香港国际机场到九龙:APPROACH TO LIFE

IN what follows I am presenting the Chinese point of view, because I cannot help myself. I am interested only in presenting a view of life and of things as the best and wisest Chinese minds have seen it and expressed it in their folk wisdom and their literature.

在下面的文章里我不过是表现中国人的观点。我只表现一种中国最优越最聪慧的哲人们所见到而在他们的文字中发挥过的人生观和事物观。

It is an idle philosophy born of an idle life, evolved in a different age, I am quite aware. But I cannot help feeling that this view of life is essentially true, and since we are alike under the skin, what touches the human heart in one country touches all.

我知道这是一种闲适哲学，是在异于现今时代里的闲适生活中所产生。我总觉得这种人生观是绝对真实的。人类心性既然相同，则在这个国家里能感动人的东西，自然也会感动别的国家的人类。

I shall have to present a view of life as Chinese poets and scholars evaluated it with their common sense, their realism and their sense of poetry. I shall attempt to reveal some of the beauty of the pagan world, a sense of the pathos and beauty and terror and comedy of life, viewed by a people who have a strong feeling of the limitations of our existence, and yet somehow retain a sense of the dignity of human life.

我将要表现中国诗人和学者们的人生观，这种人生观是经过他们的常识和他们的诗意情绪而估定的。我想显示一些异教徒世界的美，显示一个明知此生有涯，但是短短的生命未始没有它的尊严的民族所看到的人生悲哀、美丽、恐惧和喜乐。

The Chinese philosopher is one who dreams with one eye open, who views life with love and sweet irony, who mixes his cynicism with a kindly tolerance, and who alternately wakes up from life s dream and then nods again, feeling more alive when he is dreaming than when he is awake, thereby investing his waking life with a dream-world quality.

中国的哲学家是睁着一只眼做梦的人，是一个用爱和讥评心理来观察人生的人，是一个自私主义和仁爱的宽容心混合起来的人，是一个有时从梦中醒来，有时又睡了过去，在梦中比在醒时更觉得富有生气，因而在他清醒时的生活中也含着梦意的人。

He sees with one eye closed and with one eye opened the futility of much that goes on around him and of his own endeavors, but barely retains enough sense of reality to determine to go through with it. He is seldom disillusioned because he has no illusions, and seldom disappointed because he never had extravagant hopes. In this way his spirit is emancipated.

他把一只眼睁着，一只眼闭着，看透了他四周所发生的事物和他自己的徒劳，而不过仅仅保留着充分的现实感去走完人生应走的道路。

因此，他并没有虚幻的憧憬，所以无所谓醒悟；他从来没有怀着过度的奢望，所以无所谓失望。他的精神就是如此得了解放。

For, after surveying the field of Chinese literature and philosophy, I come to the conclusion that the highest ideal of Chinese culture has always been a man with a sense of detachment, toward life based on a sense of wise disenchantment.

观测了中国的文学和哲学之后，我得到一个结论：中国文化的最高理想人物，是一个对人生有一种建于明慧悟性上的达观者。这种达观产生宽宏的怀抱，能使人带着温和的讥评心理度过一生，丢开功名利禄，乐天知命地过生活。

From this detachment comes high-mindedness, a high-mindedness which enables one to go through life with tolerant irony and escape the temptations of fame and wealth and achievement, and eventually makes him take what comes. And from this detachment arise also his sense of freedom, his love of vagabondage and his pride and nonchalance. It is only with this sense of freedom and nonchalance that one eventually arrives at the keen and intense joy of living.

这种达观也产生了自由意识，放荡不羁的爱好，傲骨和漠然的态度。一个人有了这种自由的意识及淡漠的态度，才能深切热烈地享受快乐的人生。

It is useless for me to say whether my philosophy is valid or not for the Westerner.

我不用说我的哲学思想是否适用于西方人。

To understand Western life, one would have to look at it as a Westerner born, with his own temperament, his bodily attitudes and his own set of nerves. I have no doubt that American nerves can stand a good many things that Chinese nerves cannot stand, and vice versa. It is good that it should be so that we should all be born different.

我们要了解西方人的生活，就得用西方的眼光，用他们自己的性情，他们自己的物质观念，和他们自己的头脑去观察。无疑美国人能忍受中国人所不能忍受的事物，同样中国人也能忍受美国人所不能忍受的事物。我们生下来就不同样，这已有显著的区别。

And yet it is all a question of relativity. I am quite sure that amidst the hustle and bustle of American life, there is a great deal of wistfulness, of the divine desire to lie on a plot of grass under tall beautiful trees of an idle afternoon and just do nothing.

然而这也不过是比较的看法。我相信在美国的繁忙生活中，他们也一定有一种企望，想躺在一片绿草地上，在美丽的树阴下什么事也不做，只想悠闲自在地去享受一个下午。

The necessity for such common cries as "Wake up and live" is to me a good sign that a wise portion of American humanity prefer to dream the hours away. The American is after all not as bad as all that.

“醒转来生活吧”这种普遍的呼声，在我看来很足以证明有一部分美国人宁愿过梦中的光阴，但是美国人终还不至于那么颓丧。

 It is only a question whether he will have more or less of that sort of thing, and how he will arrange to make it possible.

