爱因斯坦:TheWorldAsISeeIt(英汉对照)

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2023年12月14日发(作者：)

爱因斯坦：TheWorldAsISeeIt（英汉对照）

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a

brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not,though he

sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection

oneknows from daily life that one exists for other people—first

of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own

happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown

to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy.

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and

outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead,

and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure

as I have received and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn to

a frugal life and am often oppressively aware that I am

engrossing an undue amount of the labor of my fellowmen. I

regard class distinctions as unjustified and, in the last resort,

based onforce. I also believe that a simple and unassuming life is

good for everybody,physically and mentally.

我们这些凡胎俗子的命运是多么奇特啊！每个人来到这个世上都只作短暂停留，目的何在，却无从知晓，虽然有时似有所感。但是，不必深思，仅从日常生活我们就可明白：人是为他人而存在的——首先是为这样一些人，我们自己的全部幸福与他们的欢笑和福祉息息相关；其次是为许多我们所不认识的人，因为同情使得我们与他们的命运联系在了一起。每一天，我都反复地提醒自己，我的精神和物质生活都是建立在他人(包括生者和死者)的劳动基础上，对于我已经得到和正在得到的一切，我必须尽力给以相同程度的回报。我深深向往一种俭朴的生活，并且时常发觉自己占用了同胞太多的劳动而心有不安。我认为阶级区分是不正当的，其最后往往诉诸于武力。我还认为，无论是在身体上还是心理上，过一种简单而不铺张浪费的生活对每个人都有好处。

Inhuman freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely

a ody acts not only under external compulsion

but also in accordance withinner necessity. Schopenhauer's

saying, that 'aman can do as he will, but not will as he will,' has

been aninspiration to me since my youth up, and a continual

consolation and unfailingwell-spring of patience in the face of

the hardships of life, my own andothers'. This feeling mercifully

mitigates the sense of responsibility which soeasily becomes

paralysing, and it prevents us from taking ourselves and

otherpeople too seriously; it conduces to a view of life in which

humour, above all,has its due place.

我完全不相信人类会有哲学意义上的自由。每个人的行为不仅受外在力量的约束，还要适应内心的需求。叔本华说：“人可以任意而为，却不能心想事成。”这句话从我年轻时起就一直深深地启发着我。在面对生活的艰辛时——无论是我自己还是他人的艰辛，这句话总能不断地给我安慰，成为永不枯竭忍耐的源泉。这一认识能够仁慈地缓和那份令人几欲崩溃的责任感，并防止我们太把自己或者他人当回事，还有助于形成一种人生观，在这种人生观中幽默尤其应有它的地位。

To inquire after the meaningor object of one’s own

existence or that of all creatures has always seemed tome absurd

from an objective point of view. And yet everybody has certain

idealswhich determine the direction of his endeavors and his

judgments. In this senseI have never looked upon ease and

happiness as ends in themselves—this ethicalbasis I call the ideal

of a pigsty. The ideals which have lighted my way, andtime after

time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have

beenKindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of likemind, without the occupation with the objective

world, the eternallyunattainable in the field of art and scientific

endeavors, life would haveseemed to me empty. The trite objects

of human efforts—possessions, outwardsuccess, luxury—have

always seemed to me contemptible.

客观地说，探求自己或者其它所有生命存在的意义或者目标，我一直都认为是荒唐之举。然而，每个人多少都有自己的理想，这种理想决定着他的努力和判断的方向。从这个意义上说，我从来都不会把安逸和幸福本身看作目标——我将这种伦理基础称之为“猪圈理想”。一直以来，是真、善、美照亮了我的道路，一次又一次给我愉快面对生活的新的勇气。如果没有对志同道合者的那种亲近感，如果没有对客观世界——那个艺术和科学研究永远也无法穷极的世界——的孜孜以求，生命对我来说就是一场虚空。那些向来为世人竞相追求的目标——财产、奢华和外在的成功——我对此不屑一顾。

My passionate sense of socialjustice and social responsibility

has always contrasted oddly with mypronounced freedom from

the need for direct contact with other human beings andhuman

communities. I gang my own gait and have never belonged to

my country, myhome, my friends, or even my immediate family,

with my whole heart; in the faceof all these ties I have never lost

an obstinate sense of detachment, of theneed for solitude--a

feeling which increases with the years. One is sharplyconscious,

yet without regret, of the limits to the possibility of

mutualunderstanding and sympathy with one's fellow-creatures.

