Chapter 2  The Obstacles to Achieving Life’s Purpose

第二章、達成生命目標的障礙

◎p.11

…[M]ost of us do become partially resigned, just by experience of life and by finding out how very hard it is to change the World for the better.…

In general, I am distressed at the evil of which I am aware at first hand in myself and at second in my fellow human beings—the evils of selfishness, greed, callousness, and animosity; and, in feeling this distress, I believe I am sharing a feeling that has been felt by all human beings…

第11頁

恐怕我們之中的大多數人對現實或多或少都有所妥協，這是因為生活經歷所致，也是因為將世界變得更好困難重重所致。……一般來說，我對發現在自身及他人身上的劣根性感到沮喪——對那些邪惡的自私自利、貪得無厭、冷酷無情、以及對人的敵意，而我相信這種沮喪的情緒是所有人類都曾有過…

◎p. 12

As I see it, our distress at the disparity between the real and the ideal has increased step by step with the increase in our ability to change both human institutions and physical nature….  With the increase in our power, our sense of responsibility and our sense of distress increases.  I have said that I think that man ought to live for creating, loving, and understanding.  Now to love and to understand gives us the means and the motive fore creating things, but the capacity to create also saddles us with responsibility.  The greater the power that we have to change the World into something nearer to our ideal, the greater becomes our distress at our failing to perform those beneficent and useful acts of creation which we know to be within our power.

第12頁

在我看來，當我們改變社會制度及自然環境的能力步步提高時，我們對理想和現實間的差距所感受的痛苦也步步提升。……隨著我們的能力提高，我們的責任感與痛苦感也增加了。我曾說過：我覺得人應為創造、愛、與理解而活。如今，愛與理解給予我們方法與動力去創造，但是創造的能力亦讓我們承擔責任。我們改造世界以拉近理想的能力越高，我們就會越痛苦，因為我們覺得自己有能力去做有益及有用的創造活動，卻不能得償所願。

◎p.13

Power is an inescapable accompaniment of human social life….  Every living creature is self-centred…and power is one of the consequences of self-centredness because all living creatures are competing with each other for exploiting the universe; and this competition is a conflict of power.  If all human beings could get rid completely of self-centredness, power would, I suppose, disappear.  It would be non-existent if the human race consisted entirely of arhats, the Buddhist term for people who have devoted their exertions to reaching Nirvana by extinguishing self-centredness. Power would also be non-existent in a human race consisted entirely of genuine saints in the Christian sense.

第13頁

人類的社會生活不可避免的伴隨著權力。……所有生物都以自我為中心，……而權力則是自我為中心的一個產物，因為所有的生物都在為了爭取宇宙的資源而彼此競爭，而這種競爭最終導致權力爭鬥。我猜想，如果人類能夠完全放下自我中心，權力就會消失。如果全體人類都是阿羅漢，權力就不會存在。阿羅漢是佛教名詞，指致力於消除自我中心而實現涅槃的人。如果全人類都是基督教意義上的真聖人，權力也不會存在。

◎p.15-16

A distinguished nineteenth-century historian, Lord Action, once wrote: ‘All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’  This dictum is very striking, and no one has been able to find the answer to it or to refute it, I think.

第15-16頁

19世界著名歷史學家阿克頓勳爵（Lord Acton）曾寫道：「權力導致腐敗，絕對的權力導致絕對的腐敗。」這句名言震撼人心，我想沒有人能回應這句話、或者否定這句話。

◎p.15-16

The Greek philosopher Plato said that the only people fit to rule were philosophers, and that they ought to be unwilling rulers if they were real philosophers.[1]

第15-16頁

希臘哲學家柏拉圖曾說過，只有哲學家才適合當統治者，而且他若是真正的哲學家，則一定不會自願做統治者。

◎p.19

History shows that violent revolutions in the past have almost always provoked a violent reaction. This either takes the form of a re-establishment of the pre-revolutionary régime in a rather more unpleasant form than before, or it takes the still more ironical form of the conversion of the revolutionary régime itself into a caricature of the pre-revolutionary régime.

第19頁

歷史證明，過去種種武力革命都會激起武力反抗。新建立的政權要不比起被推翻的舊政權更加讓人感到不快，要不就是新的革命政權諷刺的成為舊政權地卡通可笑版。