雙語對(duì)照 ● 幸福之道 The Road to Happiness
■ 幸福之道 The Road to Happiness
◎ Bertrand Russell
It is a commonplace among moralists that you cannot get happiness by pursuing it. This is only true if you pursue it unwisely. Gamblers at Monte Carlo are pursuing money, and most of them lose it instead, but there are other ways of pursuing money, which often succeed. So it is with happiness. If you pursue it by means of drink, you are forgetting the hang-over. Epicurus pursued it by living only in congenial society and eating only dry bread, supplemented by a little cheese on feast days. His method proved successful in his case, but he was a valetudinarian[95] , and most people would need something more vigorous. For most people, the pursuit of happiness, unless supplemented in various ways, is too abstract and theoretical to be adequate as a personal rule of life. But I think that whatever personal rule of life you may choose it should not, except in rare and heroic cases, be incompatible with happiness.
道德家們常說：幸福是不可追求的。其實(shí)，只有用不明智的方式追求才會(huì)如此。蒙特卡洛城的賭徒們追求的是金錢，但多數(shù)人卻把錢輸光了；而另外一些追求金錢的方法卻常常能夠成功。追求幸福也是如此。如果你通過豪飲來追求幸福，那你便忘記了醉酒之后的不適。埃畢丘魯斯追求幸福的方法就是和意氣相投的人住在一起，只吃不涂黃油的面包，只在節(jié)日時(shí)才涂上一點(diǎn)奶酪。對(duì)他來說，他的方法是成功的。可不幸的是，他體弱多病，而大多數(shù)人需要的是精力充沛。對(duì)多數(shù)人來說，除非你有別的補(bǔ)充方法，否則這種追求幸福的方式太過抽象和脫離實(shí)際，不太適合作為個(gè)人的生活準(zhǔn)則。不過，在我看來，無論你選擇何種生活準(zhǔn)則，除了一些少數(shù)的英雄人物的例子，都必須和幸福相容。
There are a great many people who have all the material conditions of happiness, i.e. health and a sufficient income, and who, nevertheless, are profoundly unhappy. In such cases it would seem as if the fault must lie with a wrong theory as to how to live. In one sense, we may say that any theory as to how to live is wrong. We imagine ourselves more different from the animals than we are. Animals live on impulse, and are happy as long as external conditions are favorable. If you have a cat it will enjoy life if it has food and warmth and opportunities for an occasional night on the tiles. Your needs are more complex than those of your cat, but they still have their basis in instinct. In civilized societies, especially in English-speaking societies, this is too apt to be forgotten. People propose to themselves some one paramount objective, and restrain all impulses that do not minister to it. A businessman may be so anxious to grow rich that to this end he sacrifices health and private affections. When at last he has become rich, no pleasure remains to him except harrying other people by exhortations[96] to imitate his noble example. Many rich ladies, although nature has not endowed them with any spontaneous pleasure in literature or art, decide to be thought cultured, and spend boring hours learning the right thing to say about fashionable new books that are written to give delight, not to afford opportunities for dusty snobbism.
很多人擁有獲得幸福的所有條件，如健康的體魄和充足的收入，可他們卻非常不快樂。這種情況下，似乎是生活的理論出錯(cuò)了。從某種意義上來講，我們可以說，所有關(guān)于生活的理論都是錯(cuò)誤的。我們總以為我們和動(dòng)物之間的區(qū)別很大。動(dòng)物仰仗沖動(dòng)而活，只要客觀條件有利，它們就會(huì)快樂。如果你養(yǎng)了一只貓，它只要有東西可吃、感覺到溫暖，偶爾還能在晚上的時(shí)候去尋歡，它就會(huì)很快樂。你的需求比貓的要來得復(fù)雜些，但它們?nèi)匀皇且员灸転榛A(chǔ)的。在文明社會(huì)中，特別是在講英語的國家，這一點(diǎn)很容易被遺忘。人們?yōu)樽约褐朴喠艘粋€(gè)最高目標(biāo)，盡力克制不利于實(shí)現(xiàn)這個(gè)目標(biāo)的所有沖動(dòng)。商人可能因?yàn)橄胍l(fā)財(cái)而最終失去健康和愛情。當(dāng)他最終成為富翁時(shí)，除了苦心勸導(dǎo)別人效仿自己而讓別人感到心煩，他并沒有得到快樂。那些有錢的貴婦，即便她們天生沒有欣賞文學(xué)和藝術(shù)的細(xì)胞，她們也執(zhí)意要讓別人覺得自己很有教養(yǎng)，花費(fèi)大量的時(shí)間學(xué)習(xí)如何談?wù)摿餍械男聲?。這些書是為了給人以快樂而寫的，而不是為人們提供一個(gè)附庸風(fēng)雅的機(jī)會(huì)。
If you look around at the men and women whom you can call happy, you will see that they all have certain things in common. The most important of these things is an activity which at most gradually builds up something that you are glad to see coming into existence. Women who take an instinctive pleasure in their children can get this kind of satisfaction out of bringing up a family. Artists and authors and men of science get happiness in this way if their own work seems good to them. But there are many humbler forms of the same kind of pleasure. Many men who spend their working life in the city devote their weekends to voluntary and unremunerated toil in their gardens, and when the spring comes, they experience all the joys of having created beauty.
