亨利．戴维．梭罗
(HENRY DAVID THOREAU)

湖滨散记
Walden

我到树林中去，因爲我希望从容不迫地生活，仅仅面对生活中最基本的事实，看看我是否能掌握生活的教诲，不至于在临终时才发现自己不曾生活过。

梭罗在沃尔登塘生活了两年。在那儿，他从日常事务和社会压力之中解脱了出来，有时间思考生活中究竟什麽是重要的，有时间进行写作。同普遍的传统作法不一样，在这期间，梭罗不是一位隐士，而是一位生活在社会边缘的人。他离社会的距离不太远，这样他还能够有客人造访；但又不太近，这样他才能够剔除生活的繁文褥节，将其缩减到最基本的部分。

在十九世纪五十年代，梭罗深深卷入了废除奴隶制的斗争之中。他抛弃了思索和孤僻的生活，选择了积极的政治生活。他发表演说，写文章反对奴隶制，通过地下铁道帮助奴隶逃亡到北方。他身体不好，死于1862年，时年不到45岁。

以下摘选的《湖滨散记》在1854年最初发表时，并未获得商业上的成功；五年中仅销出了2000本。不过，从那以后，它成了美国文学中的经典作品。因爲它是出色的新闻体作品，是一个人试图在朴素的生活中寻找真理与意义的写照，讴歌了与大自然和良知保持和谐的生活。

……许许多多人过着平静而又绝望的生活。所谓的听天由命，便是根深蒂固的绝望。从绝望的城市到绝望的国家，你得靠水貂与麝鼠般的勇气来安慰自己。甚至在人类所谓的运动与娱乐之下，也隐藏着一成不变的、无意识的失望。其实，那不是娱乐，因爲它是劳作的结果。它只是一种明智的、不铤而走险的特征。

用问答教学法的话来说，当我们考虑人生的主要目的是什麽，什麽是生活的真正需要，什麽是生活的手段的时候，看来人们似乎是故意选择了同一的生活方式，因爲他们对它偏爱超过对其他的生活方式。可是，他们又坦白地认爲，除此之外别无其它选择。不过，具有警觉、健康天性的人记得，太阳升起时是纯洁无理的。抛弃偏见，无论何时都不会太迟。不论是多麽古老的想法或做法，只要缺乏左证，都不足信。今天人们随声附和或默认爲是真理的，结果明天就可能被证明是错误的，不过是如同烟云般的想法而已，而有些人却曾将这烟云奉作能够爲田园普降甘露的雨云。古人说你做不到的，你试过之后却发现能够做到。古法施 于古人，新法施于新人。古人也许由于知识贫乏，不懂得添加新燃料来促使火焰燃烧不熄；新人在罐子下放一小块木柴，便能以飞鸟的速度绕着大地转悠，正如俗话说的那样，“气死老头”。作爲导师，年迈的丝毫不会比年轻的更称职，甚至还未必能比得上年轻的，因爲年龄使他失去超过他所得到的。人人几乎都怀疑，最聪明的人是否能单凭活着就可以获得任何有绝对价值的知识。实际上，老年人没有什麽非常重要的劝告可以给年轻人，正如他们必然会承认的那样，他们的个人经验是那麽片面，他们的生活由于某些个人的原因又是那麽令人沮丧的失败。也许是由于他们还残留着某些信仰的缘故，他们的经验具有某种假像，其实，他们只不过是不那麽年轻罢了。我在这个星球上生活了大约三十年了，我还未从长辈那儿听到过一句真正有价值的忠告，甚至连句真诚的劝告都没有。他们什麽也没告诉我，也许他们也无法中肯地告诉我任何事情。生活就在这儿。它是一项在很大程度上我还未尝试过的试验。他人的尝试对我并无稗益。如果我有什麽我认爲是有价值的经验的话，我肯定会想到，我的导师根本就没跟我说过这些……

