■ 幸福之道 The Road to Happiness
◎ Bertrand Russell
It is a commonplace among moralists that you cannot get happiness by pursuing it. This is only true if you pursue it unwisely. Gamblers at Monte Carlo are pursuing money, and most of them lose it instead, but there are other ways of pursuing money, which often succeed. So it is with happiness. If you pursue it by means of drink, you are forgetting the hang-over. Epicurus pursued it by living only in congenial society and eating only dry bread, supplemented by a little cheese on feast days. His method proved successful in his case, but he was a valetudinarian[95] , and most people would need something more vigorous. For most people, the pursuit of happiness, unless supplemented in various ways, is too abstract and theoretical to be adequate as a personal rule of life. But I think that whatever personal rule of life you may choose it should not, except in rare and heroic cases, be incompatible with happiness.
道德家们常说：幸福是不可追求的。其实，只有用不明智的方式追求才会如此。蒙特卡洛城的赌徒们追求的是金钱，但多数人却把钱输光了；而另外一些追求金钱的方法却常常能够成功。追求幸福也是如此。如果你通过豪饮来追求幸福，那你便忘记了醉酒之后的不适。埃毕丘鲁斯追求幸福的方法就是和意气相投的人住在一起，只吃不涂黄油的面包，只在节日时才涂上一点奶酪。对他来说，他的方法是成功的。可不幸的是，他体弱多病，而大多数人需要的是精力充沛。对多数人来说，除非你有别的补充方法，否则这种追求幸福的方式太过抽象和脱离实际，不太适合作为个人的生活准则。不过，在我看来，无论你选择何种生活准则，除了一些少数的英雄人物的例子，都必须和幸福相容。
There are a great many people who have all the material conditions of happiness, i.e. health and a sufficient income, and who, nevertheless, are profoundly unhappy. In such cases it would seem as if the fault must lie with a wrong theory as to how to live. In one sense, we may say that any theory as to how to live is wrong. We imagine ourselves more different from the animals than we are. Animals live on impulse, and are happy as long as external conditions are favorable. If you have a cat it will enjoy life if it has food and warmth and opportunities for an occasional night on the tiles. Your needs are more complex than those of your cat, but they still have their basis in instinct. In civilized societies, especially in English-speaking societies, this is too apt to be forgotten. People propose to themselves some one paramount objective, and restrain all impulses that do not minister to it. A businessman may be so anxious to grow rich that to this end he sacrifices health and private affections. When at last he has become rich, no pleasure remains to him except harrying other people by exhortations[96] to imitate his noble example. Many rich ladies, although nature has not endowed them with any spontaneous pleasure in literature or art, decide to be thought cultured, and spend boring hours learning the right thing to say about fashionable new books that are written to give delight, not to afford opportunities for dusty snobbism.
很多人拥有获得幸福的所有条件，如健康的体魄和充足的收入，可他们却非常不快乐。这种情况下，似乎是生活的理论出错了。从某种意义上来讲，我们可以说，所有关于生活的理论都是错误的。我们总以为我们和动物之间的区别很大。动物仰仗冲动而活，只要客观条件有利，它们就会快乐。如果你养了一只猫，它只要有东西可吃、感觉到温暖，偶尔还能在晚上的时候去寻欢，它就会很快乐。你的需求比猫的要来得复杂些，但它们仍然是以本能为基础的。在文明社会中，特别是在讲英语的国家，这一点很容易被遗忘。人们为自己制订了一个最高目标，尽力克制不利于实现这个目标的所有冲动。商人可能因为想要发财而最终失去健康和爱情。当他最终成为富翁时，除了苦心劝导别人效仿自己而让别人感到心烦，他并没有得到快乐。那些有钱的贵妇，即便她们天生没有欣赏文学和艺术的细胞，她们也执意要让别人觉得自己很有教养，花费大量的时间学习如何谈论流行的新书。这些书是为了给人以快乐而写的，而不是为人们提供一个附庸风雅的机会。
If you look around at the men and women whom you can call happy, you will see that they all have certain things in common. The most important of these things is an activity which at most gradually builds up something that you are glad to see coming into existence. Women who take an instinctive pleasure in their children can get this kind of satisfaction out of bringing up a family. Artists and authors and men of science get happiness in this way if their own work seems good to them. But there are many humbler forms of the same kind of pleasure. Many men who spend their working life in the city devote their weekends to voluntary and unremunerated toil in their gardens, and when the spring comes, they experience all the joys of having created beauty.
如果你仔细观察身边那些你认为幸福的男男女女，你会发现他们身上有着某些共同点，其中最重要的一点就是：追求幸福本身。在大多数情况下，它本身就是一个很有趣的活动，并能逐渐地让你的愿望得以实现。生性喜欢孩子的妇女可以从养育孩子的过程中得到满足。艺术家、作家和科学家如果对自己的工作感到满意，他们也可以用同样的方式获得幸福。不过，也有一些较低层次的快乐。许多在大城市工作的人们，周末时也愿意在自家花园里进行一些无偿的劳作，等到春天时，他们就可以尽情享受亲自创造的美景所带来的快乐。
The whole subject of happiness has, in my opinion, been treated too solemnly. It had been thought that man cannot be happy without a theory of life or a religion. Perhaps those who have been rendered unhappy by a bad theory may need a better theory to help them to recovery, just as you may need a tonic when you have been ill. But when things are normal a man should be healthy without a tonic and happy without a theory. It is the simple things that really matter. If a man delights in his wife and children, has success in work, and finds pleasure in the alternation of day and night, spring and autumn, he will be happy whatever his philosophy may be. If, on the other hand, he finds his wife fateful, his children’s noise unendurable, and the office a nightmare; if in the daytime he longs for night, and at night sighs for the light of day, then what he needs is not a new philosophy but a new regimen—a different diet, or more exercise, or what not.
在我看来，关于幸福的整个话题都被过于严肃地对待了。过去，人们一直觉得，没有生活理论和宗教信仰的人是不会幸福的。也许那些因为生活理论不好而导致不快乐的人，需要一种较好的理论让他们重新快乐起来，就像你生病之后需要补药来帮助恢复一样。但是，正常情况下，一个人不吃补药也应当是健康的，没有理论也应当是幸福的。真正起作用的是一些简单的事情。如果一个男人喜爱他的妻儿，事业有成，而且不论白天黑夜、春去秋来，总是很快活；那么，不管他的生活理论是什么，他都是幸福的。相反，如果他讨厌自己的妻子，忍受不了孩子的吵闹，并且讨厌上班；如果他白天时盼望夜晚，而到了晚上又渴望天明，那么他需要的就不是理论，而是一种新的生活——改变饮食习惯，多锻炼自己等。
Man is an animal, and his happiness depends on his physiology more than he likes to think. This is a humble conclusion, but I cannot make myself disbelieve it. Unhappy businessmen, I am convinced, would increase their happiness more by walking six miles every day than by any conceivable change of philosophy.
人类也是动物，人的幸福更多时候取决于其生理状况而非思想状况。虽然这是一个庸俗的结论，但我对此深信不疑。我相信，不幸福的商人与其寻找其他理论让自己幸福，倒不如每天步行6公里，也许后者更有效。
