Letter to Mrs. Bixby
Executive Mansion, Washington,
Nov. 21, 1864
Mrs. Bixby,
Boston, Massachusetts,
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be Yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,
Abraham Lincoln
by Abraham Lincoln
致比克靳比夫人的信
亚伯拉罕·林肯 华盛顿总统府
一八六四年十一月二十一日
马萨诸塞州，波士顿
比克斯比夫人
亲爱的夫人：
在送我批阅的陆军部档案中，我看到一份马萨诸塞州陆军副官长写的报告，说您便是有五个儿子光荣牺牲在战场上的那位母亲。我深深感到，无论我企图用什么言词，来排遣如此巨大的损失给您带来的悲痛，都一定是无力和徒劳的。但我还是抑制不住要向您表示慰问，这种慰问体现在您的儿子们献身拯救的共和国对您的感谢之中。我祈求我们的天父减轻您的丧子之痛，使您只怀有对于已故亲人的美好回忆和庄严的自豪感，您有这种自豪感是理所当然的，因为您在自由的祭坛上献出了代价如此昂贵的牺牲。
您最诚挚的亚伯拉罕·林肯敬启
【作者简介】
亚伯拉罕·林肯（1809-1865）美国第十六任总统（1861-1865），共和党人。
The Literature of Knowledge And The Knowledge of Power
All the literature of knowledge builds only groundnuts, that are swept away by sloops, or confounded by the plow; but the literature of power builds nests in aerial altitudes of temples sacred from violation, or of forests inaccessible to fraud. This is a great prerogative of the power literature, and it is a greater which lies in the mode of its influence. The knowledge literature, like the fashion of this world, passes away. An encyclopaedia is its abstract ;and ,in this respect, it may be taken for its speaking symbol---that before one generation has passed, an encyclopaedia is superannuated; for it speaks through the dead memory and unimpassioned understanding, which have not the repose of higher faculties, but are continually enlarging and varying their phylacteries.But all literature properly so called---literature par excellence---for the very reason that it is so play, and the combinations into which the poetry of this planet has thrown our human passions of love and hatred, of admiration and contempt, exercise a power for bad or good over human life that cannot be contemplated, when stretching through many generations, without a sentiment allied to awe.
知识的文学与力量的文学
德·昆西
一切知识的文学都在地面上筑巢，结果不被洪水所冲堤，就被耕犁所掀翻；只有力量的文学在那巍巍苍穹间的圣殿之内，或在那高入云际的森林之巅营造自己的安身之处，那是神圣不可侵犯、也是欺诈所无法企及的。这是力量的文学所独有的重大特权，而它影响于人类的方式尤为特殊。知识的文学，如时尚一样，与时俱逝。百科全书正是此种文学的缩影，从这方面来看，似乎可以说是它活生生的象征：一个世代尚未过去，一部百科全书就陈旧过时了；因为，在它那里面所讲的不外是虽然存留在记忆中、却已失去新意的东西，以及不带任何感情色彩的推理，因此，犹如经匣中的教条，即使补充几句、略变花样，仍无法使得人的高尚精神恬然宁息。但是，一切当之无愧的文学——最优秀的文学——由于它比知识的文学更能垂之永久，它的影响与此形成相应比例，也就远为深邃，而象电光石火一般无孔不入。一方面，我们这个星球上的悲剧培养着人的感情，使之朝着某些方向发展；另一方面，我们这个星球上的诗歌又把人的爱与憎、赞美与鄙薄等激情组成种种的结合；这样共同形成强大的力量，对人类生活产生了或消极、或积极的作用，而这些作用往往会延续许许多多世代，令人考虑之下不能不感到肃然起敬。
【作者简介】
德·昆西（1785-1859），英国浪漫主义散文名家，其代表作为《一个英国吸鸦片者的陈述》。本文节选自其文章《知识的文学与力量的文学》。
The Power Is Unlimited
Besides which, there is a rarer thing than truth-namely power, or deep sympathy with truth. What is the ef-fect, for instance, upon society, of children? By the pity, by the tenderness, and by the peculiar modes of admiration which connect themselves with the helplessness, with the innocence, and with the simplicity of children, not only are the primal affections strengthened and continually renewed, but the qualities which are dearest in the sight of heaven---the frailty, for instance, which appeals to forbearance, the simplicity which is most alien from the worldly---are kept up in perpetual remembrance, and their ideals are continually refreshed. A purpose of the same