選讀：向遠方的美景歡呼
Life is a pure flame,and we live by an invisible sun within us.
-------Sir Thomas Browne
“生命是束純凈的火焰，我們依靠自己內心看不見的太陽而存在。”
--------托馬斯-布朗爵士
――and see no end to the landscape, new objects presenting themselves as we advance; so, in the commencement of life, we set no bounds to our inclinations nor to the unrestricted opportunities of grastifying them. We have as yet found no obstacle, no disposition to flag; and it seems that we can go on so forever. We look round in a new world, full of life, and motion, and ceaseless progress, and feel in ourselves all the vigour and spirit to keep pace with it, and do not foresee from any present symptoms how we shall be left behind in the natural course of things, decline into old age, and drop into the grave.
It is the simplicity, and as it were abstractedness of our feelings in youth, that ( so to speak ) identifies us with nature, and ( our experience being slight and our passions strong ) deludes us into a belief of being immortal like it. Our short-lives connexion with existence we fondly flatter ourselves, is an indissoluble and lasting union-a honeymoon that knows neither coldness, jar, nor separation. As infants smile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our wayward fancies, and lulled into security by the roar of the universe around us. We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the more-objects press around us, filling the mind with their magnitude and with the strong of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.
中文：
此時，但覺好風光應接不暇，而且，前程更有美不勝收的新鮮景致。在這生活的開端，我們聽任自己的志趣馳騁，放手給它們一切滿足的機會。到此為止，我們還沒有碰上過什么障礙，也沒有感覺到什么疲憊，因此覺得還可以一直這樣向前走去，直到永遠。我們看到四周一派新天地――生機盎然，變動不拘，日新月異；我們覺得自己活力充盈，精神飽滿，可與宇宙并駕齊驅。而且，眼前也無任何跡象可以證明，在大自然的發展過程中，我們自己也會落伍、衰老、進入墳墓。
由于年輕人天真單純，可以說是茫然無知，因而將自己跟大自然劃上等號；并且，由于經驗少而感情盛，誤以為自己也能和大自然一樣永世長存。我們一廂情愿，癡心妄想，竟把自己在世上的暫時棲身當作千古不變、萬事長存的結合，好像沒有冷淡、爭執、離別的密月。像嬰兒帶著微笑入睡，我們躺在用自己編織成的搖籃里，讓大千世界的萬籟之聲催哄我們安然入夢；我們急切切、興沖沖地暢飲生命之杯，怎么也不會飲干，反而好像永遠是滿滿欲溢；包羅萬象紛至沓來，各種欲望隨之而生，使我們騰不出工夫想死亡。
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