The Energies of Men 7-157，人的能力195

Everyone knows what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual or muscular,
feeling stale—or oold,
as an Adirondack guide once put it to me.
And everybody knows what it is to “warm up” to his job.
The process of warming up gets particularly striking
in the phenomenon known as “second wind.”
On usual occasions we make a practice of stopping an occupation
as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so to call it) of fatigue.
We have then walked, played, or worked “enough,” so we desist.
 *That amount of fatigue is an efficacious obstruction*
 *on this side of which our usual life is cast.*
 *But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward*,
 *a surprising thing occurs.*
The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point,
when gradually or suddenly it passes away,
and we are fresher than before.
 *We have evidently tapped a level of new energy*,
 *masked until then by the fatigue obstacle usually obeyed.*
There may be layer after layer of this experience.
A third and a fourth “wind” may supervene.
Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical,
and in exceptional cases we may find,
beyond the very extremity of fatigue distress,
amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own—
sources of strength habitually not taxed at all,
because habitually we never push through the obstruction,
never pass those early critical points.   

每个人都知道，一项工作，不管是脑力的还是体力的，
令人感到很累，
或像一位阿迪朗达克向导曾对我说的那样，感到“很腻味”，
是怎么回事。
每个人都知道对自己的工作“变得热心”是怎么一回事。
这种变得热心的过程在所谓“精力恢复”现象中尤其明显。
在一般情况下，我们一旦遇到第一个有效的疲劳层（暂且这么叫吧！）
就习惯于放下工作，去散散步，玩一玩，
或者干“够”定量，就去歇一歇。
这种疲劳量就是在我们日常生活中起作用的有效阻障。
但是，如果有一种非常的必要性迫使我们继续干下去，
那就会发生令人惊讶的事情。
在某个临界点之前，疲劳程度会越来越强；
一旦达到这一临界点，疲劳就会逐渐地或突然地消失，
我们会比以前还要精力充沛。
显然，我们开发出了一级新能力；
在此之前，平常难以克服的疲劳阻障把这种新能力掩盖了。
这种体验可能有好几层，
可能会出现第三次或第四次“精力恢复”的事情。
同体力活动一样，精神活动也显示出上述现象。
在一些特殊情况下，我们会发现，
我们可以超越疲劳的极限，
拥有自己做梦都想不到的轻松自如地工作的能力–
即通常根本没有使用的力量源泉，
因为我们通常从来没有冲破阻障，
没有超越那些最初的临界点。

For many years I have mused on the phenomenon of second wind,
trying to find a physiological theory.
It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy
that are ordinarily not called upon,
but that may be called upon:
deeper and deeper strata of combustible or explosible material,
discontinuously arranged,
but ready for use by anyone who probes so deep,
and repairing themselves by rest as well as do the superficial strata.
Most of us continue living unnecessarily near our surface.
Our energy budget is like our nutritive budget.
Physiologists say that a man is in “nutritive equilibrium”
when day after day he neither gains nor loses weight.
But the odd thing is that this condition may obtain on astonishingly different amounts of food.
Take a man in nutritive equilibrium, and systematically increase or lessen his rations.
In the first case he will begin to gain weight, in the second case to lose it.
The change will be the greatest on the first day,
less on the second, less still on the third, and so on,
till he has gained all that he will gain,
or lost all that he will lose, on that altered diet.
He is now in nutritive equilibrium again,
but with a new weight;
and this neither lessens nor increases
because his various combustion processes have adjusted themselves to the changed dietary.
He gets rid, in one way or another,
of just as much N,C,H, etc.,
as he takes in per diem.

多年来，我一直在思考精力恢复现象，
试图发现一种生理学理论。
显而易见，我们的机体储备有平常并没动用，
但却可以动用的能力；
埋藏得很深的易燃或易爆材料层，
其分布是非连续性的，
但却随时可供探查到他们的人使用，
而且，它们跟表层一样，
可以通过休息得到恢复。
我们大多数人不用接近表层就可以生活下去。
我们的能力预算类似于我们的营养预算。
当某个人日复一日体重既不增加也不减少时，
生理学家说这个人处于“营养平衡”状态。
但是，奇怪的是，这种状态可以通过极为不同的食量获得。
假设某个人处于营养平衡状态，
他有规律地增加或减少他的饭量。
在第一种情况下，他的体重将开始增加；
而在第二种情况下，他的体重将开始减少。
第一天变化将最大，第二天会小一点，第三天会更小，如此下去，
直到他的体重增加到这种改变了的饮食所能增加的最高点，
或减少到这种饮食所能减少的最低点。
这时，他又处于营养平衡状态，
但却是在新的体重条件下的平衡。
这时，他的体重既不减少也不增加，
因为他的各种氧化过程已经适应了改变了的食量。
他以这种方式或那种方式消耗的氮，氧，氢等，
正同他每天吃下去的一样多。

Just so one can be in what I might call “efficiency equilibrium”
(neither gaining nor losing power when once the equilibrium is reached)
on astonishingly different quantities of work,
no matter in what direction the work may be measured.
It may be physical work, intellectual work, moral work, or spiritual work.

同样，一个人也能够完成极为不同的工作量
（不管从哪方面来计量这种工作）
而处于我所谓的“效能平衡”状态
（一旦达到平衡状态，能力就既不增加也不减少）。
工作可以是体力方面的，智力方面的，道德方面的或精神方面的。

Of course there are limits: the trees don’t grow into the sky.
But the plain fact remains
that men the world over possess amounts of resource
which only very exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use.
But the very same individual, pushing his energies to their extreme,
may in a vast number of cases keep the pace up day after day,
and find no “reaction” of a bad sort,
so long as decent hygienic conditions are preserved.
His more active rate of energizing does not wreck him;
for the organism adapts itself and,
as the rate of waste augments,
augments correspondingly the rate of repair.

当然，这里有个限度：树木不会长得高耸入云。
但是，事实仍然然很清楚：
作为万物之灵，人所拥有的能力是巨大的，
只有极个别的人充分使用了它们。
这些把自己的能力发挥到极致的人，
在许多情况下都可以日复一日地坚持下去，
只要保持像样的卫生条件，就不会有不好的“反应”。
这些人以较快的速度使用能力，
并未给自己造成损害，
因为机体会自我适应。
当消耗速度提高时，恢复速度也就相应提高。

I say the rate and not the time of repair.
The busiest man needs no more hours of rest than the idler.
Some years ago Professor Patrick, of the Iowa State University,
kept three young men awake for four days and nights.
When his observations on them were finished,
the subjects were permitted to sleep themselves out.
All awoke from this sleep completely refreshed,
but the one who took the longest to restore himself from his long vigil
only slept one-third more time than was regular with him.

我说的是恢复速度，而不是恢复时间。
极忙的人并不比较悠闲的人需要更多的休息时间。
几年前，依阿华州立大学教授帕特里克曾让三个年轻人四天四夜不睡。
对他们的观察结束后，受试者得到准许，随便去睡。
一觉醒来，它们全都彻底恢复了，
只有一个人睡得最久，
而他从这长长地熬夜行为中恢复过来，
也不过花了比他平常多三分之一的时间。

If my reader will put together these two conceptions,
first, that few men live at their maximum of energy,
and second, that anyone may be in vital equilibrium at very different rates of energizing,
he will find, I think, that a very pretty practical problem of national economy,
as well as of individual ethics,
opens upon his view.
In rough terms, we may say that
a man who energizes below his normal maximum
fails by just so much to profit by his chance at life;
and that a nation filled with such men
is inferior to a nation run at higher pressure.
The problem is, then, how can men be trained up to their most useful pitch of energy?
And how can nations make such training most accessible to all their sons and daughters.
This, after all, is only the general problem of education, formulated in slightly different terms.

