Walden: Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

At a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer’s premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it—took everything but a deed of it—took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk—cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat?—better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, woodlot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow, perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

在我们生命中的某个时节，我们习惯于把每一处地方都看作可能盖房子的地址。我就这样把我住处周围十几英里以内的乡间，四面八方都勘察过了。在想象中，我已经把所有的农场一个接一个地买下了，因为所有的农场都是可以买的，而我也知道它们的价钱。我走遍了每一个农夫的地产，尝过他的野苹果，同他谈论农事，照他开的价钱，照任何价钱，把他的农场买下来，在心里把它抵押给他；甚至出了更高的价钱——除了一张契据，什么都拿了——拿他的话当契据，因为我非常喜欢谈话——耕种了那块地，我相信，在某种程度上也把他耕耘了一番，等我享受够了，就退出来，让他自己去经营。这番经历使我的朋友们有理由把我看作某种房地产经纪人。我坐在哪里，就可以住在哪里，风景也就相应地以我为中心向四面辐射开去。房子是什么？不就是一个 sedes，一个座位吗？——要是乡间的座位，也就是一处乡间宅第，那就更好了。我发现了许多盖房子的地方，看来一时不会有人去开发，有些人也许会觉得它们离村子太远，可是在我看来，是村子离它们太远了。好吧，我可以住在那里，我说；我也确实在那里住过，住了一个小时，过了一个夏天和一个冬天的生活；看到了我可以怎样让岁月流逝，怎样熬过冬天，看着春天到来。这一带未来的居民，无论把他们的房子盖在哪里，都可以确信，已经有人先他们一步了。一个下午就足以把这块地规划成果园、林地和牧场，并且决定门前该留下哪几棵好橡树或松树，从哪里看每一棵枯树最好看；然后我就让它闲着，也许算是休耕吧，因为一个人能够放下不管的东西越多，他就越富有。

My imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms—the refusal was all I wanted—but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife—every man has such a wife—changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,

我的想象把我带得那样远，我甚至得到了好几个农场的优先购买权——我要的也就只是这优先权——可是我从来没有因为真正占有而烫伤手指。我最接近真正占有的一次，是我买下霍洛韦尔那块地的时候，我已经开始挑拣种子，还收集了做独轮车的材料，好用它来经营那块地，或者把东西运进运出；可是在地主把契据交给我以前，他的妻子——每个男人都有这样一个妻子——改变了主意，想把地留下来，于是他提出给我十块钱，请我解除合约。说实话，我在世上一共只有十美分，我的算术实在算不清，我到底是那个有十美分的人，还是那个有一座农场的人，还是那个有十块钱的人，还是三样都有。不过，我让他把十块钱和农场都留下了，因为我已经玩得够久了；或者不如说，为了表示慷慨，我把农场照我买进的价钱原价卖还给他，又因为他不是一个有钱人，就把十块钱送给了他，而我仍然有我的十美分、种子和做独轮车的材料。我就这样发现，我做了一回富人，却丝毫没有损害我的贫穷。可是我保留了那片风景，从那以后，我每年都把它的出产运走，用不着独轮车。说到风景，

“I am monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute.”

“我是我所见的一切的君王，我在那里的权利无人能够争辩。”

I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.

我常常看见一个诗人享受了一座农场最有价值的部分之后就走开了，而那个脾气古怪的农夫还以为他只拿走了几个野苹果。哎，诗人已经把他的农场写进了诗韵里——那是一种最令人赞叹的、看不见的篱笆——已经把它好好地圈起来，挤了它的奶，撇了它的油，拿走了全部的奶油，只把撇过油的脱脂奶留给农夫，而地主却好多年都不知道。

The real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were: its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders—I never heard what compensation he received for that—and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted, if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said.