问题只是他对这种闲适生活，要想享受的多少之间和他要怎样使这种生活实现而已。

Perhaps the American is merely ashamed of the word "loafing" in a world where everybody is doing something, but somehow, as sure as I know he is also an animal, he likes sometimes to have his muscles relaxed, to stretch on the sand, or to lie still with one leg comfortably curled up and one arm placed below his head as his pillow. If so, he cannot be very different from Yen Huei, who had exactly that virtue and whom

Confucius desperately admired among all his disciples. 

也许美国人只是在这个忙碌的世界上，对于“闲荡”一词有些感到惭愧；可是我确切知道，一如知道他们也是动物一样，他们有时也喜欢松松肌肉，在沙滩上伸伸懒腰，或是静静地躺着，把一条腿舒服地跷起来，把手臂搁在头下当枕头。如果这样，便跟颜回差不多；颜回也有这种美德，孔子在众弟子中，也最器重他。

The only thing I desire to see is that he be honest about it, and that he proclaim to the world that he likes it when he likes it, that it is not when he is working in the office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, "Life is beautiful. "

我希望看到的，就是他能对这件事抱诚实的态度；譬如他喜欢这件事，便应向全世界实说他喜欢这件事；应在他闲逸自适地躺在沙滩上，而不是在办公室里时，他的灵魂喊着：“人生真美妙啊！”

We are, therefore, about to see a philosophy and art of living as the mind of the Chinese people as a whole has understood it. I am inclined to think that, in a good or bad sense, there is nothing like it in the world.

所以现在我们将要看到中国整个民族思想所理解的那种哲学和生活艺术。我认为不论是在好的或坏的方面，世界上没有一样东西是如它想象的。

For here we come to an entirely new way of looking at life by an entirely different type of mind. It is a truism to say that the culture of any nation is the product of its mind.

因为我们在这里看见一种完全不同的思想典型，由这种思想典型产生了一种簇新的人生观念，任何一个民族的文化都是他的思想产物，这话绝无疑义。

Consequently, where there is a national mind so racially different and historically isolated from the Western cultural world, we have the right to expect new answers to the problems of life, or what is better, new methods of approach, or, still better, a new posing of the problems themselves.

中国民族思想在种族性上和西方文化是那么不同，在历史上又和西方文化那么隔离着；因此我们自然能从这种地方，找到一些人生问题的新答案，或者好一些，找到一些探讨人生问题的新方法。或者更好些，找到一些人生问题的新论据。

We know some of the virtues and deficiencies of that mind, at least as revealed to us in the historical past. It has a glorious an and a contemptible science, a magnificent common sense and an infantile logic, a fine womanish chatter about life and no scholastic philosophy.

我们要知道这种思想的美点和缺点，至少可以由它过去的历史看出。它有光辉灿烂的艺术，也有微不足道的科学，有博大的常识，也有幼稚的逻辑，有精雅温柔的关于人生的闲谈，却没有学者风味的哲学。

It is generally known that the Chinese mind is an intensely practical, hard-headed one, and it is also known to some lovers of Chinese art that it is a profoundly sensitive mind; by a still smaller proportion of people, it is accepted as also a profoundly poetic and philosophical mind.  At least the Chinese are noted for taking things philosophically, which is saying more than the statement that the Chinese have a great philosophy or have a few great philosophers.

很多人本来都知道中国人的思想非常实际而精明，爱好中国艺术的人也都知道中国人的思想是极灵敏的；一部分的人则承认中国人的思想也是富有诗意和哲理的。至少大家都知道中国人善于利用哲理的眼光去观察事物，这比之中国有伟大的哲学或有几个大哲学家的那种说法，更有意义。

For a nation to have a few philosophers is not so unusual, but for a nation to take things philosophically is terrific. It is evident anyway that the Chinese as a nation are more philosophic than efficient, and that if it were otherwise, no nation could have survived the high blood pressure of an efficient life for four thousand years. Four thousand years of efficient living would ruin any nation.

一个民族产生过几个大哲学家没什么稀罕，但一个民族能以哲理的眼光去观察事物，那是难能可贵的。无论怎样，中国这个民族显然是比较富于哲理性，而少实效性，假如不是这样的话，一个民族经过了四千年专讲效率生活的高血压，那是早已不能继续生存了。四千年专重效能的生活能毁灭任何一个民族。

An important consequence is that, while in the West, the insane are so many then they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them, as any body who has knowledge of Chinese literature will testify. And that, after all, is what I am driving at. Yes, the Chinese have a light, an almost gay, philosophy, and the basal proof of their philosophic temper is to be found in this wise and merry of living.

一个重要的结果就是：在西方狂人太多了，只好把他们关在疯人院里；而在中国狂人太罕有了，所以崇拜他们；凡具有中国文学知识的人，都会证实这一句话。我所要说明的就在乎此。是的，中国有一种轻逸的，一种近乎愉快的哲学，他们的哲学气质，可以在他们那种智慧而快乐的生活哲学里找到最好的论据。