The Importance of Living

3.ON DREAMS

ON DREAMS

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論夢想

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Discontent, they say, is divine; I am quite sure anyway that discontent is human.

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The monkey was the first morose animal, for I have never seen a truly sad face in

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animals except in the chimpanzee.

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不滿足，別人說，是神性；而我確信，不滿足，是人性。猿猴是最早會憂鬱的動物，因為除了黑猩猩之外，我從沒有看過動物真正擁有憂傷的表情。

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And I have often thought such a one a philosopher, because sadness and thoughtfulness are so akin. There is something in such a face which tells me that he is thinking. Cows don't seem to think, at least they don't seem to philosophize, because they look always so contented, and while elephants may store up a terrific anger, the eternal swinging of their trunks seems to take the place of thinking and banish all brooding discontent. Only a monkey can look thoroughly bored with life. Great indeed is the monkey !

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我一直認為黑猩猩是哲人，因為他的哀傷與沉思，和人類如此相似。他的表情告訴我，他在思考。牛看上去並不會思考，至少不會哲思，因為它們看起來總是那麼滿足，而大象呢，它們可能會暴怒，但是它們總在搖動的象鼻，似乎取代了思考、驅散了所有正在醞釀的不滿足。只有猴子看起來是完全對生命感到無趣的。猴子的確很偉大呀！

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Perhaps after all philosophy began with the sense of boredom. Anyway it is characteristic of humans to have a sad, vague and wistful longing for an ideal. Living in a real world, man has yet the capacity and tendency to dream of another world. Probably the difference between man and the monkeys is that the monkeys are merely bored, while man has boredom plus imagination. All of us have the desire to get out of an old rut, and all of us wish to be something else, and all of us dream. The private dreams of being a corporal, the corporal dreams of being a captain, and the captain dreams of being a major or colonel. A colonel, if he is worth his salt, thinks nothing of being a colonel. In more graceful phraseology, he calls it merely an opportunity to serve his fellow men. And really there is very little else to it. The plain fact is, Joan Crawford thinks less of Joan Crawford and Janet Gaynor thinks less of Janet Gaynor than the world thinks of them. " Aren't you remarkable ?" the world says to all the great, and the great, if they are truly great, always reply, "What is remarkable ?" The world is therefore pretty much like an a. la carte restaurant where everybody thinks the food the next table has ordered is so much more inviting and delicious than his own. A contemporary Chinese professor has made the witticism that in the matter of desirability, "Wives are always better if they are others', while writing is always better if it is one's own. " In this sense, therefore, there is no one completely satisfied in this world. Everyone wants to be somebody so long as that somebody is not himself.

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也許究其所終，所有的哲學都始於無聊之感。無論如何，憂傷地、不確定地、不滿足地期待完美，是人類的特質。即便身處現世，人類也有能力和傾向去夢想另一個世界。可能人與猴的區別在於，猴子只是純粹的無聊，而人兼有無聊和想像力。我們都渴望出逃循规蹈矩，我們都希望不是現在的自己，我們都有夢想。列兵夢想著成為下士，下士夢想著成為上尉，上尉夢想著成為少校或上校。而一個上校，如果他稱職的話，會認為成為上校也沒什麼大不了的。如果措辭優雅一些，這位上校會將他的頭銜說成是一個為人民服務的機會。確實也沒什麼了不起的。而明顯的事實是，瓊·克勞馥或者珍妮·蓋諾，都不會像其他人那樣看重自己。“難道你不卓越嗎？”世人問所有偉大之人，而那些偉人，如果他們真正偉大的話，一定會回答“何為卓越？”所以，世界就像一家點菜的餐館，在那裏每一個人都認為臨桌點的菜比自己點的更誘人、更美味。一位現代的中國教授詼諧地評價人類的渴望：“老婆是別人的好，而文章是自己的好”。所以，在這個意義上，世界上沒有完全滿足的人。每一個人都希望成為別人。

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This human trait is undoubtedly due to our power of imagination and our capacity for dreaming. The greater the imaginative power of a man, the more perpetually he is dissatisfied. That is why an imaginative child is always a more difficult child; he is more often sad and morose like a monkey, than happy and contented like a cow. Also divorce must necessarily be more common among the idealists and the more imaginative people than among the unimaginative. The vision of a desirable ideal life companion has an irresistible force which the less imaginative and less idealistic never feel. On the whole, humanity is as much led astray as led upwards by this capacity for idealism, but human progress without this imaginative gift is itself unthinkable.