nature is answered by the higher literature, viz., the literature of power. What do you learn from Paradise Lost? Nothing at all .What do you learn from a cookery-book? Something new, something that you did not know before, in every paragraph. But would you therefore put the wretched cookery-book on a higher level of estimation than the divine poem? What you owe to Milton is not any knowledge, of which a million separate items are still but a million of advancing steps on the same earthly level; what you owe is power---that is ,exercise and expansion to your own latent capacity of sympathy with the infinite, where every pulse and each separate influx is a step upward, a step ascending as upon a Jacob's ladder from earth to mysterious altitudes above the earth. All the steps of knowledge, from first to last, carry you further on the same plane, but could never raise you one foot above your ancient level of earth; whereas the very first step in power is a flight---is an ascending movement into another element where earth is forgotten.
力量无限
德·昆西
此外，还有一种东西比真理更为神奇——那就是力量，或者说，对真理的深切感应。譬如，想一想儿童对于社会的影响吧。由于儿童的幼弱无依、天真无邪、纯朴无伪而引起的种种特殊的赞叹怜爱之情，不仅使人的至情至性不断地得到巩固和更新，而且，由于脆弱唤醒了宽容，天真象征着天堂，纯朴远离开世俗，因此，这些在上帝面前最可宝贵的品质也就经常受到忆念，对它们的理想便可不断地重温。高级的文学，即力量的文学，作用与此相类。从《失乐园》你能学到什么知识呢?什么也学不到。 从一本食谱里又能学到什么呢?从每一段都能学到你过去所不知道的某种新知识。然而，在评定甲乙的时候，难道你会因此就把这本微不足道的食谱看得比那部超凡入圣的诗篇还高明吗?我们从弥尔顿那里学来的并不是什么知识，因为知识，哪怕有一百万条，也不过是在尘俗的地面上开步一百万次罢了；而弥尔顿所给予我们的是力量——也就是说，运用自己潜在的感应能力，向着无际的领域扩张，在那里，每一下脉动，每一次注入，都意味着上升一步，好似沿着雅各的天梯，从地面一步一步登上那奥秘莫测的苍穹。知识的一切步伐，从开始到终结，只能在同一水平面上将人往前运载，但却无法使人从原来的地面上提高一步；然而，力量所抬出的第一步就是飞升，就是飞向另一种境界——在那里，尘世的一切全被忘却。
【作者简介】
德·昆西（1785-1859），英国浪漫主义散文名家，其代表作为《一个英国吸鸦片者的陈述》。本文节选自其文章《知识的文学与力量的文学》。
Aesthetic Criticism
To see the object as in itself it really is , "has been justly said to be the aim of all true criticism whatever; and in aesthetic criticism the first step towards seeing one's object as it really is, is to know one's own impression as it really is, to discriminate it, to realize it distinctly. The objects with which aesthetic criticism deals---music, poetry, artistic and accomplished forms of human life---are indeed receptacles of so many powers or forces: they possess like the products of nature, so many virtues or qualities. What is this song or picture, this engaging personality presented in life or in a book, to me ? What effect does it really produce on me ? Does it give me pleasure? And if so, what sort or degree of pleasure? How is my nature modified by its presence, and under its influence? The answers to these questions are the original facts with which the aesthetic critic has to do; and ,as in the study of light, of morals, of number, one must realize such primary data for one's self, or not at all. And he who experiences these impressions strongly, and drives directly at the discrimination and analysis of them, has no need to trouble himself with the abstract question what beauty is in itself, or what its exact relation to truth or experience---metaphysical questions, as unprofitable as metaphysical questions elsewhere. He may pass them all by as being, answerable or not, of no interest to him.