如果读者把上述两个概念–
其一是很少有人在生活中最大限度地运用了自己的能力，
其二是任何人都能以极为不同的速度使用能力维持生命平衡–
汇集在一起，
我想，他就会发现，
一个非常实际的国民经济与个人道德问题已经展现在眼前。
我们可以粗略地说，
一个没有发挥最大能力的人，
同样也没有充分利用生活中的机遇；
一个充满了这类人的国家，
肯定不如一个拼命干的国家。
因而问题在于，怎样才能训练人们，
使他们最大限度地运用自己的能力？
国家怎样才能使这样的训练最容易为其全体儿女所接受？
这其实只是用略微不同的词语表述出来的一般教育问题。

“Rough” terms, I said just now,
because the words “energy” and “maximum”
may easily suggest only quantity to the reader’s mind,
whereas in measuring the human energies of which I speak,
qualities as well as quantities have to be taken into account.
Everyone feels that his total power rises
when he passes to a higher qualitative level of life.

上面我之所以使用“粗略地说”这样的字眼，
是因为“能力”和“最大限度”这些词很容易使读者只想到 *量* ，
可是，在计量我所说的人类能力方面，
不仅要考虑到量，还要考虑到质。
每个人都有这样的体验：
自己的生活质量层次提高了，
总 *能力* 也就会有所提高。

Writing is higher than walking,
thinking is higher than writing,
deciding higher than thinking,
deciding “no” higher than deciding “yes”—
at least the man who passes from one of these activities to another
will usually say that each later one
involves a greater element of inner work than the earlier ones,
even though the total heat given out or the foot-pounds expended by the organism may be less.
Just how to conceive this inner work physiologically is as yet impossible,
but psychologically we all know what the word means.
We need a particular spur or effort to start us upon inner work;
it tires us to sustain it;
and when long sustained, we know how easily we lapse.
When I speak of “energizing,” and its rates and levels and sources,
I mean therefore our inner as well as our outer work.

就质量层次来说，
书写要比散步高，思索要比书写高，判定要比思索高，
做出“不对”的判定要比作出“对”的判定高–
至少是从这些活动中的一种转到另一种的人通常会说，
后面的每个活动都要比前面的活动包含更大的* *内部工作* *要素，
即使机体用掉的总热量或消耗的能量可能较少。
迄今为止，我们还无法从生理学上表达何种内部工作，
但我们在心理学上却知道内部工作这个词的意思。
 *我们需要有特殊的刺激或努力才能开始进行内部工作，*
 *而继续干下去又很累。*
 *干的时间长了就会知道，我们是多么容易停下来。*
因此，当我说到“使用能力”以及使用能力的速度，层次和来源时，
我指的不仅是外部工作，而且还包括内部工作。

Let no one think, then,
that our problem of individual and national economy
is solely that of the maximum of pounds raisable against gravity,
the maximum of locomotion,
or of agitation of any sort,
that human beings can accomplish.
That might signify little more than hurrying and jumping
about in unco-ordinated ways;
whereas inner work, though it so often reinforces outer work,
quite as often means its arrest.
To relax, to say to ourselves (with the “new thoughters”),
“Peace! be still!” is sometimes a great achievement of inner work.
When I speak of human energizing in general,
the reader must therefore understand that sum total of activities,
some outer and some inner, some muscular, some emotional, some moral, some spiritual,
of whose waxing and waning in himself
he is at all times so well aware.
How to keep it at an appreciable maximum?
How not to let the level lapse?
That is the great problem.
But the work of men and women is of innumerable kinds, each kind being, as we say,
carried on by a particular faculty;
so the great problem splits into two subproblems thus:

所以，不要以为
我们的个人经济学和国民经济学问题
仅仅是人类所能举起的最大重量的问题，
或仅仅是人类所能发挥的
最高运动能力及其他活动能力的问题。
上述这些能力仅仅意味着
无协调可言的匆促和奔忙；
而内部工作虽说常常增强外部工作，
但却往往意味着外部工作的停止。
（在“新思想家们”看来，）
彻底放松，对我们自己说“不要乱动，安静下来”，
有时正是内部工作的巨大成就。
因此，当我谈论一般的人类能力使用问题时，
读者必须把它理解为下述活动的总和：
外部活动，内部活动，肌肉活动，情感活动，道德活动和精神活动。
读者不论何时总会十分清楚地意识到这些活动在自己身上发生的盛衰变化。
如何使这些活动保持显而易见的最大值？
如何使水平不致下降？
这是个大问题。
可是，男男女女们的工作各种各样，
每一种工作都正如我们常说的那样，
由一种特殊的能力来进行。
所以，上述大问题就分成了这样两个小问题：

1. What are the limits of human faculty in various directions?
2. By what diversity of means, in the differing types of human beings,
    may the faculties be stimulated to their best results?

1. 人类各方面能力的限度是什么？
2. 对于不同类型的人，采用哪些不同的方法可以激发其能力达到最佳结果呢？

Read in one way, these two questions sound both trivial and familiar:
there is a sense in which we have all asked them ever since we were born.
Yet as a methodical program of scientific inquiry,
I doubt whether they have ever been seriously taken up.
If answered fully,
almost the whole of mental science and of the science of conduct
would find a place under them.
I propose, in what follows,
to press them on the reader’s attention in an informal way.

初看起来，这两个问题显得既平常又熟悉：
从某种意义上说，我们从出生起就一直在问这两个问题。
可是， *作为一项科学研究的方法论纲要* 来说，
我认为它们从未得到过认真的对待。
若全面回答这两个问题，
那么，全部精神科学和行为科学就几乎都与这两个问题有关。
下面我打算用非正式的方法使读者注意它们。

The first point to agree upon in this enterprise
is that as a rule men habitually use only a small part of the powers
which they actually possess
and which they might use under appropriate conditions.

在这项事业上，大家一致同意的第一个论点是：
一般来说 *人们习惯于仅仅使用一小部分他们实际拥有的，在适当情况下可以使用的能力。*

Everyone is familiar with the phenomenon
of feeling more or less alive on different days.
Everyone knows on any given day
that there are energies slumbering in him
which the incitements of that day do not call forth,
but which he might display if these were greater.
 * *Most of us feel as if a sort of cloud weighed upon us*, *
 * *keeping us below our highest notch of* *
 * *clearness in discernment*,  *
 * *sureness in reasoning*, *
 * *or firmness in deciding. * *
 * *Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake.* *
Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked.
 * *We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.* *
In some persons this sense of being cut off
from their rightful resources is extreme,
and we then get the formidable neurasthenic and psychasthenic conditions,
with *life grown into one tissue of impossibilities*,
that so many medical books describe.

每个人都熟悉这样的现象：
他每天感受到的精力旺盛程度有高有低。
大家知道，任何时候都有潜伏于我们体内的能力，
虽然当时的刺激没有唤起这些能力，
但是，若刺激再大一些，这些能力就会表现出来。
 * *我们多数人都好像有一片乌云压在头上似的，* *
 * *无法达到* *
 * *分析的清晰性，* *
 * *推理的可靠性或* *
 * *决定的稳妥性的巅峰，* *
 * *同我们可以达到的状态相比，我们只是半睡半醒的人。* *
我们的热情被泼了冷水，我们的能力受到了阻遏。
我们仅仅使用了一小部分我们所拥有的脑力和体力。
在某些人那里，这种被剥夺了正当能力的感觉极为强烈，
从而患了许多医书所描述的可怕的神经衰弱症和精神衰弱症，
使生活变成了一张充满了不可能性的大网。

Stating the thing broadly,
the human individual thus lives usually far within his limits;
he possesses powers of various sorts
which he habitually fails to use.
He energizes below his *maximum*,
and he behaves below his *optimum*.
In elementary faculty,
in co-ordination,
in power of inhibition and control,
in every conceivable way,
his life is contracted like the field of vision
of an hysteric subject—but with less excuse,
for the poor hysteric is diseased,
while in the rest of us it is only an inveterate habit—
the habit of inferiority to our full self—that is bad.