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人類的這種特質無疑源於我們的想像力和夢想力。一個人的想像力越豐富，他的不滿足感就越持久。這就是爲什麽一個頗具想像力的孩子不是那麼輕鬆過活的原因；他更多地像猴子那樣哀傷和憂鬱，而不是像牛那樣開心與滿足。同樣地，比起想像力較弱的人群，離婚更多地發生在完美主義者和富有想像力的人中間。對於他們來說，憧憬完美的人生伴侶有著不可抗拒的吸引力，而較少想像力和不那麼完美主義的人卻無法感受到這一點。從總體上看，這種完美主義更多的是將人類引入歧途而不是引導人類前進，但是，如果沒有想像力這種天賦，人類進步本身就是無法想像的。

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Man, we are told, has aspirations. They are very laudable things to have, for aspirations are generally classified as noble. And why not? Whether as individuals or as nations, we all dream and act more or less in accordance with our dreams. Some dream a little more than others, as there is a child in every family who dreams more and perhaps one who dreams less. And I must confess to a secret partiality for the one who dreams. Generally he is the sadder one, but no matter; he is also capable of greater joys and thrills and heights of ecstasy. For I think we are constituted like a receiving set for ideas, as radio sets are equipped for receiving music from the air. Some sets with a finer response pick up the finer short waves which are lost to the other sets, and why, of course, that finer, more distant music is all the more precious if only because it is less easily perceivable.

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我們知道，人都有志向。擁有志向是值得稱讚的，因為志向通常被認為是高尚的。爲什麽不呢？無論個人還是國家，我們都按照願景來夢想和行動。一些人比其他人夢想得多一些，就像一個家庭里，有的孩子夢想得多一些，有的則夢想得少一些。而我需要坦白的是，自己私下是偏心那些夢想者的。通常夢想者更為憂鬱，但是這無關緊要，因為他同時也能感受到更多的歡樂、激動和狂喜的高潮。我認為，我們就像一個思想的接收器、一個從空中接收音樂信號的收音機。一些機器有更精准的反應器，能夠撲捉到其他機子無法察覺的更細微的短波；這就是爲什麽音樂越細微、越遙遠，就越珍貴的原因，因為它們更難被覺察到。

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And those dreams of our childhood, they are not so unreal as we might think. Somehow they stay with us throughout our life. That is why, if I had my choice of being any one author in the world, I would be Hans Christian Andersen rather than anybody else. To write the story of The Mermaid, or to be the Mermaid ourselves, thinking the Mermaid's thoughts and aspiring to be old enough to come up to the surface of the water, is to have felt one of the keenest and most beautiful delights that humanity is capable of.

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我們童年的那些夢想，其實并不像我們認為的那樣不切實際。它們以某種方式貫穿著我們的人生。正如如果我選擇成為一名作家，那麼我更可能成為汉斯•克里斯蒂安•安徒生，而不是其他人。書寫美人魚的故事，或者化身成為美人魚，想美人魚之所想，期待長大后能到海面上去看一看，這本身就是對人類能夠達到的最強烈的、最美好的喜悅的感知。

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And so, out in an alley, up in an attic, or down in the barn or lying along the waterside,a child always dreams, and the dreams are real. So Thomas Edison dreamed. So Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed. So Sir Walter Scott dreamed. All three dreamed in their childhood. And out of the stuff of such magic dreams are woven some of the finest and most beautiful fabrics we have ever seen. But these dreams are also partaken of by lesser children. The delights they get are as great, if the visions or contents of their dreams are different. Every child has a soul which yearns, and carries a longing on his lap and goes to sleep with it, hoping to find his dream come true when he wakes up with the mom. He tells no one of these dreams, for these dreams are his own, and for that reason they are a part of his innermost growing self. Some of these children's dreams are clearer than others, and they have a force which compel their own realization; on the other hand, with growing age, those less clear dreams are forgotten, and we all live through life trying to tell those dreams of our childhood, and "sometimes we die ere we find the language. "

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就像這樣，無論是行走于田園小徑，或身處閣樓之上、穀倉之中，抑或躺在水邊，孩子更喜歡做夢，而這些夢是那麼的真實。正如托馬斯·愛迪生、羅伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森、沃爾特·司各特爵士曾經的夢想，他們在孩提時代都做著自己的夢，而從這些神奇的夢中衍生出的東西，編織成了我們見過的最精美的織錦。但是這些夢想是為少數孩子所共享的。雖然他們夢想的圖景或內容不盡相同，但是他們從中獲得的喜悅卻一樣強烈。每一個孩子都有一個嚮往美好和承載希冀的靈魂，把它放在膝頭、帶著它入眠，期待著當他和媽媽一起醒來的時候，夢想能夠成真。他不與任何人說起這些夢想，因為它們只屬於自己，因為它們是內心最深處不斷成長自我的一部份。孩子的一些夢想較為清晰，能夠驅散孩子的認識；而隨著年齡的增長，那些不太清晰的夢想逐漸被遺忘，我們便終盡所生來陳述童年時的夢想，“有時，我們在找到合適的陳述語言之前，生命便已終結”。

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And so with nations, too. Nations have their dreams and the memories of such dreams persist through generations and centuries. Some of these are noble dreams, and others wicked and ignoble. The dreams of conquest and of being bigger and stronger than all the others are always bad dreams, and such nations always have more to worry about than others who have more peaceful dreams. But there are other and better dreams, dreams of a better world, dreams of peace and of nations living at peace with one another, and dreams of less cruelty, injustice, and poverty and suffering. The bad dreams tend to destroy the good dreams of humanity, and there is a struggle and a fight between these good and bad dreams. People fight for their dreams as much as they fight for their earthly possessions. And so dreams descend from the world of idle visions and enter the world of reality, and become a real force in our life. However vague they are, dreams have a way of concealing themselves and leave us no peace until they are translated into reality, like seeds germinating under ground, sure to sprout in their search for the sunlight. Dreams are very real things.