审美批评
沃尔特·佩特
“发现某一事物本身的确切内容”，曾被人恰当地说成是一切真正的批评的目标；而在审美批评中，要想发现自己评论对象的确切内容，第一步必须了解个人印象的确切内容，必须对它加以辨别，对它清晰地认识。审美批评所讨论的对象——音乐，诗歌，人类生活的种种艺术的、完美的表现形式——实际上都是纷纷纭纭、各种动力和力量的凝聚，它们象大自然的一切产物那样，具备着各种不同的美质和特性。这么一首短歌，这么一幅图画，生活中或书本上出现的这么一个引人喜爱的人物，对我自己来说究竟意味着什么呢?它究竟在我身上产生了什么样的影响?它是否给我提供了乐趣?如果提供了，那么，又是哪一类和何等程度的乐趣?另外，由于它的出现，并在它影响下，我自己的性情又受到了怎样的陶冶?——对于这些问题的答案便是审美批评家所要讨论的根本事实；而且，正象对于光、对于伦理、对于数字的研究那样，我们首先必须了解上述那些原始材料，否则，就等于什么也不了解。一个人只要强烈地感受着这种种印象，并且直截了当地对它们加以辨别和分析，就不必再为了“什么是美”或者“它与真理或经验的确切关系如何”这一类抽象的问题而去费神——因为，这些形而上学的问题，如同其他的形而上学问题一样，都是不实际的。对它们答复与否无关宏旨，可以统统放过不管。
【作者简介】
沃尔特·佩特（1839-1894），英国文艺批评家其成名之作《文艺复兴史研究》贯穿唯美主义思想。本文便节选自此书。
Change Makes Life Beautiful
To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without-our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment，for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibers, are present not in the human body alone : we detect them in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of them ---the passage of the blood, the wasting and repairing of the lenses of the eye , the modification of the tissues of the brain under every ray of light and sound---processes which science reduces to simpler and more elementary forces. Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us: it rusts iron and ripens corn.Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven in many currents; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations. That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under which we group thema design in a web, the actual threads of which pass out beyond it . This at least of flame---like our life has, that it is but the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner or later on their ways.
生命美于变化
沃尔特·佩特
将一切事物和事物的原则统统看作经常变化着的形态或风尚，日益成为近代思想界的趋势。让我们从表面的事情——我们的生理活动说起。譬如说，选取这么一个微妙的时刻，即在酷暑中猛然浸入滔滔清流的那一刹那和极其愉快的感觉。在那一刹那间的全部生理活动，难道不是具有科学名称的各种元素的一种化合作用吗?不过，这些元素，象磷、石灰、微细的纤维质，不仅存在于人体之中，而且在与人体毫不相干的地方也能检查出它们的存在。我们的生理活动——血液的流通，眼睛中水晶体的消耗和恢复，每一道光波、每一次声浪对于脑组织所引起的变异——都不外是这些元素的永久的运动，而科学把这些运动过程还原为更为简单和基本的力量的作用。正象我们身体所赖以构成的元素一样，这些力量在我们身体以外也同样发挥着作用——它可以使铁生锈，使谷物成熟。这些元素，在种种气流吹送之下，在我们身外向四面八方传播：人的诞生，人的姿态，人的死亡，以及在人的坟头上生长出紫罗兰——这不过是成千上万化合结果的点滴例子而己。人类那轮廓分明、长久不变的面颜和肢体，不过是一种表象，在它那框架之内，我们好把种种化合的元素凝聚一团——这好象是蛛网的纹样，那织网的细丝从网中穿出，又引向他方。在这一点上，我们的生命有些象那火焰———它也是种种力量会合的结果，这会合虽不断延续，那些力量却早晚要各自飘散。
【作者简介】
沃尔特·佩特（1839-1894），英国文艺批评家，其成名之作《文艺复兴史研究》贯穿唯美主义思想。本文便节选自此书。
Breaking Habit
To burn always with this hard , gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life. In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for , after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the dye that makes any two persons, things, situations, seem alike, While all melts under our feet, we may well grasp at any exquisite passion, or any contribution to knowledge that seems by a lifted horizon to set the spirit free for a moment, or any stirring of the senses, strange dyes, strange colors, and curious odors, or work of the artist's hands, or the face of one's friend. Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendor of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch. What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy of Comet, or of Hegel, or of our own . Philosophical theories or ideas, as points of view, instruments of criticism, may help us to gather up what might otherwise pass unrecorded by us. "Philosophy is the microscope of thought".
