the earth in its natural state, as before said, is capable of supporting but a small number of inhabitants compared with what it is capable of doing in a cultivated state. And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that inseparable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. 

土地，在自然状态下未经开垦的土地，曾经是，也一直是人类的共同财产。这是不争的事实。在自然社会，每个人一出生就拥有了土地这一份财产。所有人都是土地的终生业主，也拥有土地里的自然所得--蔬菜和动物。

但是，如之前所说，与开发的土地不同，自然状态的土地只能够养活一小部分人。我们无法把土地与土地耕作所得的价值隔离开来，所以就产生了土地所有权的概念。确实如此，只有因耕作而增加的价值才算是个人财产，土地本身并不是私人财产。