self reliance 中英对照(修改翻译版)

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. 每个人在受教导进程中,总有一天会认识到:妒忌是无知,模拟是自杀。不论好歹,每个人都必需接 收属于他的那一份,辽阔的世界里固然充斥了珍馐美味,但是只有从给予他往耕耘的那一片土地里, 通过辛苦劳动收获的谷物才富有养分。 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. 信任你自己吧:每颗心都随着那弦跳动,接受上苍为你找到的地位──同代人组成的社会和世网。巨 大的人物总是像孩子似地将自己托付给时期的精力,表露他们所感知到的上帝正在他们内心引起骚动,正假他们之手在运作,并驾驭着他们全部身心。 Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. 任何名副实在的真正的人,都必须是不落俗套的人。任何采集圣地棕搁叶的人,都不应该拘泥于名义 上的善,而应当挖掘善之本身。除了我们心灵的真挚之外,其它的一切回根结蒂都不是神圣的。摆脱 自己,皈依自我,也就必定得到众人的认可。记得,当我还很小的时候,有位颇受人尊敬的师长。他 习惯不厌其烦地向我灌输宗教的古老教条。有一回,我禁不住回了他一句。听到我说,如果我完整靠 内心的指导来生活,那么我拿那些神圣的传统干嘛呢;我的这位朋友提出说:“可是,内心的激动可能是低下的,而不是高贵的。”我答复说:“在我看来,却不是如此。不过,倘若我是魔鬼的孩子,那么 我就要照魔鬼的指导来生活。”除了本性的法则之外,在我看来,没有任何法则是神圣的。好与坏,只不过是个名声而已,不费吹灰之力,便可以将它从这人身上移到那人身上。唯一准确的,是服从自身 构造的事物;唯一过错的,是逆自身构造的事物。 What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. 我必须做的是一切与我有关的事,而不是别人想要我做的事。这条法则,在现实生活和精力生涯中都 是同样艰难艰苦的,它是巨大与卑贱的全部差别。它将变得更加艰难,假如你总是碰到一些自认为比 你自己更理解什么是你的义务的人。依照世人的观念在这世界上生活是件轻易的事;依照你自己的观念,离群索居也不难;但若置身在众人之间,却能尽善尽美地怕然坚持着个人独立性,却只有巨人才 干办得到。 For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. ...... It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment. 众人用不快来鞭笞不落俗套的人……对于一位刚强的探谙世事的人来说,容忍有教养的名流们的恼怒 不是件难事。他们的恼怒是正直得体,谨严慎重的。由于他们本身就非常轻易招来责难,所以他们胆 小怕事。但是,若引起他们那女性特有的恼怒,其愤慨便有所升级;倘若无知和贫穷的人们被教唆, 倘若处于社会底层的非理性的蛮横力气被怂勇狂吼发难,那就须要养成宽宏大批和宗教的习惯,像神 一样把它当作无关紧要的琐事。 The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. 另一个使我们不敢自负的胆怯是我们想要随众顺俗。这是我们对自己过往的所作所为的敬畏之情,因 为在别人眼里能够藉以评判我们行动轨迹的根据,除了我们的所作所为之外别无他物,而我们又不愿 意使他们扫兴。 A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speaks what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. 笨拙地保持随众随俗是心胸狭窄的幽灵的表示,是低级的政客,哲学家和神学家们崇敬的物件。伟大的人物基本就不会随众随俗。他也许倒更关怀自己落在墙上的影子。嘿!把好你的那张嘴!用包装线把双唇缝起来!否则,你若要做一个真正的人的话,今天你想说什么就说什么,像放连珠炮一样;明天你想说什么,照样斩钉截铁地说什么,哪怕跟你今天说的一切都是相互予盾的。哈哈!老妇人,你就嚷嚷去吧!你确定会被人误会的!误会,恰正是个傻瓜的字眼。被人曲解就那么不好吗?毕达哥拉斯被人曲解,苏格拉底、耶稣、路德、哥白尼、伽利略和牛顿,每一位纯洁而又聪慧、曾经生涯过的人都曾被人误会过。要做个巨人,就必定会被人曲解。