在我看来，霍洛韦尔农场真正吸引人的地方在于：它十分幽僻，离村子大约两英里，离最近的邻居半英里，又有一大片田地把它和公路隔开；它濒临河流，地主说，河上的雾能保护它在春天不受霜冻，不过这对我来说无关紧要；房子和谷仓灰暗的颜色和破败的样子，还有那些坍塌的篱笆，它们在我和上一个住户之间隔开了那样长的一段时间；那些空了心、长满地衣、被兔子啃过的苹果树，它们表明我将会有什么样的邻居；但最重要的，是我对它的回忆——我最早几次沿河而上的时候，那座房子藏在一片茂密的红枫林后面，我透过林子听见过看家狗的叫声。我急于把它买下来，赶在地主搬走一些石头、砍掉那些空心的苹果树、挖掉牧场上冒出来的一些小白桦以前，总之，赶在他再做任何改良以前。为了享受这些好处，我准备把它经营下去；像阿特拉斯一样，把世界扛在肩上——我从来没听说他为此得到了什么报酬——去做所有那些事，那些事除了为了付清地价、好不受打扰地占有它以外，再没有别的动机或理由；因为我一直都知道，只要我能够放下它不去管，它就会长出最丰盛的庄稼，正是我想要的那一种。可是结果正如我前面说过的那样。

All that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale—I have always cultivated a garden—was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.

那么，关于大规模的耕作——我一直都种着一个园子——我所能说的，就是我的种子已经准备好了。许多人以为种子越陈越好。我毫不怀疑，时间会分辨出好坏；等我最后真的播种的时候，我就不大会失望了。可是我要一劳永逸地对我的同胞们说：尽可能久地活得自由，不受羁绊。被羁绊在一座农场上，还是被羁押在县监狱里，其间并没有多大分别。

Old Cato, whose De Re Rustica is my Cultivator, says—and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage—“When you think of getting a farm turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good.” I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last.

老加图的《农业志》就是我的《耕作者》，他说——而我见过的唯一一个译本把这段话译得完全不知所云——“当你想要买一座农场的时候，你要在心里这样反复考虑：不要贪心地去买；不要怕麻烦，要去看它，不要以为绕着它走一圈就够了。你去得越勤，如果它是好的，它就越会使你喜欢。”我想我不会贪心地去买，而是一辈子绕着它走了一圈又一圈，并且先被葬在里面，好让它最后更使我喜欢。

The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.

眼下这一次，是我在这方面的下一次实验，我打算把它描述得详细一些，为了方便起见，把两年的经历合成一年来写。我已经说过，我不打算写一首《沮丧颂》，而是要像清晨站在栖木上的雄鸡一样，精神抖擞地大声夸口，哪怕只是为了把我的邻居们唤醒。

When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere.

我最初住进林中的时候，也就是说，开始在那里过夜也在那里过白天的时候，碰巧是在独立日，即1845年7月4日，那时我的房子还没有准备好过冬，只能挡挡雨，没有抹灰泥，也没有烟囱，墙是用风吹雨打过的粗木板做的，缝隙很宽，所以夜里很凉快。那些竖立着的、削得白白的立柱，和新刨过的门框窗框，使它显得干净而通风，尤其是在早晨，那时木头浸透了露水，我便幻想到了中午，会有甜甜的树胶从里面渗出来。在我的想象中，它一整天都多少保留着这种晨曦般的气质，使我想起一年前我去过的山上的一座房子。那是一间通风的、没有抹灰泥的小屋，适合款待一位远游的神，也适合一位女神在那里拖曳她的衣裙。掠过我的住所的风，正像掠过山脊的风那样，带来的只是人间音乐断断续续的曲调，或者说，只是其中属于天上的那几个声部。晨风永远吹着，创世的诗篇从来没有中断；可是能听见它的耳朵太少了。奥林匹斯山不过是随处可见的大地的外表罢了。

The only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, “An abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning.” Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those smaller and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager—the wood thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field sparrow, the whip-poor-will, and many others.

