在海边

上期说要和大家分享《傲慢与偏见》里的一二事，但乘着夏天，还是说说海吧~  每一次看到海会有一种似曾相识的感觉，像多年未见的老朋友。下面是英格兰作家 阿道司•赫胥黎的散文诗作—在海边，供大家欣赏和学习。

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At Sea 

Familiarity blunts astonishment. Fishes do not marvel at water; they are too busy swimming in it. It is the same with us. We take our western civilization for granted and find nothing intrinsically odd or incongruous in it. Before we can realize the strangeness of our surroundings, we must deliberately stop and think.

熟悉便冲淡了惊讶。鱼对水并不感到好奇，它们忙于在水中游泳，顾不上好奇了。我们也是如此。我们认为我们的西方文明是理所当然的。因而不觉得其中有任何在本质上古怪或者失当之处。要想意识到我们的环境的奇怪之处，我们就必须停下来审慎地思考一番。

But moments come when that strangeness is fairly forced upon our notice, moments when an anomaly, a contradiction, an immense incongruity is suddenly illuminated by a light so glaring that we cannot fail to see it. Such a moment came to me as I was crossing the Pacific. It was the first morning out of Yokohama. Coming out of my cabin, I was handed the day’s bulletin of wireless news. I unfolded the typewritten sheet and read: “Mrs. X of Los Angeles, girl wife of Dr. X, aged 79, has been arrested for driving her automobile along the railroad track, whistling like a locomotive”. This piece of information had been transmitted through the ethereal holes between the molecules of air. From a broadcasting station more than five thousand miles away, it had come to our ship in rather less time than it would have taken the sound of my voice to travel from one end of the promenade deck to the other. The labors of half a dozen men of genius, of hundreds of patient and talented investigators, had gone to creating and perfecting the means for achieving this miracle. To what end? That the exploits of young Mrs. X, of Los Angeles, might be instantaneously known to every traveler on all the oceans of the globe. The ether reverberated with the name of Mrs. X. The wave that bore it broke against the moon and the planets, and rippled on towards the stars and the ultimate void. Farady and Clerk Maxwell had not lived in vain.

不过在一些时刻，这种奇怪之处简直就是迫使我们予以注意。在这些时刻，一种反常、一种矛盾、一种巨大的失当，突然被一种如此耀眼的光线照亮，使我们不可能看不见它。当我正在横渡太平洋的时候，这样的一个时刻就来到了我的身边。那是驶离横滨的第一个清晨，我走出我的房舱，有人递给我当天的无线电新闻快报。我打开这张用打字机打出字的纸，读到：“洛杉矶的某某太太是79岁的某某医生的少妻，因为沿着火车轨道驾驶汽车，而且像机车一样鸣响汽笛而被捕。”这则消息是穿过在分子之间的以太空隙而传输过来的。它是从五千多英里之外的一个电台来到我们的船上，所用的时间比我的嗓音从散步甲板的一端传到另一端还要少。六七位天才人物，以及数百位勤奋而又有才干的研究人员，他们做了这么多的工作，才创造出成就了这一奇迹的手段，并使之尽善尽美。是为了什么目的呢？是为了使洛杉矶的某某年轻太太的业绩可以在瞬间围地球上的所有大洋上的每一个旅客所知晓。以太因为某某太太的名字而回响。传递这个消息的电波冲击着月亮和行星，并继续像起着涟漪一样，前往群星和终极的太空。法拉第和克拉克•麦克斯韦并没有白活上一回。

The wise men of Antiquity (So say the Indians) knew all that we have learned about nature, and a great deal more besides. But they kept their science to themselves, or revealed it only in enigmas which cannot be interpreted except in the light of a previous knowledge of the answers. They were afraid that---men being what they are---their discoveries might be put to bad or futile uses. The ordinary man, they argued, is not to be trusted with the power which comes of knowledge. They withheld their science.

我们有关自然所学到的东西，古代的东方三博士全都知道（印度人如是说），而且除此之外还知道别的大量的事情。但他们把他们的科学秘而不宣，要不然也只是用叫人听不懂的话披露出来，如果不根据先前有关答案的知识，那些叫人听不懂的话是无法阐释出来的。他们担心，既然人们是这个样子，那么他们的发现就可能被滥用或者无效使用。他们认为，是不可把随着知识而来的力量交付给一般的人的。他们因而不把他们的科学吐露出来。

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Learning without thought is labor lost； thought without learning is perilous.