打破习惯
沃尔特·佩特
闪耀着宝石般的光焰炽烈地燃烧，并且不断保持着这种精神亢奋的状态，乃是生命的胜利。在某种意义上，甚至可以说：一旦形成某种习惯，即意味着自己的失败。因为，归根结底，习惯总附于一个定了型的事态，而在粗疏的眼光下，两个人、两件事、两种情境常常会被看得彼此相似。只有当一切在我们脚下熔化，我们才能看清种种强烈的激情，种种似乎能提高人的眼界、使人精神豁然开朗的知识进步，种种感官的刺激，例如奇色异彩，奇香异味，以及艺术家的匠艺，或者自己某位朋友的面容。我们与周围的人们相处，在任何时刻，如果一点看不出某种受激情支配的姿态，从人们的光辉才华中竟然看不出某种力量分配方面的悲剧，那么，在我们这既有冰霜、又有阳光的短暂时日中，就意味着不待黄昏来临便昏昏睡去。感到了人生经验的五色缤纷及倏忽无常，我们拼出全部力气进行观察和接触，哪里还有时间去为自己观察和接触到的事物制订出一套一套的理论?我们必需做的，是要不断地检验新的意见、博取新的印象，而无论如何不能轻易接受不管是康德、黑格尔或是我们自己的什么泛泛的正统学说。哲学理论、哲学概念，作为立论观点、批评工具，可以帮助我们把那些可能习焉不察、轻轻放过的事物进行搜集、纳入眼底。因为，“哲学是思想的显微镜”。
【作者简介】
沃尔特·佩特（1839-1894），英国文艺批评家，其成名之作《文艺复兴史研究》贯穿唯美主义思想。本文便节选自此书。
Tragedy
To make a tragedy the artist must isolate a single element out of the totality of human experience and use that exclu sively as his material. Tragedy is something that is separated out from the Whole Truth, distilled from it, so to speek, as an essence is distilled from the living flower. Tragedy is chemically pure. Hence its power to act quickly and intensely on our feelings. All chemically pure art has this power to act upon us quickly and intensely. It is because of its chemical purity that tragedy so effectively performs functions of catharsis. It refines and corrects and gives a style to our emotional life, and does so swiftly, with power. Brought into contact with tragedy, the elements of our being fall, for the moment at any rate, into an ordered and beautiful pattern, as the iron filings arrange themselves under the influence of the magnet.Through all its individual variations, this pattern is always fundamentally of the same kind. From the reading or the hearing of a tragedy we rise with the feeling that:
Our friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind;
With the heroic conviction that we too would be unconquerable if subjected to the agonies, that in the midst of the agonies we too should continue to love, might even learn to exult. It is because it does these things to us that tragedy is felt to be so valuable. What are the values of Wholly Truthful art? What does it do to us that seems worth doing? Let us try to discover.