在这以前，如果不算一条船，我唯一拥有过的房子是一顶帐篷，夏天出去远足的时候偶尔用一用，现在它还卷着放在我的阁楼里；可是那条船，几经转手，已经顺着时间之流漂走了。有了这个更结实的住处围在我身边，我在世上安顿下来这件事上就有了一些进展。这个框架，衣着如此单薄，像是围绕着我的一种结晶，又反过来作用于它的建造者。它有点像一幅只勾了轮廓的画，引人遐想。我用不着到户外去呼吸新鲜空气，因为屋里的空气一点也没有失去它的新鲜。即使在雨下得最大的日子里，我坐的地方与其说是在门里，不如说是在门后。《诃利世系》里说：“没有鸟的住所，就像没有调料的肉。”我的住所可不是这样，因为我忽然发现自己成了鸟儿们的邻居；不是因为我关住了一只鸟，而是因为我把自己关进了离它们很近的笼子里。我不仅离那些常在花园和果园里出没的鸟儿更近了，也离那些更小、更动人的林中歌手更近了，它们从来不为村民唱小夜曲，就算唱也很少——比如棕林鸫、韦氏鸫、猩红丽唐纳雀、田雀鹀、三声夜鹰，还有许多别的鸟。

I was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord Battle Ground; but I was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains.

我坐在一个小湖的岸边，它在康科德村南面大约一英里半的地方，地势比村子稍高，处在那个镇子和林肯镇之间一大片森林的中央，在我们那唯一出名的战场——康科德战场——南面约两英里；可是我在林子里处得那样低，半英里外的对岸，像别处一样长满了树木，就是我最远的地平线了。头一个星期，每当我望着湖面，它都给我一种印象，像是高高的山腰上的一个小山湖，湖底远远高出别的湖的水面；太阳升起的时候，我看见它脱去夜里穿的雾的衣裳，它那柔和的涟漪或光滑如镜的水面，这里那里，渐渐显露出来，而那些雾，像幽灵一样，悄悄地从四面八方退进林子里，就像某个夜间的秘密集会散了场。连露水也好像比平常更晚地挂在树上，就像在山腰上那样。

This small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rainstorm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. From a hilltop near by, where the wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the northwest, those true-blue coins from heaven’s own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this point, I could not see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of interverting water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land.

八月里，在一场和缓的暴风雨的间歇，这个小湖作为邻居是最有价值的，那时空气和湖水都完全静止，可是天空阴沉，午后三四点钟就有了傍晚的全部宁静，棕林鸫在四周歌唱，从这岸到那岸都听得见。像这样的湖，再没有比这种时候更平静的了；湖面上那一层明净的空气，因为浅，又被云遮暗了，于是湖水充满了光和倒影，自己变成了一个低一层的天空，也就显得更加重要了。从附近的一座山顶上——那里的树林最近被砍掉了——可以越过湖面，透过湖岸那边群山的一个宽阔的缺口，愉快地向南眺望，那里山的两面相对倾斜，使人以为有一条溪流从那个方向穿过一道林木葱茏的山谷流出去，可是那里并没有溪流。从那个方向，我越过近处的青山，从它们中间和上方，望见地平线上一些更远、更高、染着蓝色的山。真的，踮起脚尖，我还能瞥见西北方更蓝、更远的山脉的几座山峰，那是天堂自己的造币厂铸出来的真正蓝色的钱币，也能望见村子的一部分。可是从其他方向，即使站在这个地方，我也望不见、也望不过包围着我的树林。你的附近有一点水，那是好的，它能给大地以浮力，让大地漂浮起来。即使是最小的一口井，也有一个价值，那就是当你往里看的时候，你会看见大地不是大陆，而是岛屿。这一点同它能使黄油保持凉爽一样重要。当我从这座山顶越过湖面向萨德伯里草地望去的时候——发大水的时候，我看见那些草地也许因为蜃景的作用，在它们那沸腾的山谷里升高了，像盆里的一枚钱币——湖那边的整个大地，好像一层薄薄的壳，被这一小片介于其间的水隔开，漂浮在上面，于是我想起，我所居住的这块地方，不过是一块干燥的陆地罢了。

Though the view from my door was still more contracted, I did not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture enough for my imagination. The low shrub oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all the roving families of men. “There are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon”—said Damodara, when his herds required new and larger pastures.