因此，概括地说，人类个体通常都在离他的极限很远的范围内生活。
他拥有通常未加使用的各种能力。
它使用的能力低于 *最大值* ，
他的所作所为低于 *最佳值* 。
在基本能力方面，
在协调性方面，
在 *抑制* 和控制能力方面，
在每一个可以想象得到的方面，
他的生活范围给弄得很狭隘，
就像歇斯底里病人的视野一样–
但更缺少辩解的理由，
因为可怜的歇斯底里病人不是健全的人，
而在其他人那里，上述现象仅仅是一种根深蒂固的 *习惯* ，
一种不实现最高自我的习惯：
这是一种坏习惯。

Admit so much, then,
and admit also that the charge of being inferior to their full self
is far truer of some men than of others;
then the practical question ensues:
to what do the better men owe their escape?
And, in the fluctuations which all men feel in their own degree of energizing,
to what are the improvements due when they occur?

承认了这一切，也就承认了不实现最高自我的指控对某些人比对其他人更适用，
于是就会产生这样的实际问题：
 *哪些做得较好的人逃脱出来的原因何在呢 ？*
 *人们全都感觉到了他们自己在使用能力的程度上有波动 ，*
 *那么，出现较好情况的原因是什么呢？*

In general terms the answer is plain:

Either some unusual stimulus fills them with emotional excitement,
or some unusual idea of necessity induces them to make an extra effort of will.
Excitements, ideas, and efforts,
in a word, are what carry us over the dam.

笼统地说，答案很清楚：
不是某些异乎寻常的刺激使他们全身心充满了兴奋的感情，
就是某些异乎寻常的必要性观念使他们作出额外的意志努力。
简而言之， *兴奋，观念和努力* 就是带我们越过那道障碍的东西。

In those “hyperesthetic” conditions
which chronic invalidism so often brings in its train,
the dam has changed its normal place.
The slightest functional exercise
gives a distress which the patient yields to and stops.
In such cases of “habit neurosis”
a new range of power often comes in consequence of the “bullying treatment,”
of efforts which the doctor obliges the patient,
much against his will, to make.
First comes the very extremity of distress, then follows unexpected relief.
There seems no doubt that we are each and all of us
to some extent victims of habit neurosis.
We have to admit the wider potential range
and the habitually narrow actual use.
We live subject to arrest by degrees of fatigue
which we have come only from habit to obey.
Most of us may learn to push the barrier farther off,
and to live in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power.

哪些常常是由于长期患病而造成的“感觉过敏”的病人身上，
那道障碍已经改变了正常的位置。
极微小的机能活动就会产生一种使病人先陷入而后又克服的悲痛。
在这类“习惯性神经症”病例中，采用“恐吓疗法”后，
或医生迫使病人做出违背自己意愿的重大努力后，
常常会出现一系列新能力。
最初出现的是极度的悲痛
然后就会得到出乎意料的解脱。
看来毫无疑问， *我们每个人都在某种程度上是习惯性神经症的受害者* 。
我们不得不承认，我们的潜能范围相当宽广，
但通常实际使用的却很狭窄。
 * *我们的生活受制于我们习惯于服从的疲劳程度。* *
 * *我们大多数人都可以学会把障碍推得更远一些，* *
 * *学会在高得多的能力水平上极其舒服地生活。* *

Country people and city people, as a class, illustrate this difference.
The rapid rate of life, the number of decisions in an hour,
the many things to keep account of,
in a busy city-man’s or woman’s life,
seem monstrous to a country brother.
He doesn’t see how we live at all.
A day in New York or Chicago fills him with terror.
The danger and noise make it appear like a permanent earthquake.
But settle him there, and in a year or two he will have caught the pulse beat.
He will vibrate to the city’s rhythms;
and if he only succeeds in his avocation, whatever that may be, he will find a joy in all the hurry and the tension,
he will keep the pace as well as any of us,
and get as much out of himself in any week as he ever did in ten weeks in the country.

乡下人和城里人，作为一类人来说，可以说明这种差别。
忙碌的城市男人或女人的生活–
快速的生活节奏，一小时内做出决定的次数，需要考虑的大量事情，
对一个乡下人来说，似乎是可怕的。
他根本不知道我们是怎样生活的。
在纽约或芝加哥呆一天，他会感到惊恐不安。
那里危险，嘈杂，好像总在发生地震。
可是，他要是在那儿 *定居* 的话，
他在一两年内就会把握住那里的脉搏，
跟上城市的节奏。
不管他是干什么的，只要在他那一行中有所成就，
他就会在整天匆忙紧张中找到乐趣，
就会保持同我们所有人一样的步伐，
就会在每个星期都发挥出他在乡下时10个星期才能发挥出来的能力。

The stimuli of those who successfully respond and undergo the transformation here are duty,
the example of others,
and crowd pressure and contagion.
The transformation, moreover, is a chronic one:
the new level of energy becomes permanent.
The duties of new offices of trust
are constantly producing this effect on human beings appointed to them.
The physiologists call a stimulus “dynamogenic”
when it increases the muscular contractions of men to whom it is applied;
but appeals can be dynamogenic morally as well as muscularly.
We are witnessing here in America today
the dynamogenic effect of a very exalted political office
upon the energies of an individual
who had already manifested a healthy amount of energy before the office came.

在这里，对于那些成功地应付和经受了转变的人们来说，
刺激因素是责任，他人的榜样，大众的压力和感染。
此外，转变还是一件长期的事情：
新一级能力变成了永久性的。
深受信赖的新职位所包含的责任，
常常会在被委任者身上产生这种效果。
当某种刺激作用于人从而增加了人的肌肉收缩时，
生理学家们就称之为“动力基因”。
然而，感染力不但能成为肌肉上的“动力基因”，
而且能成为道德上的“动力基因”。
在今天的美国，
我们可以看到极为显赫的政治职位
对一个就职前已经表现出相当强的能力的人产生的动力基因作用。

Humbler examples show perhaps still better
what chronic effects duty’s appeal may produce in chosen individuals.
John Stuart Mill somewhere says
that women excel men in the power of keeping up sustained moral excitement.
Every case of illness nursed by wife or mother is a proof of this;
and where can one find greater examples of sustained endurance
than in those thousands of poor homes where the woman
successfully holds the family together and keeps it going
by taking all the thought and doing all the work—
nursing, teaching, cooking, washing, sewing, scrubbing, saving, helping neighbors, “choring” outside—
where does the catalogue end?
If she does a bit of scolding now and then who can blame her?
But often she does just the reverse—
keeping the children clean and the man good tempered,
and soothing and smoothing the whole neighborhood into finer shape.

