晨讀美文：Change Makes Life Beautiful生命美于變化

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To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without-our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat.

將一切事物和事物的原則統(tǒng)統(tǒng)看作經(jīng)常變化著的形態(tài)或風(fēng)尚，日益成為近代思想界的趨勢(shì)。讓我們從表面的事情——我們的生理活動(dòng)說起。譬如說，選取這么一個(gè)微妙的時(shí)刻，即在酷暑中猛然浸入滔滔清流的那一剎那和極其愉快的感覺。

What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibers, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of them ---the passage of the blood, the wasting and repairing of the lenses of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain under every ray of light and sound---processes which science reduces to simpler and more elementary forces.

在那一剎那間的全部生理活動(dòng)，難道不是具有科學(xué)名稱的各種元素的一種化合作用嗎?不過，這些元素，像磷、石灰、微細(xì)的纖維質(zhì)，不僅存在于人體之中，而且在與人體毫不相干的地方也能檢查出它們的存在。我們的生理活動(dòng)——血液的流通，眼睛中水晶體的消耗和恢復(fù)，每一道光波、每一次聲浪對(duì)于腦組織所引起的變異——都不外是這些元素的永久的運(yùn)動(dòng)，而科學(xué)把這些運(yùn)動(dòng)過程還原為更為簡(jiǎn)單和基本的力量的作用。

Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us: it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven in many currents; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations.

正像我們身體所賴以構(gòu)成的元素一樣，這些力量在我們身體以外也同樣發(fā)揮著作用——它可以使鐵生銹，使谷物成熟。這些元素，在種種氣流吹送之下，在我們身外向四面八方傳播：人的誕生，人的姿態(tài)，人的死亡，以及在人的墳頭上生長(zhǎng)出紫羅蘭——這不過是成千上萬化合結(jié)果的點(diǎn)滴例子而己。

That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under which we group theme design in a web, the actual threads of which pass out beyond it. This at least of flame---like our life has, that it is but the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner or later on their ways.

人類那輪廓分明、長(zhǎng)久不變的面顏和肢體，不過是一種表象，在它那框架之內(nèi)，我們好把種種化合的元素凝聚一團(tuán)——這好像是蛛網(wǎng)的紋樣，那織網(wǎng)的細(xì)絲從網(wǎng)中穿出，又引向他方。在這一點(diǎn)上，我們的生命有些像那火焰——它也是種種力量會(huì)合的結(jié)果，這會(huì)合雖不斷延續(xù)，那些力量卻早晚要各自飄散。