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國家亦如此。國家有自己的夢想，而對這些夢想的記憶存在了一代又一代、一個世紀又一個世紀。有的夢想是高尚的，有的則邪惡與卑鄙。征服和稱霸其他國家的夢想都是惡劣的，這些國家通常要比那些持有和平夢想的國家擔憂得更多。但是也有別的、更好的夢想，夢想一個更好的世界，夢想國家之間和平共處，夢想更少的殘忍、不公正、貧窮和痛苦。惡願總是要摧毀人性的良願，正邪的較量一直持續著。人們同時在為自己的夢想和現實的財產而奮鬥著。如此，夢想從空中樓閣進入現實世界，成為我們生活中實在的推動力。無論夢想多麼渺茫，它們總有法子隱藏自己並且讓我們無法安生，直到它們成為現實为止，就像土壤下發芽的種子，一定要破土而出找尋陽光。夢想是多麼真實的存在呵。

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There is also a danger of our having confused dreams and dreams that do not correspond to reality. For dreams are escapes also, and a dreamer often dreams to escape from the present world, hardly knowing where. The Blue Bird always attracts the romanticist's fancy. There is such a human desire to be different from what we are, to get out of the present ruts, that anything which offers a change always has a tremendous appeal to average humanity. A war is always attractive because it offers a city clerk the chance of donning a uniform and wearing puttees and a chance for travel gratis, while an armistice or peace is always desirable after three or four years in the trenches because it offers the soldier a chance to come back home and wear civilian dress and a scarlet necktie once more. Some such excitement humanity evidently needs, and if war is to be avoided, governments may just as well recruit people between twenty and forty-five under a conscript system and send them on European tours to see some exposition or other, once every ten years. The British Government is spending five billion pounds on its Rearmament Program, a sum sufficient to send every Englishman on a trip to the Riviera. The argument is, of course, that expenditures on war are a necessity while travel is a luxury. I feel inclined to disagree: travel is a necessity, while war is a luxury.

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然而，混淆夢想和不切實際空想的危險是存在的。由於做夢也是種出逃，所以夢想者常常通過漫無目的地做夢來逃離現世。藍鳥牌汽車常常能引發浪漫主義者的幻想。人們就是渴望不同於現在的自己，渴望逃出現有的規則，所以任何能帶來不同改變的事物對於常人都有巨大的吸引力。戰爭誘人之處在於，市府書記因此能夠有機會穿上制服和裹腿、并且免費旅遊，而停戰或和平在三到四年的戰壕生活之後顯得如此令人神往，因為它讓士兵有機會回家，重新穿上平民的服裝、戴起緋紅色的領帶。人類顯然需要這類刺激，而如果要避免戰爭，政府仍需徵募二十至二十五歲的軍人，每隔十年送他們到歐洲去看看展覽或其他。英國政府目前在其軍備重整項目中花費了五百億英鎊，該數額足夠讓每一英國人到里维埃拉旅行一次。當然，有人會爭辯說戰爭的花費是必要的，而旅行則是種奢侈。我的觀點與之相反：旅行是必須品，而戰爭是奢侈品。

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There are other dreams too. Dreams of Utopia and dreams of immortality. The dream of immortality is entirely human note its universality although it is vague like the rest, and few people know what they are going to do when they find eternity hanging on their hands. After all, the desire for immortality is very much akin to the psychology of suicide, its exact opposite. Both presume that the present world is not good enough for us. Why is the present world not good enough for us? We should be more surprised at the question than at any answer to the question if we were out on a visit to the country on a spring day.

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還有別的夢想。夢想烏托邦，夢想永生不朽。從普遍性來看，夢想永生不朽是獨屬於人類的，雖然它和其他夢想一樣虛幻，也只有少數人知道如果獲得永生，他們應該做什麽。實際上，渴望永生與自殺的心理十分相似，儘管後者是前者的反面。兩者的前提條件都是現世還不夠好。爲什麽現世還不夠好呢？當我們在春日里出遊，我們應該更驚訝于這個問題的提出，而不是這個問題的答案。

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And so with dreams of Utopia also. Idealism is merely that state of mind which believes in another world order, no matter what kind of an order, so long as it is different from the present one. The idealistic liberal is always one who thinks his own country the worst possible country and the society in which he lives the worst of all possible forms of society. He is still the fellow in the a la carte restaurant who believes that the next table's order of dishes is better than his