悠游度過一天的24小時：第二章 超越計劃的渴望

CHAPTER II The Desire To Exceed One's Programme

第二章 超越計劃的渴望

But, someone may remark, with the English disregard of everything except the point,"what is he driving at with his twenty-four hours a day? I have no difficulty in living on twenty-four hours a day. I do all that I want to do, and still find time to go in for newspaper competitions. Surely it is a simple affair, knowing that one has only twenty-four hours a day, to content one's self with twenty-four hours a day!”

“但是，”有人也許會這么說，以典型英國人對要點以外的一切都不以為然的態(tài)度，“一天24小時，他到底是什么意思？我過一天24小時，沒有任何問題。不僅想做的事情都做了，而且還有時間參加報上的競賽活動。這太簡單了，誰不知道每天只有24小時，人就應該滿足于一天24小時??！”

To you, my dear sir, I present my excuses and apologies. You are precisely the man that I have been wishing to meet for about forty years. Will you kindly send me your name and address, and state your charge for telling me how you do it? Instead of me talking to you, you ought to be talking to me. Please come forward. That you exist, I am convinced, and that I have not yet encountered you is my loss. Meanwhile, until you appear, I will continue to chat with my companions in distress—that innumerable band of souls who are haunted, more or less painfully, by the feeling that the years slip by, and slip by, and slip by, and that they have not yet been able to get their lives into proper working order.

對您，親愛的先生，我深表歉意。您正是我差不多四十年來一直期待遇見的人。能否請您給我您的姓名和地址，并請您告訴我需付多少錢，您才能對我說說您是怎樣做到這一點的？不是我向您談什么，而應該是您對我講道理。請站出來。我深信，有您這樣的人，我卻不曾遇到過，這是我的損失。在您出現(xiàn)之前，我將繼續(xù)同苦惱的同胞們聊天，那無數(shù)的靈魂或重或輕地為憂慮困擾，眼睜睜地看著歲月流逝，流逝，流逝……可一直未能有效地安排自己的生活。

If we analyse that feeling, we shall perceive it to be, primarily, one of uneasiness, of expectation, of looking forward, of aspiration. It is a source of constant discomfort, for it behaves like a skeleton at the feast of all our enjoyments. We go to the theatre and laugh; but between the acts it raises a skinny finger at us. We rush violently for the last train, and while we are cooling a long age on the platform waiting for the last train, it promenades its bones up and down by our side and inquires:"O man, what hast thou done with thy youth? What art thou doing with thine age?" You may urge that this feeling of continuous looking forward, of aspiration, is part of life itself, and inseparable from life itself. True!

倘若揣摩這種情緒，我們會發(fā)現(xiàn)這主要是一種不安、期待、希求或渴望。這種情緒長久地令人不能舒暢，在我們一切享樂的盛宴上，它像骷髏一般時隱時現(xiàn)。我們看戲眉開眼笑，可劇幕間骷髏會伸出它皮包骨的手指朝我們指指點點。為了趕上最后一趟列車，我們向車站狂奔，站在月臺上等這班列車到達、順便喘息的那好一陣子，它又會拖著滿身的骨頭在我們身邊晃蕩并詢問道：“哦，你的年輕時代是怎樣度過的？你現(xiàn)在這個年齡又在做些什么？”也許你會強調(diào)說，這種不斷向前看的感覺抑或抱負是生活本身的一部分，跟生活密不可分。你說的沒錯！

But there are degrees. A man may desire to go to Mecca. His conscience tells him that he ought to go to Mecca. He fares forth, either by the aid of Cook's, or unassisted; he may probably never reach Mecca; he may drown before he gets to Port Said; he may perish ingloriously on the coast of the Red Sea; his desire may remain eternally frustrate. Unfulfilled aspiration may always trouble him. But he will not be tormented in the same way as the man who, desiring to reach Mecca, and harried by the desire to reach Mecca, never leaves Brixton1.

但有程度之別。某人也許渴望去麥加，他的良心告訴自己應該去。他動身前往，或許有庫克旅行社的幫助，或許毫無援助；很可能他永遠到不了麥加，也許還沒到塞德港就已溺水身亡；也許他在紅海岸邊不甚體面地溘然長逝；也許他的意愿永遠無法實現(xiàn)。尚未實現(xiàn)的抱負可能一直困擾他。但他承受的折磨跟其他人所受的折磨又不一樣，后者意欲抵達麥加，甚至為那種欲望所折磨，可卻不曾離開過布里克斯頓。

It is something to have left Brixton. Most of us have not left Brixton. We have not even taken a cab to Ludgate Circus and inquired from Cook's the price of a conducted tour. And our excuse to ourselves is that there are only twenty-four hours in the day.