虽然从我的门口望出去的视野更加狭窄，我却一点也不觉得拥挤或者受限制。我的想象力有足够的牧场。对岸升起的那片长着矮橡树的低矮高地，一直向西部的大草原和鞑靼的草原延伸过去，为人类所有游牧的家族都提供了足够的空间。“世上快乐的，只有那些自由地享有辽阔地平线的生灵”——达摩陀罗在他的牛群需要更新、更大的牧场时这样说。

Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia’s Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of creation where I had squatted;

地点和时间都变了，我住得更靠近宇宙中最吸引我的那些部分，更靠近历史上最吸引我的那些时代。我住的地方，就像天文学家每夜观测的许多区域一样遥远。我们习惯于想象，在宇宙体系某个遥远的、更近于天上的角落里，在仙后座的椅子后面，远离喧嚣和纷扰的地方，有着珍奇而令人愉悦的所在。我发现，我的房子实际上就坐落在宇宙中这样一个僻静的、却永远新鲜而未被亵渎的地方。如果说值得到昴星团或毕星团附近、到毕宿五或牛郎星附近去定居，那么我就真的在那里了，或者说，我离我抛在身后的那种生活同样遥远，在我最近的邻居看来，我已经缩小了，闪烁着同样细微的光芒，只有在没有月亮的夜里他才看得见我。这就是我擅自占地安身的那一角造化；

“There was a shepherd that did live, And held his thoughts as high As were the mounts whereon his flocks Did hourly feed him by.”

“从前有一个牧羊人，他把思想放得很高，高得就像他的羊群时时在他身旁吃草的那些山。”

What should we think of the shepherd’s life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?

如果他的羊群总是游荡到比他的思想更高的牧场上去，我们又该怎样看待这个牧羊人的生活呢？

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tchingthang to this effect: “Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.” I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer’s requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air—to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, “All intelligences awake with the morning.” Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?

每一个早晨都是一个愉快的邀请，邀我使我的生活像大自然本身一样简单，我也可以说，一样天真。我像希腊人一样，是曙光女神奥罗拉的虔诚崇拜者。我起得很早，在湖里洗澡；那是一种宗教仪式，也是我做过的最好的事情之一。据说成汤王的浴盆上刻着这样的铭文：“苟日新，日日新，又日新。”我能懂得这句话。早晨把英雄的时代带了回来。黎明时分，我开着门窗坐着，一只蚊子在我的屋子里作看不见、想象不到的巡游，它那微弱的嗡嗡声，对我的触动，不亚于任何歌颂名声的号角。那是荷马的安魂曲；它本身就是空中的一部《伊利亚特》和《奥德赛》，唱着它自己的愤怒和漂泊。其中有一种属于宇宙的东西；它是一则长期有效的告示——直到被禁止为止——宣告着世界永恒的活力与丰饶。早晨，是一天中最值得纪念的时节，是觉醒的时刻。那时我们身上的昏沉最少；至少有一个小时，我们身上有某一部分醒了过来，而这一部分在白天和夜里其余的时间里都在沉睡。唤醒我们的，如果不是我们自己的守护神，而是某个仆役机械的推搡；如果不是我们自己内心新得的力量和渴望——伴着天上音乐的起伏，而不是工厂的钟声，伴着弥漫空中的芳香——把我们唤醒到一种比入睡时更高的生活里去，好让黑暗结出它的果实，证明它和光明一样是好的；那么这样的一天，如果还能称作一天的话，就没有什么可指望的了。一个人如果不相信每一天都包含着一个比他已经亵渎过的任何时刻都更早、更神圣、更有晨光的时辰，那他就已经对生活绝望了，正走在一条下降的、越来越暗的路上。人的感官生活在部分地停歇之后，人的灵魂，或者不如说灵魂的器官，每天都会重新获得活力，他的守护神又会再试一试，看它能创造出怎样高贵的生活。我应该说，一切值得纪念的事情，都发生在早晨的时间和早晨的气氛里。《吠陀经》上说：“一切智慧都随着早晨醒来。”诗歌和艺术，以及人类最美好、最值得纪念的行为，都始于这样的时辰。所有的诗人和英雄，都像门农一样，是曙光女神的孩子，在日出时奏出他们的音乐。对于一个思想富有弹性、充满活力、能与太阳同步的人来说，白天就是一个永恒的早晨。钟表怎么说，人们的姿态和劳作怎么样，都无关紧要。早晨，就是我醒着、我心中有一个黎明的时候。道德的改良，就是努力摆脱睡眠。如果人们没有一直在昏睡，为什么他们对自己的一天总是交代得那么可怜呢？他们并不是那么拙劣的计算者。如果他们没有被睡意征服，他们本来是会有所作为的。千百万人醒着的程度足以从事体力劳动；可是一百万人里只有一个人醒着的程度足以从事有效的智力活动，一亿人里只有一个人醒着的程度足以过一种诗意的或神圣的生活。醒着就是活着。我还从来没有遇见过一个完全醒着的人。我怎么能够正视他的脸呢？