Such a person no doubtloses something in the way of geniality

and light-heartedness; on the otherhand, he is largely

independent of the opinions, habits, and judgments of hisfellows

and avoids the temptation to take his stand on such

insecurefoundations.

一方面，我有着强烈的社会正义感和社会责任感，另一方面，我的内心又明显没有与他人和社会直接接触的需求，二者形成了一个奇怪的对比。我确实是一个“孤独的旅者”，我的心未从全心全意地属于过我的祖国、我的家庭、我的朋友，甚至我最亲近的家人。在所有这些关系面前，我从来没有失去过距离感，也没有摆脱掉孤独感——这种感觉与日俱增。人们会清楚地发觉人与人之间的相互理解与和谐一致是有限度的，但并不为此感到遗憾。毫无疑问，这样的人已经失去了部分天真无邪、无忧无虑的心境；但另一方面，他也在很大程度上获得了独立，不再受他人观点、习惯和判断的影响，同时也能避免要把内心的平衡建立在这种不可靠的基础之上的强烈愿望。

My political ideal is that of democracy. Let every man be

respected as an individual and no man idolized. It is an irony of

fate that I myselfhave been the recipient of excessive admiration

and respect from my fellowsthrough no fault, and no merit, of

my own. The cause of this may well be thedesire, unattainable for

many, to understand the one or two ideas to which Ihave with my

feeble powers attained through ceaseless struggle. I am

quiteaware that it is necessary for the success of any complex

undertaking that oneman should do the thinking and directing

and in general bear theresponsibility. But the led must not be

compelled, they must be able to choosetheir leader. An

autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soondegenerates.

For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it tobe

an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by

scoundrels. Forthis reason I have always been passionately

opposed to systems such as we seein Italy and Russia to-day. The

thing that has brought discredit upon theprevailing form of

democracy in Europe to-day is not to be laid to the door ofthe

democratic idea as such, but to lack of stability on the part of the

headsof governments and to the impersonal character of the

electoral system. I believe that in this respect theUnited States of America have found the right way. They have a

responsiblePresident who is elected for a sufficiently long period

and has sufficientpowers to be really responsible. On the other

hand, what I value inour political system is the more extensive

provision that it makes for theindividual in case of illness or need.

The really valuable thing in the pageantof human life seems to

me not the State but the creative, sentient individual,the

personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the

herd assuch remains dull in thought and dull in feeling.

我的政治理想是民主主义。让每一个人都作为个人而受到尊重，而不让任何人成为崇拜的偶像。我自己受到了人们过分的赞扬和尊敬，这不是由于我自己的过错，也不是由于我自己的功劳，而实在是一种命运的嘲弄。其原因大概在于人们有一种愿望，想理解我以自己的微薄绵力通过不断的奋斗所获得的少数几个观念，而这种愿望有很多人却未能实现。我完全明白，一个组织要实现它的目的，就必须有一个人去思考，去指挥，并且全面负担起责任来。但是被领导的人不应当受到压迫，他们必须有可能来选择自己的领袖。在我看来，强迫的专制制度很快就会腐化堕落。因为暴力所招引来的总是一些品德低劣的人，而且我相信，天才的暴君总是由无赖来继承，这是一条千古不易的规律。就是这个缘故，我总是强烈地反对今天我们在意大利和俄国所见到的那种制度。像欧洲今天所存在的情况，使得民主形势受到了怀疑，这不能归咎于民主原则本身，而是由于政府的不稳定和选举制度中与个人无关的特征。我相信美国在这方面已经找到了正确的道路。他们选出了一个任期足够长的总统，他有充分的权利来真正履行他的职责。另一方面，在德国的政治制度中，我所重视的是，它为救济患病或贫困的人作出了比较广泛的规定。在人生的丰富多彩的表演中，我觉得真正可贵的，不是政治上的国家，而是有创造性的、有感情的个人，是人格；只有个人才能创造出高尚的和卓越的东西，而群众本身在思想上总是迟钝的，在感觉上也总是迟钝的。