我住到树林里，也就是，开始在那儿度过日日夜夜的第一天，恰巧是独立日，或者说是1845年7月4日。那时，我的房子还未完工，还不宜过冬。它还未粉刷，也没有烟囱，仅仅能避雨。墙壁是用粗糙、饱经风霜、污迹斑斑的木板钉成的，墙上有很宽的裂缝。到了夜里，房里倒是挺凉快。斧头劈得白白的笔直壁骨和新装上木板的门和窗框使房子给人一种干净、通风的感觉。尤其是在早晨，当壁板浸泡了露水的时候，我幻想着，到了中午，从这些露水中会渗透出一些可爱的仙人。一整天，这幻想或多或少地带着曙光般的色彩留在我的想象中，使我想起一年前我在山中到过的一幢房子。那是一座通风、未粉刷过的木屋，适合用来招待云游仙人，或让仙女的婆娑衣裙在屋里掠过。那穿堂过室的风，有如那掠过山脊之雄风，带着断断续续的大地之声，或者，仅仅是大地乐声中的天 籁。早上，总是晨风吹拂，创造着无穷无尽的诗境；不过，能领略这诗意的却寥寥无几。奥林匹斯山彼彼皆是，唯独不在尘世之间……

我到树林中去，因爲我希望从容不迫地生活，仅仅面对生活中最基本的事实，看看我是否能掌握生活的教海，不至于在临终时才发现自己不曾生活过。我不希望过那种称不上是生活的生活，因爲生存的代价是那麽昂贵；我也不希望听天由命，除非那是万不得已。我要生活得深沈，吮吸生活的所有精髓；我要生活得坚定，像斯巴顿人一样，摒弃一切不属于生活的事物，辛勤劳作，生活简朴，将生活局限在小范围内，将它降到最低水平。如果证明生活是低贱的，那麽就完整、真实地了解其低贱之处，并将之公诸于世；如果证明生活是高尚的，那麽就通过实践了解它，并且下一次远足时，就能对它作出真实的描述。因爲，在我看来，大部分人对生活，不管它是魔鬼的産物还是上帝的创造，都非常没有把握；并且，他们还颇有点仓促地下结论，认爲“爲上帝增光和永远享受上帝的福扯”是人类在这世界上的主要目的。

尽管寓言告诉我们说，很久以前我们就进化成人了，但是，我们却活得低贱，就像蚂蚁一样。我们仍然不自量力地像小精灵似地与鹤争斗。这是错上加错，雪上加霜；我们最优秀的德性，也有其过分的、但又是可以避免的鄙贱性。我们的生活被细节消耗殆尽。老实人用十个手指头计数就差不多了；若在极特殊情况下，他可以凑上十个脚趾，至于其它的可以合在一起算。要简单、简单、再简单!依我说，你要做的事应当是两、三件，而不是成百上千件；数上半打，而不要数上百万；把你的帐日记在你的大姆指指甲上。在这多变的文明生活的海洋里，云雾、风暴、流沙和许许多多事情都得考虑。如果一个人不想沈沦到底层，又不短躲进港湾，就得靠精心算计，才能活下去。他要成功，就必须是台出色的计算器。简化、再简化！如果吃饭是必须的话，那麽就一天吃一餐，而不要吃三餐；不要吃上百道菜，就吃五道菜；其它的东西也作相应的削减。我们的生活就像由许多小国家组成的德国联盟一样，边界老是在变动；即使德国人自己也无法告诉你，某时某刻它的边界在那里。国家本身，尽管内部有些所谓的改善，(顺便指出，这些改善都是表面上的、肤浅的)但它仍是一个庞大而且畸形发展的机构，就像这片土地上的千千万万座楼房一样，里面挤满了家具，被自己设下的陷阱所制约，被奢侈和毫无顾忌的开支、被缺乏精打细算和缺乏有价值的目标弄得倾家荡产。挽救它的唯一方法，就像挽救那些房子一样，是严格的精打细算，是一种严格的、比斯巴顿人更简朴的生活方武和高尚的生活目标。生活的节奏太快了。人们认爲，至关重要的是国家要有商业，要出口冰块，要通过电报交谈，要每小时行驶三十英里，而毫不质疑，他们做得到还是做不到；但是，我们是否应当像狒狒一样生活，还是像人一样生活，却仍是个不定之数……

我们爲什麽要生活得如此匆忙，如此浪费生命呢?我们还不曾感到饿，便断定会挨饿。人们说，及时缝一针，省得缝九针，于是，他们便在今天缝上千百针，好爲明天省下九针。至于工作，我们还没有过任何有价值的工作。我们跳圣．维图斯舞，可却无法保持头不动……饭后，人们几乎不午睡，可是当他醒来时，他擡头便问：“有什麽消息?”好像人类其它人都在爲他站岗放哨似的。毫无疑义，有些人嘱咐别人每半小时叫醒他一次，其目的却仅仅是爲了被这样叫醒。尔后，作爲回报，他们就敍述自己梦到的事情。睡了一夜之后，新闻就跟早餐一样不可缺少。“求你告诉我，世界上什麽地方，什麽人发生了什麽新鲜事。”──他一边喝咖啡吃面卷，一边阅读新闻：在瓦赫土河有个人的眼睛被挖掉了；同时，他却没想到他正生活在世界上深不可测的猛马洞穴里，而且他自己也只有一只发育不健全的眼睛。