奥尔德斯·赫胥黎
为了做成一部悲剧，艺术家就得把某种单一的元素从人类经验的总体中分解出来，并且把它当作独一无二的材料来使用。悲剧，是从全面的真实中分离出来，或者说，从那里提炼出来，就象从鲜花中提炼的香精来。悲剧是有化学纯度的东西，所以它才能具备那种迅速而强烈地影响我们的力量。一切有化学纯度的艺术都具备这种迅速而强烈地影响我们的力量。——正是由于悲剧的这种化学纯度，它才非常有效地完成着它那净化感情的作用。它迅速而有力的澄清着、矫正着我们的感情生活，赋予它以一种正当的模式。一旦与悲剧相接触，我们生命中的种种因素，至少在这短短时刻，便纳入一种井然有序、异常美好的规范之中，正如铁屑在磁体的吸引下聚拢起来一样。尽管会有各种特殊变化，这个规范从分配上说总是保持不变的。读罢或看完一部悲剧，我们心里恍然大悟，觉得——
极大的欢欣、强烈的痛苦都变成良友，
爱情和不可征服的人心也分外亲切。
我们豪迈地相信：一旦自己身遭苦难，同样也是不可征服的；处在苦难之中，我们仍应胸怀热情，甚至还要效法前人，意气昂扬。正因为悲剧能对我们起到这些作用，我们才觉得它非常宝贵。那么，什么又是具有全面真实性的艺术的价值呢?它究竟能对我们起到什么作用，才显出它的价值呢?让我们来尝试着考察一下。
【作者简介】
奥尔德斯·赫胥黎（1894-1963），英国著名文学家。本文节选自其文章《悲剧与全面的真实性》。
Suit Is Best
The proper force of words lies not in the words themselves, but in their application. A word may be a fine sounding word, of an unusual length, and very imposing from its learning and novelty, and yet in the connection in which it is introduced may be quite pointless and irrelevant, It is not pomp or pretension, but the adaptation of the expression to the idea, that clenches a writer's meaning: as it is not the size or glossiness of the materials, but their being fitted each to its place, that gives strength to the arch; or as the pegs and nails are as necessary to the support of the building as the larger timbers, and more so than the mere showy, unsubstantial ornaments. I hate anything that occupies more space than it is worth. I hate to see a load of bandboxes go along the street, and I hate to see a parcel of big words without anything in them. A person who dews not deliberately dimples of all his thoughts alike in cumbrous draperies and flimsy disguises may strike out twenty varieties of familiar everyday language, each coming somewhat nearer to the feeling he wants to convey, and at last not hit upon that particular and only one which may be said to be identical with the exact impression in his mind. This would seem to show that Mr. Cobalt is hardly right in saying that the first word that occurs is always the best. It may be a very good one ; and yet a better may present itself on reflection or from time to time . It may be suggested naturally, however, and spontaneously, from a fresh and lively conception of the subject .
适合的才是最好的
词汇的力量不在词汇本身，而在词汇的应用。一个音节嘹亮的长字，就其本身的学术性和新奇感来说，可能是令人叹赏的，然而，把它放在某句上下文之中，说不定倒会牛头不对马嘴。这是因为要确切表达作者的意思，关键并不在文词是否华丽，堂皇，而在于文词是否切合内容；正象在建筑中，要使拱门坚固，关键不在于材料的大小和光泽，而在于它们用在那里是否恰好严丝合缝。因此，在建筑物中，砂木钉有时竟与大件木料同等重要，而其支撑作用肯定远远胜过那些徒有其表、不切实用的装饰部件。我讨厌那些白占地方的东西，讨厌一大堆空纸盒装在车上招摇过市，也讨厌那些写在纸面上的大而无实际内容的字眼。一个人写文章，只要他不是立志要把自己的真意用重重锦绣帐幔、层层多余伪装完全遮掩起来，他总会从熟悉的日常用语中想出一二十种说法，一个比一个更接近他所要表达的情感，只怕到了最后，他竟会拿不定主意要用哪一种说法才能恰如其分地表达自己的心意哩！如此说来，考拜特先生所谓最先闪现脑际之词自然是最好的说法未必可靠。这样出现的字眼也许很好，然而经过一次又一次推敲，还会发现更好的字眼。这种字眼，要经过围绕内容进行清醒而活泼的构思，才能够自自然然的想到。
【作者简介】
威廉·赫兹里特(1778—1830)，十九世纪初英国著名的浪漫主义散文家。本文节选自其名篇《论平易的文体》。
Ignorance Make One Happy