比较平常的例子也许可以更好地说明
责任的要求在特定的人身上可能产生的长久影响。
约翰.斯图亚特.穆勒在某个地方说过，
女人保持道德激情的能力优于男人。
每个妻子或母亲护理病人的事例都可以证明这一点。
人们在哪里能找到
比在许多贫苦家庭中所表现出来的
更伟大的持久忍耐力的事例呢？
在这些家庭里，女人成功地把家庭凝聚在一起，
并通过为各种各样的事情操心和做各种各样的工作
（抚养和教育小孩，做饭洗衣，缝衣擦地，精打细算，帮助邻居，在外面打短工–
这些事情哪里列得完？）
把家庭维持下去。
他们要是偶尔发点火，谁又能责怪她呢？
但她的所作所为通常恰恰相反–
把孩子收拾得干干净净，让男人心情舒畅，
搞好，理顺全部邻里关系。

Eighty years ago a certain Montyon left to the Académie Francaise a sum of money
to be given in small prizes to the best examples of “virtue” of the year.
The academy’s committees, with great good sense,
have shown a partiality to virtues simple and chronic,
rather than to her spasmodic and dramatic flights;
and the exemplary housewives reported on have been wonderful and admirable enough.
In Paul Bourget’s report for this year we find numerous cases,
of which this is a type:
Jeanne Chaix, eldest of six children;
mother insane; father chronically ill.
Jeanne, with no money but her wages at a pasteboard-box factory,
directs the household, brings up the children,
and successfully maintains the family of eight,
which thus subsists, morally as well as materially,
by the sole force of her valiant will.
In some of these French cases charity to outsiders is added to the inner family burden;
or helpless relatives, young or old, are adopted,
as if the strength were inexhaustible and ample for every appeal.
Details are too long to quote here;
but human nature, responding to the call of duty,
appears nowhere sublimer than in the person of these humble heroines of family life.

80年前，一个姓蒙蒂翁的人给法兰西学院留下了一笔钱，设立一项小奖，
用来奖励当年的“美德”模范。
学院委员会极其明智地偏爱淳朴持久的美德，
而不喜欢阵发性和戏剧性地表现出来的美德。
它所报道的模范家庭主妇至为惊人，可钦可佩。
在保罗.布尔热的年度报告中就有许多事例，
下面这个事例是其中的典型；
让娜.谢克斯是6个孩子中的老大，
她妈妈是疯子，爸爸长期患病。
除了在纸箱厂工作得到的工资外，让娜没有别的收入。
他就是用这点工资操持家务，抚育孩子，
成功地养活了一个8口之家。
她就是这样仅靠她勇敢的意志力量，
不但在物质上，而且在道德上维持住了一个家庭。
在这些法国事例中，有些人除了家庭内部的负担外，还要向外人施舍；
要不然，就是收养了走投无路的亲戚（年轻的或年老的），
就好像她们有无穷无尽的力量，
足以应付每一项请求似的。
这些事例的细节太多了，此处无法引述；
但是，人类响应责任的呼唤的本性不管体现在哪里，
都不如体现在这些卑微的家庭生活中的女英雄身上那样崇高。

Turning from more chronic to acuter proofs
of human nature’s reserves of power,
we find that the stimuli that carry us over the usually effective dam
are most often the classic emotional ones:
love, anger, crowd contagion or despair.
Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
Every siege or shipwreck or polar expedition brings out some hero who keeps the whole company in heart.
Last year there was a terrible colliery explosion at Courrières in France.
Two hundred corpses, if I remember rightly, were exhumed.
After twenty days of excavation, the rescuers heard a voice.
“Me voici [Here I am],” said the first man unearthed.
He proved to be a collier named Nemy, who had taken command of thirteen others in the darkness, disciplined them and cheered them, and brought them out alive.
Hardly any of them could see or speak or walk when brought into the day.
Five days later, a different type of vital endurance was unexpectedly unburied in the person of one Berton who,
isolated from any but dead companions, had been able to sleep away most of his time.

关于人类天生的能力储备问题，
一旦从持续时间较长的证据转到突发性的证据，
我们就会发现，使我们能克服通常有效的障碍的刺激因素，
大多是典型的情感刺激：
爱，愤怒，群体感染或绝望。
绝望可以压倒大多数人，但也能彻底唤醒某些人。
每一次围困，海难或北极探险都会产生
某个使全体同伴士气高昂的英雄。
去年，在法国库里耶尔发生了一起可怕的煤矿爆炸事故。
要是我没记错的话，挖出了200具尸体。
挖掘20天后，营救人员听到一个声音。
“我在这儿”，第一个被找到的人说。
他是一个名叫内梅的矿工，
他曾在黑暗中领导了另外13个人，
训练他们，鼓舞他们，并把他们活着带了出来。
刚被带到地面上时，他们之中几乎没有一个人能看见东西，能说话或能走路。
5天后，在一个姓贝尔东的人身上，意想不到地出现了生命耐力的另一种类型。
这个人躺在死去的同伴中间，同外界完全搞隔绝，
用睡眠消磨了大部分时间。

A new position of responsibility
will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
Cromwell’s and Grant’s careers are the stock examples
of how war will wake a man up.
I owe to Professor C. E. Norton, my colleague,
the permission to print part of a private letter from Colonel Baird-Smith written shortly after the six weeks’ siege of Delhi,
in 1857, for the victorious issue of which that excellent officer was chiefly to be thanked.
He writes as follows:. . .

一个新的负责职位通常会证明一个人比原来设想的更强有力。
克伦威尔和格兰特的经历当为战争会怎样唤醒一个人的现成例子。
我十分感谢我的同事C.E.诺顿教授，
它允许部分刊印贝尔德-史密斯上校在1857年德里之围后仅六星期写的一封私人信件。
那次战斗取得胜利，主要应该归功于这位优秀的指挥官。他写道：

My poor wife had some reason to think that war and disease between them had left very little of a husband to take under nursing when she got him again.
An attack of camp-scurvy had filled my mouth with sores, shaken every joint in my body, and covered me all over with sores and livid spots, so that I was marvellously unlovely to look upon.
A smart knock on the ankle-joint from the splinter of a shell that burst in my face, in itself a mere bagatelle of a wound, had been of necessity neglected under the pressing and incessant calls upon me, and had grown worse and worse until the whole foot below the ankle became a black mass and seemed to threaten mortification.
I insisted, however, on being allowed to use it till the place was taken, mortification or no; and though the pain was sometimes horrible, I carried my point and kept up to the last.
On the day after the assault I had an unlucky fall on some bad ground, and it was an open question for a day or two whether I hadn’t broken my arm at the elbow.
Fortunately it turned out to be only a severe sprain, but I am still conscious of the wrench it gave me.
To crown the whole pleasant catalogue, I was worn to a shadow by a constant diarrhoea, and consumed as much opium as would have done credit to my father-inlaw (Thomas De Quincey).
However, thank God, I have a good share of Tapleyism in me and come out strong under difficulties.
I think I may confidently say that no man ever saw me out of heart, or ever heard one croaking word from me even when our prospects were gloomiest.
We were sadly scourged by the cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of twenty-seven officers present, I could only muster fifteen for the operations of the attack.
However, it was done, and after it was done came the collapse.
Don’t be horrified when I tell you that for the whole of the actual siege, and in truth for some little time before, I almost lived on brandy.
Appetite for food I had none, but I forced myself to eat just sufficient to sustain life, and I had an incessant craving for brandy as the strongest stimulant I could get.
Strange to say, I was quite unconscious of its affecting me in the slightest degree.
The excitement of the work was so great that no lesser one seemed to have any chance against it, and I certainly never found my intellect clearer or my nerves stronger in my life.
It was only my wretched body that was weak, and the moment the real work was done by our becoming complete masters of Delhi, I broke down without delay and discovered that if I wished to live I must continue no longer the system that had kept me up until the crisis was passed.
With it passed away as if in a moment all desire to stimulate, and a perfect loathing of my late staff of life took possession of me.