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.

我们必须学会重新醒来，并且使自己保持清醒，不是靠机械的帮助，而是靠对黎明的无限期待，这种期待即使在我们睡得最沉的时候也不会抛弃我们。我知道没有比这更鼓舞人心的事实了：人无疑有能力通过自觉的努力来提升自己的生活。能够画出一幅特定的画，或者雕出一座雕像，从而使几样东西变得美丽，这已经很了不起；可是，去雕刻、去描绘我们借以观看的那种气氛和媒介本身，那就光荣得多了，而这在道德上是我们能够做到的。影响一天的品质，这是最高的艺术。每一个人都有责任使他的生活，甚至在细节上，都配得上他最崇高、最挑剔的时刻的审视。如果我们拒绝了，或者不如说用尽了我们所得到的那些微不足道的信息，神谕就会清清楚楚地告诉我们，这件事该怎样去做。

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

我之所以到林子里去，是因为我想清醒从容地生活，只面对生活中最本质的事实，看看我能否学到它要教我的东西，而不至于在将死之时，才发觉自己根本不曾活过。我不愿过那不是生活的生活，活着是如此珍贵；我也不愿听天由命，除非万不得已。我要深深地生活，吸尽生活的全部骨髓，要活得那样坚强，像斯巴达人一样，把一切不是生活的东西都击溃，要割出宽宽的一行，并且贴着地皮割，把生活逼到一个角落里，把它简化到最基本的形式；如果它被证明是卑微的，那就把它全部的、真正的卑微都弄清楚，把它的卑微公之于世；如果它是崇高的，就亲身体验它，好在下一次远游时对它作一个真实的描述。因为在我看来，大多数人对生活奇怪地拿不定主意，不知道它是属于魔鬼的，还是属于上帝的，却有点草率地断定，人在世上的首要目的就是“荣耀上帝，永远以他为乐”。

Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.