走出布里克斯頓，已經(jīng)很了不起；我們大多數(shù)人都不曾離開布里克斯頓。我們甚至不曾搭計程車去拉德蓋特廣場咨詢庫克旅行社參加有向?qū)У穆糜蔚没ㄙM多少。我們給自己的借口是一天只有24小時。

If we further analyse our vague, uneasy aspiration, we shall,I think,see that it springs from a fixed idea that we ought to do something in addition to those things which we are loyally and morally obliged to do. We are obliged, by various codes written and unwritten, to maintain ourselves and our families (if any) in health and comfort, to pay our debts, to save, to increase our prosperity by increasing our efficiency. A task sufficiently difficult! A task which very few of us achieve! A task often beyond our skill! Yet, if we succeed in it, as we sometimes do, we are not satisfied; the skeleton is still with us.

倘若我們進一步分析這種模糊而又令人焦躁的渴望，我想我們將會發(fā)現(xiàn)這種感覺源于一種固有觀念：除了出于忠誠和道義必須完成的工作以外，我們還應該另有所為。按成文和不成文的規(guī)定，我們必須維持自己以及家人（如果有的話）的健康和舒適、償還貸款、儲蓄、提高效率以求增加財富。這相當不易！能做到的人寥寥無幾！往往超出我們能力所及！然而，即便有時我們做到了，也并不感到滿意，因為那骷髏還是糾纏著我們。

And even when we realise that the task is beyond our skill, that our powers cannot cope with it, we feel that we should be less discontented if we gave to our powers, already overtaxed, something still further to do.

即便我們意識到任務非我們能力所及，不可能憑自己的能力應對；但我們覺得，盡管已經(jīng)超負荷工作了，只要還敦促自己做更多的事，就能減輕失落感。

And such is, indeed, the fact. The wish to accomplish something outside their formal programme is common to all men who in the course of evolution have risen past a certain level.

這是毋庸置疑的事實。所有在進化過程中已達到一定水平的人，一般都希望在正式工作計劃之外也能有所成就。

Until an effort is made to satisfy that wish, the sense of uneasy waiting for something to start which has not started will remain to disturb the peace of the soul. That wish has been called by many names. It is one form of the universal desire for knowledge. And it is so strong that men whose whole lives have been given to the systematic acquirement of knowledge have been driven by it to overstep the limits of their programme in search of still more knowledge. Even Herbert Spencer2, in my opinion the greatest mind that ever lived, was often forced by it into agreeable little backwaters of inquiry.

如果不為實現(xiàn)那一愿望而作出努力，希望有所行動卻遲遲未行動的焦躁感會一直干擾本應平靜的心靈。人們給這種愿望起了很多名字。這是一種普遍的求知欲，其程度十分強烈，以至于那些全身心地、有計劃有步驟地追求知識的人，在這一強烈愿望的驅(qū)使下，超越了他們的計劃，求索更多的知識。包括我眼里迄今最偉大的思想家赫伯特.斯賓塞也經(jīng)常在這種渴望的驅(qū)使下，沉浸于令人愉快的知識探求的小小靜水灣之中。

I imagine that in the majority of people who are conscious of the wish to live—that is to say, people who have intellectual curiosity—the aspiration to exceed formal programmes takes a literary shape. They would like to embark on a course of reading. Decidedly the British people are becoming more and more literary. But I would point out that literature by no means comprises the whole field of knowledge, and that the disturbing thirst to improve one's self—to increase one's knowledge—may well be slaked quite apart from literature. With the various ways of slaking I shall deal later. Here I merely point out to those who have no natural sympathy with literature that literature is not the only well.

我認為大多數(shù)有生活欲望的人，即對知識有好奇心的人，他們超越正式計劃的渴望都以某種文學形式體現(xiàn)出來。他們愿意踏上讀書的征程?？隙ǖ卣f，英國人越來越熱愛文學。但我想指出文學絕不代表全部知識，那種令人寢食難安的、想要提高自我的渴望——要增長知識——也可借由文學以外的其他途徑得到滿足。在后面的章節(jié)里我將談到那些途徑。在此我想向那些生性不喜歡文學的人指出，文學并不是滿足求知欲的唯一源泉。

(1)布里克斯頓，位于英國倫敦南部的蘭貝斯自治區(qū)。

(2)赫伯特?斯賓塞（1820—1903），英國維多利亞女王時代的哲學家、社會學家，社會進化論和社會有機體論的代表人物。