……当我可怜的妻子重新得到丈夫时，她有理由认为，
战争和疾病几乎没有给她留下一个可以护理的丈夫。
军营坏血病使我满嘴溃疡，全身关节松动，
到处都是溃疡和黑点，使我丑陋不堪，惨不忍睹。
一颗炮弹在我面前爆炸，弹片击中了我的踝骨，
这伤本来微不足道，
因而在紧迫的，持续不断的召唤之下必然被忽视。
但情况逐渐恶化，直到踝关节以下整个脚全都变黑了，
看来似乎有变成坏疽的危险。
我不管什么坏疽不坏疽，决心在没有人接替我之前继续使用这只脚。
尽管有时痛得可怕，我仍然停住了，一直坚持到最后。
攻击开始后的第二天，我不幸在很硬的地上摔倒了；
在一两天内，一直未弄清我的胳膊有没有从肘部摔断。
最后幸而查明仅仅是严重的扭伤，
但我现在仍感到胳膊很别扭。
为了使这张令人愉快的目录完美无缺，
我还被经常性的腹泻折磨的像个幽灵，
并且大量吸食鸦片，用量之大，足以给我的岳父（托马斯.德昆西1）带来荣誉。
不过，谢天谢地，我在很大程度上是个塔普利主义者，
因而能坚强地面对困难。
我想我可以自负地说，即使在前景最暗淡的时候，
也从来没有人看到我沮丧绝望或听到我说一句牢骚话。
我们可悲地受到了霍乱的蹂躏；
同时，我还大吃一惊地发现，
在27名军官中，我只能召集起15名军官指挥进攻战斗。
不过，我们到底发起了进攻，但打完仗后，全都垮了下来。
我给你讲围城的全部真相时，请不要头皮发麻。
实际上，不久前我几乎以白兰地为生。
我毫无食欲，但我却强迫自己吃下足够维持生命的食物。
我不停地喝白兰地–我能搞到的最强刺激物。
说也奇怪，我根本就没有觉察到它对我发生了哪怕是最微小的影响。
 *工作的刺激是如此巨大，以至不可能抵御它；*
 *我以前从来没有发现我的理智如此清晰，神经如此坚强。*
衰弱的只是身体。
一旦真正的工作被我们这些名副其实的德里主人干完，我马上就垮了下来，
并且发现，我想要活下去的话，就必须改变曾经使我坚持到危机结束的生活方式。
随着危机的消逝，所有的欲望似乎立即恢复了，
我开始十分厌恶近来支撑我的生活支柱。

Such experiences show how profound is the alteration in the manner in which,
under excitement, our organism will sometimes perform its physiological work.
The processes of repair become different when the reserves have to be used,
and for weeks and months the deeper use may go on.

这种经验说明，我们的机体在受到刺激时，其生理活动方式会发生多么深刻的变化。
当我们不得不使用储备的能力时，恢复过程就会发生变化。
使用储备的时间可以延续几个星期和几个月。

Morbid cases, here as elsewhere, lay the normal machinery bare.
In the first number of Dr.
Morton Prince’s Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Dr.
Janet has discussed five cases of morbid impulse, with an explanation that is precious for my present point of view.
One is a girl who eats, eats, eats, all day.
Another walks, walks, walks, and gets her food from an automobile that escorts her.
Another is a dipsomaniac.
A fourth pulls out her hair.
A fifth wounds her flesh and burns her skin.
Hitherto such freaks of impulse have received Greek names (as bulimia, dromomania, etc.) and been scientifically disposed of as “episodic syndromata of hereditary degeneration.” But it turns out that Janet’s cases are all what he calls psychasthenics, or victims of a chronic sense of weakness, torpor, lethargy, fatigue, insufficiency, impossibility, unreality and powerlessness of will; and that in each and all of them the particular activity pursued, deleterious though it be, has the temporary result of raising the sense of vitality and making the patient feel alive again.
These things reanimate: they would reanimate us, but it happens that in each patient the particular freak activity chosen is the only thing that does reanimate; and therein lies the morbid state.
The way to treat such persons is to discover to them more usual and useful ways of throwing their stores of vital energy into gear.

这里同别的地方一样，病态的事例可以揭示正常的机制。
 在莫顿.普林斯博士的《变态心理学杂志》第一期里，
雅内博士讨论了五个病态冲动的事例，
并作出了对我现在的观点十分重要的说明。
第一个病例是一个姑娘，她吃，吃，整天吃。
第二个病例也是一个姑娘，她走，走，整天走，
并从陪着她的车上得到食物。
第三个病例是个嗜酒狂人。
第四个病例是拔自己的头发。
第五个病例是戕害自己的身体，烧自己的皮肤。
迄今为止，这些反常冲动已经有了希腊名称
（如bulimia[易饥症]，dromomania[行走癖]等），
并在科学上被当作“偶发性遗传综合症”看待。
但事实证明，雅内的病例全都是他所谓的神经衰弱症，
或是慢性的感觉迟钝症，感觉麻木症，感觉冷漠症，感觉疲劳症，感觉缺乏症，感觉空幻症，感觉虚假症和意志物理症。
而且，他们所从事的特殊活动虽然有害，
但却全都具有暂时增强机体感觉，使病人觉得自己还活着的作用。
这都是振作精神的活动：
他会使 *我们* 振作起精神。
但是，病人选择的特殊病态活动碰巧是振作精神的唯一活动，
而这正是病态现象。
治疗这些人的方法应该是给他们找到比较普通实用的方法，
使他们能运用其生命能力储备。

Colonel Baird-Smith, needing to draw on altogether extraordinary stores of energy,
found that brandy and opium were ways of throwing them into gear.

贝尔德-史密斯上校需要提取超长的能力储备，
发现白兰地和鸦片是开动它们的方法。

Such cases are humanly typical.
We are all to some degree oppressed, unfree.
We don’t come to our own.
It is there, but we don’t get at it.
The threshold must be made to shift.
Then many of us find that an eccentric activity—a “spree,” say—relieves.
There is no doubt that to some men sprees and excesses of almost any kind are medicinal,
temporarily at any rate,
in spite of what the moralists and doctors say.

这类事例在人类中具有代表性。
从某种程度上看，我们全都是受压抑的和不自由的。
我们没有得到我们应该得到的东西。
他就在那儿，但我们没有掌握它。
阈限必须改变。
然后我们许多人就会发现，某种古怪行为（如“狂饮”）消逝了。
不管道德家和医生说些什么，对有些人来说，
狂饮和几乎任何一种过度行为都肯定具有治疗作用，
至少暂时具有治疗作用。

But when the normal tasks and stimulations of life
don’t put a man’s deeper levels of energy on tap,
and he requires distinctly deleterious excitements,
his constitution verges on the abnormal.
 * *The normal opener of deeper and deeper levels of energy is the will.* *
 * *The difficulty is to use it*, *
 * *to make the effort which the word volition implies.*  *
 * *But if we do make it* *
 * *(or if a god, though he were only the god Chance, makes it through us),  * *
 * *it will act dynamogenically on us for a month. * ** *
It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral volition,
such as saying “no” to some habitual temptation,
or performing some courageous act,
will launch a man on a higher level of energy for days and weeks,
will give him a new range of power.
“In the act of uncorking a whiskey bottle which I had brought home to get drunk upon,” said a man to me,
“I suddenly found myself running out into the garden, where I smashed it on the ground.
I felt so happy and uplifted after this act that for two months I wasn’t tempted to touch a drop.”