如果你仔細(xì)觀察身邊那些你認(rèn)為幸福的男男女女，你會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)他們身上有著某些共同點(diǎn)，其中最重要的一點(diǎn)就是：追求幸福本身。在大多數(shù)情況下，它本身就是一個(gè)很有趣的活動(dòng)，并能逐漸地讓你的愿望得以實(shí)現(xiàn)。生性喜歡孩子的婦女可以從養(yǎng)育孩子的過程中得到滿足。藝術(shù)家、作家和科學(xué)家如果對(duì)自己的工作感到滿意，他們也可以用同樣的方式獲得幸福。不過，也有一些較低層次的快樂。許多在大城市工作的人們，周末時(shí)也愿意在自家花園里進(jìn)行一些無償?shù)膭谧?，等到春天時(shí)，他們就可以盡情享受親自創(chuàng)造的美景所帶來的快樂。
The whole subject of happiness has, in my opinion, been treated too solemnly. It had been thought that man cannot be happy without a theory of life or a religion. Perhaps those who have been rendered unhappy by a bad theory may need a better theory to help them to recovery, just as you may need a tonic when you have been ill. But when things are normal a man should be healthy without a tonic and happy without a theory. It is the simple things that really matter. If a man delights in his wife and children, has success in work, and finds pleasure in the alternation of day and night, spring and autumn, he will be happy whatever his philosophy may be. If, on the other hand, he finds his wife fateful, his children’s noise unendurable, and the office a nightmare; if in the daytime he longs for night, and at night sighs for the light of day, then what he needs is not a new philosophy but a new regimen—a different diet, or more exercise, or what not.
在我看來，關(guān)于幸福的整個(gè)話題都被過于嚴(yán)肅地對(duì)待了。過去，人們一直覺得，沒有生活理論和宗教信仰的人是不會(huì)幸福的。也許那些因?yàn)樯罾碚摬缓枚鴮?dǎo)致不快樂的人，需要一種較好的理論讓他們重新快樂起來，就像你生病之后需要補(bǔ)藥來幫助恢復(fù)一樣。但是，正常情況下，一個(gè)人不吃補(bǔ)藥也應(yīng)當(dāng)是健康的，沒有理論也應(yīng)當(dāng)是幸福的。真正起作用的是一些簡單的事情。如果一個(gè)男人喜愛他的妻兒，事業(yè)有成，而且不論白天黑夜、春去秋來，總是很快活；那么，不管他的生活理論是什么，他都是幸福的。相反，如果他討厭自己的妻子，忍受不了孩子的吵鬧，并且討厭上班；如果他白天時(shí)盼望夜晚，而到了晚上又渴望天明，那么他需要的就不是理論，而是一種新的生活——改變飲食習(xí)慣，多鍛煉自己等。
Man is an animal, and his happiness depends on his physiology more than he likes to think. This is a humble conclusion, but I cannot make myself disbelieve it. Unhappy businessmen, I am convinced, would increase their happiness more by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change of philosophy.
人類也是動(dòng)物，人的幸福更多時(shí)候取決于其生理狀況而非思想狀況。雖然這是一個(gè)庸俗的結(jié)論，但我對(duì)此深信不疑。我相信，不幸福的商人與其尋找其他理論讓自己幸福，倒不如每天步行6公里，也許后者更有效。