可是我们仍然活得卑微，像蚂蚁一样；虽然寓言告诉我们，我们早就变成了人；我们像侏儒一样同鹤作战；这是错上加错，补丁摞补丁，我们最好的美德，也只是为了应付一种多余的、本可避免的苦难。我们的生活被琐事一点点耗掉了。一个诚实的人，几乎用不着数到十个手指以上，在极端的情况下，他可以再加上十个脚趾，其余的就一笔带过吧。简单，简单，简单！我说，让你的事情只有两三件，而不是一百件、一千件；不要数到一百万，数到半打就够了，把你的账记在大拇指的指甲上。在这文明生活波涛汹涌的海面上，要考虑的乌云、风暴、流沙和千头万绪实在太多，一个人如果不想沉船、沉到海底、根本到不了港口，就只能靠推算航行法来过日子，能做到这一点的人，真得是一个了不起的计算家。简化，简化。如果必要，一天不要吃三顿，只吃一顿；不要一百道菜，只要五道；其他的事也按比例减少。我们的生活就像德意志邦联，由许多小邦组成，边界永远在变动，连德国人自己也没法告诉你它此刻的边界在哪里。这个国家本身，连同它那所谓的国内改良——顺便说一句，那全是外在的、表面的——正像这片土地上的上百万个家庭一样，是一个笨拙而臃肿的机构，堆满了家具，被它自己设下的圈套绊倒，被奢侈和不顾后果的挥霍、被缺乏筹划和缺乏有价值的目标毁掉了；而治疗它的唯一办法，也和治疗那些家庭一样，在于严格的节俭，在于一种严峻的、比斯巴达人更简朴的生活，以及目标的提升。它活得太快了。人们认为，这个国家必须有商业，必须出口冰块，必须通过电报说话，必须以每小时三十英里的速度奔驰，这是毫无疑问的，不管他们自己是否这样做；可是我们应该像狒狒那样生活，还是像人那样生活，这一点却不太确定。如果我们不去弄枕木，不去锻造铁轨，不日日夜夜投入这项工作，而是去修补我们的生活，使它变得更好，那么谁来修铁路呢？如果铁路修不成，我们又怎样按时到达天堂呢？可是，如果我们待在家里，做好自己的事，谁还会需要铁路呢？不是我们坐在铁路上；是铁路坐在我们身上。你有没有想过，铁路底下的那些枕木是什么？每一根都是一个人，一个爱尔兰人，或者一个北方佬。铁轨铺在他们身上，他们身上盖着沙子，车厢平稳地从他们身上驶过。我向你保证，他们睡得很沉。每隔几年，就有一批新的铺下去，让车厢碾过；所以，如果说有些人有幸坐在铁轨上，另一些人就不幸要被碾在下面。当他们碾到一个梦游的人，一根放错了位置的多余的枕木，把他惊醒了，他们就突然把车停下，大呼小叫，仿佛这是一个例外。我很高兴得知，每五英里就需要一队人，来让那些枕木在它们的床上平平地躺着，因为这表明，它们总有一天会再站起来。

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow. As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus’ dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire—or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, “What’s the news?” as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe”—and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.

我们为什么要活得这样匆忙，这样浪费生命呢？我们决心在饿之前就先饿死。人们说，及时缝一针，可以省九针，于是他们今天缝上一千针，为的是明天省下九针。至于工作，我们并没有什么要紧的工作。我们得了舞蹈病，脑袋怎么也停不下来。如果我只是拉几下教区的钟绳，像报火警那样，也就是说，不让钟摆定，那么在康科德郊外的农庄里，几乎没有一个人——尽管他今天早上一再拿事务繁忙作借口——没有一个男孩，我几乎可以说，也没有一个女人，不会丢下一切，循着钟声跑来，主要不是为了从火里抢救财产，而是，如果我们肯承认实话的话，更多是为了看它燃烧，既然它总要烧掉，而且，要知道，火也不是我们放的——或者是为了看着火被扑灭，并且插上一手，如果扑火也做得那样漂亮的话；是的，即使烧的是教区的教堂本身。几乎没有一个人在饭后打半个小时的盹，醒来时不抬起头来问：“有什么新闻？”仿佛人类的其余部分都在替他站岗。有些人吩咐别人每隔半小时叫醒他一次，无疑不为别的；然后，作为报答，他们讲他们做了什么梦。睡了一夜之后，新闻就像早餐一样必不可少。“请告诉我，这个地球上任何地方的任何人身上发生的任何新鲜事吧”——于是他一边喝咖啡、吃面包卷，一边读到今天早上有个人在沃希托河上被挖掉了眼睛；却丝毫没有想到，他自己就住在这个世界幽深莫测的巨大洞穴里，自己也只有一只眼睛的雏形。

For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life—I wrote this some years ago—that were worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure—news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right proportions—they may have changed the names a little since I saw the papers—and serve up a bullfight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted.