可是，当正常的工作和生活刺激无法使一个人的深层次能力处于随时可用的状态，
因而他显然需要有害刺激时，
她的身体就近于不正常了。
 * *深之又深层次的能力的正常开动者是意志。* *
 * *困难的是运用意志力，* *
 * *做出意志这个词所意指的那种努力。* *
 * *如果我们 *确实*  *做出了那种努力* *
 * *（或者有个神通过我们做出了那种努力，尽管这个神仅仅是命运之神），* *
 * *它就会产生刺激作用，使我们的精神活动和体力活动增强，* *
 * *这种作用会持续一个月的时间。* *
大家知道，一种成功的道德意志努力，
如拒绝某种习惯性的诱惑或做出某种勇敢的行动，
会使一个人在几天和几星期内处于较高的能力水平，
会赋予他新的能力。
有个人曾对我说，
“我在拔我带回家准备喝掉的威士忌酒瓶瓶塞时，突然发觉自己走到了花园，
在那儿，我把酒瓶摔到了地上。
我觉得如此快乐和振奋，以致我有两个月滴酒未沾。”

 * *The emotions and excitements due to usual situations*  *
 * *are the usual inciters of the will.*  *
 * *But these act discontinuously;*  *
 * *and in the intervals the shallower levels of life*  *
 * *tend to close in and shut us off.*  *
Accordingly the best practical knowers of the human soul
have invented the thing known as methodical ascetic discipline
to keep the deeper levels constantly in reach.
Beginning with easy tasks, passing to harder ones, and exercising day by day,
it is, I believe, admitted that disciples of asceticism
can reach very high levels of freedom and power of will.

 * *由平常情况引起的情感和兴奋，* *
 * *是对意志的平常刺激。* *
 * *但这些刺激是非连续性的，* *
 * *在没有这些刺激时，浅层生活总是很容易包围我们，* *
 * *把我们同深层生活隔开。* *
因此，熟知人类灵魂的人发明了著名的禁欲训练方法，
以便经常达到深层生活。
从容易做的事情开始，然后转到较难的事情，天天练习下去，
我相信，谁都会承认，
禁欲主义的信徒能达到极高水平的意志自由和意志能力。

Ignatius Loyola’s spiritual exercises
must have produced this result in innumerable devotees.
But the most venerable ascetic system,
and the one whose results have the most voluminous experimental corroboration
is undoubtedly the Yoga system in Hindustan.
From time immemorial,
by Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga,
or whatever code of practice it might be,
Hindu aspirants to perfection have trained themselves, month in and out, for years.
The result claimed, and certainly in many cases accorded by impartial judges,
is strength of character, personal power, unshakability of soul.
In an article in the Philosophical Review, from which I am largely copying here,
I have quoted at great length the experience with Hatha Yoga of a very gifted European friend of mine who,
by persistently carrying out for several months its methods of fasting from food and sleep,
its exercises in breathing and thought concentration,
and its fantastic posture gymnastics,
seems to have succeeded in waking up deeper and deeper levels of will and moral and intellectual power in himself,
and to have escaped from a decidedly menacing brain condition of the “circular” type,
from which he had suffered for years.

依納爵.罗耀拉的精神训练法
肯定在无数信徒身上产生了这种结果。
但最古老的，得到实验证明最多的禁欲修行法无疑是印度斯坦的瑜伽方法。
从远古时代起，印度追求尽善尽美的人就通过诃陀瑜伽，王公瑜伽，羯磨瑜伽或任何一种实践规则，
成年累月地训练自己。
他们所宣布的结果，在许多事例中确实得到了公正的评判者的证实，
那就是，使人性格坚强，能力加强，意志坚定。
我这里叙述的主要是我发表在《哲学评论》上的一篇文章的内容。
在那篇文章里，我大段引证了一位才华横溢的欧洲朋友的诃陀瑜伽经验。
他好几个月都坚持实行瑜伽的禁食禁水方法，
做呼吸和集中思想练习以及姿势古怪的体操。
这似乎成功地唤醒了他的深层意志能力，道德能力和理智能力，
并使他摆脱了严重威胁大脑“循环”的病症。
他得这个病已经好几年了。

Judging by my friend’s letters,
of which the last I have is written fourteen months after the Yoga training began,
there can be no doubt of his relative regeneration.
He has undergone material trials with
indifference, traveled third-class on Mediterranean steamers,
and fourthclass on African trains,
living with the poorest Arabs and sharing their unaccustomed food, all with equanimity.
His devotion to certain interests has been put to heavy strain,
and nothing is more remarkable to me than the changed moral tone with which he reports the situation.
A profound modification has unquestionably occurred in the running of his mental machinery.
The gearing has changed, and his will is available otherwise than it was.

从我朋友的来信看（我收到的最后一封信是他在开始进行瑜伽训练后14个月写的），
他无疑获得了相对的再生。
他满不在乎地经受了肉体磨炼：
乘地中海上的三等船舱和非洲火车的四等车厢旅行，
同阿拉伯穷人一起生活，吃他们那新奇的食物，
这一切，他都平静地忍受了。
它对某些事情的热情受到了严重考验，
最明显的是他向我报道近况时的道德基调发生了变化。
他的心理机制的运行无疑已经有所改变。
传动装置已经改变了，他的意志开始管用了。

My friend is a man of very peculiar temperament.
Few of us would have had the will to start upon the yoga training,
which, once started, seemed to conjure the further will power needed out of itself.
And not all of those who could launch themselves would have reached the same results.
The Hindus themselves admit that in some men the results may come without call or bell.
My friend writes to me:
“You are quite right in thinking that
religious crises, love crises, indignation crises
may awaken in a very short time powers
similar to those reached by years of patient Yoga practice.”

我的朋友是个性情很特别的人。
很少有人会下决心进行瑜伽训练，
因为一旦开始训练，似乎就要召唤远远超出了自身需要的意志能力。
而且，并非所有从事瑜伽训练的人都能达到同样的结果。
印度人自己也承认，有些人不用召唤就会达到那种结果。
我的朋友给我写道：
“你的看法很有道理，
宗教危机，爱情危机，义愤危机可以在很短的时间内唤醒某些能力，
这些能力类似于坚持若干年的瑜伽训练才能获得的能力。”

Probably most medical men
would treat this individual’s case
as one of what it is fashionable now to call by the name of
“self-suggestion,” or “expectant attention”—
as if those phrases were explanatory,
or meant more than the fact that certain men can be influenced,
while others cannot be influenced,
by certain sorts of ideas.
This leads me to say a word about ideas considered as
dynamogenic agents, or stimuli
for unlocking what would otherwise be unused reservoirs of individual power.

多数医学界人士
也许会把这个个人事例看作那些现在时髦地叫做
“自我暗示”或“期待注意”的事例之一，
似乎这些短语提供了说明或包含有超出下述事实的内容。
这个事实就是，某些人会被某种观念影响，
而其他人却不会被影响。
这使我要谈一谈被认为是动力基因或刺激因素的观念。
它们使从未使用的个人能力储备释放出来。

One thing that ideas do
is to contradict other ideas and keep us from believing them.
An idea that thus negates a first idea
may itself in turn be negated by a third idea,
and the first idea may thus regain its natural influence
over our belief and determine our behavior.
Our philosophic and religious development proceeds
thus by credulities, negations, and the negating of negations.

观念的作用之一就是反驳其他观念，使我们不相信它们。
一个这样否定了第一个观念的观念，本身又可以被第三个观念所否定；
因此，第一个观念就可以恢复它对我们信仰的自然影响力并决定我们的行为。
我们的哲学和宗教就是这样发展的：
轻信，否定和否定之否定。

But whether for arousing or for stopping belief,
ideas may fail to be efficacious,
just as a wire at one time alive with electricity may at another time be dead.
Here our insight into causes fails us,
and we can only note results in general terms.
 * *In general, whether a given idea shall be a live idea depends*  *
 * *more on the person into whose mind it is injected*  *
 * *than on the idea itself.*  *
Which is the suggestive idea for this person, and which for that one?
Mr. Fletcher’s disciples regenerate themselves by the idea (and the fact) that they are chewing, and rechewing, and superchewing their food.
Dr. Dewey’s pupils regenerate themselves by going without their breakfast—a fact, but also an ascetic idea.
Not everyone can use these ideas with the same success.