就我来说，没有邮局，我也能够轻松对付。我觉得，没有什麽非常重要的消息是通过邮局得到的。挑剔地说，我一生中仅收到过一、两封信，其内容值得付那邮资──这是我数年前写的。通常收费低廉的邮局只是一种机构，通过它你能一本正经地付上一点钱，便可购买他人心中的想法，而且付这麽点钱还常常是爲了开个肯定不会出差错的玩笑。我确信，我从未在报纸上读到过任何值得记忆的消息。如果我们读一则关于有个人遭抢劫的消息，或者有人被谋杀，或者有人在事故中丧生，或者有座房子被烧了，或者条船沈没了，或者有艘汽轮爆炸了，或者有只母牛在西部铁路被压死了，或者一条疯狗被宰了，或者冬季里来了一批蝗虫──那麽，我就绝对不必再读其它消息了。一则就够了。如果你已经认识了这条原则，那麽你搭理那一大堆具体例子和该原则的实际应用情况又有什麽用呢?对于哲学家来说，所有的新闻，所谓的新闻，都是闲话，其 编辑和读者都是些老妇人，一边喝茶，一边藉以度日。

让我们像大自然一样，从容不迫地过上一天吧，别让一些落在枕木上的坚果和蚊子的翅膀将我们颠出轨。让我们一早起来，不吃早饭或吃早饭，一切慢慢来，不带任何烦乱。朋友来也罢，走也罢；门铃响也罢，孩子哭也罢，──横下一条心，过一天这样的日子。我们爲什麽应当向潮流屈服和顺应潮流呢?午饭，有如位于浅滩中央的湍急而又可怕的 漩涡，届时我们万万不可心烦意乱，不知所措。度过这个危险，你就平安了，因爲剩下的时间就如下山，带着未松懈的勇气和上午的活力，扬帆而下，缚于桅杆上，像尤利西斯一样，领略另一侧风光。如果引擎发出响声，就让它一直响到声音嘶哑，痛苦不已。如果铃声响了，我们干嘛得跑呢?我们可以想想铃声像何种音乐。让我们安下心来工作吧。观念、偏见、传统、妄想和表面现像组成的泥泞淤积层覆盖了整个地球，从巴黎到伦敦，从纽约到波士顿再到康科，从教会到政府，从诗学到哲学再到宗教，全部被覆盖着。我们要迈开双脚，踏着淤泥前进，一直到我们抵达我们称之爲“现实”的实地和礁石爲止。我们说，就是这个，没错……不论是生还是死，我们仅追求现实。如果我们真的要死了，那就让我们听到喉头的呼吓声，感到临终的冰冷；如果还活着，那就让我们干我们的事业。

时间不过是我垂钓的小溪。我饮用溪中水；喝水时，我看到沙质的水底，发觉溪水是那麽浅。那浅浅的水流一溜而过，留下的是永恒。我要喝得深一些，到空中垂钓，苍穹的尽头是有如鹅卵石的星星。我不识数，我连字母表上的第－个字母都不认得，我一直后悔我不能像初生时那麽聪明。理智是一把利刃，它辨清方向，一路剖切直抵事物的奥秘之所在。如非必需，我不希望动手忙碌。我的大脑就是手和脚。我觉得，我的所有最精华的能力都集中在大脑里。我的本能告诉我，我的大脑是挖掘器官，就像一些生灵用嘴或前爪挖穴一样，我用大脑挖掘一条穿过这些山峦的隧道。我想，最富足的矿脉就在这儿的某个地方，凭借这魔杖和这淡淡升腾起的雾气，我的判断也是如此。我要在这儿开始我的挖掘。

Walden

 . . . . The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

    When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion,. which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned anything of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about....

    When first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited a year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a traveling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere. . . .

    I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

    Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. ...

    Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for work, we haven't any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. ... Hardly a man takes a half-hour's nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What's the news?" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. "Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe,"--and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.

    For my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life--1 wrote this some years ago--that were worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter,--we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. . . .

    Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito's wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry,--determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake. . . . Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.

    Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.