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西南联大英文课（英汉双语版） [:1705033819]
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15 对生活的持久满足
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对于受过教育的人，什么可以带来生活中稳定而持久的满足呢？我希望大家的目标都是获得稳定而持久的满足，即那些能延续很久并不断增长的满足，而非那些眼下或明天就能得到的东西。在我看来，满意的生活的一个必不可少的基础是：健康。一个年轻人必须是一个洁净的、健康的、充满活力的生命。这是一切的基础；如果你们没有别的成就，我希望你们至少做到这一点。要想家庭幸福，成为成功的专业人士，开创有益的、高尚的事业，这一切都要建立在身体健康和充满活力的基础上。而要想成为一个洁净、健康、充满活力的生命，涉及颇多。首先，你必须戒掉日常生活中的恶习，如醉酒、暴饮暴食、纵欲放荡，或者其他不良嗜好，这样才能做到洁净、健康并充满活力。当然，如果这就是你人生的全部成就的话，你肯定不会满意。年轻时具有所谓的“动物精神”，是一件可喜之事。这个词语非常形象，但动物精神在动物身上也不可能持久，它只是幼崽阶段的特征。体育和积极的健身，在人生的某个阶段或每天的某个时间来进行，是有益的。这些是合情合理的娱乐；但是，如果将之作为人生的主要目标，则会让你厌倦。它们就不再带给你持久的满足。娱乐终究只能作为满意生活的调味品。
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那么，要在生活中获得持久满足，还需要什么呢？需要强大的心理素质，以及从事艰苦工作的能力。我们需要思考能力和目标。在所有行业中——无论是学术界、科技界还是工业界——能够获得巨大的精神愉悦的人都是那些接受过良好教育的人。你们所属的特权阶层，即有机会获得长期教育的阶层，与大多数人所属的那个没有机会接受长期教育的阶层相比，显著区别就在于知识阶层主要依靠思考能力生存，因此比之主要靠体力劳动生存的大众阶层，他们能获得更大的生活乐趣。因此，你们应该通过训练获得这种从事脑力劳动的能力——从事快速的、高强度的、持续的脑力劳动的能力。这是你们在进入专业学习之前，在大学期间应该学到的重要能力。现在就马上行动，在大学生活中掌握它。你们在大学里的主要任务，就是获得这种思考能力，这种进行细心而敏锐的观察、做出公正的推论以及持续思考的能力，获得我们称之为“理性”的东西。这种能力是我们在漫长而忙碌的人生中获得思想乐趣、幸福及满足的主要源泉。
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当然，除了获得这种从事智力劳动的能力之外，还需要点别的。正如莎士比亚所说，“无瑕的名誉是世间最纯粹的珍宝。”名誉这种财富如何获得？当然来自于过有尊严的生活，靠尊严生活。你们中大多数人已经开始过有尊严的生活，并受到尊重；因为尊严在生活中很早就开始了。有些事情，高尚的人不能做，也永远不会做。高尚的人从不欺侮妇女，也不会压迫或欺骗一个比他弱小或贫穷的人。他诚实、真诚、坦率、慷慨。仅有诚实不够。一个高尚的人必须慷慨大度；我指的不仅仅是在金钱方面慷慨。我指的是在对别人的评判，以及对人类天性和前景的评判上慷慨大度。这种慷慨大度是高尚之人身上的美好特征。
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一个人是怎么获得尊敬的？高尚生活的凭证是什么呢？那个最终宣判“这是一个高尚的人”的特别法庭，是由什么人组成的呢？现在，你们寻求长辈——父母、老师和学长们——的肯定；但这些比你年长的人将不是你人生的最终裁判。你最好现在，在上大学时，就为将来的终极审判做准备——那个终极审判团是由你的同代人及你的子孙后代组成的。你的同代人对你的评判是最重要的，而且你会发现，你的同代人很早就开始评判你了，早得令你吃惊。可能今年以某种方式对你形成的一个评价，会持续一生，并持续到你死后很多年。对你的评判，一部分是那些从未跟你说过话的人做出的，或者那些你认为根本不认识你的人做出的，或者是那些对你仅有个大概印象的人做出的。但你的同代人会评判你，这是不可避免的，而且影响巨大。所以现在，就怀着对最终审判的恐惧生活，——不是那种凄惨可怜的恐惧，因为高尚之人的精神是独立的。在我生活的那个年代，男孩子们都以背诵《独立宣言》为时尚。我不知道这种时尚是否还存在。但我们的公众生活表明，这已经不再是时尚了。在《独立宣言》中，有段话说得极妙：“在人类历史的进程中，当一个民族必须解除其与另一个民族之间业已存在的政治联系，并依照自然的法则和自然之神的意旨，在世界列国中接受独立和平等的地位时，出于对人类公意的应有尊重，需要把他们不得不独立的原因公布于众。”这句话中有个词语——“应有尊重”——用得好。珍惜“对人类公意的应有尊重”，但决不让此干涉或妨碍你个人的“独立宣言”。现在就开始为最终审判做准备吧。
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此外，对你人生中的重大危机要有前瞻性。这些危机会比你想象的更早出现。好好生活，就好像自己在一个月内就要跟一个纯洁的女孩结婚；这是一条安全生活法则。它就像一堵防护墙，保护你过有价值的生活。另一条有用的法则是，长期不懈地努力工作。三分钟能做完的事，不要用四分钟。在三年里能彻底完成的工作，不要用四年。认真紧张地工作至为重要。你会听到许多建议，说什么让你的灵魂成长啦，在学术团体或学习场所的氛围中轻松呼吸啦。不错，你当然会呼吸，你当然会成长；这些过程会自然发生。但你每一天要思考的应该是如何学习以提升自我。大学就是你获得思想能力的地方，现在就是最好的时间。最后一点，今天，并且每一天都过高尚的生活。
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（余苏凌 译）
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西南联大英文课（英汉双语版） [:1705033820]
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16 THE IMAGINARY INVALID
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By Jerome K. Jerome
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THE IMAGINARY INVALID, from Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men Is a Boat , Boston, Henry Holt and Company.Reproduced in Robert I.Fulton’s Standard Selections , pp. 354-357.
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Jerome Klapka Jerome （1859-1927）, English humorist and playwright. He has a reputation for genial humor, of which the selection given is not a bad example.
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I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of “premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
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I sat for a while, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that too, —began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learned that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.
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I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.
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I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to “walk the hospitals,” if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.
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Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had scarlet fever.
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I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I’m ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. “What a doctor wants,” I said, “is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each.” So I went straight up and saw him, and he said:
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“Well, what’s the matter with you?”
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I said:
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“I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is not the matter with me. I have not got housemaid’s knee. Why I have not got housemaid’s knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I have got.”
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And I told him how I came to discover it all.
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Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn’t expecting it—a cowardly thing to do, I call it—and immediately afterward butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.
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I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist’s and handed it in. The man read it and then handed it back. He said he didn’t keep it.