就我来说，没有邮局我也很容易过下去。我想，通过邮局传递的重要信息少得可怜。严格地说，我一生中收到的信，值得那份邮资的不超过一两封——这话是我几年前写的。一便士邮政，通常是这样一种制度：你通过它郑重地付给一个人一便士，买他的想法，而这一便士平常只是在开玩笑时才放心地拿出来。我也确信，我从没在报纸上读到过什么值得记住的新闻。如果我们读到一个人被抢劫，或被谋杀，或死于意外，或一座房子被烧毁，或一条船失事，或一艘汽船爆炸，或一头牛在西部铁路上被碾死，或一条疯狗被打死，或冬天里出现了一群蝗虫——我们就再也不必去读另一条了。一条就够了。如果你懂得了其中的原理，又何必在乎成千上万的事例和应用呢？对一个哲学家来说，所有所谓的新闻都是闲话，编新闻和读新闻的人，都是喝着茶的老太婆。可是贪图这种闲话的人却不在少数。我听说，前些天在一家报馆里，人们争着打听最近一班船带来的外国新闻，挤得那么厉害，竟把报馆的好几块大玻璃都挤碎了——而这种新闻，我认真地想，一个机敏的人提前一年，或者提前十二年，就能写得足够准确。比如说西班牙，如果你懂得时不时地按适当的比例，把唐·卡洛斯和公主、唐·佩德罗、塞维利亚和格拉纳达加进去——自从我看报以来，他们也许稍微改了改名字——在别的娱乐都不够用的时候，再端上一场斗牛，那么它就会一字不差地真实，让我们对西班牙的确切状况或衰败情形，得到和报纸上这一栏最简明扼要的报道一样好的概念；至于英国，从那里来的最后一条有意义的新闻，差不多就是1649年的革命了；如果你已经了解了英国一个平常年份的收成史，你就再也不必关心这件事，除非你的投机纯粹是为了钱。如果一个难得看报的人也可以下判断的话，那么外国从来没有发生过什么新鲜事，法国革命也不例外。

What news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old! “Kieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!” The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week—for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one—with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, “Pause! Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?”

什么新闻！知道那永不陈旧的东西是什么，要重要得多！“蘧伯玉（卫国的大夫）派人到孔子那里去问候。孔子请使者坐在身旁，这样问他：你家主人在做什么呢？使者恭敬地回答：我家主人想要减少他的过错，可是还没能做到。使者走了以后，这位哲人说：好一位使者！好一位使者！”传道的人，与其在一周之末的安息日，用又一篇拖泥带水的布道去烦扰昏昏欲睡的农夫们的耳朵——因为星期日是虚度了的一周恰如其分的结尾，而不是新的一周清新而勇敢的开端——还不如用雷鸣般的声音大喊：“停下！站住！为什么看起来这么快，实际上却慢得要命？”

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindu book, that “there was a king’s son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father’s ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul,” continues the Hindu philosopher, “from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme.” I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be. If a man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where, think you, would the “Milldam” go to? If he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at a meetinghouse, or a courthouse, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.

