II
THE DESIRE TO EXCEED ONE'S PROGRAMME
"But," someone may remark, with the English disregard of everything except the point, "what is he driving at with his twenty-four hours a day? I have no difficulty in living on twenty-four hours a day. I do all that I want to do, and still find time to go in for newspaper competitions. Surely it is a simple affair, knowing that one has only twenty-four hours a day, to content one's self with twenty-four hours a day!"
To you, my dear sir, I present my excuses and apologies. You are precisely1 the man that I have been wishing to meet for about forty years. Will you kindly2 send me your name and address, and state your charge for telling me how you do it? Instead of me talking to you, you ought to be talking to me. Please come forward. That you exist, I am convinced, and that I have not yet encountered you is my loss. Meanwhile, until you appear, I will continue to chat with my companions in distress—that innumerable band of souls who are haunted, more or less painfully, by the feeling that the years slip by, and slip by, and slip by, and that they have not yet been able to get their lives into proper working order.
If we analyse that feeling, we shall perceive it to be, primarily, one of uneasiness, of expectation, of looking forward, of aspiration3. It is a source of constant discomfort4, for it behaves like a skeleton at the feast of all our enjoyments5. We go to the theatre and laugh; but between the acts it raises a skinny finger at us. We rush violently for the last train, and while we are cooling a long age on the platform waiting for the last train, it promenades6 its bones up and down by our side and inquires: "O man, what hast thou done with thy youth? What art thou doing with thine age?" You may urge that this feeling of continuous looking forward, of aspiration, is part of life itself, and inseparable from life itself. True!
But there are degrees. A man may desire to go to Mecca. His conscience tells him that he ought to go to Mecca. He fares forth7, either by the aid of Cook's, or unassisted; he may probably never reach Mecca; he may drown before he gets to Port Said; he may perish ingloriously on the coast of the Red Sea; his desire may remain eternally frustrate8. Unfulfilled aspiration may always trouble him. But he will not be tormented9 in the same way as the man who, desiring to reach Mecca, and harried10 by the desire to reach Mecca, never leaves Brixton.
It is something to have left Brixton. Most of us have not left Brixton. We have not even taken a cab to Ludgate Circus and inquired from Cook's the price of a conducted tour. And our excuse to ourselves is that there are only twenty-four hours in the day.
If we further analyse our vague, uneasy aspiration, we shall, I think, see that it springs from a fixed11 idea that we ought to do something in addition to those things which we are loyally and morally obliged to do. We are obliged, by various codes written and unwritten, to maintain ourselves and our families (if any) in health and comfort, to pay our debts, to save, to increase our prosperity by increasing our efficiency. A task sufficiently12 difficult! A task which very few of us achieve! A task often beyond our skill! Yet, if we succeed in it, as we sometimes do, we are not satisfied; the skeleton is still with us.
And even when we realise that the task is beyond our skill, that our powers cannot cope with it, we feel that we should be less discontented if we gave to our powers, already overtaxed, something still further to do.
And such is, indeed, the fact. The wish to accomplish something outside their formal programme is common to all men who in the course of evolution have risen past a certain level.
Until an effort is made to satisfy that wish, the sense of uneasy waiting for something to start which has not started will remain to disturb the peace of the soul. That wish has been called by many names. It is one form of the universal desire for knowledge. And it is so strong that men whose whole lives have been given to the systematic13 acquirement of knowledge have been driven by it to overstep the limits of their programme in search of still more knowledge. Even Herbert Spencer, in my opinion the greatest mind that ever lived, was often forced by it into agreeable little backwaters of inquiry14.
I imagine that in the majority of people who are conscious of the wish to live—that is to say, people who have intellectual curiosity—the aspiration to exceed formal programmes takes a literary shape. They would like to embark15 on a course of reading. Decidedly the British people are becoming more and more literary. But I would point out that literature by no means comprises the whole field of knowledge, and that the disturbing thirst to improve one's self—to increase one's knowledge—may well be slaked16 quite apart from literature. With the various ways of slaking17 I shall deal later. Here I merely point out to those who have no natural sympathy with literature that literature is not the only well.
1 precisely [prɪˈsaɪsli] 第8级 | |
adv.恰好,正好,精确地,细致地 | |
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2 kindly [ˈkaɪndli] 第8级 | |
adj.和蔼的,温和的,爽快的;adv.温和地,亲切地 | |
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3 aspiration [ˌæspəˈreɪʃn] 第7级 | |
n.志向,志趣抱负;渴望;(语)送气音;吸出 | |
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4 discomfort [dɪsˈkʌmfət] 第8级 | |
n.不舒服,不安,难过,困难,不方便 | |
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5 enjoyments [enˈdʒɔɪmənts] 第7级 | |
愉快( enjoyment的名词复数 ); 令人愉快的事物; 享有; 享受 | |
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6 promenades [ˌprɔməˈneɪdz] 第12级 | |
n.人行道( promenade的名词复数 );散步场所;闲逛v.兜风( promenade的第三人称单数 ) | |
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7 forth [fɔ:θ] 第7级 | |
adv.向前;向外,往外 | |
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8 frustrate [frʌˈstreɪt] 第7级 | |
vt.使失望;使沮丧;使厌烦;vi.失败;受挫 | |
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9 tormented [ˈtɔ:mentid] 第7级 | |
饱受折磨的 | |
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10 harried [ˈhæri:d] 第8级 | |
v.使苦恼( harry的过去式和过去分词 );不断烦扰;一再袭击;侵扰 | |
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11 fixed [fɪkst] 第8级 | |
adj.固定的,不变的,准备好的;(计算机)固定的 | |
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12 sufficiently [sə'fɪʃntlɪ] 第8级 | |
adv.足够地,充分地 | |
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13 systematic [ˌsɪstəˈmætɪk] 第7级 | |
adj.有系统的,有计划的,有方法的 | |
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14 inquiry [ɪn'kwaɪərɪ] 第7级 | |
n.打听,询问,调查,查问 | |
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15 embark [ɪmˈbɑ:k] 第7级 | |
vi.乘船,着手,从事,上飞机;使从事,使上传 | |
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