This topic bringsme to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which Iabhor. That a man can take pleasure

in marching in formation to the strains ofa band is enough to

make me despise him. He has only been given his big brainby

mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of

civilizationought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism

by order, senselessviolence, and all the pestilent nonsense that

does by the name ofpatriotism--how I hate them! War seems to

me a mean, contemptible thing: Iwould rather be hacked in

pieces than take part in such an abominable yet so

high, in spite of everything, is my opinion of the human race that

Ibelieve this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the

sound sense of thenations not been systematically corrupted by

commercial and political interestsacting through the schools and

the Press.

讲到这里，我想起了群众生活中最坏的一种表现，那就是使我厌恶的军事制度。一个人能够洋洋得意地随着军乐队在四列纵队里行进，单凭这一点就足以使我对他轻视。他长了一个大脑，真是一个错误；单单一根脊髓就可满足他的全部需要了。文明国家的这种罪恶的渊薮，应当尽快加以消灭。由命令而产生的勇敢行为，毫无意义的暴行，以及在爱国主义名义下一切可恶的胡闹，所有这些都使我深恶痛绝！在我看来，战争是多么卑鄙、下流！我宁愿被千刀万剐，也不愿参预这种可憎的勾当。尽管如此，我对人类的评价还是十分高的，我相信，要是人民的健康感情没有被那些通过学校和报纸而起作用的商业利益和政治利益蓄意进行败坏，那么战争这个妖魔早就该绝迹了。

The fairest thing we canexperience is the mysterious. It is the

fundamental emotion which stands at thecradle of true art and

true science. He who knows it not and can no longerwonder, no

longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.

It was the experience of mystery--even if mixed with fear--that

engenderedreligion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest

reasonand the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to

our reason in theirmost elementary forms--it is this knowledge

and this emotion that constitutethe truly religious attitude; in this

sense, and in this alone, I am a deeplyreligious man. I cannot

conceive of a God who rewards and punishes hiscreatures, or has

a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves.

人类所能享有的最美妙的体验就是神秘感，这是真正的科学与艺术的根源中最基础的情感。无论是谁，如果没有感受过它的魅力，如果不再感到好奇，不再发出惊叹，他就无异于行尸走肉，风中残烛。正是这种神秘的体验——即使夹杂着恐惧——促进了宗教的产生。我们知道有某种事物的存在我们无法参透，我们对最深刻的理性与最绚丽的美的感知，只有在它们以最原始的形式出现时才能有所理解——正是这种认知和情感构成了真正的宗教信仰。在这种意义上，也只有在这种意义上，我是一个笃信宗教的人。我无法臆想出一个对自己创造出来的生命加以奖赏和惩罚的上帝，也无法想象他会拥有我们自身所拥有的意志。

Anindividual who should survive his physical death is also

beyond mycomprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such

notions are for the fears orabsurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough

for me the mystery of the eternity oflife, and the inkling of the

marvellous structure of reality, together with thesingle-hearted

endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of

thereason that manifests itself in nature.

(/Albert-einstein-the-world-as-i-see-it-annotated)

我无法也不愿想象一个人在肉体死去之后仍然可以活着。让那些脆弱的灵魂，出于恐惧或者可笑的私利，去拥抱这种想法吧。我满足于对生命的永恒保持神秘感，满足于对现存世界神奇结构的粗浅感知和匆匆一瞥，也满足于通过不懈的努力，对自然本身显露出的一部分“道”进行理解，哪怕只是极其微小的一部分。

The essay was originally published in'Forum and Century,' vol.

84, pp. 193-194, the thirteenth in theForum series, Living

Philosophies. It is also included in LivingPhilosophies (pp. 3-7)

New York: Simon Schuster, 1931. For a more recentsource, you

can also find a copy of it in A. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions,based

on Mein Weltbild, edited by Carl Seelig, New York: Bonzana

Books,1954 (pp. 8-11).

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