但是，不管在唤醒信仰方面还是在阻止信仰方面，观念可能都不太灵验，
就像一条金属线有时可能充满了电流，有时又可能没通电一样。
在这里，我们看不到原因，而只能概括地指明结果。
 * *一般来说，某个观念是否会起作用，* *
 * *与其说取决于观念自身，* *
 * *还不如说是取决于接受观念的个人。* *
哪个观念对这个人有启发性，而哪个观念又对另一个人有启发性？
弗莱彻先生的门徒靠着不断咀嚼食物的观念（和事实）使自己获得新生。
杜威博士的学生靠不吃早饭（这是一个事实，但也是一个禁欲观念）来使自己获得新生。
并非每个人都能同样成功地使用这些观念。

弗莱彻（1840-1909），美国营养学家。

But apart from such individually varying susceptibilities,
there are common lines along which men simply as men
tend to be inflammable by ideas.
As certain objects naturally awaken love, anger, or cupidity,
so certain ideas naturally awaken the energies of loyalty, courage, endurance, or devotion.
When these ideas are effective in an individual’s life, their effect is often very great indeed.
They may transfigure it, unlocking innumerable powers which,
but for the idea, would never have come into play.
“Fatherland,” “the Flag,” “the Union,”
“Holy Church,” “the Monroe Doctrine,”
“Truth,” “Science,” “Liberty,”
Garibaldi’s phrase “Rome or Death,” etc.,
are so many examples of energy-releasing ideas.
The social nature of such phrases is an essential factor of their dynamic power.
They are forces of detent in situations in which no other force produces equivalent effects,
and each is a force of detent only in a specific group of men.

然而，除了这种因人而异的感受性之外，
人们还有仅仅作为人来说容易为观念所激动的共同点。
正像某些对象可以自然地唤起爱，愤怒或贪婪一样，
某些观念也可以自然地唤起忠诚，勇敢，忍耐或奉献的能力。
当这些观念对一个人的生活起作用时，
它们的作用确实很大。
它们可以解放没有观念根本就不会得到使用的无数能力，
从而改变一个人的生活。
“祖国”，“国旗”，“美国”，
“神圣教会”，“门罗主义”，
“真理”，“科学”，“自由”
以及加里波第的名言“无罗马毋宁死”等等，
都是解放能力的观念的例子。
这类短语的社会性质是它们能动力量的本质因素。
在某些情况下，它们是其他力量无法产生同等效力的制动力量，
而且每一个这样的短语都只有在某一类人那里才是制动力量。

The memory that an oath or vow
has been made will nerve one to abstinences and efforts otherwise impossible;
witness the “pledge” in the history of the temperance movement.
A mere promise to his sweetheart
will clean up a youth’s life all over—
at any rate for a time.
For such effects an educated susceptibility is required.
The idea of one’s “honor,” for example,
unlocks energy only in those of us who have had the education of a “gentleman,” so called.

回想起以前做出的誓言或誓约，
会给一个人以禁欲和进行艰苦努力的力量；
否则，这样的禁欲和努力是根本做不到的。
请亲眼看看禁酒运动史上的“誓言”吧。
仅仅是对情人的承诺，就可以彻底净化一个年轻人的生活，至少暂时如此。
但是，要达到这种效果，需要有受过训练的感受性。
例如，一个人的“荣誉”观念，只有在受过所谓的“绅士”教育的人那里才会释放出能力。

That delightful being Prince Pueckler-Muskau
writes to his wife from England that he has invented
“a sort of artificial resolution respecting things that are difficult of performance.
My device,” he continues,
“is this: I give my word of honor most solemnly to myself
to do or to leave undone this or that.
I am of course extremely cautious in the use of this expedient,
but when once the word is given,
even though I afterwards think I have been precipitate or mistaken,
I hold it to be perfectly irrevocable,
whatever inconveniences I foresee likely to result.
If I were capable of breaking my word after such mature consideration,
I should lose all respect for myself—
and what man of sense would not prefer death to such an alternative? .
. . When the mysterious formula is pronounced, no alteration in my own view,
nothing short of physical impossi168 bilities,
must, for the welfare of my soul, alter my will.
 * *. . . I find something very satisfactory in the thought*  *
 * *that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of the most trivial materials*,  *
 * *indeed out of nothing*,  *
 * *merely by the force of his will,*  *
 * *which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent.”* *

哪个招人喜欢的皮克勒–穆斯考亲王从英国写信给他的妻子说，
他发明了“一种人为的方法来处理难以处理的事情”。
他说，“我的方法是这样的：
 *我十分严肃地以荣誉保证* 做或不做某件事情。
他说，”我当然极其小心地使用这种权宜之计，
但是，一旦做出保证，即使我后来认为自己太鲁莽或犯了错误，
我也坚持认为它是完全无法改变的，
不管我预见到由此可能带来多少麻烦。
如果我在这样慎重地思考之后违背诺言，
我就一点也不应该尊敬自己了–
恐怕任何有理智的人宁愿去死也不会做这种选择。
……一旦宣布了这一神秘的准则，即使我的看法有所改变
（这几乎是不可能的），
为了我的灵魂的幸福，也不得改变我的意志。
 * *……仅仅依靠意志的力量，* *
 * *人就能用极其平常的材料（其实什么也没有损失）* *
 * *建造出这样的支撑物和武器；* *
 * *因此，意志才真正配得上全能这一名称。* *
 * *想到这些，我心里感到很满足。”* *

Conversions, whether they be political, scientific, philosophic, or religious,
form another way in which bound energies are let loose.
They unify us, and put a stop to ancient mental interferences.
The result is freedom, and often a great enlargement of power.
A belief that thus settles upon an individual always
acts as a challenge to his will.
But, for the particular challenge to operate,
he must be the right challengee.
In religious conversions we have so fine an adjustment that the idea may be in the mind of the challengee for years before it exerts its effects;
and why it should do so then is often so far from obvious that the event is taken for a miracle of grace,
and not a natural occurrence.
Whatever it is, it may be a high-water mark of energy, in which “noes,”
once impossible, are easy,
and in which a new range of “yeses” gains the right of way.

 *转变* 是解放被束缚的能力的另一种方式，
不管这种转变是政治上的，科学上的，哲学上的还是宗教上的。
它们使我们统一起来，并终止古老的精神冲突。
结果就是自由，
而且常常会大大扩展能力。
某个人由此而接受的信仰，总是起着向他的意志挑战的作用。
但是，为了使特殊的挑战起作用，他必须是一个正当的应战者。
在改换宗教方面，我们的调整如此良好，
以致应战者在改宗想法发挥作用之前好几年就可能有了这种想法。
然而，何以如此的原因却常常极不明显，
以致改宗事件被认为是皈依的奇迹，
而不是自然发生的事情。
不管怎么样，它都是能力高潮的一个标志。
此时，以前曾经根本不可能的“否定”成了轻而易举的事情，
而一系列新的“肯定”获得了通行权。

We are just now witnessing a very copious unlocking of energies
by ideas in the persons of those converts to “New Thought,” “Christian Science,” “Metaphysical Healing,”
or other forms of spiritual philosophy,
who are so numerous among us today.
The ideas here are healthy minded and optimistic;
and it is quite obvious that a wave of religious activity,
analogous in some respects to the spread of early Christianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism,
is passing over our American world.
The common feature of these optimistic faiths is
that they all tend to the suppression of what Mr. Horace Fletcher calls “fearthought.”
Fearthought he defines as the “self-suggestion of inferiority”;
so that one may say that these systems all operate by the suggestion of power.
And the power, small or great, comes in various shapes to the individual—
power, as he will tell you, not to “mind” things that used to vex him,
power to concentrate his mind,
good cheer, good temper—
in short, to put it mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral tone.

