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We need especially to be on our guard when we come across propositions which seem to be "obviously"true.
當遇到某些看似“顯而易見”正確的觀點時，我們需要格外替覺。
When we find ourselves entertaining an opinion about which there is a feeling that even to enquire into it would be absurd, unnecessary, undesirable, or wicked—we may know that that opinion is a non-rational one.
當我們發覺自己持有一種觀點，并且認為對它的任何探究都顯得荒謬、多余、不受歡迎或者惡毒時--我們就可以說這種觀點是非理性的。
When we are tempted to say that any general truth is so "obvious" that it would be absurd even to question it, we should remember that the whole history of the development of human thought has been full of cases of such "obvious truths" breaking down when examined in the light of increasing knowledge and reason. For instance, for ages nothing could have seemed more obvious, more utterly beyond question than the proposition that slavery was natural, reasonable, necessary, and right. Some kinds of men were "obviously" "slaves by nature." To doubt it was impossible.
當我們想說任何普遍真理都是“顯而易見”的，以致甚至對其提出質疑都是荒謬的時候，我們應該記住，在人類思想的整個發展歷史過程中都充滿了這種“顯而易見的真理”現象，經過人類不斷增長的知識與理性的檢驗，而不攻自破的情況。例如，很多年以來人們認為奴隸制是很自然、合理、必要而且正確的，似乎沒有什么比這更顯而易見、更不容置疑的觀點。某些人“顯然”是“天生的奴隸”。那時質疑這種觀點是不可能的。
Again for more than two thousand years, it was "impossible to conceive" the planets as moving in paths other than circles. The circle was "obviously" the perfect figure; and so it was "natural" and "inevitable" to suppose that the planets moved in circles. The age-long struggle of the greatest intellects in the world to shake off that assumption is one of the marvels of history.
同樣，兩千多年來人們“不可能想象”行星是以軌道而非圓周的形式運行的。而圓形“顯然”是最完美的圖形；因此設想行星按圓周的軌道運行是“很自然的”而且“不可避免的”。世界上最偉大的智者們經過長期斗爭推翻了這一設想，這成為歷史上的一大奇跡。