The average man who uses a telephone could not explain how a telephone works. He takes for granted the telephone, the railway train, the linotype ,the airplane, as our grandfathers took for granted the miracles of the gospels. He neither questions nor understands them. It is as though each of us investigated and made his own only a tiny circle of facts. Knowledge outside the day's work is regarded by most men as a gewgaw. Still we are constantly in reaction against our ignorance. We rouse ourselves at intervals and speculate. We revel in speculations about anything at all---about life after death or about such questions as that which is said to have puzzled Aristotle,"why sneezing from noon to midnight was good, but from night to noon unlucky." One of the greatest joys known to man is to take such a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge. The great pleasure of ignorance is, after all, the pleasure of asking questions. The man who has lost this pleasure or exchanged it for the pleasure of dogma, which is the pleasure of answering, is already beginning to stiffen. One envies so inquisitive a man as Jewell ,who sat down to the study of physiology in his sixties. Most of us have lost the sense of our ignorance long before that age. We even become vain of our squirrel's hoard of knowledge and regard increasing age itself as a school of omniscience. We forget that Socrates was famed for wisdom not because he was omniscient but because he realized at the age of seventy that he still knew nothing.
无知常乐
罗伯特·林德
普通人只会使用电话，却无法解释电话的工作原理。他把电话、火车、铸造排字机、飞机都看作当然之事，就象我们的祖父一代把福音书里的奇迹故事视为理所当然一样。对于这些事，他既不去怀疑，也不去了解。我们每个人似乎只对很小范围内的某几件事才真正下工夫去了解、弄清楚。大部分人把日常工作以外的一切知识统统当作花哨无用的玩意儿。然而，对于我们的无知，我们还是时时抗拒着。我们有时振作起来，进行思索。我们随便找一个什么题目，对之思考，甚至入迷——关于死后的生命，或者关于某些据说亚里士多德也感到大惑不解的问题，例如：“打喷嚏，从中午到子夜则吉，从子夜至中午则凶，其故安在?”为求知识而陷入无知，这是人类所欣赏的最大乐事之一。归根结底，无知的极大乐趣即在于提出问题。一个人，如果失去了这种提问的乐趣，或者把它换成了教条的答案，并且以此为乐，那么，他的头脑已经开始僵化了。我们羡慕象裘伊这样的勤学好问之人，他到了六十多岁居然还能坐下来研究生理学。我们多数人不到他这么大的岁数就早已丧失了自己无知的感觉了。我们甚至对自己一点点浅薄的知识感到沾沾自喜，而把与日俱增的年龄看作是培养无所不知的天然学堂。我们忘记了：苏格拉底之所以以智慧名垂后世，并非因为他无所不知，而是因为他到了七十高龄还能明白自己仍然一无所知。
【作者简介】
罗伯特·林德（1879-1949），英国随笔作家。本文节选自其名篇《无知常乐》。
The Arts of Informal Essay Writers
We may follow any mood, we may look at life in fifty different ways---the only thing we must not do is to despise or deride,because of ignorance or prejudice, the influences which affect others; because the essence of all experience is that we should perceive something which we do not begin by knowing, and learn that life has a fullness and a richness in all sorts of diverse ways which we do not at first even dream of suspecting.
The essayist, then, is in his particular fashion an interpreter of life, a critic of life. He does not see life as the historian, or as the philosopher, or as the poet, or as the novelist, and yet he has a touch of all these. He is not concerned with discovering a theory of it all, or fitting the various parts of it into each other. He works rather on what is called the analytic method, observing, recording, interpreting, just as things strike him, and letting his fancy play over their beauty and significance;the end of it all being this; that he is deeply concerned with the charm and quality of things, and gentlest light, so that at least he may make others love life a little better, and prepare them for its infinite variety and alike for its joyful and mournful surprises.