在今天为数众多的皈依“新思想”，“基督教科学”，“形而上学疗法”或其他精神哲学的人那里，
我们看到的正是能力借助观念大量释放出来的情况。
这里的观念是健康的和乐观的；
很明显，一股宗教活动浪潮正在席卷我们美洲地区，
这股浪潮在某些方面很像早期基督教，佛教和伊斯兰教的传播。
这些乐观主义信仰的共同特征在于，
它们都倾向于抑制霍勒斯.弗莱彻先生所谓的“恐惧思想”。
弗莱彻把恐惧思想定义为“自卑的自我暗示”。
所以我们可以说，这些体系全都通过启发能力而发挥作用。
能力不论大小，都会以各种形式出现在每个人那里，
正如每个人会告诉你的那样，
有不“理会”经常使自己烦恼的事情的能力，
有集中精神的能力，
有使自己高兴愉快的能力–
总之，说得婉转一些，
有使道德基调更加坚定灵活的能力。

The most genuinely saintly person I have ever known
is a friend of mine now suffering from cancer of the breast—
I hope that she may pardon my citing her here as an example of what ideas can do.
Her ideas have kept her a practically well woman for months
after she should have given up and gone to bed.
They have annulled all pain and weakness and given her a cheerful active life,
unusually beneficent to others to whom she has afforded help.
Her doctors, acquiescing in results they could not understand,
have had the good sense to let her go her own way.

我所知道的真正名副其实的圣洁之人是我的一位患有乳腺癌的朋友。
我希望她会原谅我在这里用她的例子说明观念能起什么作用。
她本该不抱希望并躺到床上去，
可观念却使他好几个月都跟健康妇女没什么区别。
它们消除了一切疼痛和软弱，
使她能过一种愉快活跃的生活–
异乎寻常地为别人做好事，帮助他们。
她的医生们默认了他们无法理解的结果，
并很明智地让她自行其事。

How far the mind-cure movement is destined to extend its influence,
or what intellectual modifications it may yet undergo,
no one can foretell.
It is essentially a religious movement,
and to academically nurtured minds its utterances are tasteless and often grotesque enough.
It also incurs the natural enmity of medical politicians,
and of the whole tradesunion wing of that profession.
But no unprejudiced observer can fail to recognize its importance as a social phenomenon today,
and the higher medical minds are already trying to interpret it fairly,
and make its power available for their own therapeutic ends.

没有人能够预言精神治疗运动会把它的影响扩展到多远的地方，
或者，它还会经历怎么样的理智变化。
精神治疗运动本质上是一场宗教运动。
对于受过高等教育的人来说，
这场运动的语言表达枯燥无味，而且常常十分荒唐。
它还激起了医疗界政客和医疗界公会的天然仇恨。
但是，任何一个无偏见的观察家都会看出它作为当今的一种社会现象所具有的重要意义，
而且医疗界的高级人士已经开始试着公正地解释它，
并把它的力量应用于她们自己的治疗实践。

Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the great West Riding Asylum in England,
said last year to the British Medical Association
that the best sleepproducing agent which his practice had revealed to him was prayer.
I say this, he added (I am sorry here that I must quote from memory),
purely as a medical man.
The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it,
must be regarded by us doctors
as the most adequate and normal
of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.

著名的英国约克郡西区救济院的托马斯.希斯洛普博士去年对英国医学会说，
他的实践表明，
 *祈祷* 是最好的催眠剂。
他补充道（很抱歉，我只能根据记忆引证）：
我仅仅是作为一个医务工作者说这番话的。
就那些习惯于做祈祷的人而言，
我们一生必定会认为
祈祷活动是所有促使心灵平静和神经镇定的方法中
最正当和最正常的方法。

But in few of us are functions
not tied up by the exercise of other functions.
Relatively few medical men and scientific men, I fancy, can pray.
Few can carry on any living commerce with “God.”
 * *Yet many of us are well aware of* *
 * *how much freer and abler our lives would be* *
 * *were such important forms of energizing* *
 * *not sealed up by the critical atmosphere in which we have been reared.* *
 * *There are in every-one potential forms of activity* *
 * *that actually are shunted out from use.* *
 * *Part of the imperfect vitality under which we labor* *
 * *can thus be easily explained.* *
 * *One part of our mind dams up—even damns up!—the other parts.* *

但是，我们的官能很少不被其他官能的活动所阻碍。
我想，相对而言，能做祈祷的医学家和科学家人数很少。
很少有人能跟“上帝”进行活生生地交流。
 * *然而，我们许多人都意识到* *
 * *如果这种使用能力的重要方式* *
 * *不被我们从小就生活于其中的批判环境所扼杀，* *
 * *我们的生活该多么自由，* *
 * *多么能发挥人的能力！* *
 * *每个人身上都存在着实际上未被使用的潜在的能动性。* *
 * *因此，生命力中有缺陷的部分（我们在它们底下辛苦劳作）就很容易解释了。* *
 * *我们心灵的一部分抑制了（甚至毁灭了！）其他部分。* *

Conscience makes cowards of us all.
Social conventions prevent us from telling the truth
after the fashion of the heroes and heroines of Bernard Shaw.
We all know persons who are models of excellence,
but who belong to the extreme philistine type of mind.
So deadly is their intellectual respectability that we can’t converse about certain subjects at all,
can’t let our minds play over them,
can’t even mention them in their presence.
I have numbered among my dearest friends persons thus inhibited intellectually,
with whom I would gladly have been able to talk freely about certain interests of mine,
certain authors, say, as Bernard Shaw, Chesterton, Edward Carpenter, H. G. Wells,
but it wouldn’t do,
it made them too uncomfortable,
they wouldn’t play, I had to be silent.
An intellect thus tied down by literality
and decorum makes on one the same sort of impression
that an able-bodied man would who should habituate himself
to do his work with only one of his fingers,
locking up the rest of his organism and leaving it unused.

良心使我们全都变成了胆小鬼。
社会习俗不让我们像萧伯纳的男女主人公那样实话实说。
我们全都知道杰出的模范人物，
但他们的心灵却可能十分庸俗。
它们那道貌岸然的面孔，
使我们根本不能谈论某些话题，不能思考它们，
甚至不能在他们面前提到它们。
我曾把一些在理智方面受到这样抑制的人看做我的密友，
我同他们本来应该能愉快地，自由地谈论某些我感兴趣的事情，
例如，谈论像萧伯纳，切斯特顿，爱德华.卡彭特，H.G.威尔斯那样的作家，
但根本就谈不起来。
这样的谈话使他们极不舒服，
它们不愿意谈，我只好闭嘴。
这样一个规规矩矩，正正经经的有知识的人给人留下的印象，
就好像一个身体健全的人竟然习惯于只用一个手指做事，
而把其他器官都锁起来不用那样。

I trust that by this time I have said enough
to convince the reader both of the truth and of the importance of my thesis.
The two questions,
first, that of the possible extent of our powers; and,
second, that of the various avenues of approach to them,
the various keys for unlocking them in diverse individuals,
dominate the whole problem of individual and national education.
We need a topography of the limits of human power,
similar to the chart which oculists use of the field of human vision.
We need also a study of the various types of human being
with reference to the different ways
in which their energy reserves may be appealed to and set loose.
Biographies and individual experiences of every kind may be drawn upon for evidence here.

我希望上面所说的一切足以使读者相信我的论点的真实性和重要性。
有两个问题：
第一个问题是，我们的能力可能有多大；
第二个问题是，对于形形色色的人来说，
接近这些能力都有哪些不同的途径，
解放这些能力又有哪些不同的方法？
解答这两个问题，
对于解决全部个人教育和国民教育问题至关重要。
我们需要有一张人类能力限度的解剖图，
类似于眼科医生使用的人类视力图。
我们也需要根据召唤和解放能力储备的不同方式来研究人类的各种类型。
每一类人的传记和个人经验在这里都可以用做证据。