这个道理布朗宁(Browning)在Rabbi Ben Ezva那篇诗里说得最精透,我不会翻译,只择几段出来让你自己去玩味:
Not on the vulgar mass
Called "work”,must Sentence pass,
Things done,that took the eye and had the price;
O,er which,from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straight way to its mind,could value intrice:
But all,the world,s coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work,yet swelled the
man,s amount:
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through thoughts and escaped:
All I could never be,
All,men ignored in me,
This I was worth to God,whose wheel the pitchershaped.
这几段诗在我生平所给的益处最大。我记得这几句话,所以能惊赞热烈的失败,能欣赏一般人所嗤笑的呆气和空想,能景仰不计成败的坚苦卓绝的努力。
假如我的十二封信对于现代青年能发生毫末的影响,我尤其虔心默祝这封信所宣传的超“效率”的估定价值的标准能印人个个读者的心孔里去;因为我所知道的学生们、学者们和革命家们都太贪容易,太浮浅粗疏,太不能深人,太不能耐苦,太类似美国旅行家看《蒙娜•丽莎》了。引自第57页