激情晨读英语美文 第一章 人生如诗:我的世界观

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The World as I See It
By Albert Einstein
How strange is the lot of us mortals!
Each of us is here for a brief sojourn;
for what purpose he knows not, though he
sometimes thinks he senses it. But without
deeper reflection one knows from daily life
that one exists for other people —
first of all for those upon whose smiles
and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent,
and then for the many, unknown to us,
to whose destinies we are bound by
the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day
I remind myself that my inner and outer life
are based on the labors of other men, living and dead,
and that I must exert myself in order to give
in the same measure as I have received
and am still receiving. I am strongly drawn
to a frugal life and am often oppressively
aware that I am engrossing an undue amount
of the labor of my fellow-men. I regard
class distinctions as unjustified and,
in the last resort, based on force. I also
believe that a simple and unassuming life
is good for everybody, physically and mentally.
I do not at all believe in human freedom
in the philosophical sense. Everybody acts
not only under external compulsion but also
in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer’s saying,
that “A man can do what he wants, but not want
what he wants,” has been a very real inspiration
to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation
in the face of life’s hardships, my own and others’,
and an unfailing well-spring of tolerance.
This realization mercifully mitigates the easily
paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from
taking ourselves and other people all too seriously;
it is conducive to a view of life which,
in particular, gives humor its due.To inquire after
the meaning or object of one’s own existence or
that of all creatures has always seemed to me
absurd from an objective point of view. And yet
everybody has certain ideals which determine
the direction of his endeavors and his judgments.
In this sense I have never looked upon ease
and happiness as ends in themselves —
this ethical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty.
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time
have given me new courage to face life cheerfully,
have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without
the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without
the occupation with the objective world, the eternally
unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors,
life would have seemed to me empty. The trite objects
of human efforts — possessions, outward success, luxury —
have always seemed to me contemptible.