虚假和幻象被奉为最可靠的真理，而真实反倒成了虚构。如果人们只坚定地观察真实，不让自己受骗，那么生活，拿我们所知道的东西来比，就会像童话，像《一千零一夜》。如果我们只尊重那些必然的、有权存在的东西，音乐和诗歌就会响遍街头。当我们不慌不忙而又明智的时候，我们就会看出，只有伟大而有价值的东西才有永久的、绝对的存在，渺小的恐惧和渺小的快乐，不过是真实的影子。这总是令人振奋而崇高的。人们闭上眼睛，昏昏欲睡，甘愿被表象欺骗，于是处处建立起、巩固了他们日常的例行公事和习惯的生活，而这种生活仍然建立在纯粹虚幻的基础上。孩子们把生活当游戏来玩，反而比成年人更清楚地看出生活的真正法则和关系；成年人没能活得有价值，却以为自己因为经验，也就是因为失败，而更加聪明。我在一本印度的书里读到：“有一个王子，幼年时被逐出故乡的城市，由一个林中人抚养长大，他在那种境况中长大成人，以为自己属于与他同住的那个野蛮的种族。后来他父亲的一位大臣找到了他，告诉他他是谁，于是对他身份的误解消除了，他知道了自己是一位王子。灵魂也是如此，”那位印度哲人接着说，“由于它所处的环境，误解了它自己的本性，直到某位神圣的导师向它揭示了真理，它才知道自己就是梵。”我看出，我们这些新英格兰的居民之所以过着现在这种卑微的生活，是因为我们的眼光穿不透事物的表面。我们以为看上去是怎样的，就是怎样的。如果一个人走过这座小镇，只看见真实，你想，那个“磨坊水坝”会到哪里去呢？如果他把他在那里看见的真实讲给我们听，我们会认不出他所描述的地方。看看一座礼拜堂，或一座法院，或一座监狱，或一家商店，或一座住宅，在真正的注视之下说出那东西到底是什么，它们在你的描述里就都会土崩瓦解。人们以为真理很遥远，在体系的边缘，在最远的星星后面，在亚当之前，在最后一个人之后。在永恒之中，确实有某种真实而崇高的东西。可是所有这些时间、地点和时机，都在此时此地。上帝本身就在此刻达到顶点，在所有世代的流逝中，他永远不会比现在更神圣。我们之所以能够领会崇高和高贵的东西，全靠环绕着我们的真实不断地灌注和浸透。宇宙总是顺从地回应我们的构想；无论我们走得快还是慢，轨道都已为我们铺好。那么，让我们用一生去构想吧。诗人或艺术家从来不曾有过那样美好而高贵的构思，以至于他的后人中至少没有一些人能够把它实现。

Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry—determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d’appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamppost safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a scimitar, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.

让我们像大自然一样从容地过一天吧，不要因为每一片落在铁轨上的坚果壳和蚊子翅膀就被抛出轨道。让我们早早起身，斋戒，或者用早餐，温和而不慌张；让客人来，让客人去，让钟声响，让孩子哭——下定决心好好过这一天。我们为什么要屈服，随波逐流呢？我们不要在那个叫作午餐的可怕急流和漩涡里翻船、没顶，它就位于正午的浅滩上。闯过这个危险，你就安全了，因为余下的路都是下坡。以不松懈的神经，以早晨的精力，从它旁边驶过，眼睛望着别处，像尤利西斯那样把自己绑在桅杆上。如果火车头鸣笛，就让它鸣去吧，鸣到嗓子哑了，算是它的辛苦。如果钟声响了，我们为什么要跑呢？我们要考虑考虑，它们像哪一种音乐。让我们安定下来，用力把脚往下踩、往下楔，穿过那覆盖着全球的意见、偏见、传统、幻觉和表象的淤泥与烂浆，那一层冲积土，穿过巴黎和伦敦，穿过纽约、波士顿和康科德，穿过教会和国家，穿过诗歌、哲学和宗教，直到我们踩到坚硬的底层和原位的岩石，可以称之为真实，然后说：这就是了，没有错；然后，有了一个支点，在洪水、冰冻和火焰之下，开始打一个地基，可以在上面筑一道墙，建一个国家，或者稳稳地竖一根灯柱，或者立一把标尺，不是尼罗河水位尺，而是一把“真实水位尺”，好让后世知道，虚假和表象的洪水时不时地积聚到了多深。如果你正面对着一个事实，与它面对面地站着，你就会看见太阳在它的两面闪烁，仿佛它是一把弯刀，感到它甜美的刀锋把你从心脏和骨髓里劈开，于是你便会愉快地结束你的尘世生涯。无论是生是死，我们渴求的只是真实。如果我们真的要死了，就让我们听见喉咙里的咯咯声，感到四肢的寒冷；如果我们活着，就让我们去做我们的事吧。