"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，”有人也许会这么说，以典型英国人对要点以外的一切都不以为然的态度，“一天24小时，他到底是什么意思？我过一天24小时，没有任何问题。不仅想做的事情都做了，而且还有时间参加报上的竞赛活动。这太简单了，谁不知道每天只有24小时，人就应该满足于一天24小时啊！”

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.

对您，亲爱的先生，我深表歉意。您正是我差不多四十年来一直期待遇见的人。能否请您给我您的姓名和地址，并请您告诉我需付多少钱，您才能对我说说您是怎样做到这一点的？不是我向您谈什么，而应该是您对我讲道理。请站出来。我深信，有您这样的人，我却不曾遇到过，这是我的损失。在您出现之前，我将继续同苦恼的同胞们聊天，那无数的灵魂或重或轻地为忧虑困扰，眼睁睁地看着岁月流逝，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!

倘若揣摩这种情绪，我们会发现这主要是一种不安、期待、希求或渴望。这种情绪长久地令人不能舒畅，在我们一切享乐的盛宴上，它像骷髅一般时隐时现。我们看戏眉开眼笑，可剧幕间骷髅会伸出它皮包骨的手指朝我们指指点点。为了赶上最后一趟列车，我们向车站狂奔，站在月台上等这班列车到达、顺便喘息的那好一阵子，它又会拖着满身的骨头在我们身边晃荡并询问道：“哦，你的年轻时代是怎样度过的？你现在这个年龄又在做些什么？”也许你会强调说，这种不断向前看的感觉抑或抱负是生活本身的一部分，跟生活密不可分。你说的没错！

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 Brixton [1] .

但有程度之别。某人也许渴望去麦加，他的良心告诉自己应该去。他动身前往，或许有库克旅行社的帮助，或许毫无援助；很可能他永远到不了麦加，也许还没到塞德港就已溺水身亡；也许他在红海岸边不甚体面地溘然长逝；也许他的意愿永远无法实现。尚未实现的抱负可能一直困扰他。但他承受的折磨跟其他人所受的折磨又不一样，后者意欲抵达麦加，甚至为那种欲望所折磨，可却不曾离开过布里克斯顿。

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.

走出布里克斯顿，已经很了不起；我们大多数人都不曾离开布里克斯顿。我们甚至不曾搭计程车去拉德盖特广场咨询库克旅行社参加有向导的旅游得花费多少。我们给自己的借口是一天只有24小时。

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.

倘若我们进一步分析这种模糊而又令人焦躁的渴望，我想我们将会发现这种感觉源于一种固有观念：除了出于忠诚和道义必须完成的工作以外，我们还应该另有所为。按成文和不成文的规定，我们必须维持自己以及家人（如果有的话）的健康和舒适、偿还贷款、储蓄、提高效率以求增加财富。这相当不易！能做到的人寥寥无几！往往超出我们能力所及！然而，即便有时我们做到了，也并不感到满意，因为那骷髅还是纠缠着我们。

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.

即便我们意识到任务非我们能力所及，不可能凭自己的能力应对；但我们觉得，尽管已经超负荷工作了，只要还敦促自己做更多的事，就能减轻失落感。

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.

这是毋庸置疑的事实。所有在进化过程中已达到一定水平的人，一般都希望在正式工作计划之外也能有所成就。

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 Spencer [2] , in my opinion the greatest mind that ever lived, was often forced by it into agreeable little backwaters of inquiry.

如果不为实现那一愿望而作出努力，希望有所行动却迟迟未行动的焦躁感会一直干扰本应平静的心灵。人们给这种愿望起了很多名字。这是一种普遍的求知欲，其程度十分强烈，以至于那些全身心地、有计划有步骤地追求知识的人，在这一强烈愿望的驱使下，超越了他们的计划，求索更多的知识。包括我眼里迄今最伟大的思想家赫伯特.斯宾塞也经常在这种渴望的驱使下，沉浸于令人愉快的知识探求的小小静水湾之中。

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.

我认为大多数有生活欲望的人，即对知识有好奇心的人，他们超越正式计划的渴望都以某种文学形式体现出来。他们愿意踏上读书的征程。肯定地说，英国人越来越热爱文学。但我想指出文学绝不代表全部知识，那种令人寝食难安的、想要提高自我的渴望——要增长知识——也可借由文学以外的其他途径得到满足。在后面的章节里我将谈到那些途径。在此我想向那些生性不喜欢文学的人指出，文学并不是满足求知欲的唯一源泉。

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[1] 布里克斯顿，位于英国伦敦南部的兰贝斯自治区。

[2] 赫伯特·斯宾塞（1820—1903），英国维多利亚女王时代的哲学家、社会学家，社会进化论和社会有机体论的代表人物。 i1F2gnaYhXOICdNs1gvigOXFgszQyw8O6gswXenPONM2LSzczIUPvv60PGs5tMZE