随笔作家的艺术
亚瑟·克里斯托夫·本森
我们可以遵循任何一条思绪，也可以从几十个角度来看待人生——但千万不可由于无知和偏见而鄙视或嘲笑别人所接受的种种影响；因为，全部人生经验的精髓即在于：我们要想了解什么事物，总要从不知道开始 ；而且，还要知道，我们原来从未梦想过的千变万化的生活方式，恰恰体现了人生的充实和丰满。
因此，随笔作家以其特殊的方式充当了人生的解说员，人生的评论家。他观察人生，不象历史家，不象哲学家，不象诗人，也不象小说家，然而这些人的特点他又都有一点儿。他所关切的并非发现全部人生的哲理，或者把人生各个不同的方面凑在一起，进行装配。他工作时所采用的是所谓分析的方法，即按照事物在自己心里留下的印象，观察着，记录着，解说着。随着兴之所至去体察万事万物的美好和意义，而这一切又是为了这样一个目的：随笔作家所深切关心的乃是事物的魅力和特性，并想把它呈现在最明净、最柔和的光亮之下，好使得别人更加热爱人生，并对于人生当中无穷的变化在思想上有所准备，不管那是意外的欢乐或是意外的悲伤。
【作者简介】
亚瑟·克里斯托夫·本森（1862-1925），英国作家。本文节选自其散文《随笔作家的艺术》。
Open Your Eyes
He who has much looked on at the childish satisfaction of other people in their hobbies, will regard his own with only a very ironical indulgence. He will not be heard among the dogmatists. He will have a great and cool allowance for all sorts of people and opinions. If he finds no out -of -the- way truths, he will identify himself with one very burning falsehood.His way takes him along a by-road, not much frequented, but very even and pleasant, which is called Commonplace Lane, and leads to the Belvedere of Common-sense. Thence he shall command an agreeable, if no very noble prospect; and the Sunrise, he will be contentedly aware of a sort of morning hour upon all sublunary things ,with an army of shadows running speedily and in many different directions into the great daylight of eternity. The shadows and the generations, the shrill doctors and the plangent wars, go by into ultimate silence and emptiness; but underneath all this, a man may see, out of the Belvedere windows, much green and peaceful landscape; many fire-lit parlors; good people laughing, drinking , and making love as they did before the Flood or the Errant Revolution; and the old shepherd telling his tale under the hawthorn.
【注释】
你能看到一切
罗伯特·路易斯·斯蒂文森
一个人如果常常观察别人对于个人兴趣爱好所流露出的孩子气般的满足，那他也会以一种幽默的宽容态度来对待自己的兴趣爱好。这样的人不会变成一个教条主义者。他对于各种人、种种意见都会采取一种宽容大度的体谅态度。尽管他发现不出什么石破天惊的真理，他也不会去附和什么荒谬绝伦的错误。他的一生走的是一条虽非熙来攘往、但却平坦愉快的偏僻小路——它叫做平凡无奇之小巷，通向普通常识的望楼。从那里，他虽看不到什么宏伟的壮观，却能俯瞰一片赏心的小景。当别人都在观看东方与西方、恶魔之王与黎明之神，他却怡然自得地注意：当清晨降于大地万物，大群阴暗的幽灵都向着四面八方仓皇逃入永恒的白昼之中。那些阴暗的幽灵，已逝的世代，尖声叫喊的博士，轰轰烈烈的战争，都匆匆过去，永远消失。然而，我们从望楼的窗口中，透过这一切还看到了一片青葱的和平景象，看到灯火辉煌的客厅；看到象在洪水到来之前或是法国革命前夕那样善良的人们在欢笑、在饮酒、在求爱；也看到了牧羊老人在山楂树下讲述着他自己的故事。
【作者简介】
罗伯特·路易斯·斯蒂文森（1850-1894），英国著名小说家和诗人。本文节选自其文章《为闲人一辩》。
